I work with a creative business to design a comprehensive communication strategy for every platform, from your website to social feeds to your blog and on to print media.

Cross-platform communication strategy must be linked to a simpler objective: delivering a clear story about you and your work. What do you need to say about your work? To whom are you saying it? Why say it at all?

Communication is central to building relationships, which is central to growing your business. First you do the good work. After that, people need to know about it to become a patron, collaborator or client.

Getting communication right begins with strategy, not content. There is an effective way to develop strategy. Listening carefully is the basis of how it is done.

You are the ultimate authority on what you do, on what you make, and who you make it for. Not me.

If I don’t listen carefully to what you say and choose not to say, there can be no insight. Without insight, there can be no strategy. There isn’t even a starting point.

Written content? That’s the easy bit. The hard bit is defining the overarching strategic context within which tactical decisions can be made about how, when, and with whom you communicate. When you have the strategy in place, the tactics become clear - and the content practically writes itself.

(Actually it doesn’t, I do that too.)

I can provide the words (the ‘copy’, in publishing terminology) for your chosen communication channels. This ranges from print to digital, website and blog to social feed.

In 25 years I have had about 100,000 words published into legacy print media - actual ink on paper - both in Australian and overseas, with many tens of thousands more words published through digital media channels.

Quantity is not quality. Nevertheless, through sheer quantity of practise I have got the hang of copy writing for diverse audiences, for my own businesses and for others.

That point about audience definition is important. There is a stark difference between writing for industry professionals and writing for intelligent and interested lay people. Most of your buyers are non-professionals - interested lay people.

By unconsciously using industry terminology and jargon, design writing by professionals often fails to communicate clearly to non-professionals. This can be fatal to the communication effort. You see this in designer’s websites frequently - they speak clearly and well to other practitioners, but miss the mark for the actual buyer or patron, who is frequently not ‘in the business’.

Knowing the reader allows us to carefully choose the correct - clear - language and channel of communication. Reader first: mode and channel of expression follow.

I can help you by coordinating a competitive bid team, while writing content for your competitive bid, tender or EOI. The size of the team typically depends on the size of the bid. I’m comfortable in large and small teams.

I have particular expertise in coordinating between content producers (those creating the written, design, visual and financial/technical content) and the graphic design team putting the documentation together.

I have written hundreds of successful competitive bids, expressions of interest [EOIs] and tenders, large and small.

My bid experience ranges from small government grant applications for as little as $50,000 up to major competitive proposals for international projects in excess of $1.5 billion construction cost.