Writing website content for a company you are working with for the first time is a tricky business. Because a website is a very personal representation for many businesses (especially smaller businesses, which are the ones doing the bulk of the hiring for freelancers), you really have to focus on capturing the essence of who they are and what they are trying to accomplish. (This is, of course, excepting those websites that just want a cheesy sales pitch in CAPITAL LETTERS with exc!lam!ation! points placed randomly throughout the text and emphasized wherever possible. Those, in my estimation, are another category entirely.)
For the most part, website content writing is very hit-or-miss. There will be instances in which your client loves every single word, and there will be times when you get what is the email equivalent of a blank stare and several bemused blinks. Rarely, if ever, have I landed anywhere in the middle.
There are typically three client types when it comes to needing website content:
Type A: Has no idea what they want to say.
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You get a brief overview of the company and general writing directions (“I want it to be creative but traditional; innovative but not too risky”). Once you complete the writing and turn it in, they immediately pounce on what needs to be changed. What you don’t change, they do, eventually compiling your sentences in a random pattern that for some reason makes them happy.
Type B: Has no idea how they want to say it.
You get a brief overview of the company and general writing directions. They love every word and immediately put it up on their website (occasionally changing your punctuation in a manner that completely nullifies your intent) since they know very well that they could never write anything better.
Type C: Knows exactly what they want it to say but can’t say it themselves.
They offer what they have attempted to come up with in the past as well as insight into their company’s vision and founding. No matter what you turn in, they are happy with the result, oftentimes asking for one or two revisions on a tricky portion, but still pleased with the outcome.
Fortunately, a good freelance writer can navigate a relationship with every single one of these client types – even the Type A folks. The outcome is all in how you handle your side of the job.
- You usually can’t tell a Type A from a Type B right from the start, so it’s best to always assume you are working with the former. Avoid a conflict by asking probing questions designed to get a better understanding of what they want before you get started. Who is their primary audience? What words would they use to describe the reaction they want from readers? What do they hope to accomplish right away? In two years? How important is search engine ranking? How hard should sales be pushed? Eventually, you’ll come up with your own list of pertinent questions that will become a sort of template for each website you write.
- Have patience with the Type A clients. We’ve been there ourselves; when we asked for a website design, we had no idea what it was we wanted. It was so much easier to nitpick a sample than it was to clearly define what it was we wanted in the first place (mostly because we didn’t know). It’s not that we weren’t happy with what our designer came up with, it’s that we wanted it to reflect us a little bit more – and we did that by picking out what we wanted to change. That’s the nature of this type of work. (Trust me, if you look in your past, you’ll probably find that you, too, have been a Type A at some time or another.)
- Always reinforce your willingness to make revisions (assuming you are willing, of course). If your clients come back horrified with the outcome of your writing, they might actually be worried that this is a one-time deal and that you won’t work with them to achieve a happy outcome, thereby making you a complete waste of money. I consider website writing a collaborative process, and I let my clients know that from the start. I also make sure that my cost to the client includes this process, so that they don’t end up with hidden fees for revisions.
- Never, never take rejection personally when it comes to websites. It’s easy to be affronted when someone comes back and dislikes what you’ve come up with – but it’s not your website. Your job is to make the client happy. If that means they want to move paragraphs around and add sentences to the point at which you are no longer willing to use their website as a sample, so be it. Of course, you may want to gently offer your professional opinion, especially if you know more about SEO or marketing than they do, but in the end, it’s not your decision to make.
If you’re the type of freelancer who gets website content spot on every time, good for you. (Or, perhaps, how fortunate that you never had to work with a Type A.) At the end of the day, most of us will come across at least a few of those hard-to-please clients who seem to dislike anything and everything that we do.
The moral of this story is that you can’t win the first time every time. What makes a good freelancer great is being able to make revisions and collaborate so that the client is satisfied with the end result. In this case, it’s the destination that counts, not the journey.
