Copywriting - Nicola Joyce

About Nicola Joyce
Nicola used to work for a major conference company, researching, writing and producing international B2B conferences for the finance, telecoms, retail and security sectors. What did that entail? Knowing how the market worked (and what information people would part with lots of money to hear or read about), pinpointing the hottest topics or biggest holes in a market's communications, persuading high-flying business leaders to chat to her on the phone for up to an hour for absolutely no money, writing the information into a conference format, enticing international heads of industry to come and speak at the conference for no pay and, finally, writing the brochure for the event.

What's that got to do with writing?
Nicola always liked the copywriting bit of the conference industry the most. But, as a copywriter and journalist, she now realises that those years in conference production gave her other useful skills as well: the ability to see gaps in the market, the vision to notice what an industry or organisation needs to communicate more skillfully, the know-how to realise what information people will pay money to hear/read/learn about. All those hours on the phone persuading industry leaders to part with their top business tips and insider knowledge gave her a great grounding in interview skills. Writing the conference programme enabled her to break down essential information into hot topics, put them in order of most pressing and essential, and write them in a way that people would pay to read.

What else has Nicola done?
Since leaving full-time conference employment, Nicola has freelanced as a:
Journalist
Feature writer
PR
Copywriter

Nicola is a member of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ).