Guest post by:Matthew Kaplan, Senior Content Manager at Brafton Inc. Head Writer, Chicago Finance, Industry & Technology
One of the toughest parts about being a content writer at a marketing agency is juggling the demands of all the clients. Here at Brafton, I could be personally writing for many different clients at once, and editing the copy for many others too. All told, I could be involved with the copy for dozens of different businesses at one time. Considering that each and every client has particular needs for their content and they all address a different audience, this can be a lot to think about and handle at any given moment.
Further compounding the issue is the fact that I write almost exclusively for B2B technology clients. So, not only am I thinking about dozens of businesses and unique marketing strategies all at once, but each one is operating in an especially niche field. Trust me, it takes time, patience and good research skills as a writer to learn the intricacies of big data, cybersecurity, data center networking and the many other IT-centric topics I cover day in and day out. It's too easy for this meme to become my reality at my job.
Problems with old information-saving techniques
When I first started writing at Brafton many moons ago, I used the Bookmarks feature in Chrome to save information. When I would find an excellent statistic in my research, I would bookmark it for future use. I would also sometimes keep links in a Google Drive document. This was a huge help in my early days at the agency, as I would find myself leveraging the same numbers over and over again for certain clients.
But, both methods quickly proved cumbersome for many reasons. For one, as the number of clients I became involved with grew by the day, I was saving so many links that it became increasingly difficult to find older stats I had stashed away. Thus, what was originally a time-saving measure turned into a time sink as I spent way too much time combing through my Chrome bookmarks looking in vain for one particular tidbit.
In addition, as my job became more collaborative with other creatives here at Brafton, I encountered difficulties when trying to share great pieces of information I found. Email and instant messaging could work in a pinch, but it's too easy to ignore both or to forget to save a link sent to you in this manner. I would sometimes share co-workers on my Google doc, but then they'd have to sift through my hundreds of sometimes unrelated links to find something relevant to their needs.
What it all added it up to was precious time wasted looking for information and trying in vain to collaborate. In any business, time is money, and I was losing both to inefficient information storage and recollection.
How Sorc'd saves the day, every day
Luckily, all of my old information saving and sharing woes are firmly in the rearview mirror ever since I discovered Sorc'd. If you've never used it before, Sorc'd is a total lifesaver for an agency writer like myself. With one Web-based tool I can access from any computer, I have the ability to save information I find on any website. Thanks to its tags feature and great search functionality, I can always find tibdits I put in Sorc'd with ease. My Sorc'd account is linked with co-workers, so they can easily find the information I put in there and vice versa.
My co-workers and I have estimated that thanks to Sorc'd, we now spend 10 to 20 percent less time than before looking for the information we need to write content for our clients. Thanks to Sorc'd, we have a much easier time delivering well-researched and well-written content to all of the businesses we work with. In our fast-paced agency world, this makes Sorc'd one of the most invaluable tools in our arsenal.