2 tips to get the best from your writer

Great writing for any medium relies on a few key factors. When the stage is clearly set and there is room left for creativity, writers can flex their linguistic muscles to find just the right words to reach the right readers with the right story.

Unfortunately when it comes to writing for brands and businesses, these elements are often overlooked - resulting in copy that lands flat, requires multiple rewrites or never sees the light of day.

So whether they’re in-house, agency or freelance, here’s my top tips for getting the most from your writers.

A thorough brief is essential

In busy organisations, so often a brief can look like;

“We haven’t updated the company website in ages. Can you write an article by the end of the week?”

A great writer will be able to research, tap into trends, work off previous examples and usually generate a half-decent article with minimal additional direction.

However, this kind of haphazard approach leaves both you and your writer at risk of a lot of wasted time and resourcing and a good chance whatever they produce won’t be what you had in mind.

Setting expectations early and ensuring a shared understanding of the required outcome is crucial to producing high-quality content. And this means: a brief.

While they’ll vary from case to case, a solid briefing template for content should include:

• Format or medium Where will we be publishing? Will it be used across multiple platforms? Is it long-form or short-form?

• Audience Who do we want to read it? (hint: ‘the public’ doesn’t count. Be specific.)

• Key messages and takeawaysWhat do we want the audience to do or think after reading this?

• Tone of voice Is this formal or informal? Authoritative or friendly? First-person or third-person?

• Reference materials Previous examples to use as a template, background information, useful documents or links

• Logistics - when is it due, who needs to approve it, are there any other checks and balances required?

Ensuring you’re clear on your expectations and your writer understands these requirements will get you halfway to a great content piece before they’ve even put pen to paper.

Give clear feedback and explain why

Everyone approaches feedback differently. Some people love to turn tracked changes on and go to town with line edits and suggestions. Others will give a few short lines of overall impressions in an email and call it a day. Others still will call their writer and talk for half an hour about how it “just doesn’t feel right yet.”

The best gift you can give your writer is clear feedback with an explanation.

Changing some phrasing in their draft is one thing, but giving a clear reason why you’re making the change allows them to identify the difference between their approach and yours, and to implement this throughout the draft.

Even phrasing your conversations in terms of “it feels like x and I want it to feel like y” gives a frame of reference that your writer can use to adjust their approach.

Sometimes, you might find this sparks more conversation as they provide other (perhaps more elegant!) solutions for achieving the same outcome.

Better yet - giving feedback with an explanation helps them improve so next time there’ll be less editing for you to do.