7 high-performance writing and content strategy tips for communicators in 2027

Nowadays, writing is worth your time if it stands out and gets results. Easy, right?

OK, maybe not.

Fortunately, we can lean on the wisdom of brilliant minds like Natalie Calvo, head of social media at Prologis; Nancy Lippincott Pollio, vice president of content and marketing at Best Lawyers; Jorie Mark, director of copy and content at Life Extension; and Jenny Li Fowler, author and director of social media strategy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, all of whom will speak at Ragan and PR Daily’s Writing & Content Strategy Virtual Conference on Dec. 3.

We caught up with them ahead of the event to get their best tips for sniffing out and sculpting great stories that do the work in 2027.

Create a character

Mark gets past a handful of brand adjectives by asking the copy team to picture the brand as a fictional character, from its age and day job to the characters it brings to mind and the things it does for fun.

“We start with a fully baked brand persona, imagining our brand as a fictional character and building out attributes that way,” she said.

Time to bust out a Dungeons & Dragons character creation sheet? Sure, if that floats your boat. But you can also just ask these questions:

1. Is our brand male or female?
2. What is our brand’s age, and what do they do for a living?
3. What combination of TV characters or celebrities/icons does our brand embody?
4. What does our brand do for fun and do they have a sense of humor?

“Once we know all of these things and embrace them as a copywriting team, it’s much easier to be consistent in how our brand speaks and writes,” Mark said.

Make customers part of your craft

When generic copy could belong to any organization, Pollio sends writers back for customer questions, company data and the knowledge only their team can supply.

“Most generic copy isn’t a voice problem,” she said. “It’s a reporting problem. If a sentence could run on a competitor’s site with the logo swapped, it isn’t done yet.”

Your brand’s voice, she said, comes from your organization’s data, your customers’ questions and comments, and the things your most dedicated audience members and employees know about your organization that no one else knows — and the things that aren’t true of your competitors.

“Lean into what makes your brand or organization uniquely you and stay consistent across all your channels,” Fowler added. “What is the way you and only you can talk about an industry, product, or topic? And while different channels can take on different tones, for example, you might talk to your boss in a different manner than your grandmother or your next-door neighbor, your personality should remain the same when interacting with all three people.”

Give your stories the three-question grilling

But what about individual stories? Calvo weighs audience value, business return, and news value before deciding how far to take a story, reserving her time and mental bandwidth for the ideas that clear all three bars.

1. How much of our audience will find the topic valuable?
2. How much return on investment can the topic deliver to our business?
3. How novel or newsworthy is the storyline?

Based on these three questions, she decides which topics really deserve her full focus and top-notch work. “Writing quality content takes time and mental bandwidth,” Calvo said. “Writing ‘good-enough’ content can take as little as 10 to 15 minutes.”

And of course, they’ll help you decide which stories don’t deserve any attention at all.

Figure out what it’s trying to change

Before you start reporting, ask what you want readers to believe, choose or do because of the story; Pollio gives the assignment a job by identifying the decision it should influence.

“I ask what the story is supposed to move,” she said. “What a customer believes, what an employee does, what a buyer chooses. If nobody can name the decision it’s meant to influence, it doesn’t get reporting time. Stories built on something only we know get priority, because they’re the hardest for anyone else to copy.”

Follow the data, trends and your own wins

Product launches, trending searches and social chatter give Mark a read on what could interest people now, while past wins in traffic, social success or sales show which approaches could work again.

“We let the data, trends and marketing initiatives lead the way with content initiatives,” she said. “If we are launching a new product, we develop top-of-funnel content to drive interest in it; if a topic within our realm is being searched and talked about on social media, we speak to it from our vantage point and an area of expertise.”

Workshop it with a human

When you get to the editing process, Pollio advises asking a colleague (or heck, your best friend or your mom) to read the draft cold; they can judge what the words say without filling gaps with what the writer meant.

“They don’t know what you meant, only what you wrote, which makes them the closest thing you have to your actual audience,” she said.

Mark and Fowler agree. “Brainstorming meetings, casual Teams group chats and peer editing are our secret sauce!” Mark said.

“My intern and I come up with the best content ideas when we’re in the same room bouncing off ideas to one another,” Fowler added. I just love when your creativity matches with another person and what you come up with together is better than what you would have created alone.”

Show leadership what the work did

And of course, there’s always the reporting process, which communicators have to think of from the get-go. Mark says leaders and writers should agree on the expected measure before work begins.

“Ensuring they are aware of where your content plays in the awareness/sales funnel and that you’re aligned on which KPIs to measure,” she said. “If your content is a traffic play and they are expecting sales, that’s a disconnect.”

Fowler leads with data and ties her case to the goal; Mark asks leaders to agree on a KPI before work starts, while Pollio urges teams to connect every measure to business results.

“Anytime I try to make a case of any kind to leadership I always lead with data,” she said. “The initial goal and a strategy is what keeps us on the path to achieving and supporting that goal.”

Pollio explained how to connect each metric to revenue, retention or risk.

“Stop reporting output and start reporting movement,” she said. “Leadership doesn’t care that you published 40 pieces; they care whether the right ones brought in buyers, kept customers or protected the brand. Translate every metric into revenue, retention or risk before it reaches the slide, and pair it with one sentence from an actual customer.”

Chase the wins

Oh yeah, and when it works, do more of it!

“When we’ve had a runaway hit, whether that’s traffic, social success or driving sales, we try to replicate that approach so we are learning from our wins,” Mark said. One thing we avoid is creating content that isn’t in our wheelhouse; we’ve learned the hard way that it doesn’t perform.”

Hear more from these speakers and other writing, editing and content strategy experts at Ragan and PR Daily’s Writing & Content Strategy Virtual Conference on Thursday, Dec. 3, 2026, from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET. Register for the virtual conference.