Welcome!

Welcome to LeadVenture! Whether you’re part of our Dealer Spike team, or ARI team, or both, we’re excited to have you on board. This page offers a quick overview of resources you’ll need and processes you’ll need to become familiar with. Bookmark this page, leave it open while you’re working, and use it as much as you need.

First Things First…

Your first day will be guided by our HR department and IT. They’ll work to help you get set up and in the system. They should have reached out to you prior to your first day to begin this process.

Who’s Who?

Once you’ve got the basics, it’s time to meet the team! Many of your coworkers are spread across the United States and the world. You may be just down the street from a fellow writer or on the other side of the world. If you’re unsure what time zone the person you’re talking to is in, try hovering your cursor over their Teams or Outlook profile.

What to Know About Your First Days/Weeks/Months

We don’t expect any new writer to hit the ground running. While you’ll be coming with in essential writing skills, you may be significantly less familiar with the products you’ll be writing about. That’s okay! We didn’t hire you to be an expert in telehandlers. We hired you because you’re a strong writer with excellent resource literacy skills. Those will come in handy while you work at LeadVenture.

Finally, keep in mind that while you’re a gifted writer, there’s a lot to learn at this job! There are a lot of products to familiarize yourself with and picking up the work may not be as easy as it seems. It’ll take time to adjust and eventually you’ll find it’ll get easier. Until then, don’t be afraid to ask for help and take this time to learn everything you can. The more foundational knowledge you gather in your first month, the easier it’ll be to pick up some of the harder pieces down the road.

Time to Start Your Day!

Once you’re all set up, you’ll begin training, which will be conducted by the Content Team Lead. Everything that’s covered can be found below…

Clock In

Start by clocking in every day using your ADP account.

ADP is also where your hours are logged, where you’ll find pay information, and where we conduct quarterly reviews.

Check Your Messages

Start every day by opening your email, Teams chats, and calendar.

Answer any messages and emails that came in after you left the previous work day. Leave these messaging platforms open. You must promptly respond to emails and Teams communications throughout your day.

Your calendar will tell you if you have a meeting scheduled for that day. As a writer, you will have a handful of meetings you’ll be expected to attend, or may want to attend to learn from other writers. Meetings are held virtually (unless otherwise noted), and the meeting event on your calendar will also have the link to the online meeting room (usually through Teams or Zoom).

Links for Content Fulfillment

The majority of your day-to-day will be spent filling content requests from the SEO department. You should receive a complete training on this from the Content Team Lead, but you can find a quick refresher, along with important links, below.

1. Open Trello

2. Choose a Request

Choose one or more requests to fill. Priority is given to:

1. High Priority requests from assigned clients

2. Dealers whose content requires approval

3. Oldest to newest requests from your assigned clients, up until the following month’s work

4. Unassigned requests from the current month’s work

5. All requests from the current month’s work

6. Requests for the following month

3. Screen Requests

Not all requests are ready to be filled, whether it’s because there’s missing information, conflicting information, the request is too difficult, or any other reason that’s creating an obstacle for you. That’s when it’s time to kick the card back to the rep for corrections.

4. Fill Requests

If the requests are good to go, it’s time to fill them. We’ve provided a list of resources you can use to fill each request, but you’ll want to use what you’ve learned with what you already know about good writing to provide the best possible product for our clients.

Stuck on a Piece?

If you’ve been staring at the screen for ten minutes without an inkling of how to approach a content piece, don’t get too frustrated! It happens to us all. Just remember you have lots of resources you can pull from:

Go back to the sources

Whether you pull up the rewrite again, open some new resource links, or go searching for a different rewrite for new ideas, going back to the research is an excellent way to discover a new avenue of information you might be able to explore.

Ask for help

You may find one of the other writers has encountered this exact problem and has some tips for digging yourself out. Message the writers for ideas or drop a few words in the team chat and see if you can benefit from their experience.

Kick the piece back

Sometimes, it isn’t about what you haven’t learned yet. Some topics just don’t have enough viable information to cover. If the piece is just too hard, it may warrant a kickback. The SEO rep may need to change their approach or they may choose to provide more guidance based on their own research. Either way, we don’t want to be wasting time on content that just isn’t fillable.

5. Wrap it Up

When the piece is finished, there are some final steps to take before you can move on to the next set of requests.

Review Your Piece

Take a quick scan and make sure you’re satisfied with the quality and there are no typos.

Fill Out the Finished Content Template

Copy the Finished Content Template into a comment on the Trello card and fill out each prompt appropriately. Remember, depending on which content format you used, you may not need to fill out the entire template.

Enter Information into Content History Sheet

Each piece must be recorded in the Content History Sheet on the client sheet (linked on the card). You will only need to fill out the information up to the publication information in the last two columns.

Submit to QA

Once all requests on the card have been filled, click your corresponding QA button to send the card to the QA board, where our QA team will either review your content or push the card through to publication.

Record in Tracker

Your daily work will be recorded in a monthly tracker. These trackers are created at the beginning of each month and can be found in the Writing Documents portion of the Drive.

And now you’re all done and ready to do it all over again for the next card!

Additional Notes About Your Work

For International Writers

For all writers not based in the United States, applying American and Canadian dialects can be difficult. While it’ll get easier with time, there are a couple of resources we can give you:

Other Materials

Project Work

Most of your day will be spent filling content requests, but the team works on additional projects designed to make the work easier and the process more efficient. Keep in mind, writing comes first. No project should interfere with your ability to reach your monthly goals. If you choose to work only on filling requests, that is perfectly acceptable and in line with expectations.

If you are interested in joining one of the additional projects, check out the Open Projects tab in your tracker. There, you’ll find all the initiatives we’re actively working on and who’s in charge of them. If you’re interested in any of them, contact the lead of the project for more direction.

Meetings

We try to give you most of your day to write content, but it is important for us to check in as a team periodically. You should receive invitations to the team’s recurring meetings, including our bi-weekly team check-in, which you’ll want to accept in order to get them on your calendar. Some of these meetings you’ll be required to attend (all others will say “Optional” in the title). Make sure you have a system in place to remember to join when they start. It’s easy to get caught up in a piece and realize you’re late to an important discussion, so create a system that works best for you.