The Writers of Thumbtack
by Jason Hunter, Yael Levy, and Rachel Christensen
If you’ve worked as a writer in tech, you’ve probably met someone at a party, and they’ve asked you where you work and what you do there. You hit them with, “I’m a writer, actually,” and watch their face scrunch up a bit in confusion. They know the tech company regulars: engineers. Analysts. IT people. Maybe they even know about product managers, or front-end designers. But a writer? At a tech company? What is there to write, anyway? Isn’t it just a few words here and there on a phone screen?
But there’s plenty of content. In fact, at Thumbtack there are millions of words written every year. Part of it is the stuff you see every day: the landing screen in the app, the updates you get about project statuses, the emails that land in your inbox when a new feature is announced.
And then there’s also a massive labyrinth of copy that you may only encounter once in awhile. There’s marketing collateral and advertising, commercials, direct mail. There’s the help center, reliably updated and ready to assist when you’re not sure how to get something done. And there’s a huge content infrastructure that you might never see at all — error messages and alerts for unique edge cases that may never apply to your experience.
Any given person isn’t likely to read the majority of content that exists on Thumbtack. But it still needs to be there, ready at just the right moment to serve the end user. That’s why we’re here. So, with that in mind, let us introduce ourselves!
There are three kinds of writing and content disciplines at Thumbtack. Together we evenly split the duties of writing, updating, and maintaining our storehouse of copy. We work both together and separately, meeting weekly to go over each other’s work, and critique and refine it. We have our own projects in our own lanes, and we often collaborate most closely with cross-functional disciplines, from designers, to engineers, to product and marketing managers. But we’re also connected to each other by a common purpose: to provide useful, effective, easily understood content that shares a common voice and style. Here’s a bit more about what we each do.
Yael — Lead Brand Writer
As a brand writer at Thumbtack, the words I write live in a variety of places. The bold headline on a postcard you can hold in your hands, the subject line on a promotional email, the spoken rhythm of a radio spot — they’re all written by brand writers like me. Sometimes, the words lay the foundation for your core understanding of Thumbtack. Sometimes, the words build upon what you already know and introduce you to something new.
Whether the words are part of your very first Thumbtack experience, or part of your thousandth interaction, they have to communicate our brand vision. They should, somehow, evoke emotion — which can sometimes feel like a lot to ask from an email. But when I step back and focus on Thumbtack’s core attributes and goals, the words come easily.
Mostly, it’s important for me to remember that reading a brand writer’s words is just the first step. The words might introduce you to a new way to care for your home, congratulate you on growing your business, provide a crash course on our refund policy, or simply alert you that spring cleaning is upon us. But what happens next is key. My goal is always that the words will inspire our users to take action: to look us up and download the app for the first time, to click through and engage with us, or even to remember us fondly the next time they have a project. And if I accomplish that task, that’s where content designers and help content writers come in.
Jason — Staff Content Designer
My job is to create the interaction content for Thumbtack — basically, the stuff you see in-app. I work on the copy in onboarding flows, in new product features, and in various core product experiences. In a way, I pick up where Yael leaves off. You might read about a cool new thing that Thumbtack’s offering from Yael, and, if you like what she’s telling you, you dive in. There I am, waiting for you in the next set of words. Think of me and my fellow content designers when you see in-product copy, from top to bottom, header to footer; notifications inside the app; buttons, links, forms; even certain transactional emails and research surveys we send out.
My priority when writing content is a little different. They call me a content designer because, I’m always looking at the big map of app screens holistically. I’m thinking about how information is flowing, from one moment to the next. I’m really building an interaction through copy, trying to make sure that every word is getting you where you want to go.
So my judgment on whether copy is truly effective is based on what came before, and what comes next. Is the call to action on the page mapping correctly to the screen that follows? Is the error message giving you a path forward (instead of just “Error 404”-ing you)? Do the one or two tight sentences on each small screen help you understand what you’re looking at? If I’m doing my job right, you often barely notice me, thinking more about what you’re doing and navigating smoothly through the experience.
Rachel — Help Content Manager
Emphasis on help. Our help center is where you go if you have a question or you’d like to dig a little deeper into how Thumbtack works.
From the moment you land on our help center, our goal is to give you the right details quickly. It starts on the help homepage, with the resources we recommend and the topics we offer for you to browse. It continues with surfacing the right results (in the most helpful order) when you start a search. Even down to the way we title our content, every detail is purposefully created to help you find what you need.
Then there’s the content itself. We write articles to answer common questions, guides to explain more complicated topics and tie Thumbtack’s features together, and video scripts to show you how to complete tasks step-by-step. If we’ve done our job right, you leave the help center with the details you need so you can get back at the important stuff.
So that’s us, the writers at Thumbtack! Next time you click through the app, read an email, hear a radio jingle, or look up a help article, know that a writer is always behind it — yes, even at a tech company :)
