Mélanie Cloes: The storyteller who won’t call herself a writer
She thinks in strategy, digs like an archaeologist, and writes without claiming the word.
In this week’s edition of Copy THIS, I interview Mélanie Cloes, a LinkedIn Growth Partner who helps founders once they’re done hiding. She doesn’t claim the title “writer,” yet her entire business is proof that writers make the best strategists.
“I don’t like writing to write,” Mélanie Cloes tells me, matter-of-factly. “I like the stories you get to tell when you’re writing. I’m a storyteller instead of a writer.”
It’s the kind of line that sounds like a contradiction, especially coming from someone whose entire business now revolves around words. But in Mélanie’s world, the distinction isn’t accidental, it’s the key to everything she does.
She never set out to be a writer. She didn’t study it. She didn’t dream of becoming one.
She and I are total opposites in that respect, but it’s exactly why her work stands out. She treats writing as a strategic tool - a way of understanding people, clarifying ideas and building trust - exactly what a good LinkedIn growth expert should do.
The archaeologist who ended up in marketing
As a kid, Mélanie wanted to be an archaeologist. She loved the clues. The layers. The hidden stories beneath the surface.
“It amazed me to think that before we were here, other people lived on this same ground,” she says. “So many stories happened in the place you’re standing now.”
Most kids grow out of their childhood obsessions. Mélanie didn’t. She just swapped soil for social platforms.
She still excavates. She still studies the layers. She still digs for what’s hidden.
She just swapped ancient ruins for the digital traces we leave behind in comments, posts and patterns.
From appointment setter to clarity architect
Mélanie didn’t enter the creator space through copywriting. She entered through DMs, as an appointment setter. Hundreds of conversations a day, thousands of messages, her pay tied directly to whether her client could close the deal.
Some campaigns worked beautifully. Others tanked.
One night, after a brutal stretch of clients not closing, she found herself doing what she always does when something isn’t working: digging.
She pulled up the client’s profile, re-read their recent posts. Scrolled through the comments, one-by-one. Compared it to the DMs she had been sending to book appointments.
Very quickly, she saw a gap.
It wasn’t her DMs that weren’t working - it was her client’s story. A bland voice can’t be rescued by an emoji, and vague positioning won’t spark a meaningful conversation.
No DM system - no matter how well designed or experienced the appointment setter - can compensate for an unclear message.
“That’s when it clicked,” she tells me. The problem wasn’t downstream, it was upstream. And once she saw it, she couldn’t unsee it.
It was the moment she realised she didn’t want to push messages. She wanted to shape them.
And that realisation followed her everywhere, including across borders. She packed up her life, moved from Belgium to Cyprus and adopted a new mantra: “I can do this my way.”
The writer who still won’t call herself one
Today, Mélanie runs a growing LinkedIn strategy business.
But if you ask her whether she’s a copywriter?
She laughs. “No. I’m not even a very good writer.”
(lol, says the bilingual woman building a writing business that’s not even in her native language)
After the self-deprecation fades, she clarifies: “What I do is more than writing. I think strategically about everything. It’s branding, lead generation and thought leadership all rolled into one.”
She never approaches content as content. She approaches it as psychology, systems and narrative design.
Her actual process goes like this, long before a single word gets typed:
Dig into audience psychology
Study what triggers reactions
Map out content pillars based on what the market actually cares about
Audit profiles for alignment
Analyse behaviour patterns
Sharpen ideas until they finally draw blood
Simplify stories until they resonate
Build systems founders can sustain
Infuse personality until it stops sounding like everyone else
This is something all copywriters worth their salt do.
But Mélanie has packaged the entire strategy - not the writing - into the service itself.
Writing is the artefact, not the craft.
And maybe that’s exactly why she still hesitates to call herself a writer. Not because she lacks skill, but because her brain has always been more interested in meaning than mechanics.
The philosophy she lives by: Don’t overthink. Don’t dilute. Just start.
If there’s a thesis to Mélanie’s work, it’s this: “Taking action is the thing that will make you learn faster.”
But her whole worldview lives in a slightly darker - and more liberating - corner:
“In 100 years we’ll all be dead, so who cares what people think?”
It’s morbidly funny. And shockingly practical. Nothing kills visibility like perfectionism. Nothing destroys writing faster than overthinking.
Nothing accelerates growth like simply starting.
“It’s never too late to begin,” she says. “I started my bachelor at 29. Moved countries at 34. Started my business at 33. Life is too short not to try things.”
She doesn’t wait for confidence. She lets confidence catch up.
The last word
Massive thank you to Mélanie Cloes for being the first interview off the Copy THIS rank. If you’re on LinkedIn, follow her here.
Before we wrap, I want to circle back to her resistance to the word “writer” - because it’s exactly the misunderstanding I’m trying to untangle with Copy THIS.
Lately, I’ve been redoing my business plan and the core realisation has been that I fundamentally believe writers make the best strategists.
Because we don’t just write. We see patterns others miss. We connect dots no one else can.
We’re translators of meaning.
Mélanie never wanted to be a writer. In the past, I’ve tried to shake the label too.
But now? I’m embracing it - and changing the perception of what it means, one newsletter at a time.
What about you? Are you claiming the word “writer”? Answer the poll below👇
Oh no Cass circle back? Very interesting interview does this platform or another allow for video? Clips or whole interview.