How to be the writer clients love to edit

Even as an experienced writer and CEO of an agency, getting edits from a client can be scary. 

I always keep in mind that our job at Copytree isn’t to get everything right on the first try. Our job is to get to a great final draft, do it efficiently, and make sure our clients feel listened to and cared for along the way. 

Here’s what we’ve learned about using the editing cycle to end up with a stellar piece and get closer to your clients in the process. 

Overcommunicate

It’s essential to touch base with your client (we use Slack) at these points:

• While the client is reviewing

• When you have started a revision

• When you have stopped halfway through a revision and are planning to continue it another day

• When you’ve completed your revision

With each update, share what you’re going to do and what you did. If there’s more than one approach and you’re not sure what your client would like, ask. 

Examples:

• While the client is reviewing: “I see you made some comments on my piece yesterday! Do you want me to start replying to those now, or wait for confirmation that you’re done reviewing? I wasn’t sure if you’d had a chance to finish going through the whole piece.” 

• When you have started a revision: “Thanks for your review! I’m going to go through and accept the suggested edits. I’ll make a note in the doc if there are any that we should discuss further. When I make rewrites to address your comments, I’ll do so using Suggesting mode so you can see what’s changing. Let me know if you’d prefer for me to make those edits directly, though.”

• When you’ve stopped halfway: “I got through revising the intro today, but there were a lot of comments and it’s taking me a bit of time to reconcile. I’ll jump back into the doc tomorrow and finish editing the rest of the article!”

• When you’ve completed your revision: “I’ve just completed my review! I accepted all the edits you suggested. I was able to address all the comments, except for a comment about the conclusion where I’ve asked a follow-up question. Please take a look at my edits and accept the ones that you agree with. Let me know if you have any questions!”

Overcommunication goes for how you reply to comments, too—you’ll want to reply to every comment in the document, every time. Yes, even the ones you think were obviously addressed by changes you made: it may not be obvious to the editor who has limited time. They want to see that you’ve read and understood every comment that they left, and so you should reply to each one, even if it’s just to say “This should be fixed in the text now!”

Keep pushing forward (or sometimes, no one else will)

Once you’ve submitted your first draft, publication can feel tantalizingly close. You’ve thought about it, researched it, and written it. Now, all that’s left is for your client to shepherd your piece through their editing process.

However, this is not the time for you to sit back and relax. Your client has a long content marketing to-do list, without much room for project-managing your editing cycle. Meanwhile, a few unresolved Google comments are all it takes for your piece to slide to the back burner.

From your position as an external contractor, it’s hard to be the shepherd for your piece. But you can be the sheepdog—who might not know exactly what’s going on, but who is excitedly determined to get the flock moving and will nip at their heels a bit if need be. 

When you receive conflicting feedback from reviewers, find a way forward. If you haven’t gotten the response you need to one of your questions, nudge the editor. Not clear if the piece is approved? Ask what’s left to do before publishing. 

Pro tip: To maintain momentum, we set an SLA at Copytree of always responding to edits within 48 hours.

Pick your battles

Junior writers often wonder when to push back on an edit they disagree with, and when to defer to the client. It’s a natural question, and one that doesn’t go away no matter how experienced you are. (Junior writers, though, tend to want to push back the most, due to the Dunning-Kruger effect.) 

The best answer I have is “it depends.” On the one hand, you’re being paid to deliver content that makes your client happy. On the other hand, your client has hired you because they trust your opinion as a writer. 

The client is always right…except when they’re not. Here are some tips for picking your battles:  

• Do push back when an edit introduces factual errors or grammatical mistakes. Usually all this requires is gently pointing out a mistake and/or cleaning up a suggestion so that it flows nicely.

• Do push back when edits bend the truth. Flag “marketing math,” exaggerated timelines, and other fibs that misrepresent reality. While your client has final say over what’s published, it’s important to create a paper trail if anyone questions your involvement later. (You may want to question working with this client again.)

• Don’t push back if the edit doesn’t alter the meaning drastically. Think of it as learning to mimic your client (versus compromising your own style).

• Do look for paths of least resistance. Can you just cut the paragraph that’s controversial? The best fix is one that’s easy for a client to say yes to, and doesn’t require them to think harder or weigh in further. 

• Do ask questions rather than assuming you know the intention behind an edit. Most of the time, when you think the client is wrong, you’re just misunderstanding each other or missing something. 

• Don’t take edits personally. Easier said than done, right? A good strategy is to take half a day to cool off if you feel frustrated or dismayed, and then start responding with a clear head.

Ultimately, pushing back is about testing, and building, a relationship with another human being. You have to use intuition and emotional intelligence, and sometimes you have to learn by making a few mistakes—times when you came on too strong, or times when you let too much slide—and then correcting in the opposite direction. 

Write comments like you write prose

When you respond to edits, you’ll find yourself doing a lot of writing as you make comments or replies on suggestions. Think of this as an opportunity to uphold your image as an expert in written communication.

You may be tempted to dash off a quick sentence fragment as a reply to a Google Docs comment. And if you come from an engineering background, you may be used to terse communication as the norm. 

But you’re not an engineer reviewing your piece—you’re the author. Take a few extra moments to use correct grammar, punctuation, and complete sentences in the margins of Google Docs (and in Slack, and everywhere else). You’ll speak with more authority, come across as more thoughtful and considerate, and inspire more trust. 

For more about commenting in Google Docs, see our article on best practices. 

Call out a dud

Sometimes, for some reason, a piece doesn’t land the way you expect. When this happens, your client won’t always do you the service of letting you know. Many people avoid confrontation, and it can take a lot of work to explain why something isn’t working. You might get the silent treatment instead. 

If reactions to your piece were muted or inconclusive, and editing isn’t progressing the way you expect, it’s time to be brave and ask, “Is this piece working for you?” Clients will respect a writer who can acknowledge when a piece is a miss. And they’ll appreciate you offering a fast, full rewrite. 

But don’t have this conversation over Slack—a meeting is the most productive way to talk about major issues with a piece. It’s more constructive and faster for everyone involved, especially when your client is anxious about delivering tough feedback.

Build a mini style guide

When you get feedback from an editor you’ll be working with again, make a note. Do they prefer that you use sentence case for headers? Have an aversion to a certain word or phrasing? Want you to always capitalize the name of that feature?

Most tech startups don’t have a style guide for their written content, so create one for them. All the better if you can share this doc with your client and ask them to review and modify it as needed. 

We go a step beyond this and create internal “playbooks” for our clients at Copytree, documenting both a client’s stylistic preferences and how their individual editors tend to operate. For instance, maybe a certain reviewer doesn’t usually leave detailed feedback, so you shouldn’t be alarmed if you don’t get many notes from them. 

Thank your editor

Finally: great editing is a gift, and gratitude goes a long way in building rapport with your client. When you notice something particularly helpful in an edit, share your appreciation in reply to a comment or even in a Slack message or email. It’s worth taking the time to acknowledge the time they invested. 

If you can put these principles into practice, you’ll be more successful at getting pieces published and you’ll emerge from tricky feedback scenarios with your head held high. Keep in mind that while being edited almost always feels a bit like being criticized (ugh!), it’s also the best way to learn as a writer—and to build trust with your client. For more on collaborating during the editing process, see our article about etiquette for Google Docs.