Your Strategy is Great. Your Words Aren’t.
We want to talk about writing. Words. Language. The melodic string of letters and symbols pieced together to form coherent, crescendoing thoughts.
Written words are the transfer point for your passion—for your mission. Words encapsulate all your work, ideas, meetings, ponderings, agonies, and thoughts. They are the filter through which your work must go to get into the world.
Does your expert work deserve expert representation?
Exhibit A:
The most recent college graduate with a degree in English is not an expert communicator. They are a low-expense resource your finance officer is delighted to see on the books. They are unlikely to have the requisite expertise to represent the magnitude of your work.
Your web developer? Not a copywriter.
Your email campaign expert? Not a copywriter.
Your newsletter designer? Not a copywriter.
Your admin? Not a copywriter.
The person charged with making sure your passion, ideas, and plan are intelligible to the world is at the wheel of your passion’s bus. But, should they really be the person with the least life experience, the least professional experience? Do you risk negating all the value in your work because the language is not what you want to say? Words fall flat without a life well-lived and experience with storytelling to fuel the language.
Exhibit B:
Robots have nothing on writers. Only humans can reach out to humans and create a thought so powerful that another person can feel it. Robots can collect words and arrange them grammatically, which can be helpful—but that’s not enough.
“We know the way the brain works and all the best ways of tapping into it, simply because we have one,” says Vikki Ross of Vikki Ross Writes. We relate, and we understand. We use shared experiences to highlight shared truths, and in an industry grounded on relating to its audience, we need good, human writers to translate those universal anecdotes.
Exhibit C:
You can’t be your own copywriter, just like you can’t be your own lawyer or doctor. Truly “seeing” requires perspective, which is impossible to get with your own work. So don’t make your staff tell you this in a terribly awkward and frightening conversation for them.
Without a great copywriter, you are mute, and your audience is deaf to you.
If you read only one more sentence today, make it this: Lack of a good copywriter devalues all your other work. Period. Full stop.
Yes, you may be doing incredibly important work. But, no, your audience won’t understand its breadth. No, they won’t resonate with its purpose. And no, they probably won’t donate.
The harsh reality is this—even minor mistakes and inconsistencies can discredit your organization and its message.
Producing masterful writing that is crisp, stirring, and intelligible is hard. Really hard. Well-formulated, carefully-chosen words can and do affect how people view you and your organization. They build trust and inspire the action you want.
Build trust.
The fact is: language is everywhere. It’s invisible to most—a tool we take for granted that connects Point A to Point B—and appreciated by few. But pity not the heads-down writers who craft the stories that are invisible to most. Because according to UIE CEO Jared Spool, “Good design, when done well, becomes invisible. It’s only when it’s done poorly that we notice it.”
Language, like design, holds the inexplicable power to influence. To build meaningful relationships. And to foster trust founded on consistency and thoughtful, well-intentioned, accurate information.
Without a writer who understands the weight of their words, you’re left with… doubt. And that is anything but invisible.
Inspire action.
We’re all familiar with the playground taunt, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
That was a lie. The fact is, what people say and how they say them do affect us. Both positively and negatively. Believers often refer to the Christian Bible as the “Word of God.” The “word” part is important.
Our point: we are constantly consuming, interpreting, analyzing, and acting on the words we read and hear.
When you’re sharing yours, make sure they’re the right words. Words that tell your story, shape the narrative—not react to it. Words that inspire, provoke, stimulate, and energize your reader, your audience, and your team. Let us see your brilliance with a word picture.
How does a copywriter do it?
With emotion. They use the human truths we talked about earlier—shared experiences, yada yada, to build a bridge. A connection. A human connection.
With techniques… learned over time as a lifelong student of language—both technical and artistic syllabic expressions that break through and grab readers on some deeper level.
So that when they’re finished, your reader is left still. Contemplative. Taking it in long after they’ve turned the page. And when the time is right, they subscribe to your mission. Become stewards for something greater than the words they’ve read… and actually live them.
Does it feel like that might take more than one draft? More than one hour? More than one person?
Good. Because it does.
To quote one of our favorite movies: “We don't read and write … because it's cute. Instead, we read and write … because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion.”
Words move hearts. And hearts move mountains.