By Liliana Torres
Adding Copywriting Services to Your Company’s Repertoire
During my time at Local Wisdom, I’ve had the unique opportunity of establishing a company writers group that publishes regularly and feeds the company’s website and newsletter. Since the agency predominantly specializes in all things digital – from development to UX/design, I thought of putting my English major in gear to add to the company’s future services. If your company has technological prowess but lacks in the traditional copywriting, editing, and communication areas, consider these tips to spearhead a writing movement and potentially add to your service offerings:
1. Find the one who will lead the group. If that’s you, great. If it’s not but you think it’s important, get in front of the right people and sell them on why it’s an important service. Then research your options to see who would be the best fit for the role or how you could take the lead.
2. Who is going to be part of the group? I lucked out in that we have people who have writing as one of their core trades, but I also have designers, marketing and sales people. Well, some volunteered (thank goodness). Others, I pulled in because I needed more support. If your resources and people are limited, see how certain people could leverage their strengths in the group. For example, one of the designers in our group writes but has also taken the lead in making sure the blog posts on our websites meet our design standards. The more you leverage everyone’s strengths, the more involved they’ll feel in your group.
3. Assign roles. I use the term “assign” loosely. Once you share your vision and mission with the group, ask around to see where people think they can help the most. The fact that we have natural writers is great, but it’s even better that we have UX/design and sales people. At first glance, their craft may not seem related to writing, but they can provide valuable insight from an audience perspective.
4. Figure out a day and time that works for most. At this point in your career, you should be an expert at setting up meetings, so here’s another one to set up.
5. Implement a writing and publishing schedule at your meetings. There should be time allocated to brainstorming and sharing topic ideas and time to write. This also keeps everyone accountable to deadlines.
6. Make sure you provide the group with the right tools to succeed. Starting a writers group can be difficult, especially if people need guidance in the writing process. There may be some weeks when there aren’t any brainstorming sessions or deadlines – that’s the perfect time to have a grammar Q&A or to discuss how to properly cite sources.
