Client Success Story
Helping Cloud City create a consistent content strategy to build brand awareness
Consistent blog and newsletter schedule
Open rates above industry standards
Messaging and content strategy
“As a small team, we thought we were asking for the impossible. With Helen Anne, we got someone who collaboratively enabled our dream of systematizing our content.”
Leslie Chicoine
About Cloud City
Cloud City Development is a wholehearted, full-service software development and design consultancy specializing in web and mobile apps.
They are experts in lean user experience, product design, agile software development and product delivery.
highlights
Challenge
- Finding time to plan and create content.
- Inconsistent content marketing without a clear vision.
- Time-consuming for team members to create content about their experiences.
Solution
- Creating a consistent marketing and content strategy.
- Creating a process so team members can easily share their expertise.
- Working with Cloud City Development's work culture to capture their unique values and personality.
Results
- Consistently posting two blogs a month and publishing a quarterly newsletter.
- Newsletter's open rates are above industry standards.
- Team members have an expert copywriter on hand to help make creating content efficient and fun.
"Initially, I was worried that a copywriter wouldn't work for us. We wanted the content to be in our voice and about topics we care about but didn't have the bandwidth to make that happen. With Helen Anne, we got someone who understood us, was collaborative, worked independently and took initiative."
Leslie Chicoine
- The Challenge
Creating a consistent content marketing process to share the team’s expertise with current and potential clients and build brand awareness.
As a boutique development and design agency, Cloud City Development frequently solves unique, complex technology problems for their clients.
They knew their team had valuable and interesting insights to share, which could help their clients and industry colleagues.
“It was frustrating to not be able to unlock all the valuable and fun
ideas the team wanted to share.
We needed an easy and consistent process to allow our team to share the fun and unique challenges they’ve solved without getting
bogged down by the details of writing and publishing articles.”
Yet, as a smaller business, team members were often too busy working on projects to have the time to write articles.
As a result, Cloud City’s content marketing was inconsistent, with articles and newsletters published sporadically.
- The Solution
Hire Helen Anne Travis, a copywriter and former journalist, to help create a consistent content and marketing strategy.
Cloud City Development realized they needed help with their content creation and strategy.
But they were unsure how to proceed. Plus, they were concerned whether someone outside their industry could truly understand their highly technical content.
“We work with CTOs and VPs of engineering and product. These are
people who know their practices really well. They need to see content
that’s actually written to their level.
I was concerned. Can we work with a copywriter? Can we talk about
detailed industry subjects without oversimplifying or turning out
marketing mush?”
Then, Leslie received a recommendation to speak with Helen Anne Travis, a copywriter and former journalist.
“It was very clear right away that working with Helen
Anne would be a great fit. I was impressed with the
process of getting to know her, her practices and the
way that she had automated aspects of her business.
Her ability to create a system around her own
business was inspiring because it was what we wanted
to do. We wanted to feel somewhat automated with
our copywriting and content.”
Leslie was pleasantly surprised at how quickly and seamlessly Helen Anne Travis integrated into their work culture, captured their values and personality, and understood their business and marketing needs.
“Helen Anne has been great about taking the initiative to stay up to date with what we’re doing, using our asynchronous communications and helping out in other ways, like with internal documentation and marketing strategy.”
- The Results
Cloud City is now publishing blog posts and newsletters consistently, allowing them to share their employees' insights and grow their brand awareness.
Employees at Cloud City now have an easy way to create and publish their ideas as blog posts, giving them an increased sense of pride in their company and work.
“One of our engineers wanted to write a blog post about an
interesting challenge he solved. But when he tried writing it on his
own, it wasn’t going the way he wanted.
He sat down with Helen Anne and talked about technical problems
and his solution, and shared a very long draft. Then, after she wrote
the post, he reviewed it and was like, ‘That’s what I was hoping
I could write. That’s me!’ He was excited to get that information out into the world.”
Since working with Helen Anne, Cloud City now has:
A consistent content strategy that allows them to publish two
blog posts a month.
A quarterly newsletter with open rates above industry standards
and a low attrition rate.
An expert to turn to for help with marketing and content
strategy questions.
A broader perspective of their messaging and content goals.
A sense of pride in the quality of their content and strategy.
“Helen Anne knows how to distill down the technical information correctly and does it so well. We don’t need to double-check that information will fit our voice or vision for our company. We trust her process.”
Leslie Chicoine
Do you hear that? That’s the sound of things getting done.
No more stress
No more bottlenecks
No more micromanaging
Just great content, copy and branding.
