reynoldswriting.com Blog

You’re too busy to create your marketing content yourself, so you sub that task out to a freelance copywriter. Problem solved, right? Well, up to a point. Your copywriter can work wonders to keep your blog posts, newsletter articles and other content fresh and up to date — but have you told him what you want far enough ahead of time to ensure that it gets done? It’s all too easy to bury yourself in other work and assume that your writer is fulfilling assignments you never assigned. Then one February 14th you sit bolt upright with the horrified realization that you forgot to request that special Valentine’s Day article.

If you’re familiar with this particular chill down the spine, then you probably need an editorial calendar. List your anticipated needs for content over the coming months or quarters, and then distribute that list among your marketing professionals. Your creative folks will always know which assignments are coming up and when, and you’ll have eliminated the “Oops, I forget to tell you” factor on your end.

In fact, it’s smart to have multi-stage editorial calendars for collaborative pieces such as direct mail postcards or newsletters, with separate schedules for idea submission, graphic design, copywriting, revision and publication. The whole project then comes together with Swiss-watch precision, and your team can roll right onto the next job. For example, a mortgage firm sent me a 12-month editorial calendar in January that showed me quite clearly what marketing pieces I’d be writing come December. As a result, we had a year’s worth of email blasts and direct mail postcards ready to go before Spring had sprung.

Of course there will be times when you need to respond quickly to current events. But that’s okay. You don’t have to give your freelancers license to bull ahead with a year’s worth of stuff. Just ask them to keep an eye on the upcoming month or quarter with a “subject to change” disclaimer. It’s much easier to change something that exists than something that doesn’t, and if you have no editorial calendar in place everyone’s just operating on the fly. This can hurt you if your freelancers are non-exclusive, because without prior knowledge they may be working on another gig when you need them.

If you’re a marketing firm ghost-blogging for multiple clients, then you face another obvious challenge. How can you prepare articles months in advance if you can’t always get your clients to send you the necessary background information in a timely manner? Here’s where you hedge your bets by adding alternate titles to the mix — pre-approved, evergreen topics that you can always fall back on. As publication time draws near, if you can’t get the intake on time, go to Plan B. Your copywriter composes the alternate title, you post it on time, and everybody’s happy.

Editorial calendars can make the difference between a last-minute scramble and a calm, smooth ride for your marketing campaign. Create yours today — and then assign the writing to me!

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Have you ever chatted with a professional in a different line of work from yours and walked away wishing you’d brought a translator to the table with you? You’re pretty sure it was English — at least, the little words sounded familiar. But 90 percent of it somehow managed to whoosh right over your head. Are you stupid? Do you have a hearing problem? Or have you simply been buzzed by wall-to-wall buzzwords?

We all fall into jargon from time to time. It exists for a reason, and it can be highly useful or even necessary among those in the know. Car buffs debate issues involving torque and fuel ratios, composers pepper their language with Italian musical phrases, electricians casually drop terms such as “resistance” and “capacitor,” and physicists no doubt talk like time-traveling refugees from Star Trek: the Next Generation. It’s only natural for people in the same profession to talk shop. The problem comes when the engineer or the musician or the IT expert suddenly has to speak to a general audience. We’re listening, but we just don’t understand. And after a few minutes of not understanding, we’re no longer listening either.

The problem isn’t limited to industry-specific terminology, either. I’m often asked to rewrite or edit content written by people who work in a more general business field, and I still have to spend half the project time figuring out what the heck these folks are trying to say. A lot of it tends toward the nebulous, stuff about “aligning verticals and utilizing granular compartmentalization to achieve a more impactful synergy,” yadda yadda yadda. Business-speak is a way for people to talk a lot without saying much. But if you’re trying to sell yourself or your product/service to a mainstream audience, don’t be shocked if you’re rewarded by the sound of crickets chirping.

As a first step in clearing up your verbiage, try to avoid jargony words that ordinary language can handle perfectly well, such as “agreeance” (agreement) and “incentivize” (spur, motivate). And watch out for whiz-bang phrases that describe something that isn’t really that amazing, such as “results-oriented.” (You’d never guess how many business professionals think it a huge feather in their caps to describe themselves or their company as “result-oriented.” As opposed to what, “sitting-around-doing-nothing-oriented?”) “Full-service” is another phrase I’ve attacked on this blog before. (Ever hear a company describe itself as “partial service?”) Finally, don’t overuse the relatively simple, easy-to-understand buzzwords just because they aren’t as likely to whoosh us — for instance, not everything has to be a “driver” for something else. (I see that one a lot too.) Get a thesaurus and give another word or two a chance. We’ve got lots of them.

If you’re not sure you can veer away from industry lingo, or you can’t tell how accessible your stuff is to your intended audience, get a professional copywriter or copyeditor to go over it for you. You may get a revised version that makes you exclaim, “Oh, so that’s what I was saying!”

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.