The simple answer is yes, no and sort of. Presuming the question is “Can I learn to write for my business?” not “Can I become the next Virginia Woolf?” then we can at least get some of the way there.
TL:DR
What can be taught
In his book On Writing, Stephen King outlines the basics of a writer’s toolbox. This involves understanding grammar (even if you choose to ignore it), avoiding the passive voice and eliminating unnecessary adverbs.
These are fairly easy fixes. Tweaks that can be applied to your existing writing to make it more readable. They are the kind of principles that can be learned – that you can even teach yourself.
King says you cannot teach a good writer to be a great one. And you cannot teach a bad writer to be a good one. But you can teach a competent writer to be a better one. Read any of our ‘how to’ blogs and you will find ways to take your writing up a notch.
“The gift of a good editor is what hones a writer from a free-spirited creative into a focused force.”
What takes time
There are ways to improve your writing. But the amount of time you can invest in writing is an important factor. Think of it like learning the piano. With a little practice you can learn to play Coldplay’s Clocks. But it takes a lot longer to learn how to play Shostakovich. Like, years.
If you have the time to invest, spend it reading and writing. And reading. And writing some more. Much about good writing is learning to recognise the rhythm in a paragraph, the subtleties in sentence structure. This kind of pattern recognition is the product of a seasoned professional. It takes work, but it can be done.
If you’re talking about copywriting, you also need to add in a bunch of stuff that fits around the writing. Like consumer psychology. Brand personality. Customer journeys. General marketing strategy. Copywriting, as we’ve said before, is not just any old writing.
Learning from others
Almost as important as the time you invest is the feedback you receive. The gift of a good editor is what hones a writer from a free-spirited creative into a focused force. Every writer has their blind spots and every new writer has many.
A good mentor stops you from second-guessing your good writing and they can tell you straight when a paragraph is a load of waffle. They can help you grow in confidence and inspire you to take your writing beyond the perimeters of your own thinking.
If you don’t have an obvious mentor to hand, bounce ideas off your friends and colleagues. What does that word make you feel? Does this sentence make sense or is it confusing? Would you be interested enough to read to the end of that paragraph if I didn’t tell you to?
Other people’s feedback can begin to build an awareness in you of what your writing is actually communicating.
What can’t be taught
No one can be taught to enjoy writing. If you hate it, if it bores you, you’d be better investing your time elsewhere. In this case, delegation could be your new best friend. Check for writing talent hiding in your staff team or hire a copywriter to make sure your writing is as good as it can be (yes, that was a subtle sales pitch!).
Finally, for some people writing might be something they really want to do, but each and every time they sit at the keyboard their head fills with fuzz. This is a greater creative block than the kind you solve with a few new writing principles.
If that describes you, don’t give up on a desire to write – but writing for your business probably isn’t the kind of pressure you need right now. Take a step back and take some creative risks in a less hazardous arena. Have a go at poetry, a short story, a comic sketch – there’s more than one kind of writer. Mix it up and maybe that creative fuzz will fade and something new will take its place.
The words we use make a big difference to how people perceive us – and it’s no different for brands. In today’s blog post, RH&Co founder Rin picks through the vocabulary choices she has deliberately made in order to make a subtle statement about our values as a business. What impression do the words you use make about your brand?
You know how sometimes you meet someone and you just get a feeling about them that you don’t like? You might not quite be able to put your finger on what it is, but you just sense that they’re a bit arrogant, or condescending, or untrustworthy.
Chances are that if you were to analyse the language they used in their conversation with you, you’d be able to spot a few words that helped you make this impression.
The words we use are incredibly powerful in communicating our personalities and our values. Naturally, as a writer, I find this fascinating. But is it something that you as a business owner or marketer should care about? I would say yes.
TL:DR
- Building a brand one word at a time
- A statement about relationship
- Creating a positive impression
- Language, gender and equality
Building a brand one word at a time
Brands are built on a million small things. Just look at how much thinking goes into the colours in a logo, for example. Businesses can spend thousands working out whether a particular shade of green is likely to be seen as trustworthy or whether a sample group of clients feels a certain shade of red feels aggressive rather than bold.
Language is similarly important. Your brand voice says a lot about who you are as a business. Are the words you use passionate or playful? Sassy or serious? Are you informative or irreverent?
Today’s consumers care about company values in a way they haven’t in the past and they’re more likely to spend their money with businesses that have similar values to their own. So it’s vital that you are clear about who you are as a business and what you stand for. And that you communicate this not only in what you say but how you say it.
Here are some of the language choices we’ve made at RH&Co and the reasons why we’ve made them.
A statement about relationship
There’s something about the word staff that makes me think about Downton Abbey. If I were to talk about “my staff”, I feel like it would immediately place them below me. It would suggest a hierarchy that simply doesn’t exist at RH&Co.
Instead, I always talk about the team, because that’s how I see us all. Yes, technically they’re employees and I’m the “boss” (another word I can’t abide!) but that’s just not how we work. We operate as a cohesive whole. No one tells anyone what to do. We respect each other’s positions, skills and experience.
In the same way, I always talk about the people who work with me rather than for me. The way I see it, we’re all working for the business, because the business is all of us. The better the business does, the better we all do, and vice versa. Again, it’s a team effort.
Creating a positive impression
At RH&Co, we try to speak in a positive way. That doesn’t mean we don’t say things that might inherently have a negative aspect. It’s just that we try to use language and phrasing that presents it in the most positive way possible.
For example, when talking about our website health check, we might tell prospective clients that this service will help them identify what’s working and what’s not. But we don’t want the focus to be on what’s not working, which is negative.
Instead, we talk about where there might be room to get their copy working even harder for their business. In this way, we keep the focus on the positive end results of changing that copy which isn’t working.
What does this have to do with values? Well, as a business we want people to feel encouraged rather than disappointed. Yes, there’s a lot of really terrible website copy in the world. Yes, there are many businesses that aren’t blogging strategically. But being critical isn’t in our DNA. Instead, we’re enthusiastic about the possibilities for improvement and the benefits this can bring to our clients.
Language, gender and equality
There’s no getting away from the fact that we live in a world dominated by white, middle class men. In order for this to change, we need to make changes ourselves, both big and small. Language may not seem like a priority, but it can be powerful for shaping hearts and minds.
For example, as a society, we tend to default to a male pronoun. I notice this a lot when I’m talking to my children. They will often refer to, say, a toy or a creepy crawly in the garden as “he”. As a result, I make a concerted effort to use “she” as often as I can, as in “Oh look, a caterpillar – isn’t she colourful?”
In a work context, we recently had a client who adjusted a phrase we’d written, switching the original “he or she” for “she or he”. Again, an incredibly subtle difference but so easy to change and, along with millions of other small changes, important in the long run.
Of course, this particular conversation will need to continue as more people choose not to identify with an assigned gender at all, preferring the pronoun “they”.
In the meantime, other ways we try to address the gender balance in our language include making sure never to refer to women as girls, and avoiding adding a gender reference where it simply isn’t needed. For example, there’s no need to talk about a female CEO, a female surgeon or a female engineer when CEO, surgeon and engineer will do just fine.
One or two words or phrases taken in isolation might not seem like much. But they make a difference. That’s why our strapline reads: you don’t need many words, just the right ones. If you want to talk to a professional about your business’s brand voice and core messaging, get in touch to find out how we can help.
Messaging is a tough nut to crack at the best of times, let alone when it’s difficult to explain what your business actually does. Our #WriterInResidence, Sam Whitlock, looks at five brands that waded into these muddy waters and made them clear as glass.
When it comes to clarifying your company’s message, it’s easy to misunderstand the problem. You don’t have to explain what your company or product does, necessarily. You do need to show your audience why they should care.
Some businesses are lucky. The market is known enough, their brand is simple or established enough that they can boil everything down to “Buy vintage clothes online,” and proceed to show you images of Christmas jumpers. Or they can simply say “All your admin sorted,” or “Get this and get it cheap,” and even at glance their target audience might be interested.
But if your organisation does more complex or niche work, you’re competing not only against a potential lack of interest but a lack of understanding too. Your branding can quickly fall into one of two traps: 1) Your message gets muddied by explanation. Or 2) Your message becomes generic and doesn’t truly tap into your actual brand offering.
To capture your audience, you need a crystal clear message that goes to the heart of what your audience cares about. Here’s five businesses that pull it off…
Telerick.com – “Modern UI made easy”
You and I might not know anything about JavaScript. But we can probably appreciate that developing a user interface is not generally not easy. If anyone is making it simple, that’s going to be a selling point. Telerick’s website is quick to fill in the gaps for more discerning browsers:
“Build feature-rich experiences for Web, Mobile and Desktop faster than ever.”
“Stop sweating over UI and focus on the parts of the application where you can truly make a difference.”
What jumps out at you here? Phrases like “Feature-rich,” “faster than ever,” and “stop sweating” are getting straight to the core of what developers care about: time, energy and the free rein to invent. And you don’t have to speak code languages to appreciate the value here. So if someone in a design department stumbles across Telerick, they’ll be able to recommend it to their more technical counterparts.
One of the key tricks Telerick is deploying here is to skip explanations and start making promises. They don’t waste their breath telling you how they’re going to do it (until you read on); they’re getting straight to “Here’s why you should care.”
Slack – “Slack replaces email in your company”
Okay, so this strapline is dated because everyone (basically) knows what Slack is now. They’ve become so established that they don’t have to define themselves anymore. And their new homepage introduces Slack as “your new HQ” instead.
But there was a time when Slack was a skinnier, scrappier fighter trying to get its name out there. It had to define its place in the market while simultaneously ensuring businesses saw its essentiality. If it had settled on, “Slack: Your business’s messaging service,” it would have missed its simplest and central selling point:
Nobody likes email.
If Slack focused on telling you its many functions and time-saving, ease-of-use benefits, it would sound like just another business add-on. But an alternative to email… that’s worth having, surely. For sanity’s sake alone.
The beauty of clear messaging is that it makes conceptual, technical or nuanced ideas very simple to grasp. Slack doesn’t seem like a complicated tool to explain now – but that’s only because their branding team first did their homework. And speaking of this phenomenon…
Apple iPod – “1,000 songs in your pocket”
The iPod worked magic in the mp3 market because their message was clearer than their competitors. While everyone else was trying to communicate that they had a digital walkman device thing, Apple were singing a simpler tune.
The phrase resonated with people so effectively because it spoke directly to their experience. This was a new device, potentially complicated, possibly unwieldy. For many, the idea of popping a CD into a player was much simpler than fussing around with internet downloads and limited storage. But Jobs’ team found a way to make iPod sound limitless and streamlined. Carrying around CDs suddenly seemed cumbersome compared to such a simple idea.
It’s interesting that the words you traditionally associate with tech: digital, future, software, power, innovation, were scrapped in favour of everyday language. While Google’s algorithms will require us to use the keywords associated with our industry (at least for the foreseeable future), we have to be careful we’re not letting that become an obstacle to our message.
UiPath – “We make robots so people don’t have to be robots”
Artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, machine learning algorithms…. can’t we just call them all robots and be done with it? There’s something very refreshing about the way UiPath uses language that could have been understood in 1975.
While many of the AI and automation companies use grand statements to elevate themselves as harbingers of the future, UiPath scales it back. Their message doesn’t meander through the technical hocus pocus but drives straight to the human benefit: your people will be free to use their time, energy and human intelligence more creatively.
There’s a time and a place for grand statements like: unlock the future, power your dreams, achieve the impossible. But they can sometimes be a little bit vague. As if they came out of a slogan generator. UiPath on the other hand, drives home a specific message that makes artificial intelligence seem warmer and more inviting. Almost human.
SEGA – “SEGA do what Ninendon’t” (and more offensive examples!)
A new generation of video game consoles has been released but their messaging can’t quite match the sassy, cheeky, crass tactics of early 90s SEGA.
At the time Nintendo had monopolised the video game market and even though SEGA were coming onto the scene with a more powerful console, it would be tough to get noticed in the 8-bit world that Mario had come to rule.
SEGA could have pushed their 16bit technology, which gave games greater detail and colour. Or they could have tried to imitate Nintendo’s campaigns that emphasised power. But instead of explaining the console’s capabilities, they made their message crystal clear through their outrageous tone.
Here’s just some of the copy from SEGA’s print adverts. And these are the tamer examples – (I don’t necessarily recommend trying these at home!):
- “What’s blue and pisses over everything?” (answer: Sonic the Hedgehog)
- “More balls than Linford Christie”
- “Don’t be a mean git at Xmas”
SEGA tone was a clear differentiator from cutesy, child-friendly Ninendo. Their message was razor sharp: theirs is a console for adults, for teenagers, for people too cool for Nintendo (note: these days Nintendo are pretty damn cool too!). SEGA showed they weren’t just “another” console, or a better one, they were their own beast.
If you’re looking to hone your own business messaging, check out our thoughts on how to explain what your business does so people understand quickly or learn how to tweak your copy with subtle subversions so that your brand evokes something new.
***
Explain what you do and why your audience should care.
You have 12 seconds.
Here’s one we did earlier:
We find the right words for expert-led businesses. We clarify their brand message and create strategic content to make them stand out as authorities in their field.
That’s the RH&Co value proposition in a nutshell. It took quite a bit of work and a fair few conversations before we were able to communicate this so clearly. And what we do is – in the grand scheme of things – relatively simple to explain. We’re copywriters, content strategists, marketers.
Many of our clients, however, are experts in complex subjects that don’t lend themselves to a one or two word description. We’ve worked with a number of them to create foundational copy, messaging and brand voice guidelines to help them clearly communicate what they do.
Here’s a few questions that we’ve found helpful to ask along the journey:
Does every stakeholder in your audience speak your language?
The first and most important step in any communication is to know – really know – who you’re talking to. If you’re a B2B tech brand with a no code/low code product and your target persona is a CTO or CIO who already knows the API calls they need, then talking at an expert level and using appropriate jargon is perfectly acceptable.
If, on the other hand, you first need to win over a stakeholder with less technical knowledge, you’ll need to think about what they might need to understand, what might confuse them, where they might draw the wrong conclusions or be put off by technical language.
The beauty industry is a great example of where brands do value proposition well. Sure, they might mention retinol or keratin or silica to give a gloss of scientific weight to their advertising. But they know that their audience aren’t scientists – they just want younger looking skin, glossier hair, and sparkling white teeth.
The same often applies to tech products and users. When we worked with The Land App to create messaging for their brand, we needed to find language that would position their product as an expert-level mapping tool.
We also needed the messaging to resonate with a diverse audience made up of everyone from farmers and estate managers to ecologists and surveyors.
To avoid patronising the technical experts, we needed to talk about ‘data layers’ and ‘delivering biodiversity net gain’ but we also needed to summarise the essence of this multifaceted product in language every potential user could understand.
We settled on messages such as:
- “Design a sustainable planet, together”
- “Intuitive mapping, collaboration and insight”
- And, to make it super clear who benefits, “Join our network of farmers, farm advisors, land agents, estate managers, ecologists, foresters, surveyors and landscape recovery projects”
So even if you’re not an ecologist looking to deliver biodiversity net gain, you can quickly see how The Land App’s product might help you achieve your vision.
Are your features clear in your value proposition? And are your benefits believable?
When it comes to encapsulating benefits vs features in your value proposition, the best description of the concept is the truth universally acknowledged by marketers: no one wants a quarter inch drill bit; they want a quarter inch hole.
The trouble is, these days, lots of brands are claiming to offer the same hole a million different ways.
- Attract and retain your customers
- Engage your employees
- Transform your culture
And, of course, the classic:
- Save time and money.
In the end it all sounds a bit like vapourware. Marketers mustn’t forget features in their rush to sell the benefits. Your SaaS product, ESG consultancy offering or L&D programme might be difficult to summarise, but don’t settle for broad, vague promises in an attempt to make it simple.
Rather than toning down the richness of the expertise involved to make your brand understood, it’s more about finding the right blend of features, benefits and language.
Futureground are a team of subject matter experts in the truest sense. Their partners have even described them as polymaths (think Leonardo Da Vinci) of the built environment. However, describing what they do is a much tougher challenge. Not least because it looks different for every single client they work with.
Some of their competitors have floundered here, describing themselves as ‘delivering sustainable solutions’, which is about as vague as you can get.
We went for something more concrete for Futureground:
Who is walking with you through complexity?
We’re sustainable place strategists with decades of experience working across the property lifecycle, and we can step alongside you as a critical friend in this complex world.
Sometimes this means forming an action plan. Often it means working closely with stakeholders. It always means asking good questions.
Then we grounded all of that in social proof through case studies. You can find out more about the rebranding journey on the Futureground website.
Does your audience know they need you?
What made the Futureground case even more challenging was that their audience is often not problem-aware.
If your audience is problem-aware, they know they have an issue. But when they are pretty low problem-aware, they need some help defining the real issue. So perhaps they think they need more leads but what they actually need is better quality leads or better CRM tracking.
This is where you really need to drill down and understand your audience – so you can figure out how to position your solution in a way that makes them want to solve a problem they don’t know they have.
This is toughest when you’re looking to disrupt the market in some way. A product or service that sits in a category of its own, or across more than one category, so that people either have no idea what it is or confuse it with things it isn’t.
Let’s take Nespresso as an example. When they first brought out their pod-based coffee model, people may well have laughed. Why would you want to spend 40p on a cup of coffee you had to make yourself, when you can have any other instant for a fraction of the price?
But Nespresso knew that their audience wasn’t looking for a better tasting instant coffee. They were looking for a cost effective alternative to high quality take away coffee, which they could make in the comfort of their own home. And so that’s how they communicated their offering.
Slack played a similar trick in their initial marketing campaigns. They didn’t try to sell themselves as a messaging service or a digital workplace. Instead they simply said: ‘Slack replaces email in your company’. The people came, because while few companies knew they had a comms problem, once pitched against email, Slack made sense instantly.
Use this value proposition pitch format to help explain what you do
Whether you’re selling a complex technology product or you’re delivering your service via a disruptive new business model, it’s important that you can communicate your business offering in a way that is clear and easy for your audience to understand.
Use this pitch format to start honing your key messaging: For [your ideal customers or clients] who are [trying to do X or facing X challenge], [your product or service] is a [product category] that provides [key value proposition]. Unlike [closest alternatives] [your product or service] offers [key features].
If you’re struggling to put it succinctly, you have more work to do.
If you run it by a potential user and they don’t instantly grasp the value, you have more work to do.
You don’t have time to explain everything.
You can’t afford to be misunderstood.
You need a complex value proposition in a nutshell.
To find out more about how we can help you define and communicate your business offering, get in touch to learn about our brand voice, messaging and other consultancy services.
Every time someone in B2B describes their brand voice as “friendly but professional” we try not to sigh. Unfortunately, you could be describing virtually every B2B business in the world. No one wants to come across as unfriendly or unprofessional, right?
If you try to adopt a friendly but professional tone, your brand will usually slip into whatever the default tone is in your industry. If you run a creative agency, you’ll seem like all the other agencies. If you’re a hot new startup, you’ll sound like every other new tech company in town.
There’s really no good reason why companies should sound the same. The average native speaker has 15-20,000 root words in their active vocabulary. There’s plenty of potential for variety – why do we keep defaulting to terms like ‘transform’ or ‘unlock value’? And why, why, why do articles keep starting with the phrase ‘In our fast-paced digital world…’ ?
Even in B2B, you want to differentiate your brand from the competition. And you need to create an instant connection with your audience. If you take a backseat on brand voice, you’ll be skipping over one of your primary ways you build your brand’s success.
TL:DR
- What is brand voice?
- What can brand voice really achieve?
- How to develop your organisation’s brand voice
- How to create practical guidelines for your brand voice
What is brand voice?
Brand voice is how an organisation’s words convey brand personality. It covers both what you say and how you say it, and is influenced by everything from sentence length to individual word choice, and the use of active or passive voice.
Brand voice can literally be as nitpicking as whether or not you use contractions (can’t, I’ve, they’re). We wrote the website copy for a law firm once and they insisted that there were no contractions anywhere, which resulted in them coming across as extremely formal and businesslike rather than warm. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just important to be aware that the language you use will impact how people perceive your brand.
It’s like meeting a person for the first time. Initially, your impression will be based on how they look, how they’re dressed and presented, their facial expression, how they catch your eye, etc. This is the equivalent of brand visuals.
Once they start talking to you, you’ll have much more to go on – not just what they say but how they say it – their accent, pitch and the pace at which they speak. You might conclude that they’re warm, well educated, no-nonsense, boring, try-hard, trendy, quick-witted or uptight. Your potential clients will judge you by your brand voice in the same way.
…their brand was a lot like Stephen Fry – intelligent and knowledgeable about all sorts of things but also lightly funny and humble and very real, appealing to people of all backgrounds and ages.
What can brand voice really achieve?
Pitched right, your brand voice can express your attitudes and values, build your reputation, and even attract your ideal clients. That’s no exaggeration. If your brand voice is distinct from the tone your competitors use, or it helps express old concepts in a refreshingly new way, there’s no reason it can’t be a big part of your brand strategy.
For instance, one of our fintech clients, Weavr, works in an incredibly complex field: embedded finance. In general, this market adopts a hyped up, tech normative voice (using words like innovative, transform, optimise, evolve, disrupt, supercharge, etc. etc.) or an academic one (think McKinsey).
After a workshop with our client’s commercial team, we suggested that they opt for a different tone entirely: that of a popular, cool, research professor who works alongside their students and demystifies complex concepts for them. The result was a voice that was clever but not too academic. Confident but not hyped-up and salesy. Really relatable but not gimmicky.
As you can see, this voice is much more developed than “friendly but professional” and it gave our client some really practical guidance. Rather than they could talk about making B2B transactions as “easy as ApplePay”. Their voice even guided some of their content strategy, such as the creation of a buyer’s guide that demystified an area that is rarely explained in their field – making the brand totally distinct from the competition.
How to develop your organisation’s brand voice
The best way to understand brand voice in context is to think about a conversation between two people – your brand and your client.
1. Start with who you are
First, you’ll want to create your brand avatar or persona. This is who your organisation would be if it was a person. A helpful starting point is to identify which of Carl Jung’s 12 personality archetypes fit your brand best.
Creating a brand avatar is an exercise best done with more than one person – often the business founder and/or the marketing lead at the very least, and ideally a representative from sales too. Really, you want the whole leadership team involved, at least in the initial brainstorming stages.
Together, discuss who your brand would be if they were sitting in the room with you. Would they be young or old? How would they be dressed? What values would they express?
If the concept still feels too abstract, try thinking about which celebrity your brand might be like. Years ago we did some training with a South West tourism organisation. During a brand voice session we suggested that their brand was a lot like Stephen Fry – intelligent and knowledgeable about all sorts of things but also lightly funny and humble and very real, appealing to people of all backgrounds and ages.
Some of your choices will be dictated by what you stand for. For instance, when we were helping to shape the brand voice of Nviro, specialist cleaning provider, we saw they wanted to change the culture surrounding the cleaning profession – celebrating cleaners and putting dignity before profit.
For Nviro, it was vital that they made no hierarchical distinction between their office team and their frontline cleaners. Also the word ‘staff’ would be completely off limits. The same went for any term that suggested Nviro were trying to avoid the word cleaner (like cleaning operative, or cleaning technician). In this team, there was no embarrassment or misgivings about the profession. They were cleaners. And they were proud of it.
2. Think about your audience
As a B2B brand you may think you’re marketing to businesses rather than people, but ultimately even the biggest corporate deal is made by real people. From the gatekeeper to the person approving the purchase order, it’s important that you understand what they need to hear from your brand.
Are they more motivated by targets and goals, or are they a person with a dream or a vision? Are they disillusioned or are they optimistic? Are they interested in technical detail or do they want concepts to be explained without it? Are they in a mood for humour? Or are they looking for reassurance?
One of our fintech clients, Moneyhub, was creating a product for an audience of lenders. Its personas were typically experts in the financial industry, but potentially distrustful of tech companies.
As a result, we recommended Moneyhub choose a voice that included technical financial terms – such as delinquency, manageable risk, etc. – but didn’t slip into techy language – unlock opportunities with the power of data, etc. – which could have alienated the brand from its ideal clientele.
3. Think about your competition
The trouble is, in this conversation, you might not be the only ones in the room. Your audience might be scouting out their options, and they could even already be in talks with a competitor. You need to make sure you sound like a real alternative, and not just more of the same.
When we were working with TPC Leadership to develop their brand voice, we had a challenge on our hands. The global company works in leadership development and cultural change, and if you’re familiar with the industry, you’ll know almost everyone in it sounds alike.
That’s partly because coaches and consultants are selling an intangible offering – and it’s very easy to reach for the same intangible words to describe it: ‘a transformational programme’ or a ‘people-centred approach.’
To make TPCL stand out, we suggested they don’t try to distinguish themselves by their offering and philosophy, but by making it clear what they stand for in bold and concrete terms. As a result, if you head to their new website, you’ll quickly see what they’re about.
Here’s an exercise: go back through the content you’ve produced, any pages on your website, posts on your social channel, or talks given by your CEO or managing director. Then try and pull out phrases that could have only come from your brand and not your competitors.
How to create practical guidelines for your brand voice
Now it’s time to pull these ideas together to create guidelines that everyone who writes on behalf of the brand – both internally and externally (PR agency, marketing agency etc) can follow. This will ensure you get that level of consistency you need to build trust and client loyalty.
Writing brand voice guidelines is a task best left to your marketing lead, or a brand or copywriting agency. It doesn’t matter how your guide is actually formatted, but you want to end up with a document that translates the ideas you’ve had about how your brand should come across into a guide that anyone can follow to produce content that fits.
If the task of creating brand voice guidelines falls to you, make sure you include a concise overview of your client and brand personas. Have a summary of your brand offerings, your values and what makes you distinct from your competitors.
Then spend time creating a style guide and some helpful examples – words and phrases to use or avoid, some sentences written in your brand voice and some in a way that wouldn’t be acceptable, so people can see the difference.
If you’re looking to commission a copywriting partner, you’re probably thinking about how good their writing skills are. But there’s an awful lot that goes into a copywriting project beyond the ability to wrangle the written word into the required number of sentences and paragraphs.
Why should you care? Because if you want to choose the best copywriter or copywriting agency – one that will produce results on time, on budget and with minimal hassle for you – then you need to make sure they’re skilled across all of these areas.
TL:DR
Project management
No matter how small the project, someone needs to be in charge of managing it otherwise it can get very stressful, very quickly. Project management starts immediately, and in this case includes arranging briefing calls or meetings, agreeing and ensuring deadlines are met, organising amends stages and handling any unforeseen circumstances that arise along the way (and believe us, most projects have these).
Behind the scenes in an agency there are also writers to be commissioned and internal amends stages to be done, plus copyediting and proofing (more on these later). Freelancers have limited capacity not only because they can only write for a certain number of hours every day but because juggling too many clients leads to balls being dropped.
Often we ask questions that challenge our clients to more clearly define what they’re after, which means that they’re much more likely to get a first draft that doesn’t need endless amends.
At RH&Co we’ve worked hard to put process in place that mean things run smoothly. Even in those moments when we’re paddling madly under the surface, our clients should only ever see the gliding swan on the surface. It’s our job to take the stress away for them.
Brief creation
The first and most important step of any project we work on is the brief creation stage. Even when a client comes to us with a written brief, we still add value by interrogating it, bringing our perspective on what’s possible, where problems might arise, and how we can achieve even better results together.
A good brief should cover a huge range of important elements from objectives to target audience to tone of voice. Often we ask questions that challenge our clients to more clearly define what they’re after, which means that they’re much more likely to get a first draft that doesn’t need endless amends. We can also help them clarify their strategy and set goals against which we can measure progress.
At RH&Co briefings are always handled by a strategist and a creative. By bringing in two different brains and skill sets, we ensure we deliver the best possible outcomes for the client. That’s one of the benefits of using an agency rather than a single individual.
Research
Before your copywriting partner can start writing, they’ll need to know what to write about. And that means research. This might involve making themselves familiar with your product, analysing data from a survey you commissioned, or hunting for a BCG or McKinsey study to lend credibility to your argument.
In many cases, research will include what we call ‘gold mining’ – speaking to your subject matter experts to draw out their knowledge and experience. This is especially important for expert-led businesses who want to establish themselves as an authority on a particular subject.
Copywriting is the art of persuasive writing so when we talk about top quality copy we’re not just talking about it being well written – it needs to be able to generate the results that our clients are looking for.
RH&Co was founded by a former journalist, and this interview-style approach runs through the whole agency. Whether we’re talking to a reluctant developer, a detail-oriented academic or a flighty founder, we know how to get the best out of them.
Writing skills
It’s worth pausing for a moment to take note of how much value your copywriting partner has already added before they actually start writing.
Once the writing does start, it’s about far more than being articulate. Copywriting is the art of persuasive writing so when we talk about top quality copy we’re not just talking about it being well written – it needs to be able to generate the results that our clients are looking for.
Will the landing page copy convert? Will the blog post engage the reader until the end? Has SEO been taken into account and are the CTAs strong enough?
That’s why we’re super fussy about who we allow on to our writing team. We have both in-house copywriters and a handpicked team of freelancers who have to go through a thorough evaluation process before they go on our books. Plenty of people are decent enough writers; there are far fewer good copywriters around.
Copyediting and proofing
There’s a particular blind spot that you get when reading your own writing, which is why it’s important that you always get a second pair of eyes on anything you create. This will help you spot unsupported facts, veering off brand, errors in continuity, moments of rambling, changes in tense, random typos and a whole bunch of other issues.
It’s difficult to articulate exactly what makes one piece of copy better than another but we’ve been doing this a long time now and we’re experts at spotting what’s good and what needs work before it’s client ready.
At RH&Co, any copy produced by the freelance team is copyedited in-house, while writing done by an internal writer gets a second look from another member of the team. In some cases we’ll get a third person to do a final proofread, just to be sure the copy we deliver is word perfect.
Administration
It’s worth adding this bit because it’s so easy to forget the millions of little things that keep a copywriting agency – or even a freelancer, if we’re honest – up and running. Invoicing, sorting out insurances, making sure the accounts are up to date, filling out tedious forms of one kind or another.
Without these jobs your copywriting partner wouldn’t exist to be able to take care of all the other stages of whatever copywriting project you need doing. Yes, they add a few pounds to your invoice. But in the scheme of things they are worth it.
By appreciating the many skills that go into a successful copywriting project, you’ll be better placed to choose a team that can support you in creating copy that genuinely delivers results. Hopefully you’ll also have a much clearer idea of why doing it in-house isn’t the easy option it might at first appear!
If you’re planning on engaging a copywriter then you’re almost certain to have a briefing session at some point. A good briefing is an essential first step to any successful copywriting project. Without it, you’re likely to find yourself being disappointed with your first draft and going through far too many amends stages before you get what you’re looking for.
A briefing session should help you communicate essential core information to your writer or agency so that they fully understand what is required before beginning the work. We often find that the questions we ask during this session help our clients clarify their ideas about the project by making them think about things that just hadn’t occurred to them before.
So what can you expect to be asked about? Here are some of the things we’d be looking to find out in a briefing session.
What are your goals?
Copywriting isn’t simply about phrasing things nicely. It’s about using words to drive results. And in order to see results you need to have first set some goals. So whether you want to reduce your blog’s bounce rate or get people signing up to your newsletter via your website, it’s important that your copywriter understands what it is that the copy they’re creatin is trying to achieve.
Who are you writing to?
We’ve written many times about the importance of understanding your target audience. Unless you understand what drives them, what they want and what they fear, what interests them and what influences their buying decisions, you can’t create effective content. If you don’t already have one or more customer or client personas, it’s worth spending time thinking about some of the elements that go into these profiles before your briefing session.
What is the core message?
If your reader had to take one thing away from the piece of content you’re asking us to create, what would it be? That you’re an expert in your field? That you care about the environment and are working to make a difference? That they will save huge amount of money by switching to you? Messaging is not always overt but it needs to underpin your content and so it’s important that your copywriter knows what it is.
What are the features and benefits of your offering?
If you’re commissioning words for a website or brochure or any piece of content that sets out what you do or sell, your copywriter will need to set out both the features and the benefits of this. Features are facts – the locally grown ingredients that go into your pies, the types of legal cases you handle. The benefits are what people will get by buying your product or using your service – satisfaction that they’re looking after their bodies and the environment, peace of mind that they’re not going to have to end up in court. Most of our clients are well versed in the features of their products or services but the benefits are as important if not more so. After all, as the saying goes, no one wants a six inch drill bit, they want a six inch hole.
What is your brand tone of voice?
If you’ve already invested in getting brand voice guidelines drawn up then you’re well ahead of the game. These are vital documents that provide copywriters with a huge chunk of what they need to know to ensure a piece of copy truly represents a brand. But if you don’t, prepare to be able to give at least some guidance during the briefing. Are you quite a formal, corporate sounding sort of a brand? Or do you use colloquial phrases like “check it out” and “give us a shout”? Having consistency in this area is vital if you want your copy to breed trust and loyalty and achieve results.
By taking the time to prepare for your briefing you’ll not only find that the meeting is a lot quicker and easier than it would otherwise be, by the results your copywriter delivers will be better too.
If you’d like to discuss a copy project with us, drop us a line on talktous@rin-hamburgh.co.uk or call us on 01179 902 690 – we’re always here to help.
Lingo. It’s so easy to use when you’re surrounded by it all day. Whatever industry you’re in, it’s likely that there are certain terms, acronyms and so on that everyone uses. And because you hear them all the time, you start to feel like everyone understands it.
The problem is, when it comes to your customers and clients, that’s not always the case. Even I’ve fallen into this trap. The other day a client admitted she’d read a word on one of our blog posts that she hadn’t understood and was too shy to ask.
So by way of apology and in order to help you better understand some of the words your copywriter, marketing agency or even designer might use, here is a glossary of copywriting terms that are worth knowing:
Body copy: The main section of text on a page, as opposed to the peripheral text such as the headline, standfirst, subheads and so on.
Brief: A written document that sets out what is required from the job, giving the copywriter something to follow.
Call to action (CTA): The part of the copy that actually tells people what it is they should do e.g. buy now, sign up, call us etc.
Content: Any kind of marketing device that people actually want to engage with e.g. social media posts, blog posts, videos etc. as opposed to the more intrusive marketing materials like banner ads and junk mail flyers.
Copy: Simply put, written text. Most often the word is used to refer to either marketing or journalistic text.
Copywriting: The act of writing persuasive text in order to further a business goal.
Evergreen content: Content that is not linked to a particular date or time, so can be reused some months or even years later.
Headline: A short sentence at the top of a piece of copy that summarises the main message of the content.
Para: Paragraph – a group of sentences arranged together without a break.
Pull quote: A line of text that is ‘pulled out’ of the body copy and used as a graphic feature to catch people’s eye and draw them in.
Sidebar: A graphically separate section of text, smaller than the body copy, that is used to give more information. Also known as a box out.
Standfirst: A short paragraph of text that sits below a headline and is used to convey a bit more information about what is contained in the body copy.
Subhead: A line of text that is used to separate large chunks of text into more manageable bites, usually formatted in a larger or bolder font. In websites they take the H2 format which is important for SEO.
Strapline: A short sentence that helps convey the essence of a brand. For example, our strapline is: “You don’t need many words, just the right ones.” Also known as a tagline.
Are there any other terms you’re not sure of the meaning of? Let us know on social (we’re on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram) and we’ll be sure to provide a definition.
Last month, I wrote about why you don’t need to insert a comma as often as you might have been led to believe. The feedback indicated that some of our readers are slightly terrified of grammar and indeed of people who know the rules well. I wanted to reassure you that I am not some kind of grammar despot!
While I believe that the rules of our language are important and help to give written language structure and precision, I do not believe that all grammar rules are to be applied fanatically. Sometimes, a writer or editor has flexibility and can bend or ignore traditional grammar rules for the sake of style, tone of voice or emphasis.
Secondly, as our society shifts and evolves, the grammar we use is continually shifting and evolving in the same way. Grammatical behaviour changes in the same way that other areas of etiquette shift from one generation to the next.
Outdated rules
Depending on when you went to school, you may have been told that in English you must never split an infinitive; the most famous example is from Star Trek:
“To boldly go where no one has gone before.”
Strictly speaking, that sentence ought to have been rendered as:
“To go boldly where no one has gone before.”
If the rule had been followed here, the stress would have ended up on the wrong syllable and the drama of the statement would have been lost. The writer wanted to make a particular impact and therefore took the liberty of ignoring the grammar rule. Semantic and pragmatic considerations trumped syntax. A prescriptive approach to grammar would have forced the writer to follow the external syntactic rules rigidly to the detriment of meaning and the writer’s goal.
A descriptive approach to grammar takes account of people’s preferences in speaking and writing and accepts that some rules have become irrelevant and can be safely ignored. It analyses the language people are actually using at any given time and deduces the rules that are being followed. A study conducted of 672,000 spoken words by Lancaster University and Cambridge University Press concluded that split infinitives are now nearly three times as common in British speech as they were in the early 1990s. Once a rule is being ignored this frequently, it is no longer realistic, desirable or relevant to attempt to teach or enforce it.
The prescriptive grammar approach is becoming less fashionable despite the current national curriculum emphasising obedience to a set of grammar rules. All four of my children can explain when to use the subjunctive. In my opinion, this is an example of a rule that is almost at the end of its life cycle in standard English and may not be a valuable use of their time although it’s a nice party trick!
A descriptive approach emphasises teaching children and adults to be able to identify and use the building blocks of the language(s) they speak. I am convinced that this is still a useful and vital skill. I see it as a benefit that they understand when and where a comma is used and that they at least understand the meaning of these words:
Grammar crimes quiz
I hope, as a parent and a proofreader, I err to the side of descriptive in my approach to grammar but of course, there are some commonly repeated mistakes that do grate on my nerves. At our team meeting this week, I did a little survey of top grammar crimes and then compiled a little quiz for you all.
Can you spot the errors in these sentences:
- They are giving away samples for free.
- There were less people at the event than I expected.
- I was sat at my table when my phone suddenly rang.
- I was stood at the bus stop for half an hour.
- Choice of words is equally as important as grammar.
- Outside of work, I love to travel.
See if you can re-write these sentences correctly and bonus points if you can explain why each one is grammatically incorrect. All six are examples where I would still insist on prescribing the rules. Perhaps in 100 years, our language will have evolved again and these will have become de facto constructions. At least I won’t be here to cringe!
Tweet your answers @rinhamburgh, comment on our Facebook page or email your answers to talktous@rin-hamburgh.co.uk with the subject Grammar Crimes.
Want to read more? Try this – Breathe if you have to but don’t use a comma
Did you know that Liz is our resident linguistics expert? In the new #linguisticsliz series she’ll be demystifying some common grammar and punctuation rules that people (including copywriters!) often get wrong in their marketing copy. Today it’s all about the humble comma.
At my daughter’s assembly recently, the class dressed up as pop stars and sang a song called “AAAWWUBBIS”:
“Two clauses in one sentence yeah
You combine never asking why
A comma here
A comma there
It’s a mess no-one can deny”
Tears rolled down my cheeks at the sheer hilarious genius of it. The song is designed to help them remember when to use a comma in a complex sentence. The parent next to me whispered, “I thought you just chucked a comma in whenever you needed to pause for breath?” “No, no, no, there are RULES”, I replied in despair through my tears.
Get rid of that comma!
I am often called on to proofread copy for a website or blog before it is sent to clients. My mother was a professional proofreader and I have BSc in Language Technology so I feel at home finding typos and grammatical errors. My most frequent complaint to our writers [Rin’s note: Including me!] is the number of erroneous commas that appear before conjunctions which I must unceremoniously delete.
It is a common misconception that a comma can be thrown in whenever the reader might need to breathe. But actually there are specific points in English syntax where they are required and they cannot be thrown in on a whim.
Introducing clauses
Back to “AAAWWUBBIS”… AAAWWUBBIS is an acronym for the most common subordinating conjunctions in the English language…
“Stop, stop! What on earth is a subordinating conjunction and why do I need to know?”
You use them all the time to join up two clauses in a sentence.
“Wait. What? What’s a clause?”
OK, let’s rewind a few pages of the textbook: a clause is a mini sentence containing a verb.
For example:
I have written a blog post.
I will set off to pick my children up from school.
If I want to join these two ideas together and make one of them dependent (or subordinate) to the other I need a subordinating conjunction:
- After
- Although
- As
- When
- While
- Until
- Because
- Before
- If
- Since
See what those initials spell?
Complex sentences
Using a subordinating conjunction I can then write a complex sentence containing two clauses instead of one. There are two ways I could do this:
I will set off to pick up my children from school after I have written this blog post.
After I have written this blog post, I will set off to pick my children from school.
If I choose to use a subordinating conjunction at the start of the sentence then I need a comma between the clauses. If I use the subordinating conjunction in the middle of the sentence then I must not use a comma.
That is the rule – nothing to do with breathing or pausing!
P.S. There are lots of other sentence types that require a comma. For example, when using an adverbial phrase. I will save that for next time!