As a content writer here at Clockwork, there’s been full site builds, content refreshes, rebrands, and a lot of fun in between. Most of our content-related projects start where you probably are now: an aging site with decaying content, and the question of where to even begin rewriting.
The team’s given me a chance to answer that for you, including going over the dump-and-done approach where you drop everything into an AI chatbot and hope for the best.
Who Are You Talking To, and What’s the Ask?
If the idea of writing content has successfully talked you out of actually starting to write, congratulations! You’re officially a writer. We’ve all been there, and there’s a plan for this.
The first step is knowing exactly who the site is for and what action we want them to take. Are they already informed and ready to act, or are they just comparing options? Do they speak technical shorthand, or do they need plain language? There’s usually more than one answer.
- MNT4P at Emory University serves healthcare providers, patients and families, and researchers, each arriving with completely different questions from the same site.
- Delta Zeta is a nation-wide sorority that speaks to sisters past, present, and future.
- All Around Industry Supply needed plain, direct language for contractors who already know their motor part numbers and just need to find them fast.
Like all of these teams, you know your audience details better than anyone. How you structure pages, the words you use, and how much explaining any section needs to do all come back to who you’re talking to. Clockwork uses the branding questionnaire to jumpstart that conversation, and it can help you think through your audiences’ underlying needs and wants.
Get Organized Before Starting the Project
There might be PDFs from 2012 still linked somewhere in the footer, pricing that quietly fell out of date, and content built around assumptions the business has long since moved past. You want to sort through what content and collateral carries over, what gets cut, and how new pages connect to each other in the sitemap (more on this soon).
A shared Google Drive folder is a good place to start pulling that material together before the project kicks off. Dropbox, SharePoint, or even a well-organized email thread works, too. The goal is just having everything in one place that everyone can get or refer to later.
Once I get access to shared folders or start digging through search results, I tend to find old press releases, PDFs, and archived pages that nobody remembered existed. A fair amount of that material usually just needs a light update or we can repurpose it directly into a new page.
Top Tip
Drop all your existing marketing collateral into a shared Google Doc or folder early on. Old decks, press releases, pricing sheets, or whatever exists. It keeps everyone on the same page and has a way of turning up things worth keeping that nobody thought to mention.
Your Sitemap Is a Living Document
Your sitemap is the base-layer for all of this work. Even when not much is structurally changing, having this shared document establishes hierarchy, identifies gaps, and gives everyone a shared vision before the actual web design and development work kicks into high gear.
Early on, your sitemap is less a finished product and more a working one. Ours tend to include columns for page status, ownership, content links, live page links, and URL suggestions when SEO is part of the project. Everyone’s notes, questions, and anything needing a decision before moving forward all link there, connected to the project management tools we use.
Once content is approved, design and development take over the document as they work through their phases. But the content conversation continues as needed.
Keep Things Moving
Voice Can Take a Few Rounds To Get Right
Clients come to us at different starting points with their content. Some have a strong existing voice they want to carry forward. Some want a clean break. Some are starting completely fresh.
That first round of editing helps me shape how a client wants to show up for their users. It might be hesitation over a certain phrase, the instinct to soften a claim or sharpen a headline, or a sentence added back that wasn’t there before. If you’re working through content on your own, sleep on it before you edit and finalize. Chances are you’ll notice things right away the next day.
Why does a consistent voice really matter? We only get one first impression. That’s the whole premise behind Michael’s Know Like Trust framework. Nail down the copy starting on the homepage, with the right design, and it carries down through every page in your sitemap.
How Content and Design Come Together
Content usually comes before design at Clockwork, but it’s highly collaborative. Once first-draft content starts living inside actual page layouts, things tend to shift and evolve.
A section that reads fine in a Google Doc might run long in a template, or a text-heavy page that feels complete suddenly needs a callout to make things more digestible. Design has a way of showing me where the content still needs attention.
It’s worth scheduling this back-and-forth into the content writing process. Even if you start with content, sometimes building it is the best way to see if the words are working as intended.
Where “Dump and Done” AI Content Falls Short
So what happens if you just let AI take a swing at all of this?
AI can outline a first draft or help with variations on clunky writing. But a website isn’t a document, it’s an interconnected system. Pages reference each other, services link to case studies, and some pages exist to get users to third-party platforms. AI struggles to grasp how one page sets up the next, or what a user already knows by the time they get there.
A few other things to watch out for:
- The rewriting loop. Prompting AI, getting mediocre output, and cleaning it up can easily take longer than just writing from scratch.
- Hallucinations. AI hallucinates, which is a nice way to say it makes stuff up. You need to check every name, date, price, and URL.
- Missing context. AI doesn’t know your business and it’s not an industry expert. It fills gaps with words that sound good until someone who actually knows reads it.
On the other hand, you’re not just writing for people anymore. As weird as it may be to think about, our piece on AI search optimization and query fan-out explains how to plan content around that new reality.
Which Brings Us Back To Editing
AI can draft, design can build, and a good system keeps everything moving. But someone who actually knows your organization inside and out should have final say. After fifteen-plus years of copywriting, I can tell you editing should take about just as long as the writing itself.
Editing is for finishing touches. Voice, accuracy, length, flow, the parts that feel flat and the parts that need more personality. All of it gets better with a close pass. Pages that are too long, too dense, or just hard to follow lose people before they reach the point. A detailed edit usually fixes it.
Thinking About Bringing In Some Help?
Content strategy is no joke. You’re organizing a sitemap, writing for multiple audience segments, coordinating approvals, keeping design and development in the loop, and editing everything with fresh eyes at least once. Most people come to us somewhere in the middle of realizing that.
If you’re considering working with a content team, here’s what that typically looks like with us:
- We start with the branding questionnaire to get to know your audience, your goals, and what already exists.
- In the project kick-off call, we ask follow-ups to your answers, dig in a bit deeper, and get on the same page before writing starts.
- From there we build the sitemap and homepage content first, with URL structure and keyword targeting included if SEO is part of the scope.
- Once approved, content gets written, reviewed, and polished in rounds, with your approvals handled through our project management tools.
- The content team, designers, and developers all work in close collaboration and communication, so nothing gets lost in the shuffle between phases.
- Launch is a milestone, not the finish line. There’s a solid next-steps guide for what to focus on once your site is live.
You can hand off as much or as little as makes sense for your project. Some clients write their own content and bring us in to edit and organize. Others hand us early AI versions they didn’t like or the branding questionnaire and let us take it from there. We’ve seen it all and done it all.
A Better Content Strategy Starts Here
Writing your own website content is entirely doable, but it’s also more work than most people expect. If you want to know where your site stands, the site health checker is free and takes about two minutes. And if you’d rather just talk through it, reach out any time.
And with that, my Clockwork debut is in the books. Thanks for reading and I hope it saves you some of the head-scratching that comes with figuring content out on your own.
