We know the score as content writers (and copywriters, for that matter); we’re writing a block of words for you, and of course we’re expecting feedback. Of course we are. We’re doing it for you, after all. We’re not spending our time writing about ‘IT cloud infrastructures’ or ‘open banking’ and necessarily enjoying it. We want you to put your eyes on our draft, and give your feedback so that we can make those final tweaks and, basically, move onto our next piece.

Do you ever consider though, how helpful the feedback you’re giving actually is to your writer?

Let’s take a look at just a few examples of comments and suggestions that might be leaving your unsuspecting content writer cursing your name under their breath, why this might irk them, and how you can help them out in future.

“How can we…?” (or similar)

Ok, look. We don’t have time for your mind games. Leaving us cryptic riddles down the side of our Google doc or Word doc is just going to hold everyone up. Why are you trying to make us think? And actually, is what you’re saying even related to the current piece, or is it throwing in a spanner that might take it off in a sideways spin?

What we need is clear direction, and so if you wish us to ‘push something’ more or explore something new, it would be so much better if you just spelled out exactly what you want to see in the next version - rather than expecting us to don our frock-coat, deerstalker hat and gourd Calabash pipe to spend hours trying to figure out what the hell it is you want.

“Can we add in some diagrams?”

We know that images can certainly help to break up long reams of prose, believe me, this is something we are already aware of. However, there are certain times where there just isn’t a graph, pie chart or even diagram for ‘the thing’. Nevertheless, you can be assured that we will waste some time embarking on a wild goose chase to try and find one for you. All this does is stress us out a bit, and make us feel like we are useless at finding specific things online.

If you’re the expert in your business, can you at least give us a clue, mate? Where might we find a bloody scatter plot diagram which shows the meaning of life vs how many beers are consumed in the US each year? Because you probably have more of an inkling than us.

Even Google doesn’t have all the answers sometimes, let’s face it.

“I’ve been thinking, and I’d now like to add in an additional section on…”

Ffs. You gave us that thing at the start of all this, remember? You know, the BRIEF? Why on earth did you not think this through in a more methodical way before getting us to start?

An overreaction? Sometimes. Sometimes adding a new section in is fairly straightforward, sure.

But sometimes, that additional section might mean a complete rework of the entire piece to reframe everything, and/or peppering mentions of some new bits across the existing sections. We just don’t know yet until we start on it again for you.

If you want to keep us happy, please, please try to think through exactly what you want in the content before you brief us, because although you may think it’s dead easy to add in new chunky sections afterwards, it can really cause a considerable amount of extra work in some cases.

“Can we make it more punchy?”

I mean, we just don’t know what you want us to do with that comment, to be honest. We’ve just looked up ‘punchy’ as it seemed like the logical thing to do, and the Oxford Dictionary says:

“…having an immediate impact; forceful.”

But it also says:

“…another term for ‘punch-drunk’ (in North America).”

So we’re really no further forward here.

Oh, or are you saying you want EVERYTHING IN CAPITAL LETTERS perhaps?

Our plea would be, please don’t ask us to apply fanciful adjectives to a 2,000-word document as it’s just not very helpful. Instead, if you can point out which paragraph/s made you think of this comment in the first place, we can work on those specifically to try and dial them up a notch somehow.

“I’ve just rewritten this bit…”

OH GOD.

You have now totally messed up how the overall piece flows for the reader. You’ve also written it in your own wonderful way, so the tone of voice is now out of sync and sticks out like some kind of imposter paragraph. We’re going to have to discreetly and secretly try and fix that without even telling you, because, quite frankly, we just want to be done with this piece and move on with our lives.

Everyone’s entitled to change their minds or think that what we’ve written for them isn’t 100% perfect, yes indeed. But if you can at least describe what needs changing, we can then work more easily to integrate this into the draft without causing a disturbance to all the other bits.

We want to produce great content for you, so…

In short, do try to be proactive in caring for your writer and their work for you. It doesn’t matter whether they’re working in-house or on a freelance basis; avoiding all the above will not only help you build a better relationship with us because the work is more enjoyable, you’ll also get the best out of us, and get what you want at a quicker (and cheaper) rate.

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