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In our recent posts, we’ve talked about the why and how of working with a ghostwriter to produce thought leadership content.
Today, we’re exploring one of the most important aspects of working with a ghostwriter: giving feedback.
Why first drafts aren’t always perfect
Once in a rare while, you might find that potent alchemy: a written piece that, within a single draft, captures all the right information in a pitch-perfect imitation of your voice.
Mostly, however, this isn’t the case. Especially in the first few weeks of your relationship with your writer, you’re more likely to find drafts that aren’t quite perfect—maybe they’re short on the details, or an important point is MIA, or the tone just doesn’t hit the mark.
Which is understandable: even highly-paid, professional mimics—comedians, actors, professional impersonators—don’t nail their acts on the first try.
Good writers tend to faithfully execute on the briefs they get. Often, the perceived shortcomings of the first draft stem from seeing it in its entirety and realizing that some areas need to be developed further before you can sign off. Getting to that point is where feedback comes into play.
Why getting your feedback right is so important in content marketing
Say you’re working with a ghostwriter, and you’ve just received their first draft. It hits all the basic talking points and the tone you agreed on during the initial briefing. But, looking at it with the critical eye of a domain expert, you notice some inaccuracies you know your peers are going to take issue with. And maybe the writer absorbed a little too much industry jargon, so now the article isn’t quite as friendly and accessible as you’d hoped.
Where do you go from here?
Worst-case scenario: you keep giving the writer feedback, but it doesn’t seem to work. You’re getting nowhere fast. Your writer keeps asking you a million questions and you don’t have time to respond to them all. They just seem to be guessing at what you want, you’re now on draft eight, and this article is, you believe with increasing despair, never seeing the light of day.
Best-case scenario: you give your writer feedback, you get back polished revisions, you publish swiftly. Job well done, high fives all around. Obviously, this is the outcome we want.
Whether you get one or the other hinges heavily on the quality of your feedback.
With that in mind, let’s dive into the good, bad and ugly of giving feedback and have a little fun using examples.
The ugly: Not making sense
Talk to any creative freelancer, and chances are you’ll hear a story or two (or more) about nightmare clients and nonsense feedback. Personally, we’ve gotten a good chuckle out of the real-life examples showcased on Sharp Suits. Broadly speaking, we see three categories of terrible feedback.
1) Feedback that doesn’t communicate anything. “You know. Fun. Just non-specific fun.” This feedback provides no meaningful guidance—or any kind of sense. The client may be asking for non-specific fun, but we guarantee the writer won’t be having any.
2) Feedback that contradicts itself or some fundamental aspect of the project.
“It needs to be animated but not a cartoon.” Cue panic and frustration as the creative freelancer tries desperately to reconcile two diametrically opposed concepts.
3) Feedback that stems from confusion or lack of understanding.
“The copy seemed to be in Latin. Can we change that to French?” If the copy is, in fact, in French, not only has this feedback provided no value, it has shifted the onus back on the creative to re-educate the client.
This type of feedback pretty much guarantees a bad outcome.
Of course, people don’t intend to give feedback like this. Usually it’s because they’re in a hurry, or they’ve forgotten important details about the project and are now confused, which manifests itself in the feedback.
Our suggestion? Set aside time for feedback. And we don’t just mean five minutes: ground yourself in the project’s goals, really think about its impact—how many words, how visible will the final copy be, how crucial the audience is that you’re trying to capture—and set aside an appropriate amount of time to do it justice.
The bad: Being vague
In this category: the dreaded “Just make it pop,” which has become so ubiquitous an example of bad feedback that even non-creatives understand the frustration this phrase spawns.
Or imagine, for a second, being a writer and hearing “Just jazz it up a bit” as your only piece of feedback. You’re scratching your head and left to wonder: what does that even mean? Does the client want more words? Bigger words? Does the content need jazzing with more facts? More humour? More Ella Fitzgerald playing in the background?
The client giving this feedback is making a fatally flawed assumption: that the recipient understands their version of “jazz.”
This vague approach to feedback demands a lot of guesswork on the writer’s end. And the more guesswork required by the writer, the more rounds of revisions will be required of the client. It’s a little better than the contradictory, nonsense examples above—but not, really, by much.
The good: Being clear and specific
Looking at a thesaurus for antonyms of vague, we might land on a few words. Specific. Clear. Explicit.
Not so coincidentally, these make excellent guiding principles for giving good feedback.
When we say “be specific,” we mean it in two ways:
- Be specific about which part of the article the feedback applies to. Annotate particular sections or sentences with your requests. Some clients with strict copy guidelines might even get specific with particular words. You don’t necessarily need to get this granular, but the more specific you are, the less follow-up your writer will require of you.
- Be specific with context and instruction. “The introduction needs to be more attention-grabbing; please work in the story about the Brazilian hacker that we discussed last week” gives a writer specific instruction. “Please restructure the body so that the first two sections build up to and support the third” gives great context for the desired flow of the next draft.
We also encourage injecting some positive feedback into your revisions. If the writer has nailed it on a specific point, give them an enthusiastic “Yes!” to keep them encouraged and let them know they’re on the right track.Specific, constructive feedback will allow your ghostwriter to produce an article that meets all your expectations with a minimum of revisions.
Practice makes perfect (or at least takes you a little closer to it)
The hole-in-one is a rarity when it comes to writing content. But, through the power of good feedback, you can cut down the amount of time a piece lives in the WIP pile. Give your writer clear, specific feedback, and you’ll find your first drafts turning into final versions in fewer and fewer revisions. In turn, you’ll likely find yourself needing to spend less and less time directing revisions—a win-win situation.
Sure, it takes a little more time to provide detailed feedback than it does to “plz fix” a whole page of copy. But the better your feedback, the quicker you’ll be able to hit publish and move on to other things—whether that’s your next piece of content or an exciting new initiative you can’t wait to get started on.
Want to learn more about effective ways to publish content? Stay tuned for more incoming articles or drop us a line and let’s chat about your content goals.
