Scroll’s associates have run bespoke training sessions in web writing for a number of organisations, including government departments and private companies.

We’ll customise the training to suit your needs and budget and can provide anything from shorter presentations to longer sessions or workshops. We can deliver the training at your offices or arrange alternative premises, including refreshments.

Web users are notoriously impatient and short of time, and understanding how your audience uses your websites is key to writing effective web copy. These are some of the things we might cover in a training session:

• Understanding how your audience uses the web and how reading on screen differs from reading printed materials
• Reaching your audience through the right tone and choice of content
• Tips on making your web pages skim-friendly
• Making the most important messages stand out to the user
• Optimising your content so that it’s picked up in site searches
• Ensuring your web content makes sense in isolation, since you often don’t have control over the order users follow to reach content online
• Information about structuring your web content effectively and intuitively to help your users get to the information they need quickly.

If you have a thorny editorial dilemma or want to check a point of grammar with us why not email us on info@scroll.co.uk? Our editors love a tussle and we’ll email you back if we can solve the puzzle.

We’re strategically placed to deliver projects across the UK. Most of our core team and one of the founding partners are based in London and throughout the South East. Our other founding partner and several associates are based around Berwick and Edinburgh, but we’ve got people dotted across the UK and the rest of the world.

All our associates have their own equipment and also have access to tools and facilities such as Scroll’s intranet and our admin and IT support.

We’re happy to work in-house alongside you or to come in for meetings or as required.

Flexibility and cost savings
We work with a large number of freelance associates. This means that we’re able to respond quickly to your changing needs and can reduce and increase the size of the team to suit your volume of work as it fluctuates. An example of this is when we worked on a large web migration project for a government department in 2008.

We responded quickly to the client’s sudden demand for a larger team and arranged for an additional 20 editors to be trained on a new content management system and start work within just a week. This ability to scale up or down quickly can ensure considerable cost savings, as our clients pay only for the editors they need. It also means they have the flexibility to move from large teams to just a few hours of support per month and back.

Recruiting beyond Scroll
If you need to recruit for posts that are difficult to fill, either because they are very niche or because of the complexity or seniority of experience required, we can advertise on your behalf through our wide network of associates and partners. We have successfully recruited in the past and can take away some of the burden from you by identifying the best channels, writing and placing the advertisement, then sorting through responses and conducting interviews.

Our lead presenter has years of experience and has been entrusted to interview high-profile personalities from politicians Tony Blair and David Miliband toChannel 4 news presenter Jon Snow.

Our online communities expert will film and edit the event. She specialises in the management and production of online video content and has years of experience providing interactive and community services for clients including the BBC, Capital Radio, Interflora and the Department for Education.

Here are some examples of online content presented and produced by Scroll partners and associates:

• Hotseat interview with Tony Blair on the TeacherNet website.
• Hotseat interview with Jon Snow interview on theGovernorNet site.

More hotseats presented by Scroll are available to view in TeacherNet’s ‘Communities’ section.

LBi, an acclaimed global digital marketing and technology agency, was appointed by a major international airline based in the Middle East to manage their online strategy. As part of the drive to transform their web presence and improve customer reach, the airline commissioned a series of online destination guides.

Scroll was awarded the contract to produce the guides in partnership with LBi from a shortlist of four bidding companies. Drawing on our extensive experience of producing tailored content, optimised in line with changing client specifications and making the most of available functionality, this involved:

• producing original and insightful copy, drawing on local experts and writers with in-depth knowledge of a diverse range of destinations throughout the world
• sourcing and researching up-to-date factual information to tie in with the ongoing work of designers and developers, including images, weather forecast feeds, geotagging coordinates and other associated metadata
• imposing a consistent layout and structure on the guides by designing a custom-built template for our writers, resulting in a seamless and consistent experience for users of the guides, as well as making it extremely easy for the web designers to align our copy with their layouts
• adherence to the company’s very specific style and tone requirements, while producing quality, readable content to tight deadlines which appealed to a wide range of audiences.

The client

LBi is the largest genuinely full-service digital marketing and technology agency in Europe, with 26 offices in 16 countries. They’ve worked with many of the world’s best brands to help them define and execute their digital strategies, blending insight and creativity to solve business problems.

Why Scroll?

Several of Scroll’s associates specialise in travel writing and photography, and between them they’ve produced a number of published guide books and online articles on locations including Egypt, Ecuador, Latvia and Venice.

In addition, our expertise and experience in working with providers across the board on large-scale web projects allowed us to respond immediately to the changing requirements of the client. We were also able to work alongside project managers to ensure a complementary and mutually beneficial relationship between our strategy for content creation and the work of the technical and design teams.

Results

According to our contract manager for the project, Scroll ‘displayed a solid understanding of the technical possibilities and delivered refreshing content that delighted the client. Scroll has the expertise to handle both digital and print projects and the connections to find the right people for the job. I’ve worked with them on a couple of websites and found that they have a pleasing mix of professionalism and creativity.’

Our editors will edit your content according to your guidance, including style, tone of voice and branding guides. We’re sensitive to using the appropriate tone of voice, and are acutely aware of the need to keep content simple, avoiding jargon while remaining unpatronising.

We also have experience of rewriting copy, for example to suit a different audience or medium – everything from print to web content, including social media. Examples of our work in this field include writing summaries of articles for RSS feeds and a big project for the Department for Education which involved rewriting content originating from dozens of different websites to suit a single website for a schools workforce audience, applying consistent tone and style.

See case studies of some of our editing and rewriting projects:

• Schools Workforce Channel
• EdComs
• Greaves West & Ayre
• A guide to the law for school governors
• Every Child Matters
• TeacherNet

Scroll works with a wide range of clients in the the private, not-for-profit and public sectors. Our experienced team of writers is used to writing for various audiences and media. Here are some examples of the types of media we have written copy for in the past:

• technical guidance dealing with policy or legislation
• corporate website and promotional content
• instructional content for website manuals
• online destination guides
• case studies
• professional or specialist magazines and websites

We gather relevant background information and intelligence through client liaison and independent research. We are experienced in undertaking desk research and conducting interviews (live or phone). We then adapt this raw information to produce comprehensible, succinct content in plain English, balancing client expectations and audience needs. Sensitivity to the audience’s knowledge level is key – particularly where the source material contains a high level of jargon, specialist or legal terminology. This is where Scroll has the subject matter experts to make a difference in terms of quality and reach.

It is important to ensure that content is adapted to suit the medium through which it will be accessed, since content is consumed by users in a very different ways on the web compared to printed copy. Scroll’s copywriters work both with web and print content and can also provide separate print and web versions of the same set of content, if required. We also write digests for clients’ RSS  feeds, Twitter accounts and email newsletters, and manage and provide content for blogs.

Our services range from corporate content to more targeted and direct writing, such as copy aimed at specific professional groups, or particular demographics such as young people or parents.

See some case studies of and links to clients for whom we have done web copywriting work:

• EdComs
• WCL
• Comic Relief
• Soil Association
• TeacherNet
• Every Child Matters
• GovernorNet
• Learning and Skills Network
• Sustainable Schools
• Young Apprenticeships
• 14 to 19 Briefing
• A guide to the law for school governors

We’ll work with you to develop a content strategy customised for your organisation. This can include:

• Analysis of existing content, including style and tone of voice
• Developing a style and writing guide according to your requirements
• Reviewing and updating or rewriting your content to apply consistent style and tone of voice
• Commissioning new content – providing writers and editors where required
• Developing short-term and longer-term plans for your content, including detailed review cycles
• Assessing what form your content should take, what channels to use and how to engage with your audience
• Expanding your content to make the most of free, streamed or user-generated content: harnessing the best of what exists already to reduce your content generation effort and costs.

Depending on your needs we can either work with you to implement the content strategy end-to-end, giving you peace of mind throughout the process, or we can use our content expertise to develop a customised strategy for your organisation to implement internally or with third parties.

See some case studies of clients for whom we have done content strategy work:

• Sustainable Schools site
• Schools Workforce channel
• TeacherNet site
• WCL site
• Governornet site

Several of Scroll’s associates specialise in travel writing and photography, and between them they’ve produced a number of published guide books on locations including Egypt, Ecuador, Latvia and Venice. We also have several writers who have contributed travel articles to a range of newspapers, magazines and websites, including the Guardian and the BBC.

We recently put our team’s extensive travel writing experience to good use in a project for a major international airline. Scroll was commissioned to produce a set of online destination guides for the airline’s website, writing copy that adhered to the company’s very specific style and tone requirements, providing quality content and fast turnarounds.

One element of our project plan which enabled us to meet the clients brief while maximising economies and efficiencies was the creation of standardised Excel template to serve as a guide for our writers. This also ensured a seamless and consistent experience for users of the guides, as well as making it extremely easy for the web designers to align our copy with their layouts.

The work was conducted in partnership with acclaimed marketing and technology agency, LBi; according to our contract manager for the project, Scroll ‘displayed a solid understanding of the technical possibilities and delivered refreshing content that delighted the client’.

Migration of this kind demands not only an editorial oversight to set the new tone and style guide and ensure consistency across the new site; it requires more technical skills so that content from a number of platforms and in a variety of formats can all fit seamlessly into the new site. Scroll can offer all these skills, including the following:

• content repurposing
• finalising and clearing content with stakeholders and content owners, and through legal teams
• defining technical migration rules
• translating complex, structured content into new templates, data models and navigation structures – as well as advising on how to structure these templates, data models and navigation.

See some case studies of clients for whom we have done content migration work:

• Every Child Matters site
• Schools Workforce channel
• TeacherNet site
• Learning and Skills Network
• WCL site

Our extensive experience of working alongside developers and clients on the definition and implementation of site build requirements means that we are able to provide the kind of rigorous and supportive feedback which enables technical teams to be fully responsive to the needs of both stakeholders and their audiences. By leading on UAT for several high-profile government site build and web migration projects, we have provided a vital link in the process of designing and implementing stable, usable and intuitive systems, supporting the needs of both internal and end users.

We can also lead on UAT and provide test scripts, as well as supplying detailed and consistent reporting to help evaluate and improve on the results of UAT.

See some case studies of clients for whom we have done UAT work:

• Every Child Matters site
• Schools Workforce channel