Louise Turner is ‘chief wordsmith’ and founder of Wordsmiths.
The Yorkshire-based agency is an outsourced copywriting team for agencies, SMEs and corporate marketing teams and helps companies of all sizes enter awards and tell their stories.
From big job challenges to influential people, Turner shares more on her career journey with some words of advice.
How did you first get into your industry?
I was lucky to get a placement in a public sector communications team in my second year at uni and that became my part-time job for the rest of my studies.
I landed a PR assistant role at a supermarket chain a month after I graduated, then worked in PR and communications until 2011, when I set up my own copywriting business. It’s like PR but easier because you don’t need to persuade a journalist to print/broadcast your stuff!
What do you love about your job?
I love uncovering stories and helping clients realise they are actually pretty fascinating. I’m a magpie, a fan of a shiny thing, so the variety created by having a large portfolio of clients in all kinds of sectors is also really appealing.
Who – or what – has inspired you in your career?
I was lucky to work for and with some really great people early in my career who gave their time and expertise to help me improve. By contrast, I have also worked in places where there was no support and no ambition for you to be any better. The difference was stark.
I benefited from people willing to give me opportunities, explain their decision-making rationale so I could learn, and who spent time coaching me to improve. I’ve tried to repay that throughout my own career by supporting young people and those early in their careers.
I still have dinner at least three times a year with two of my most brilliant and inspiring bosses, Lisa Mason and Jean Varley, which tells you plenty when we haven’t worked together for almost 15 years.
What are the biggest challenges about your job?
Many hats! We have all the usual agency life juggles of winning new business and keeping existing clients happy. I wear four hats – people, ops, new business and delivery – so I need to make sure I’m giving enough attention to each of them.
What skills have been the most crucial to you succeeding in your career so far?
Asking questions and listening are the top skills I’ve needed. I’m relentlessly curious, which I think can be annoying, but it’s also how I get to the stories that might otherwise stay buried. If AI is going to deliver knowledge to anyone, then future power isn’t going to be about what you know but about being able to ask the best questions. I reckon I’ve got a bit of a head start on that.
What was your first salary and what could someone getting into the industry expect to earn nowadays?
I earned £13,500 a year for a 45-hour week. A starting salary for a PR assistant will be around £23,000 these days.
What education or training would be most useful for someone looking to follow your career path?
Strong writing is the number one skill you need. My degree was in history and management, but I’ve worked with people with a range of degrees and none at all. If you’re looking for courses, something in the communications or marketing space would be a good introduction as we need to be able to advise broadly about how to tackle a problem, not just write the thing the client requests.
What advice would you have for someone looking to follow your path?
I don’t want to sound like a teacher, but reading helps with writing, so make sure you read a broad range of stuff and notice things like tone of voice, format, purpose.
Pair this with exercising your writing muscles. Write a blog. Write reviews online. Write a diary. The format doesn’t matter but find ways to build up your skills by writing regularly.
