How to Place an Order: Tips and Tricks for Your First Order

woman ordering content on Crowd Content

When you place an order at Crowd Content, we want the experience to be as seamless as possible. Your orders reach a large, talented community of writers who are eager to create content that matches your business’s needs and SEO requirements.

How It Works – The Workflow

When you place your first order, and any subsequent orders after that, it reaches a large pool of writers who can view and access orders at your preferred star level and higher. For instance, if you place an open order for 4-star content, it reaches all available 4-star writers in the system. Placing an order at the 3-star level makes it available to all 3- and 4-star writers. Similarly, 2-star orders are available to all writers with 2, 3 or 4 stars.

Writers receive an email notification when your orders have been placed, so they can log in and decide whether or not to write the order depending on their time constraints, interests or skills. After your order is placed, a qualified writer will pick it up to work on and complete it according to the deadline you set and the minimum time allowed by the platform — 24 hours per 500 words. To set a custom deadline, scroll to the bottom of the order screen, select Advanced Options and use the Processing Time dropdown.

If you place an order that requires 500 words or less, you can set the deadline for 1 to 10 days. A 1,000-word order requires a minimum deadline of 2 days and a 1,500-word order needs a minimum of 3 days. If you need content faster than that, you can call us directly and we’ll put you in touch with a qualified writer who may be available to complete it for you right away.

After the writer produces the content according to your instructions and guidelines, they’ll submit the content for you to review. At this stage, you have two choices: Choose to accept the content as-is or send it back to the writer to make revisions. If you request revisions, you’ll have an opportunity to provide specific guidance for the writer to let them know exactly what you want changed. The writer has 24 hours to complete revisions, and then the content is sent back to you for further review. If everything looks great, then you can accept the content, and the writer is paid. Once the content is accepted, you can use it as you need for your business.

How Many Orders Can I Place at Once?

You’re not limited to how many orders you place in the same day. If you have a large batch of orders to complete, such as hundreds of product descriptions, you may be better suited for our Enterprise services — you can contact your customer success manager for more information on this.

Different Order Types

At Crowd Content, we offer several content types that can be sorted into four main categories.

Custom Content

Custom content is our specialty: Entertaining articles, blog posts, web content and press releases belong here. You can provide a specific title, instructions and exactly what topics you would like covered in the written post. Our writers are skilled at being able to help you meet your business goals through developing and implementing successful content strategies.

Product Descriptions

This is a specialized category and applies to written descriptions of individual products on an e-commerce website. Depending on your product types and preferences, product descriptions can be short, long, or somewhere in the middle, and they should include strong keywords to help drive eager buyers to your site.

Facebook Posts

Need help promoting your latest blog posts? Want to keep your fan base engaged? You can do that effectively with a batch of custom Facebook posts. Customers must order a minimum of 10 posts to use this service.

Twitter

This is an excellent platform for promoting your brand and getting the word out to the masses about how great your business and services are. Our Twitter-savvy writers will create a minimum of 15 tweets for you when you choose this content option.

Going Through the Order Form, Step by Step

Once you’ve signed up for an account on crowdcontent.com and communicated with your customer success manager, you’re ready to place an order. Our simple, one-page interface asks essential questions related to content creation and ensures writers will have everything they need to create great content.

Campaign

The default value for this is “Campaign 1”, but if you’ve worked directly with a customer success manager, they may have created a custom campaign for you with specific pricing and services. This is selectable here.

Folders

Customized folders let you keep content in an easily accessible place. They can be organized by topic, date, or content type — the labels are totally up to you. Folders make it easy to group individual orders together. During each stage of the content creation process, that order remains in the folder you selected for easy retrieval later.

To create a new folder, go to your content queue and click the + to the right of label Folders on the left sidebar.  

Content Types and Categories

The next drop-down let you choose the type of content you need, whether it be Facebook posts, tweets, an ebook, a blog article, product descriptions or a press release. The box directly under content type lets you select a category for the content. Categories are important because writers add tags to their profiles to match category types, so someone who is extremely knowledgeable about photography equipment or animals is more likely to write your order if it falls into their area of expertise.

Instructions

The rest of the order form changes based on the content type, but in general, it lets you provide specific directions and guidelines for the writer. For instance, if you’re placing orders for tweets to be posted on Twitter, there is a field for you to include your business’s Twitter handle so the writer can view your current Twitter page. An instruction box lets you provide details about your order, links to Google docs or links to example content.

Order Type, Pricing and Word Count

Next, you must select an order type. On Crowd Content, we have three basic types of orders:

  • Open Order: The most common type, these orders are available to writers at the star level you select. We recommend 3 or 4-star content for most orders, because these writers have proven skills in the industry and often have specialized areas of expertise.
  • Direct Order: This type of order is placed with one writer that you choose yourself. The individual writer selected is the only one to have access to a direct order.
  • Team Orders: This restricts order access to writers placed on a team that you create. Gather as many writers as you’d like and place them on individual teams; this way, you know your order will be picked up by someone you hand-selected.

Pricing is based on word count, star level, and services selected (such as whether you’re just using writing services or writing and editing). When you fill in the word count fields for each individual order, the sidebar on the right updates to reflect accurate pricing based on the word count provided and the star level selected for both writing and editing.

Editing & Proofreading

Editing and proofreading services are also available for each order you place at an additional 3 cents per word. Just as with a writing order, you can choose to place editing open, direct to a specific editor, or to a team of editors.

Advanced Options

Advanced options let you upload a relevant document, spreadsheet or PDF for the writer to use as a reference. There are also several other order options included here:

  • Keywords: The writer will include keywords you select when you indicate them in this box. You can include a total of up to three keywords. The system lets the writer know when they submit the order if they’ve met your keyword requirements. Keywords are extremely important for SEO.
  • Target Audience: You’ll receive better copy in the end if you let the writer know upfront who the intended audience is. You may have formal buyer personas in place that you can summarize, or you can say something as simple as “golf enthusiasts.”
  • Suggested Outbound Link: If you have a URL you would like the writer to link to within the order, insert it here.
  • Identifier: This option lets you tag the article with an identifying number. For product descriptions, for example, this may be the model, item or UPC number.

  • Metadata: Choose this option if you would like the writer to create a meta title and meta description to go along with your order.
  • Layout: If you need multiple fields available to the writer, you can use this option to create a layout that contains the fields you need. If you don’t select this, the writer will have access to a title field and a single text field.
  • Language: Use this option to indicate the language you’d like the writer to use. The default is English (US).
  • Processing Time: Choose a time frame when you’d like the order returned to you. Most clients choose 1 or 2 days as an appropriate time frame, but options are offered up to 10 days if needed. You must give the writer at least one day for each 500 words in the order.
  • Point of View: Indicates from what perspective the writer should create content from. Options include:
    • 1st person – Using pronouns such as I, me, we, us
    • 2nd person – Using pronouns such as you, your
    • 3rd person – A company, the business, and pronouns such as it or they
    • Let the writer decide: Often skilled writers know what perspective to write from based on the content you need. You can check this box if you’re not sure, and the writer can choose whatever seems appropriate for the content type.
  • Things to Emphasize/Things to Avoid: Text boxes are provided for both of these fields for you to indicate exactly what points you want the writer to emphasize and things you definitely want avoided.

In general, the more information you provide to the writer about what you want, the better chance you’ll have at receiving quality written content that suits the needs of your business. Anything you want to see in the created content should be communicated when you place the order — this way, the writer has everything they need to create quality content. If you placed an order but missed an important detail, find out how to get in touch with your writer and message them while it’s in progress.

 

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Helping manage over 15,000 clients from over 80 countries, Nissa works with the customer success team at Crowd Content. Her goal is to help clients create unique and relevant content for their digital strategy. Originally from a small town in the mountains, Nissa moved to Vancouver Island to satisfy her curiosity about sociology, and complete her degree in it. When she takes a break from clients and content, Nissa spends time with her partner and her dog, Tickle. She also loves to embroider, paint and draw.

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