Why You Should be Open-minded When Working with a Professional Copywriter 
You’ve decided it’s time to call in a professional copywriter.
Yes, it will stretch your budget, but you understand the importance of focusing on the long-term benefits of professionally written content.
You’ve been smart, done your research and realised that offshore content mills are not the answer. You don’t want sub-standard articles; you want professionally written, unique, relevant content from a copywriter that knows their onions.
Using their experience and outsider’s perspective, your copywriter will create sales copy (in just about every format you can imagine) that engages your customers, bolsters your brand, and boosts your market visibility.
Usually, these relationships go really well (OK, there may be minor hiccups along the way while you get used to working together, but nothing that can’t be learned from), but there are occasions when relations can get strained.
Let me explain.
Your copywriter won’t write like you
Before hiring your copywriter, I would imagine that you used to do the writing yourself.
Whether the plea for a professional was to improve your content or save you time, it’s important to remember they’re not going to write like you.
They’ll be more audience orientated; the most important person in their minds is your reader, not your CEO.
They’ll bring their outside experience with them to shape your communications into the type of thing your customers will want to read.
In other words, you must appreciate that what they write won’t be the same as what you’d have written.
That doesn’t mean they (or you for that matter) are wrong; it means that for the relationship to flourish, you must have an open mind.
Trust your copywriter’s judgement
Why am I telling you this? So, you can learn from a recent experience I had.
I was working on a project with a client’s marketing person.
To give you a bit of background, the company is growing rapidly, and the content demands are too much for one person to deal with. Therefore, they came to me to provide the expertise and support they needed.
The staff member in question is lovely and a competent writer, but they needed to take on a more strategic role.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I received a brief for a piece of work, given a deadline (quite tight) and went away to work on it.
Within 24 hours, the deadline had been brought even closer, and someone else got involved with the review process who wasn’t part of the original briefing team. As a result, there was disagreement about how the piece should be written, where information should come from, the style it should take, blah, blah, blah.
And to top it all, my original contact wanted things altered to the way they would’ve written it because they seemed unable to let go of their old role and be open to new ways of doing things.
As you can imagine, it was a complete disaster.
Thankfully, the relationship wasn’t sullied because the client could see what the problems were, and we’ve both learned from the experience for future projects.
The moral of this short tale is that no two people write the same way.
If you hire a professional, listen to them, take on board their suggestions and work with them to make sure their new content is on-brand.
It’s in our nature to be conservative and want to remain within our comfort zone, but if nothing changes, your business can’t grow.
If you’re about to collaborate with a professional writer, remain open-minded. Yes, you’ll want them to create a certain voice and tone but listen to their advice and suggestions.
They’re there to create the content for you and enrich your marketing with fresh ideas that’ll make you stand out in your industry.
Sally Ormond, professional copywriter