Copywriting is an exercise in getting people to agree. Fresh from two large website projects, here are the four biggest lessons I’ve learned about working with other people to make content happen.
Yesterday, I surfaced from two large website projects. They’re both really special to me for two reasons. First, they were built to help promote something I’m excited about. Second, I was the only writer on both projects — which turns out is exactly the opposite of working alone. My biggest takeaways from the past few months are actually all about working with other people. They include “all copywriters should learn GitHub” and “JavaScript doesn’t like commas so sometimes a comma change isn’t a quick fix.” But here are by far the four biggest lessons I’ve learned.
Have content first
For some organizations, getting content ahead of design is just a really funny joke. And sure, it’s not easy, but it’s important. Every other thing in this post hinges upon having content early in the process. Whatever content you end up sharing with designers doesn’t even have to be final, as long as it says kind of what you want you want it to say in a sort-of-right order.
Under a tight deadline, I wrote out matter-of-factly what I wanted each section of the site to communicate, along with ideas for images and layout. Even clumsy sentences and headlines that were too long were clearer objectives to design around than lorem ipsum or dummy copy. It’s fine if your content starts messy and ugly, as long as it starts early.
