You’re looking for a copywriter. It’s a specialised brief, editing your company’s financial results and writing your annual report. How do you decide who to use?

Experience? Definitely.

Price? That’s bound to play a part.

Writing style? Then you’ve misunderstood what copywriters do.

Copywriters use a writing style that suits you

Good copywriting reflects the client’s personality. A skilful copywriter uses word choice, sentence structure, rhythm, metaphor and a host of other techniques to communicate the company’s essence. Copywriting is a creative process.

That’s why I talk to clients about their writing style, as part of the briefing. I try to get a feel for their culture and self image, and how they perceive their brand. I might make suggestions, point out that if we do this with the copy, then you can achieve that. But the decision is always the client’s.

That’s also why a potential client needs to look with care at a copywriter’s past projects. The writing style you’re seeing is the style of that client. It’s someone else’s choice. It doesn’t have to be what you get, any more than you’ll be forced to use the same design and colour palette.

What’s your tone of voice?

There’s another issue here for companies: do you actually know what your writing style is?

Most companies don’t. Their corporate style is whatever the person briefing the copywriter thinks it is.

So why not work out your tone of voice? It’ll strengthen your brand and make life simpler for your copywriter, and for you.

Want to read more?

Read my other posts on using a copywriter.

Go to my Facebook page for more observations about business copywriting.