Did you know that a freelance copywriter with experience and strong knowledge in public relations can help you improve your internal and external communication for better success?
As part of their role writing for you, a good freelance copywriter would get familiar with your personal brand or business so they can:
- get to know and understand your style and business culture
- ask questions and challenge you and your team to get a better ‘feel’ of your target publics
- come up with ideas that you’ve never thought about, therefore becoming a true asset to you and your team, even if you’re hiring them on a freelance basis.
How can a freelance copywriter help you?
There are seven components of your business that a freelance public relations copywriter can work with you on:
1/ Internal communication
- Write internal publications, including newsletters, bulletin boards, blogs and intranet
- Interview employees to write instruction manuals
- Work with HR and management to develop policies and procedures
- Pair up with HR on employee satisfaction surveys
- Develop style guides and other guidelines
- Write speeches and presentations
- Write creative, inspirational or persuasive posters and notices
- Come up with questions for internal forms and other tools
- Write surveys and database labels, as well as rewrite your analyses.
2/ External networking and multifaceted communication
- Write your vision and mission statements, and taglines
- Rebrand and find new directions for the brand messages
- Rewrite your strategic plans, including your single-use plans (e.g. to achieve a specific objective)
- Improve your media and public relations campaign kit
- Create engaging content for better online interaction (website copy, blog posts, profiles, social media messages and articles)
- Interview influencers and other stakeholders to write the story of your brand
- Write promotional articles, media releases and brochures to share your messages
- Write content for your annual reports, books, podcasts, webinars, seminars and promotional videos
- Gather stories from your clients and partners to help promote corporate responsibility and partnership
- Write emails, letters and newsletters to help maintain strong relationships with stakeholders
- Create messages to inform of new services, resources and tools
- Write public announcements and other non-salesy notices.
3/ Issues, crisis, reputation and brand management
- Get your wording right when addressing issues or ongoing matters of concern to the organisation, partners and stakeholders.
4/ Research
- Write your external stakeholder surveys, including questions for focus groups, interviews and internal audits
- Interview you, your spokesperson and clients for write media articles
- Write or rewrite evaluation papers.
5/ Public affairs
- Get the words right when creating position papers to lobby on behalf of your staff or sector
- Improve your white papers or debate papers for use as an influencer in your industry.
6/ Investor relations and financial public relations
- Write your pitches, tender documents and grant applications
- Come up with content for fundraising and social good publicity
- Promote your financial achievements in languages that everyone can understand
- Write reports for funding partners – banks, government and donors.
7/ Reposition your organisation when changes are occurring
- Write your messages in all formats (media releases, web copy, blog posts, posters, letter and more) to help all stakeholders understand what’s happening with you to help keep stakeholders calm and make them feel like they’re being taken care of and that you have their best interest at heart.
Why use a freelance copywriter with public relations knowledge?
The components mentioned above are just some of the nuts and bolts of what a copywriter can do for you.
As you may have noticed, though, most of the tasks are probably already being written by your in-house public relations assistant or other employees across various departments.
However, if you were to use one freelance copywriter you’ll gain better quality content because you’ll give your brand ONE VOICE.
Not two, not five – the one voice. And you’d get to choose what type of style and personality that voice comes with.
Another reason why you should hire a freelance public relations copywriter is they already know how journalists think, what they want, what the target publics want and what partners and investors want to hear or read about the brand. A public relations assistant (usually a junior or someone who has never worked in journalism) doesn’t have the time to learn or research all this.
Freelance copywriters with public relations experience also have better inbuilt detector for story angles, therefore they won’t struggle to come up with ideas. In-house employees only see the world from the eyes of the brand and at times can struggle to see beyond what the brand ‘thinks’. If they can’t see past the front door they could misunderstand what the target audience perceives. It’s not uncommon that the employee thinks the brand does one thing while the target thinks another.
Since the freelance copywriter is not ‘personally’ attached to the brand in the same way, they’re more likely to look from the outside in and instead see from the external audience’s perspective, something that’s incredibly hard for a brand to do.
Over to you now… how many of the above components are you employing a professional copywriter to help you with?
If you’re hiring freelance copywriters, please tell us what they’ve helped you achieve.
Photo Credit: ChrisMRichards via Compfight cc
The 7 components are based on Chia, J., & Synnott, G. (Eds.) (2009). An introduction to public relations: From theory to practice. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
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