Case study: content writing retainer for SaaS
Breathe is an HR software company, providing HR SaaS to SMEs across the UK. Their target markets are SME business leaders and people responsible for HR management and administration.
With a gap in their content team and the need to continue creating and updating content to fit their busy content schedule, I worked on a content writing retainer with them for two years. A year later, I worked on a further retainer of 11 months with them.
As a freelance content writer, I was able to provide several services to support the team. Here are a few highlights:
Blog repurposing
Great content deserves to be seen but needs regular spring cleaning to keep it working hard from an SEO perspective. The team at Breathe gave me a list of blogs to repurpose as part of my content writing retainer. With access to their Monday.com board, I delivered blogs in line with their updated keyword targets and any other changes, while running due diligence checks on stats and legislative information to ensure all content was correct. Naturally, I ensured keywords were incorporated naturally and effectively for SEO dynamite. I also provided page titles and SEO descriptions. Some of this work involved merging multiple posts into single blogs. Every post was delivered to schedule.
Blog writing
Refreshing existing content is an easy win, but writing new blogs is a surefire way to show your audience you’re on top of current topics. Again, working from the team Monday.com board, I delivered a series of blogs in line with keyword and title requirements. Some blogs had very specific briefs, others were left open for me to write as I felt fit. Again, every blog was written to a tight schedule, and I turned edits around in a flash.
“Her work is well-researched and very well-written. I would highly recommend Laura’s services” – Carl Sadecki
Gated content for SAAS
Information-rich gated content is lead-generating gold. However, it needs to be up to date. The Breathe team briefed me to update a selection of their guides – all of which related to employment law, leadership and team management. I researched the topics, sense-checked the data and ensured links and statistics were still relevant. If there were stronger links or better statistics, I updated these. In some cases, social attitudes were shifting – especially if the content was written pre-covid. In this case, I edited things and alerted the team, so they were aware of my changes.
Content writing training for team members
I was asked to run a training session with a newer member of Breathe’s content team to help with their development. During the two-hour session, I shared my methodology around content creation, particularly focusing on research and helpful tools to help with blog writing. The feedback I received was that the session was very useful and shaped how the writer builds their content to this day.
Content writing retainer results
I worked with Breathe in two separate contracts. During my first content writing retainer, I wrote 82 articles for Breathe. These have been read by more than 870,000 people and generated more than 4,000 clicks through to other content, including requests for software trials and demonstrations.
“Laura has been a great asset to our content team over the past few years. She fully understands our brand voice & our goals, always creating insightful and interesting content that is enjoyable to read. Laura has re-invigorated some of our older blogs with her engaging writing style, as well as shared her valuable knowledge in updating some of our core website resources. Laura also kindly ran an incredibly useful training session with me when I was new to content writing, sharing some golden pieces of advice that I implemented & still use today. I can’t recommend Laura highly enough, nor thank her enough for all her hard work and help.”
Aimée Brougham-Chandler
You can see some of the work I completed for Breathe here.
