Copywriting By Committee Is A Recipe For Disaster

May 22^nd 2019 Sally Ormond content writing, copywriting, writer

It’s funny, isn’t it? No one wants the job of creating content for your business, and yet, when you get a professional copywriter in to do the writing for you, suddenly everyone wants to be heard.

The process usually goes something like this.

The person who (in their eyes) drew the short straw finds a writer and briefs them on what’s to be done. They chat through the type of voice they want, and the subjects that need to be covered. The copywriter goes away with a specific brief and gets to work.

The first draft

After a while, the first draft is ready for your review. You read through it and think it’s great, only needing a few minor tweaks.

However, your colleagues decide that they should also get to see it and have their input.

Suddenly, you have umpteen competing ideas about what should be included, and how it should be written.

You try to amalgamate all the feedback and pass it back to your writer who then has to try to make sense of it all. After one look at what you sent through they go pale and instantly email you back pointing out that, by carrying out everyone’s wishes, the engaging and compelling copy they’ve just written will become diluted and a bitmeh.

The ideal situation

A copywriter’s dream is to have one person brief them and then the same person review the work.

That way, during the initial meeting they can get agreement on the tone, language, and style of layout and of course what the content should consist of.

When you start adding in different perspectives at the review stage, things become confused and the content that was once strong and compelling becomes watered down.

As a result it won’t do the job it was intended to do.

What to do when you have a lot of people giving ideas

Larger companies are bound to have several people wanting to be involved in the creation of marketing content. That’s not a bad thing provided they come to a consensus before instructing the copywriter.

Get together and discuss what content is required, how you want it to be written, and then task one person to oversee the whole project. If possible, get everyone together with the copywriter so they can make their recommendations to the whole team. By the end of the meeting the brief provided should meet with everyone’s agreement.

By doing that bit first, the whole process becomes far more streamlined and your writer is more likely to hit it right first time.

Remember, the more the content is reviewed and changed by different people, the less effective it will become.