How to give feedback: get better content faster with these 4 feedback tips
Image via: Jason Leung
Giving good creative feedback is a highly underrated skill. And today, you'll learn the fundamentals in 3 minutes or less.
Learning how to articulate your vision clearly means you'll reach your perfect draft faster without incurring extra fees for more rounds of amendments. You'll also be teaching your writer how to create for you in the future, and you'll end up with a draft that matches (or exceeds!) your expectations.
Basically, everyone wins.
So, here's how to give feedback to creative freelancers like the total boss you are.
1) Designate a primary stakeholder
The first step is to designate a primary stakeholder responsible for collecting and reviewing feedback before it goes to the freelancer. There are several very excellent reasons for doing it this way…
It stops the freelancer from getting a bundle of conflicting requests and notes.
It means you can hand all notes off in one go rather than confusing things with multiple drafts containing multiple notes from multiple people.
It gives one person the authority to ask each individual for notes only pertaining to their expertise — Dave from legal shouldn’t be giving feedback on creativity.
It ensures everything is crosschecked against the original brief before it goes back to the freelancer.
As you can see, the primary stakeholder thing is a biggie. It cuts out a lot of the back-and-forth that occurs when feedback is misaligned with the brief, conflicting, or just plain irrelevant.
2) Agree on a single feedback format
True story — a copywriting agency owner once told me their client printed every single page of the draft, annotated it by hand, and then posted it back. And while we could do that, it would make the process much longer.
Feedback goes so smoothly when you agree on a system to start with. Most freelance writers (myself included) prefer tracked changes and comments inside the draft itself. That way, we can save it as a V2 and systematically work through all the notes. Makes it easier to catch everything!
3) Re-read the brief before you give feedback
You’d be surprised how many clients give feedback that conflicts with the original brief. This usually happens when they’ve forgotten what they asked for. No shade, babe. It happens!
Before each of your team gives feedback, urge them to re-read the brief so the objectives and deliverables are front-of-mind when they read the first copy draft.
4) Be clear and use examples
Nothing makes a copywriter roll their eyes harder than vague or generic feedback. It might be tempting to throw in the odd 'not keen on this' or 'needs to be more punchy', but I urge you to resist.
Instead, give examples or more detailed explanations to help guide your writer to the best edit. For example:
'Needs to be punchy' = 'Make the sentences shorter and active tense.'
'Not keen on this' = 'I'm not sure our customers use words like this; can we try something with a more positive connotation?'
'More personality' = 'Could you add more language from our brand book to make this feel a little more like us?'
Try to stay away from personal likes and dislikes as much as possible. Your writer will have made choices to suit your customer base, and what appeals to them may not appeal to you. Let go of personal taste and return to the brief and the customer data for reassurance — when in doubt, test the copy! You can usually edit it later.
