Keeping (or even getting) your writing team motivated can be difficult. Writing is not like many other types of tasks, it does not involve simply moving box A to shelf A and calling it a day.Writing often involves taking chaos ( chaos in the form of massive volumes of information and bosses who are not quite sure what they want) and turning that chaos into something that makes sense and makes everyone happy. So frustration is common, which can result in what appears to be lack of motivation and direction. So how do you steer the boat into smoother, faster moving waters?
In my experience, the number one reason writers get frustrated involves dealing with clients or marketing directors who simply do not really know what they want.
So how do you fix that?
Client:
It is true, you probably do not really know what you want, you have a basic idea, but have not really nailed it down yet. So what do you do?
When you communicate with your writing team try to convey your ideas to the best of your abilities, including the desired outcome of the product, the style or toned desired and your imagined audience. Make sure to stress the major points that must be included and give clear deadlines. If you can give them an idea about the space the content will be posted or published in and how many words that may help. Do you want article style or bullet points? This may seem like a lot of things to think about, but how is the writer going to "guess" what you are thinking? They cannot, they need as much information as you can give them and even then there will be a bit of guess work involved. Sometimes it is helpful if you can give them some sample pieces that you think are similar to what you are imagining.
Writer:
Working with clients or employers who do not know what they want, but want you to render it perfectly for them, is going to happen. So part of your job is it help them figure out what they want.
When approached with a new project ask as many questions as possible, try to get them to solidify their ideas better and make them commit to them. Unless you are a mind reader and a damn good psychiatrist you cannot guess what they are thinking and even then how can you turn that into a product that directly mirrors their ideas?
Make them become involved in the direction of the content. Make them make choices, give them rough outlines to review so you don't waste your time creating content or marketing material they do not like. Make sure you clearly understand the major points they want to address and their most important objective.
You have to be a bit of a crack psychiatrist as well, listen to the language they use, how they present themselves, note how they feel about their product, take into account their business background and so on, use this information to try to get an idea of how they want the content presented, what kind of language will make them comfortable. And of course, ask, ask, ask....as many questions as they will answer.
If all else fails, write several versions of the introductory lines or paragraphs and let them pick which one they feel best applies. Or have several writers on your team write a few samples and let them pick from those. Yeah it sucks, yeah it takes time, but remember they usually do not quite know what they want, so you need to help them figure that out.
Other things to help keep your team motivated and on task:
- Break large projects into manageable sections.
- Promote group thinking, many brains on a task can see more than just one.
- Set firm deadlines and intermediary deadlines.
- Follow through, don't drop the ball and run, follow through with your agreements.
- Foster a solid writing team, writers who understand each others talents and abilities and can trust each other to meet their team deadlines.
- Be flexible, it may take some writers 6 hours to do what you want and others 10, build a pay schedule that allows this kind of flexibility in a fair manner.
- Pay your writers what they are worth. Underpaid writers will under produce. Of course do not over pay bad writers, they will just keep being bad writers, weed them out, find good writers and pay them well.
- Let them know when they do something that you like, so they know for future projects what works.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate.....
- Let your writers, who know the subject or product well, help you figure things out, their hours and hours of research should be put to good use.
- Good writers should also be good researchers, ask them to explore some ideas or strategies before your assign them a task you are not sure about.
- Let the team work how they work best, which means that some writers may work well in marketing while others prefer technical writing, use the talents of the team. Don't assign a marketing email blast to your tech writer or the privacy policy to your creative, marketing writer.
- Keep in mind that figuring out what you want is hard work, let your writers get away from the keyboard every now and then, let them go for walks or to the gym. Since they are likely sitting at their desk spacing out anyway, you would be better off letting them go for walk to clear their minds.
- Writers have a tendency to over analyze. Make your intentions clear and to what level you want them to dive into a project, if you just want them to jump in and out, tell them that, because they may analyze it to death, wasting time and money.
