10 ways for copywriters to keep their clients

This month it will be 10 years since Regus first employed me as a freelance corporate writer. It has used all of my services at one time or another, from writing press releases and marketing communications to being editor of several internal and external publications.

Visiting the Regus centre at Bath Road, Slough

Regus is one of my earliest clients but I also have long relationships with others, including IC agency AB and parts of the NHS. It made me wonder, what is the secret of a long client-copywriter relationship?

So I’ve drawn up the following 10 tips for keeping a client long-term.

1. Polish your skills

Your client wants the skills you’re bringing to the relationship, otherwise they wouldn’t have employed you in the first place. But over time it can be challenging, especially for freelancers working on their own, to keep up with trends.

If you’re short of time or funds, take advantage of the many free online seminars and network events to add new skills to your repertoire – and don’t forget to tell your client you have done so.

2. Build rapport

Developing personal relationships with your client is essential. Keep in touch by phone and email but also meet them whenever you can. Face-to-face meetings are the best way to build rapport.

Invite them along to networking events and seminars where they can mix business and pleasure. If you know your client is going to be at a new product launch or other business event, try to be there.

3. Be responsive

The ability to react quickly to your client’s needs is crucial. PR, corporate communications and marcoms teams are often up against tight deadlines. If you can say ‘yes’ to difficult timelines they’ll appreciate it and come to you first next time.

4. Be flexible in your support

Be prepared to change tack if the client requests it, even if it means the brief has changed radically from the original. You don’t know what pressures your client contact is under, so remain responsive and calm and support them with ideas that solve their dilemma. If a client is unsure what angle to take, write several versions from the off just to show them what can be done.

5. Meet demand – build a network

As the work rolls in, how will you meet increasing client demands unless you sub-contract? Sole freelancers offer great skills cost-effectively because they don’t have the overheads of a larger agency, but corporations can also see this as a downside. Who will write their copy if you’re ill or on holiday?

Creating a network of freelance writers, editors subs and proofreaders – signed up to watertight contracts drawn up by a solicitor – means you can offer the best of all worlds: flexibility and cost-effectiveness but with a support team on hand for bigger jobs or when you’re not around.

6. Keep updated

Keep up with your clients’ business, including changes to their product portfolio as well as their marketing messages. It’s easy to get complacent when you have worked for a client for a long time. So register for news alerts, sign up to RSS feeds and online newsletters, follow them on social media, in national press and broadcast channels.

7. Share information

People don’t stay in jobs as long as they used to. As a long-term supplier, you may have the longest memory in the team. If your client is about to embark on a marketing campaign that tried and failed five years ago, let them know.

Your insight can also prove useful to new joiners to the company. And remember, more than one long-term freelancer has won a contract to write a book based on their knowledge of a client’s history.

8. Conduct business professionally

When you’re working for a large corporation, especially a global one, you need to make sure all your business processes are top notch. Draw up terms and conditions for your clients to sign. Get your contractors to sign confidentiality agreements. Ensure you have professional indemnity insurance and public liability. Invoice regularly and build a good relationship with your clients’ accounts payable team.

9. Make it easier to use you

If it’s easier to come to you than someone else you’ll have more chance of remaining a client’s preferred supplier. Ensure that you are contactable at any time, with smartphones, email and laptops all synched so they can talk to you even if you’re mobile. If you’re out of the office a lot, consider a voice messaging service so a professional receptionist is there to answer your client.

10. Fight complacency and inspire confidence

Don’t make the mistake of thinking you are indispensible. Corporations have plenty of copywriters knocking at their door, so stay on top of your game.

Amid all the daily pressures of communicating to a corporate audience, your client will have confidence in you and you’ll have a better chance of playing a role in their future.

• Have I missed anything? Let me know!

Variety is the spice of a freelancer’s life

One of the best things about being a freelancer is the diverse stuff you get to research and write about.

This week, working for the public and private sector, I’ve learned about:

• Apeldoorn in the Netherlands and its impressive business school
• How to prevent dental decay
• An investment bank’s short-term financing plans
• What it’s like doing business in Egypt in the current climate
• The best way to create a calming office space.

It’s one of the many reasons why I love being a copywriter. No day is ever the same.

What words would you bring back?

English is a dynamic language that’s forever changing. But I think there’s a good argument to be made for bringing some little-used words back into common use.

Take ninny for instance. Marvellous word! Haven’t heard it for ages. Then all of a sudden it just fit the moment and I used it, prompting this blog. Meaning ‘foolish person’, ninny is so much softer and kinder than stupid and much more delightful to say.

A quick trawl of a dictionary double-page from nightshirt to nitrogen and even more unfashionable words put their heads over the parapet. There’s the glorious niminy-piminy (feeble, affected, lacks vigour) and nincompoop (simpleton, fool), for example.

I’d also like drat to make a comeback – Dick Dastardly-like – and discombobulate too.

My husband votes for ripsnorter (energetic, remarkable or excellent) and wheeze.

What word or words would you like to bring back into fashion?

Don’t exclaim more than once – if at all!

For some reason, people believe that adding more than one exclamation mark to the end of a sentence will get their point across – in triplicate!!!

Well, quite the opposite is true.

Bombarded with such in-your-face punctuation, the reader flinches and moves on to the next sentence – if you’re lucky.

Most single exclamation marks are unnecessary. More than one not only looks aggressive, but it also has an air of desperation about it. Please read me! Please!!!

Exclamation means words exclaimed or a sudden strong cry, according to my dictionary. So unless you’re writing a novel in which the heroine has just screamed, avoid exclamation marks at all costs.

Book on Norway reveals best in self-publishing

eBook sites have made it easier than ever to publish your own work but self-publishing can still be a bit of a slog.

Often, even if it finally makes it into print, the effort has all the hallmarks of an amateur production. But then a gem comes along, like the book Gunstige wind, eindeloos zicht (Favourable wind, endless horizons) by Saskia van der Sluis and Diana Venneman.

Self-publishing the right way

Saskia is cook and mate on a traditional Dutch sailing ship called Bør and Diana is the co-owner with her husband Hans. Together they have created a beautiful coffee table book containing 128 pages of photos of their travels up and down the Norwegian coast with Dutch tourists.

“I’ve always wanted to make a book but it wasn’t until Hans and Diana read an article I did about Bør in an online sailing magazine that they decided I should do it,” said Saskia.

She and Diana decided on layout and selected the photos that all three of them had taken, while Saskia learned InDesign – the Adobe graphic design program.

They took the first 20 spreads to a nautical publisher in March 2011 but discovered it was cheaper to publish it themselves.

Working full throttle for eight days, in between sailing and other jobs, after months of preparation, they finally had the drafts together and by November they had a book.

Hans and Diana made the investment and printed 1,000 copies in China.

The Netherlands’ biggest sailing magazine reviewed the book and it’s now available from the boat’s website www.borzeilreizen.nl or www.bol.com

Saskia’s now hooked on publishing and is practising her InDesign and working on photo books she can upload.

Related articles:

How self-publishing came of age

 

Easy tips on remembering grammar

A good style guide can easily turn a quick search for an answer into 30 minutes of pleasant indulgence refreshing your knowledge of words.

But it’s also gratifying when I stumble across an easy way to remember something that I can pass on to the reporters I mentor.

Take this tip on using there, their and they’re from How we write: A style guide for Regus writers:

Remember the phrase ‘They’re there in their office’, which of course means: ‘they are there in the office belonging to them’.

Or to recall the difference between principal and principle:

Principal has an A, which is the first – or principal – letter of the alphabet.

My favourite book on remembering grammar is the Excellent English chapter in Thirty days has September, which contains many helpful mnemonics such as:

What’s the difference between a cat and a comma?

A cat has claws at the end of its paws

A comma’s a pause at the end of a clause.

And an acronym (RAVEN) to remember affect vs effect:

Remember: Affect, Verb, Effect, Noun.

Good stories write their own headlines

Despite being at the top of every story, why is the headline so often the last piece of copy on a writer’s mind?

As a regular editor of internal communications (IC), I despair at seeing ‘Headline to come’ at the top of writers’ copy. It’s as if they’ve built a house of cards and are afraid the last ace will bring it all crashing down – so they simply avoid putting the roof on.

Sometimes they lose heart because there isn’t enough to go on in the copy. Shaky foundations result in shakier headlines. A persuasive story that draws the reader in will make it easier to top your story with an attention-grabbing head.

Repetitive fare makes this a challenge for anyone writing in internal comms. Old faithfuls like award ceremonies, the Three Peaks Challenge and other fundraising stories make it hard to stay fresh. But failure to find new angles stifles headline creativity and ends with writers resorting to headline clichés such as Wheely good and Smiles better that are sure to put readers off instead of arousing their curiosity like a good head should.

So when you’re writing the umpteenth awards story for your publication, spare a thought for the sub or the designer who writes your headlines – try to give it a different twist. You’ll be surprised by the creativity heaped on your head!

Spiders invade – this means war!

Last year I promised to report on any spider repellents that worked.

Sad to say, a plethora of conkers at every door and copious spraying of No More Spiders deterrent spray (ha!) has had zero effect on this year’s invaders, of which, according to The Guardian, there are even more this year.

The eight-legged blighters are definitely bigger. We’ve certainly had three of the largest arachnids I’ve seen since holidaying in France gave me heart failure every time I had to use the bathroom.

Our home’s spider-finding general (my husband) is now on strike over using the cup-and-card method of spider-evacuation. The sucker-upper I bought last year is too small to suck up the size of spider we’re getting.  The cat plays spider snooker when he sees one but refuses to take them outside.

As a lifelong arachnophobe, I’m left with no choice but to return to tried-and-tested methods! Now where’s that boot…

The only true spider repellent...

Related articles

• Good year for spiders sparks a surge of arachnophobia (guardian.co.uk)

Three has sweet way to get staff reading

If you think employment contracts are dull, raise a cheer for Three.

The communications company prides itself on its fresh thinking and this time it really is ‘out of the box’.

Recognising that staff contracts need to be digestible to compel word-for-word reading, it sweetens the chore by adding a chocolate bar and tea bags in neatly designed packaging worthy of Apple. Maybe the comms team imagined new employees sitting comfortably on a sofa to digest their contract while munching a treat and sipping a brew.

Some may think this is a waste of resources. For my money, any company that thinks this hard about how its new staff will view its communications is doing something right.

Tips on homeworking – never housesit for carp

Freelancing from home requires discipline. Most of all, you learn to avoid distractions. After 10 years, I’m pretty good at ignoring piles of washing and breakfast detritus. I’m even immune to the call of the sun when the garden looks oh-so inviting.

But even experienced homeworkers can make mistakes. Mine was agreeing to house-sit and fish-sit for a neighbour who was acting koi about how easy it was to feed her carp while the family went on holiday.

A nightmare of time-consuming problems ensued during – inevitably – my busiest week ever.

Day one, the bolt to the door of the conservatory containing the fish food shot back in its slot and couldn’t be moved. I drove to the local aquarium for extra food and shimmied out of a window.

Day two, armed with pliers, I manage to force the bolt back and access the fish food.

Day three, arrive to find the fish barely covered by water. Panic! The pump is on but there’s no water flowing. I try the hosepipe. Nada. Thankfully, there’s water coming from a tap on the other side of the house.

An hour later I’d poured 12 buckets of water into the pond. I call the aquarium – no good, running water is needed for oxygenation.

The clock ticking on a deadline, I drive to a mutual friend who gets the hose to work and the pump begins again. What a relief! It was almost ‘carp die-m’.

Fear not, relatives from Wales are taking over on Friday, I’m emailed from Cuba. Leaving my workload pending, I walk over to the house only to find the aunt had arrived on Thursday night. My patience running fin, I hurry back to the house and work like mad until the day’s end.

This big girl didn’t koi, but it came close! Lesson of the day: when it comes to your time be shellfish.