Content writers – the good ones anyway – excel at making something out of nothing, or at least something out of very little.
It’s the job of the content writer to take your stream of consciousness dictation and put it together into a cohesive and thorough article that is both fun to read and search engine friendly. It’s also the job of the content writer to translate a loosely related collection of keywords into a collection of topics that are unique, exciting, and highly interesting to web viewers. The content writers are the heroes who turn your confusion into cohesion, your indecision to confidence, and your loose thoughts into fully developed ideas. Without your content writer, how well would your marketing pieces perform? How popular would your blog be? How would it affect your bottom line?
I hope this has been inspiring to you thus far, because there are some things that clients do that make us crazy. As a content writer, I’m always prepared to deal with a wide variety of clients, from the meek to the overconfident, and I pride myself on the ability to take odd instructions, minimal instructions, confusing instructions, or even no instructions at all, and turn them into some great copy. I can take criticism, opposition, fastidiousness, and bizarre demands in stride, because it’s what I do.
Of course, that does not mean it doesn’t make me a little crazy.
Just for fun (no accusations here, just a few giggles), here are a few of the things clients do that drive content writers, like myself, a little bit nuts.
1. The Bad Beginning
Jobs that start with no direction are always an ill omen. The content writer receives a brief from a new client, only to find that it’s a little light on actual information. Oh, it contains the name of the company and the nature of the business, but no information on what type of content they’re looking for, who they’re trying to reach, how long the pieces should be, or even what the relevant keywords should be for the project. Now, I understand that you’re not a writer, and no one’s looking for Mark Twain level wit and wisdom on a brief, but we do believe that you should be able to string together 100 words or so to let us know what we should be focusing on. Telling me that you need “20 pages on plumbing” doesn’t really give me much to work with, you know?
2. Creative by Committee
Someone once told me “If you look on every Main Street, in every city park, on every college campus, and in every town square, you will never see a statue of a committee.” Those words of wisdom have stuck with me, and indeed they have rung true on more than one occasion in my content writing career. It usually goes something like this: The client provides a brief, the content writer produces the content. The client briefly reviews, and says “This looks great, I’ll just have the rest of the team look it over.” This is when beads of sweat begin to appear. Sure enough, the copy comes back with a round of revisions. And then another. Oh, now it looks like two members of the creative team have requested conflicting changes. What’s a content writer to do?
3. All Enthusiasm, No Substance
If you’ve ever said “I don’t know what I want, but I’ll know it when I see it” to a content writer, then I’d like you to know the insanity that causes. These clients are generally excited about developing new content, and very enthusiastic. But, they have no clue what they want, or how to get it. This situation also occurs frequently in the revision cycle. “I don’t like this piece, but I don’t know how to tell you to make it better.” Also falling into this category are clients who give direction consisting of such descriptive terms as “informative,” “edgy,” “dynamic,” and “engaging,” and, in one very true and nearly aneurism-inducing case, your humble narrator was given the phrase “make it GREAT!” as a creative direction. I can’t make this up.
Now, I feel like I need to reiterate that this is all in good fun. These are all things which have happened to me, but the only thing I get from telling these stories today is a good laugh, and you should laugh as well. As a content writer, I value every client however “quirky” they may be, and make every effort to treat them all with the utmost professionalism. Just remember: if you end up being cited (with no names mentioned) in a future “Volume Two” version of this article, you have been warned.
If you’re looking for help with your web content, the Express Writers team is here for you, and it doesn’t matter to us if you don’t know what you want. Honest.