Wordsmithing and content: Marketing Therapist, Amber Raney-Kincade, puts Words by Jacqui on the couch (Part 2)

Amber (of Raney Kincade, ARK, pictured above), continues with the second part of her interview with Jacqui Hogan of Words by Jacqui, WBJ)

ARK: How can you decide if you need to hire a wordsmith?


WBJ: 
I think many people believe that because they can write, they can also be wordsmiths - and perhaps some of them can. What I see a lot, though, is people setting out to write their own websites, blogs, ebooks, promotional campaigns, not fully understanding that Copywriting is a true craft. People without the necessary skills and experience often find themselves writing in a ‘scatter gun’ fashion, or putting off writing anything at all, because they simply underestimate the time and skill it takes to create a strategic, intuitively navigable, powerfully persuasive and well-crafted piece or pieces of communication. I’ve heard it said that it takes a thousand days of doing something to become expert at it – and the same is true of wordsmithing. It’s impossible for someone to come to it with no experience and expect professional results. So I would say consider hiring a wordsmith in the following circumstances:

1. If you’re sitting on promotional materials that you know are not selling you as well as they could, but can’t seem to find the time to sit down and sort them out

2. If you’re working on your own promotional materials, but struggling with content – especially if you’re writing bits and pieces in a tactical way and losing sight of your overall aims

3. If you’re starting out in business and trying to find words to describe what it is that you do/plan to do and what unique position you would like to occupy in relation to your competitors – such communication strategy precedes the actual crafting of content, but will utterly clarify the words you will use from here on in to describe yourself to the world

4. If your promotional materials need updating, not only for narrative content but for search engine optimisation – a good wordsmith will make sure that your new content is not only ‘on message’, reads well and inspires audience action, but that the search engines like it as well

5. If you’d like to become more visible by adding deployment of social media to your promotional portfolio

6. If you’ve got together a load of content but are not experienced in working with words and media – it’s always a good idea to run your work by a wordsmith for a final check and edit

ARK: What would be a benchmark for costs associated with hiring a wordsmith?

WBJ: I had a client come to me, not long ago, with content for an upgrade to his website that he’d paid for, but simply could not get the writer to alter it to his satisfaction. He had written it off (no pun intended) as a bad job. I asked him how much he’d paid for it – £15 per hour, he said. Therein lies a cautionary tale. There are plenty of people out there who will write you content for peanuts – especially if you go to one of the online creative skills brokers. So if you’re not too fussy and are looking for infill as opposed to words that actually define, differentiate and drive your enterprise, that’s the kind of figure you might be looking at. But in my opinion, you could probably do just as well yourself and save yourself the money. Actually, just on that point, there’s a world of difference between someone who can write simply to fill in the spaces between the pictures and someone who can write strategically and commercially. Perhaps this accounts for differences in writers’ fees – there are loads of people selling themselves as writers simply because they can string two words together, but they offer something vastly different to someone who has practised their craft for many years in a commercial environment.

If you’re going to do it properly, look at spending no less than £50 per hour and make sure you’re talking to a Copywriter with at least three years of experience, preferably working in an agency environment. In advertising agencies, Copywriters are defined as Junior, Middleweight and Senior, which gives you some idea of the value placed on experience. It normally takes several years to work your way up to senior level, with the capacity to write creatively, accurately, skilfully and quickly being key criteria for upward movement through the ranks. Hiring an experienced Copywriter will save you time and expense in the long-run, through their knowledge of how to process your work, how to ask you the right questions, how to research, how to write with flair and efficiency and how to avoid costly re-writes.  

ARK: What other services would a wordsmith offer?

WBJ: Depending on their level of experience, a wordsmith can offer any service whose final end is the commitment of words to pixels or paper. Someone with many years of experience working on promotional campaigns can help you to plan and execute your communication strategy across all media, writing your business plan, producing scoping documents for websites (including mapping out social media), writing websites, writing content for blogs and ebooks and any and all of the writing tasks involved with the day to day running of business. This might include letters, leaflets, email shots, scripts and support materials for presentations – basically anything you need to say in words, in whichever media are most appropriate. Any wordsmith worth their salt will be expert in coming quickly up to speed with your area of enterprise and will be able to partner you ongoingly in writing materials (blog or Twitter updates for example) to keep you looking and sounding crisply professional and always ‘on message’. Once a wordsmith has set you off on the right track with your key messages, tone of voice and communication objectives they can be called in periodically to help with steering and polishing content as and when needed.

We haven’t even touched on the creative writing services that wordsmiths can offer, but often, those gifted with words can turn their hand to plays, poems, short stories, novels – but I guess that’s a whole other story. After all that blah-blah, probably the best way to answer your question is by directing you to wordsbyjacqui.com.