Writing website text: How do you get input from your organization?

Do you know all the ‘ins and outs’ of your organization? Is there actually anyone who knows everything? If you would answer these questions with a resounding “YES,” that’s wonderful, but in practice, the opposite often proves true. This is actually quite logical, because everyone in an organization has their own specialized knowledge in their field. On the website, all the knowledge and expertise of the organization must come together and be presented as clear information to the visitor. Therefore, it is essential that the input for the website texts comes from across the entire organization. In practice, this often turns out to be one of the biggest stumbling blocks, because try turning all this knowledge into a coherent piece of text. In this article, we discuss the causes and how you can actually get the information you need.

Sometimes it seems as if there is enormous resistance to helping you with something very simple, input for your website text. A piece of text that, after all, is about their own department or specialty! What we often forget is that people hide behind unwillingness or other tactics because they simply can’t figure it out and don’t want to admit it. Your open request for information, images, or text about their work, specialty, or department causes them a lot of stress. Below are briefly some reasons why you don’t get input, and therefore cannot write website text.

Challenges in writing website text

Organizational blindness – Due to the daily rush, your colleagues no longer know what is so unique about your organization or the way they work. So they have no idea how special that actually is!
Your colleagues are not copywriters – You probably have more affinity with writing, but for many of your colleagues, it feels like being back in high school having to submit an essay for a grade.
No time – Your colleagues probably don’t have hours to spare during the week or have enough backlog to spend usefully. This is sometimes used as an excuse.
Fear – Having something on paper, black on white, is very definitive in our culture. If something is in the newspaper, it must be true. Many people are therefore afraid of writing something wrong and that it will be used against them by colleagues, competitors, or maybe even the boss.
No common ground – In practice, we often encounter that different departments have completely different ideas about what makes an organization unique. If you then ask for input, you get information that actually contradicts each other. And then you are even further from your goal.
Open question – You ask your colleagues an open question, so they have to figure out themselves what is important to tell. It’s logical that you get very specialized information or a vision with blinders on, right?

Of course, there are more reasons why you don’t get input, but you will probably find the most important ones here. Now that we know what challenges are at play, we can look at solutions.

How do you get the necessary information from your organization?

There are several ways to get the information you need to write good website text from your organization, but the most important questions are; how much time do you want to invest and how much time do your colleagues have? Therefore, three different examples:

Create a question and answer form. The most cost-effective solution. Formulate clear and specific questions to which your colleagues respond. Use these answers as a basis for your text. The downside is that you will probably get concise answers and cannot ask follow-up questions.

Organize a workshop. Bring the key figures together for half a day and get as much input from them as possible. Record the session and incorporate all this into your texts. It takes more time, but you can go deeper. An additional advantage is that you stimulate cohesion and more organization-wide knowledge because these key figures also get to see each other’s work.

The interview method Take the time to interview each key figure individually. Prepare your questions and knowledge as well as possible to get the most out of her or his (and your) time! During the conversation, you can go deeper and ask good follow-up questions. It takes you much more time, but based on a one-hour conversation, you can sometimes write 10 pages of website text!

Now you know why it is so difficult to get input from your own organization and how you can make it easier for your colleagues (and yourself). This is so important in the process that we almost always budget these activities; in practice, our clients are always very grateful to us afterward. Because even with our help, this is a time-consuming process. But forewarned is forearmed, keep the above points in mind and the whole process becomes easier and therefore more enjoyable.

The main article In practice: writing website text covers the other topics we have already addressed. Next week we will write about the right tone for website text. If you want to talk to us further after reading this article, we would love to hear from you.