A-Z of writing, tips from copywriting experts
December 5, 2024
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, so I’ve been tasked with writing the annual round-up of activity this year.
If I was a different generation, I might say something like “We have sleighed 2024”, but my teens would probably want to push me off a cliff, and I’m also not sure that’s quite true.
In common with lots of agencies this has been an odd year, with a distinct lack of confidence seeming to affect clients’ ability to commit. Regardless, we’ve made it to the end of the year in a good place, and with some great work under our (slightly bigger than they were) belts. I blame all of the Fridays off eating cake…
So, as we jingle all the way to the holidays, here are a few of our headlines and highlights:
- We wrote 13,540,000 words (that’s what you get with a large team who write day in, day out)
- 82% of Awards Writers entries are on shortlists, including for awards like Northern Digital Awards, Women in Pensions Awards and PR Week Awards
- Delivered seven major web projects, delivering 276 pages of copy
- Helped five clients understand and codify their tone of voice
- Suggested the name adopted for a new housing development in the South East – a personal favourite
Sprucing up web content
The story of this year has been a lot of web content. From brand new sites to developing narratives around which to shape new content and refreshing existing copy with a new tone of voice, the team has delivered plenty!
We’re particularly enjoying supporting the University of Hull with implementing their new tone of voice across web content. It’s very different for the sector, and has been a pleasing challenge for the team as we get to grips with the counter-conventions and paradoxes which are a feature of the voice.
We’ve delivered a handful of urgent projects throughout the year too, including editing 105 pages of copy for the UCAS website in just three weeks in the summer alongside working on another 126 pages of copy on a separate project. While we’d rather not work to such tight deadlines, the scale of the team means we can do it when clients need us to.
We get by with a little elf from our friends – new agency partners
We’ve continued to work with some great creative agencies which need our team as additional fire power for their copy or use us exclusively as their copywriting team. Most importantly, these agencies share our values, which means we naturally make a fantastic extended team.
Great projects included shaping the tone of voice for a new housing development within the local council’s development company, researching and writing reports on the gender health gap and on mental health, and writing the customer journey emails for people wanting to rent a property from a not-for-profit organisation in the north west.
And we’ve added two new partners to the stable this year, working on projects for Hybrid and Forbidden, ranging over blogs, tone of voice, web and campaign content.
At a conference this year we heard someone say you should never work on projects which don’t make you rich, famous or happy. We’ll settle for enriched lives over rich – such as the warm feeling we got supporting a deaf-led company with copy for their new website. We have no wish to be famous in the traditional sense, but becoming known for what we’re great at and being recommended by clients and partners will do for us.
Tree-mendous team changes
We haven’t stood still and continued to recruit to our extended team this year, adding former teacher-turned-copywriter Matt Hall and creative copywriter Andrea Thompson to the associate pool.
Andrea has an advertising background but also has extensive experience in long-form copy, so is a brilliant addition to our flexible and multi-skilled team. Matt joined the gang in the summer and brings a lively tone, curious mind and always an interesting perspective to projects.
We’re always looking to speak to other copywriters and communications experts, so if you know anyone, do gift us an introduction.
Our deputy chief wordsmith Kat Trinder left in October for pastures new at Arts Council England. We wish Kat all the best in her role as communications manager for the children and young people’s grant-giving programme.
We’re adding a brilliant new person to the team in the New Year as head of content and quality, so watch out for an announcement about that.
We hope you’ve had an equally fabulous year, and that you have a good break ahead, spending time with those who mean most to you. So that the team can have a proper rest, the Wordsmiths office will close at lunchtime on Friday 20 December, reopening on 6 January.
Have yours-elf a merry Christmas and a fa-bauble-ous New Year. That’s a wrap!
