Trust with a capital T: a keyword in the copywriting process

T-shaped support holding up a 13th Century ceiling in a round tower. T is for trust.

Trust is the keyword in our business.

We know clients often choose to work with us because they don’t have the time or skills to write material for their websites in house.

Indeed many clients don’t even have the time to sign off on what we’ve written for them.

So where does trust come into all of this? They trust we have the writing skills and that we have the time to put together written material that they cannot.

You need to trust your service supplier

Today we heard about a company that had written the content themselves because they didn’t think that a writer would know enough about their industry to write it. We think it’s great they had the time and energy to put this together. Indeed, if an organisation has the time/skills capacity we would recommend go for it – not everybody needs a professional writer.

But it also made us sad. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that person has trust issues. But they’re definitely not aware of the power of questioning.

Interrogation skills and stuff

One of the reasons we work with journalists to write website content is that they’re skilled in research and interviewing. They can research an industry prior to interviewing somebody, let’s say for an article, a feature article. That way they can compose the right questions. Or sometimes it’s just as well to let a person talk and intervene along the way with questions. It’s a learning process. The outcome: you don’t have to be an expert about something to write about it if your sources are informed and you’ve been given the right direction/angle to follow.

Tracing the meat to the farm

The important thing at the end of the day is clarification and fact-checking – either independently, through research or going back to the source.

Then there’s the careful eye of an editor ensuring that the finished piece of writing meets the brief originally outlined. The sub-editor also plays an important role – fact-checking; tidying up grammar and punctuation; tightening up sentences and more.

That’s how the print media works (or used to work at least when I last worked in it). That’s the approach we take too. It’s building trust through quality control.

What are your biggest trust issues when it comes to your or your business’s online presence?