Cloud copywriting: a step-by-step guide

Step-by-step guide helps Jisc promote cloud consultancy

screen grab from Jisc brochure

When you’re offering technology consulting to an intelligent audience, it’s vital to demonstrate the value you provide.

As well as convincing clients of your expertise, you need to show that you understand their own challenges – and can guide them through the options they face.

This was the challenge faced by Jisc, a not-for-profit organisation providing digital services to its members in research and education, when it launched a cloud consultancy service.

Jisc’s strategic vision is for the UK to be the most digitally advanced nation in the world for research and education – and helping its members plan successful cloud projects will be an essential part of this.

So to help demonstrate the value it provides, Jisc decided to create a step-by-step guide to cloud technologies – as part of a package of free “advice and guidance” it offers members.

The solution: clear technology copywriting

To help create the guide, Jisc needed to consult a copywriter capable of simplifying a complex topic. So Jisc turned to me.

Jisc already had a PowerPoint document setting out its six-step guide to the cloud, and a catalogue of services to which it could direct clients at various stages of the consultancy process.

Using this information as a basis, I planned a brochure that devoted a page of content to each of Jisc’s six steps – showing how Jisc understood its members’ challenges every step of the way.

“He understood what we were trying to achieve,” says Jessica Wu, cloud services group manager at Jisc.

Along the way, I used phone meetings to raise points of detail with the cloud consultancy team – helping to refine drafts and achieve copy sign-off.

The benefit: making a complex topic simple

Hosting a step-by-step cloud guide on its website means Jisc now publicly articulates how its cloud consultancy process helps clients – which should help build credibility for its services among members.

Jessica from Jisc says my approach to technology copywriting was helpful in making its products and services simple to understand.

“I was impressed by his ability to translate complex technical information into succinct, easy-to-understand language,” she says. And that helps make it easier for Jisc members to see how its cloud experts can help – step by step.

Case study summary

"You understood what we wanted – and turned complex technical info into language that’s easy to understand"

Jessica Wu, cloud services group manager, Jisc

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