How do you like yours?

Now I am over the obligatory early autumn lurgy... I'm back. Have you had the pleasure of the snotty lurgy yet? It's surely just a matter of time during September. Anyway, that's not the point of this post. Read on...

This week my husband and I attended a walking tour in Norwich. It was decent weather, a good crowd of participating folks, and a knowledgeable tour guide - but despite all that, it just didn't really grab our attention and I found myself daydreaming and clockwatching along the way. Consequently, this thought entered my head:

What do we want from good copy?

Now the guided tour was verbally delivered, but I'm sure at some point that the tour guide will have written it all down and created his spiel, honed over many years no doubt, and largely memorised in the end. But it began as a piece of copy nonetheless.

The reason this topic popped into my mind is that I too lead guided walks now and again and have quite a different style to the aforementioned gentleman. I tend to keep things light, factual but not too dry and overly detailed. If people ask questions, I am happy to elaborate. I'm not saying my talks are more interesting, but just different, and everyone has their own different gauge of what they find compelling to take in.

Wandering through woodlands

I know first hand how much work it takes to get to the point where most of it is in your head - other than perhaps the odd date that never seems to stick and requires a glance to your brief notes. My own tour has a mix of history, nature and local projects. It has many layers of facts, dates, seasonal information, and wildlife spotting off the cuff. That keeps me on my toes and cannot be pre-planned, of course!

What is the best style for you?

The tour I lead began as 50 pages of rambling internet research! It was insanely detailed and waaaaaaaaay too long given that a guided walk is normally around 90 minutes and not all of that is chat. It took a huge amount of editing down and revising.

Looking back to that time when I honed down the research into a sensible set of facts and information, it is clear I did it based on what jumped out as interesting to me personally. I cannot possibly base the content on a hypothetical set of tour-going visitors and their personal preferences. I also wouldn't fancy delivering a tour that I wasn't personally interested in.

All I have to go on is that people are probably going to be interested in nature - coming to a country park - and they know that there is some history coming at them as it's detailed on the event information. So, that is a good bet that it'll go down well, which it does seem to so far. Phew!

Why am I banging on about guided tours?

Well, all off this has made me think in general about what makes good copy.

Good copy does what it needs to do for the right audience. To quote a famous meerkat:

"Simples."

How can I help you?

I will always listen to your needs, take in the point of what role the copy needs to fulfil, and then deliver. I have a meticulous nature which is driven to succeed in the mission.

Get in touch with your copywriting needs and let's make your ideas a successful reality.