Kerry Campion 💾’s Post

Eeeeexactly. I don't know your industry, but I do know how to ask smart questions to get the information I need to write an excellent post if you make the time for me. And, eventually, I'll understand the topic well enough I won't need to talk through each article with you. Also, I love when I explain to a client this piece will be most effective if we can get aa (Founder's perspective/SME interview/internal data/client case study) and they say "sure" we can get you that. And then they don't. And don't. And eventually I have to just write it based on Google searches and the empty branding words on their website.

I work with writers as a Content Manager on a daily basis and I am definitely guilty of this. I don't want these to sound like excuses, but if you're a one-person content team and you are buried with other projects and meeting certain expectations, it's hard to do this for every article, even though it's a must. I 100% agree. I send general content guidelines, and some of the writers I now work with have been around the company for much longer. They know what our members like to read and how to present the information well. I wish I had more people on the content team though. That way, other team members could focus solely on writers and help them during the writing process. What I have as a piece of advice is to ask. Ask the person to provide you with the steps you need. Explain that this is how you work and that you can only start after having certain things in place. If you're a fantastic writer, the hiring person will recognize that and not turn you down.

Agree so hard with this! If I had wanted to go into strategy, I would have but I don't. I want to write, research, draft, create. Without any strategy, how can we as writers know which direction to head?

This is why I encourage writers to become industry experts. Raw writing skill is not enough.

My background is in technical writing but in the last year, I’ve transitioned more into copywriting. I was SHOCKED at how general most of the copy briefs I looked at were. Especially compared with the type of questions I have when interviewing a SME. I ended up creating my own, much more detailed brief. Still simple to use and follow, and by asking a bunch of specific questions, it gets the client considering these things on their end.

I wish I had the courage to DM this to a few folks. 👀

Oh and also providing a voice guide helps! It's hard to expect writers to write exactly how you want them to if you don't give them the guidelines for what that should look like. Not enough companies invest in brand voice guides.

Send your client a comprehensive questionnaire to complete is one way of tackling the problem.

Thorough, clear briefs are the secret sauce to good content. Not enough people understand this.

Yeah Kerry Campion 💾 couldn't agree more. And expecting writers to write copy that mirrors exactly what your brain is thinking is 😮. If you are outsourcing your copy, you are equally responsible for its success. (Success defined as how your readers perceive your copy and not what you think is the best copy).