6 Reasons You Need Expert Writers for Sustainability & Impact Projects
No matter what communication you are working on—a website, campaign, or sustainability report—you will benefit from expert writing. Developing, producing, editing, designing, and publishing communications typically requires a significant time commitment, and often expertise. Don’t shortchange the writing.
If you are engaging a partner to design and create, writing is an integral part of overall success. Everyone’s resources are constrained, but your message is only effective if it’s understood and acted on.
Fortunately, experts can help and there are many ways to engage. The right support and expertise will improve both your processes and results. Still unsure? Here are 6 reasons you should consider an expert writer:
1. Time Efficiency
Engaging an external writer forces you to be clear on the purpose of the communication, to define the audience, and desired outcome (education, action, etc.) You can oversee the effort and control for accuracy while focusing your time on the big picture and internal buy in, keeping the project on schedule.
2. A Fresh Perspective
One of the biggest traps organizations fall into is writing for themselves, not the intended audience. An outsider can keep your audience focused. Your expert can gather input from your organization and assess relevance without internal politics getting in the way. And, your expert can provide new ideas and insights that internal staff may overlook because they are just too close.
3. Write for Humans, not SEO
One of the temptations when writing is to maximize keywords and industry terms, to ‘improve’ search engine results. Bad writing full of jargon does not communicate and will not serve you, your readers, or the ‘robots.’ Good writing will connect with people and do well in search. Someone focused on the writing keeps you honest.
4. Sustainability Subject Matter Expertise
For sustainability projects, having a writer with subject matter expertise can greatly improve your communications. A writer with experience in reporting and sustainability topics will understand tone, claims, what needs to be said, and the right way to talk about goals and commitments. No greenwashing or greenhushing! And, that knowledge helps in translating messages for diverse audiences—customers vs. employees vs. investors.
5. Objective Feedback
Experienced writers can help a little or a lot—engaging to gather content, generate all drafts and revise; generate a draft from your collected information; or even polish edit a full draft created internally. They will be able to advise on best practices and will have a well-informed point of view on your project’s strengths and weakness. Having that external perspective will improve the result.
6. Credibility
With everyone stretched the temptation to use AI is strong, but the risks are real. ChatGPT and its ‘cousins’ can help with some tasks, but accuracy and sourcing are not its strength, at least not yet. You don’t want to publish anything that is wrong, and you could spend more time fact checking and training your GPT than you would writing. Maybe most important, an external writer can help strengthen your company’s reputation.
Needless to say, with our years of experience we have seen many projects suffer from less-than-stellar writing, and urge you to consider the complete package when you are sourcing a partner.
Ready to hire an expert? IOP can help.
With over 20 years of experience, we’re experts in sustainability and impact communications. We’ve written, designed, and developed many initiatives—websites, reports, and sustainability communications. Email us to discuss the options.
Photo by Desiray Green on Unsplash