Earlier this year, a client of mine wanted to submit applications for some prestigious business awards. My challenge was: use everything I know about the young company’s best achievements (which are many) to weave a compelling story that met the strict requirements for the application essay, which had to be under 1,000 words.
It worked! The company was named a semifinalist for the most prominent award, and was named the winner of another.
I’m sharing this story because it shows how badly organizations need a writer or storyteller. Some organizations will handle the task of writing an award application in-house, but if you don’t have a great writer on staff, you're not giving yourself the best chance to win.
As a manager or the person responsible for editing content at your company, this is how you determine if content (and the writer behind it) is just not as strong as it should be: while reading, ask yourself if it’s connecting with you on an emotional level–if it’s activating your imagination. Is it making you smile? Feel proud? Excited, eager to know more, or maybe even a bit agitated? It’s also a good sign if, at some point, you think, “Wow. It's impressive how he/she communicated that point right there.” If you’re not experiencing any of these emotions, it’s time to hire a writer.
(One note here: if you feel too close to the content, ask a friend or a partner to read it and provide feedback.)
Once you know it's time to hire a writer, there are some unique ways that your award application, series of blog posts, or white paper will improve. Here is how I did it with my client:
Even though the company provided me with lots of details on client success stories, revenue growth, and overhauling their business model, it needed someone to take all this information and do three things:
1. Find only the absolute most compelling bits.
2. Ask more questions about those parts to make them much more compelling.
3. Turn it all into one, cohesive story.
Those are three of the key skills that every writer or journalist has been honing for years. And there's another big reason, as a writer, I could help the company: I was an outsider. An outside writer has the unique ability to look at all of your achievements and see those “wow” developments that really stick out to other outsiders, and knows which elements of your story to highlight to various audiences. On the other hand, an insider on your marketing or communications team can sometimes be so in the weeds with the daily tasks of helping to run a business that she might need help seeing the big picture.
In closing, if you’re truly trying to win a contest with an essay, doing so without a writer is sort of like, well, doing anything without a specialist. It’s not quite the offense of fighting a legal battle without a lawyer, but it is like that in the following sense: if you don’t have a lawyer, you are less likely to win.
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(Photo: Pixabay)