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Service Standards

Our service standards cover how we collaborate with clients from start to end, and everything in between.

Over the course of our work together, we hope that this will serve as a point of reference to answer questions you might have about matters such as our onboarding process, assignment of writers and editors, and important plan milestones.

When you work with us, you agree to abide by these service standards.

Have any further questions that are not covered here? Drop us an email at hello@withcontent.co, and we’ll get back to you soonest.

Getting started

A plan refers to the scope of work we agree on together, which typically involves a package of credits and deliverables.

For each plan, you will have a dedicated Account Manager who will be your primary contact. All plan communications will go through him/her. We recommend having a single point of contact from your team, too. However, we can accommodate other team members if necessary.

Onboarding

Within two weeks of the start of every new plan, we will send over two items:

  1. An Onboarding form
    for your team to fill out
  1. A kickoff meeting
    which will involve our Account Manager, Production Manager, and the main point of contact from your team

During the 45-minute kickoff meeting, we will confirm the plan’s scope, review our editorial process, and propose a tentative timeline to complete the work by the plan’s expiry date. Any substantive creative discussion related to specific deliverables should wait until the initial topic proposals have been submitted.

After the kickoff meeting and approval of the proposed timeline, we will assign credits based on the confirmed deliverables and standard creation timelines, which will be outlined in Section 4.

Standard timelines

Our highest priority is to ensure that we have qualified writers, editors, and designers available to take on your deliverables, and sufficient time to deliver our best work. This is reflected in our standard creation timelines, as well as the proposed plan timeline. Once credits have been assigned, we will reserve production capacity accordingly.

As such, if you fall behind on credit usage, we will need to adjust the plan’s timeline accordingly, which might result in the underutilization of credits by the end of the plan.

In addition, we cannot accommodate assigning more credits within a timeline shorter than what we’ve proposed, as this will result in a lower standard of work that we believe will not meet both our expectations and yours.

Do note that these are maximum timelines. We always aim to deliver work ahead of schedule, while keeping in mind that the best work requires sufficient time to create.

Strategy timelines

Our content strategy offering includes three parts:

  1. Competitor Analysis

Understanding how your competitors are performing in terms of keywords and content

  1. Keyword Research

Evaluating and picking focus keywords based on keyword difficulty and volume amongst other factors

  1. Topic Ideation

Suggesting topics according to pillars and stage of the funnel

If you have opted solely for topic ideation, we will conduct high-level competitor and industry research only, and refer to any other materials you might be able to provide us with.

For content strategy or topic ideation, we will arrange a second meeting with you within 30 days to find out more about:

  • what you’ve done for marketing so far,
  • any goals you’ve set,
  • your competitors, and
  • general industry trends.

Our Account Manager will come prepared with preliminary competitor and industry research we’ve done as well.

The first draft of the competitor analysis will be completed and delivered to you within 2 weeks. This will be followed by the full content strategy (including all three parts) 2 weeks after. In most cases, we will schedule a meeting upon delivery to walk you through the details.

A revision is any subsequent draft after the first full content strategy draft, based on feedback given by your team. We provide 2 rounds of revisions, which will be delivered within 1 week each.

Standard creation timelines

All content creation timelines cover the period of time our writer/designer spends creating drafts, as well as our internal editorial process, which involves our Lead Editor and Account Manager.

For plans that only include content creation, we will require for each new deliverable:

  1. Content brief. We will provide you with a content brief template at the beginning of a new plan, which should be filled out for every individual deliverable. Our team will review the submitted brief to ensure we have everything we need, and then either approve it or send it back for any missing information.
  2. Interview sources. If you provide people for us to interview, we’ll ask you to confirm their names, roles, and email addresses. We also ask that you inform interview sources ahead of time that we’ll reach out to them, and provide warm introductions.

For plans with content strategy or topic ideation + content creation:

Once content strategy/topic ideation is completed, all topics will be ready for production.

As such, for every deliverable, we will only require:

  1. Interview sources. If you provide people for us to interview, we’ll ask you to confirm their names, roles, and email addresses. We also ask that you inform interview sources ahead of time that we’ll reach out to them, and provide warm introductions.

Once the full content strategy or brief has been approved, we will begin work on the outline of the first deliverable, which will be delivered within 3 to 5 business days. Similar to drafts, we will ask for your feedback on the outline, and provide one round of revisions within 3 to 5 business days.

  • For deliverables that require interviews, the writing timeline only begins once the final interview has been completed.
  • For deliverables that do not require interviews, the writing timeline begins once the content brief has been approved by our team.

First draft timelines

Once you’ve approved the outline, we will begin writing the first draft. The standard production timelines for the first draft are as follows:

  • Standard blog article or case study (up to 1,200 words) – 5 to 7 business days
  • Pillar article or thought leadership article (up to 3,000 words) – 10 to 14 business days

For visual content, such as infographics, eBooks, or reports, we will include a design sample together with the first copy draft:

  • Small infographic, eBook, or report (up to 3,000 words) – 2 to 3 weeks
  • Medium eBook or report (up to 5,000 words) – 3 to 4 weeks
  • Large eBook or report (up to 8,000 words) – 4 to 5 weeks

Revision timelines

A revision is any subsequent draft after the first draft, based on feedback given by your team. We provide 2 rounds of revisions per deliverable, which will be delivered within 3 to 7 business days each.

Timelines for revisions begin on the business day that your Account Manager confirms receipt of your feedback. Please note that we won’t begin the revision process until you tell us via email that your team has finished leaving feedback and that you are ready for us to begin a new draft.

In the event of any substantive edits requested—i.e. those that require significant structural changes, require additional research or interviews from the writer, or constitute a major departure from the original content brief—revisions may take additional time, and in some cases, additional credits. Your Account Manager will notify you of this and set a general timeline for when to expect the next draft to be available for review.

Regarding feedback

Once we have delivered a first draft or revision, we request that you send feedback and any requested edits within one week of receipt. If you know that you won’t be able to meet this timeline, please inform us as soon as possible so that we don’t reserve capacity for edits during that time.

Additionally, we request that you consolidate and resolve any conflicting feedback between members of your team. This helps us keep your plan on track and avoid unforeseen delays.

Plan expiration

From onboarding to production, our processes have been set up in such a way as to ensure that the scope of work is of the highest quality and delivered in a timely manner. This also requires your support in meeting timelines that are agreed upon.

In addition to the plan expiration dates written into our agreements, unfinished plans and unused credits may be paused and/or expire if we don’t hear from you for an extended period. In these instances, we will proactively and regularly follow up with you to let you know that timelines are in jeopardy:

  • We will put the plan on hold if we don’t receive a response within 30 days of delivering an outline, draft, or revision. You may request to resume the plan, but there will be a waiting period of 2 weeks as we assign a writer/designer and make time in their schedule. Drafts past the first round of revisions (i.e. second draft and beyond) will be considered approved and finished.
  • If we don’t receive a response within 90 days, the plan will expire, and we will be unable to resume or begin new work without signing a new agreement.
  • Once the plan has expired, all credits will be forfeited (barring exceptional circumstances).

Unused credits may be rolled over to a new plan. The amount that can be rolled over will be 25% of the number of credits purchased in the new plan. For example, if you purchase 100 credits in a new plan, you can carry over 25 credits from your previous plan.

When we work

We operate on a standard 5-day workweek, from 9am to 6pm SGT every day. Any feedback or other emails sent to us after working hours or on weekends will be read and responded to the following business day.

We also typically close for the year during the Christmas season. We will let you know several weeks in advance of any office closures that might impact your plan timelines.

Working together

At With Content, one of our core values is to “trust & be trustworthy”:

There’s no better feeling than being able to trust the person who’s working with you. Trust begets trust, so we always begin from a position of goodwill—assuming the best in our colleagues and partners and being trustworthy through our words and actions.

As we work together, trust that we have your best interests in mind.