How Upwork Talent Helps an Events Company Thrive in Virtual Spaces

In early 2020, a company called Museum Hack was a well-known name among urban professionals in the U.S. The company offered in-person team-building events in the form of “renegade, small group tours” at museums in some of the largest cities in the U.S.—perfect for teams that wanted an alternative to staid happy hours or potluck lunches.

Like many businesses that relied on face-to-face events, though, Museum Hack found its core business model deeply impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. So they decided to go all-in on something they’d only dabbled with previously: virtual events.

But first, they’d have to get the right team in place.

A new name, a new product—and a new marketing strategy

By the end of 2020, Museum Hack’s owners started a new initiative: teambuilding.com.

When not actively guiding a museum tour, the company’s team members worked remotely— so they knew what went into successful virtual communication. And the jovial, fun spirit of Museum Hack’s in-person events carried through to online events like digital escape rooms and whodunit murder-mystery parties.

There was one key difference, though: the in-person events often generated referrals.

While referrals for virtual events certainly happen, the company wasn’t likely to benefit from the same word-of-mouth marketing and name recognition as before.

Enter Angela Robinson. Hired as the company’s sole content writer, she was responsible for creating an online brand that would define teambuilding.com growth.

“We had to, essentially, build a brand from scratch and build up a whole new business model with different clientele,” Robinson said. “A big part of that was developing a strong blog presence.”

Turning real-world remote work expertise into effective content

Robinson began producing the bulk of teambuilding.com content herself, writing four or five pieces a week. And by the end of 2021, these regular content creation efforts paid off.

The company saw hundreds of thousands of  visits to their website every month—and held thousands of keywords in the top three spots on Google search engine results pages (SERPs).

Soon, though, Robinson needed to produce even more content to continue this phenomenal growth.

“We were positioned to be a market leader in this virtual team building space—but as the pandemic stretched on, more competitors cropped up,” Robinson said. “It became ever more important to have an SEO strategy including content marketing. We needed to be able to produce content very quickly so that we could gain authority and gain in the rankings.”

Robinson wasn’t interested in quick, fluffy articles that could be churned out rapidly strictly for SEO purposes, either.

“I thought it was very important that we be able to produce thought leadership content,” Robinson said. “We’d already been running as a remote company for a decade, and have experience that can help other businesses.”

In order to get this mix of quality and quantity—the kind of output that could aggressively scale teambuilding.com’s customer base—Robinson turned to the Upwork Talent Marketplace™ to find skilled writers.

Quickly scaling content operations with Talent Marketplace

“The first step, after posting a job, was to look at talent profiles on Upwork and see their existing writing samples,” Robinson said. “But for me, as a writer and a leader, it was very important to test how talent on Upwork would perform with our brand voice and our style guidelines.”

Robinson did this by setting up one-time contracts for paid writing samples to test her top candidates’ ability to match the teambuilding.com voice.

“The paid writing samples really let me see which writers put attention and care into creating a finished product that read as a teambuilding.com article,” Robinson said. “It was also a test to see how they responded to the directions we gave them. Our entire team works remotely and asynchronously, so it’s really important that we have a strong team of writers that can take direction and then run with it.”

Robinson ultimately settled on a team of six independent writers located around the world.

10x content production with a global twist

Today, Robinson’s team of writers creates between 30 and 40 pieces of content every week. But they’re contributing to the company’s success through more than just sheer output.

“One thing that we noticed ranked very well, even early on, was virtual holiday content—especially content we built out for culturally significant holidays like Black History Month and Women’s History Month,” Robinson said.

Because the writing team is distributed globally, they’re able to bring new insights as to the types of holiday and event content that will engage readers around the world.

“It’s been really interesting, this intersection of celebration with team togetherness and diversity,” she said. “A lot of companies want to know how they can make these occasions truly meaningful when we’re working remotely.”

Being able to hone in on the kind of content that audiences around the world want to see—and then deliver it on such a large scale—means that today, teambuilding.com holds one of the top three spots for tens of thousands of keywords across Google SERPs.

And with more than two million website visitors every month—and the #15 spot on Inc 5000’s list of America’s fastest growing companies—it’s clear that the team’s content strategy is working.

Behind-the-scenes benefits of an independent team

There’s another big benefit that Robinson has experienced as a result of working with Upwork, too—one that’s not so readily apparent in search results.

Because Robinson completely trusts her team of writers to produce quality work, she’s able to spend less time writing and editing. This allowed her to expand her focus to new initiatives and take on the role of marketing coordinator.

“Having this team on Upwork has really allowed me to open up some of my workload and take on new projects. I wouldn’t be able to do that if I was still pumping out content on my own and trying to keep blog posts consistent,” Robinson said. “And I can really trust this team—I feel very confident when I see new content loaded in WordPress. I don’t have to scrutinize every single word because I’m familiar with everyone’s writing styles and know they’re doing a great job.”

Robinson’s success with her team of writers has cemented Upwork as a key part of the company’s growth. While there are plenty of new avenues for the company to explore, she’s confident that Upwork talent will be part of the process.

“In startup culture, your position doesn’t always stay static for long and you’re wearing lots of hats. So it’s important that you’re able to build things up and then pass them to a reliable contributor so you can develop new things,” Robinson said. “It’s so important to be able to find the people and skills we need, when we need them—and Upwork helps us do that.”