We get it. Working relationships aren’t always the easiest to maintain; especially when you’re working in different timezones. You get busy. Roles change. Deadlines change. Things change. But relationships could be the difference between scattered, disorganized unfocused content and clear, organized quality content. We sat down with marketing and strategy consultant Ben Jacobson and Luke Wolfe, an editor here at ClearVoice, to discuss ways to foster and maintain a healthy working relationship between writer, editor and client.
Below are a few highlights from the episode, and in this full #ProContent episode you will learn:
- How to work with a remote team
- To build relationships beyond assignments
- The right level of communication
- Best practices when things unexpectedly change
Ben Jacobson, marketing and strategy consultant, @osbennn:
- “Get aligned on everything, trust each other [as writer, editor, and client], it takes time. There’s a learning curve. There’s a lot of friction involved. You need to feel like there’s at least a good chance that you’ll hit that smooth sailing phase for long enough that it’ll be worth your while.”
- “If you feel a personal connection, even if you work with them professionally. You’re going to empathize with them and respect their time. You don’t want to necessarily give precedence over anybody else’s time, but you certainly want to help that person as much as possible.”
- “It comes down to really having a deep understanding of the client’s objectives and strategy, because if you understand their messaging strategy, and the kinds of storylines they want to iterate on, then it gets easier to understand what they’re looking for.”
- “You’re trying to find that perfect match. Especially when there’s clients and editors and writers involved. You want to find that sweet spot and it takes a lot of trial and error. You need to be willing to experiment to work with different types of workflows, different ways of communicating, different ways of structuring things and describing things.”
Luke Wolfe, editor at ClearVoice:
- “If you trust the writers, they get the same out of you, or you get the same level of respect back. It just really makes the working process a lot easier and successful.”
- “I do appreciate when the writers I’m working with reach out to me and they tell me what’s going on in their life and how that impacts the amount of work they can pick up or what not.”
- “The writer can seek the client’s input. You want to keep everyone an even keel and happy and sometimes it’s a bit of a balancing act. Usually, some kind of compromise has to occur.”
- “You can be direct and kind of scathing without being mean and it saves time, too. You don’t want to beat around the bush with criticism.”
