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At lunch the other day with a couple of serial entrepreneurs, questions came up about the optimum timing of product launches and web site debuts.  Inevitably, the conversation turned to the value of blogging.  Nobody denied the value.  There was, however, disagreement as to timing.  So when is the best time to pull the trigger on your new blog for your new company?

There are those who argue that, in the early going, time and energy should be devoted to customer- and product-development. Exclusively. That there are not enough hours in the day for everything.  We won’t argue. Still, in the web 2.0 marketplace, a few minutes a day, or even per week, during which you crystallize your thoughts and share them with your ecosystem is to our way of thinking not a bad use of time.  In fact, it can be a highly productive one. Why?  It forces you to “stand down” for a brief period and clear your head and think about things in a different way.  Yes, you can go for a walk or shoot hoops or jog or pound golf balls.  Or any number of other things that puts you into a different gear.  The thing about crafting a blog post, however, is that you can make that same shift AND get yourself published. This is no idle indulgence in vanity.  It can foment discussions that serve your larger purposes as you prepare your count-down to launch.

Almost three out of four start-ups die during their first five years.  We wonder, right along with successful entrepreneur Martin Zwilling how many of those failures had a blog.

To the extent your customers are readers today, you are a publisher.

“Marketing content” and “riveting quality” are rarely spoken in the same conversation.   Indeed the latter is typically invoked disparagingly, as in “The content isn’t exactly riveting”.  At Write Angle we’ve been at war with flat, yawn-inspiring content for years.  But this isn’t about us, it’s about you and your mission to deliver content that attracts, engages and retains visitors to your site and converts them into users and customers.  Marketing content can be more than good, it can be downright engaging, which is what you should be striving for at all times.

But there’s another quality right up there with engagement.  More is better today when it comes to getting found online and upping your rank on search engines.  And speedy delivery goes hand in hand with volume.  While “good” is good, when it comes to content good and fast is even better.  Says Kyle Monson, a former editor at PCMagazine now at JWT, “a company’s ability to speak honestly and quickly to its customers, fans, and detractors is a huge competitive advantage”.

Step one: recognize and embrace the publishing mandate of your enterprise which is the imperative of Web 2.0.  Back in late ’80s and early ’90s as technology pulled companies into the age of networks it meant that many of them were suddenly in the telecommunications business as much as the business of their category. Today, in the real-time world of Web 2.0, you’re in the publishing business.  Your customers and prospects are your audience.  How are you building, engaging and growing this audience?  How are your “ratings” right now and what can you do to improve them?

Nobody’s ever been bored into reading something.

People love good stories.  After all, it’s part of what makes us human.  And no matter if it’s a technology white paper, a product brief, a speech or a Op-Ed submission to technical journal, readers are people first. They want to be engaged on their terms, not the author’s or the vendor’s.

It’s incumbent upon the content creator to engage the consumer/reader.  No matter how compelling you believe your material is, don’t assume you have a reflexively engaged audience.  It’s not up to the reader to find a way to stay interested.  So, how to do this in an age of short time and shorter attention?

Right from the start, at the concept-stage of your project, it’s fundamental to get inside the head of the individual you envision on the receiving end.  Think about yourself as a reader or a member of an audience. What is it that grasps and holds your attention?  Of course, the subject matter has to be relevant to an issue or problem you might be dealing with at the moment but if what you read is fluff that evaporates before the end of each sentence, or so opaque and dense with jargon that you have to re-read each paragraph, chances are you’ll put it aside.  Even if it’s clearly worded, a tract that reads more like a textbook is unlikely to inspire the calls-to-action envisioned by the author.

By storytelling, we don’t mean anything touchy-feely or non-analytical.  The watchword here is “anecdotal”.  Incorporating real-life vignettes or business anecdotes gives authenticity, immediacy and texture to your content.  The reader can identify with it. We won’t argue that the objectivity of numbers and statistics don’t inject strength into any argument but the objectivity of the numbers weakens them as a communication device.  And make no mistake, you’re trying to communicate — images and ideas and opinions. You need to motivate a prospect.  Reassure a customer or partner. Capture their interest and, ideally, their imagination.  Get them to think in a new ways about familiar things.  And get them to want to read your content when you have something else to tell them.  Your objective is not just to get your content approved for publishing.  It’s to get read.

This just in from the research folks at HubSpot: the most valuable form of marketing content today is, in the opinion of marketers (who are measured by the quality of their content as never before), their blog.

And it’s true for B2B and B2C marketing.  Respondents in B2B marketing who were asked to rank various forms of content for value to their marketing objectives named blogs number one (39%), followed closely by webinars and virtual events (38%), white papers (31%), videos (23%), data-driven research reports (20%), user-created content (17%), white papers sponsored by vendors (10%) and podcasts (6%).

This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to the in-bound marketing world of Web 2.0.  Publishing a business blog offers the chance for marketers to keep content fresh, topical, personal and relevant the way no other form of content can.  And more is better, the way no other form can be.  The fresher and more frequent your online content, the greater your chances of being found online.

What form of content is most valuable to achieving your marketing objectives?  Is your blog as active as you suspect it should be? How do you stack up competitively in terms of posting?  What do your customers tell you?

One of our clients was in a collateral quandary recently. One to which, we’re proud to say we called attention.  In the crush to create killer content about their technology, they had assigned us to generate a relatively generous number of technology white papers.   As we drew closer to preparation, we grew concerned about quality vs. quantity.

Now we are the first to cite the utility (read: value) of white papers, despite some claims that fewer of them are being downloaded these days.  In the I.T. world, the workhorse white paper remains a standby of marketing. Customers expect them and read them (the good ones).  And, admittedly, we welcome the opportunity to show off our chops. In this instance, however, there simply was not enough there to justify and support the volume documents originally called for.  Upon closer scrutiny at our invitation, the functional VP agreed that as impressive and elegant as his products are, a smaller number of more comprehensive documents would suffice.

How does your team decide when and if a white paper is justified?  Are you publishing more of them today or fewer?  Is the volume of downloads greater, smaller or about the same as a year or two ago?  How does this compare to competitors?  What’s the process you use to determine white-paper ROI?

At first blush, this may seem like a given.  After all, clients hire a writing service for domain expertise, proven methodologies and a track record, right?  In theory, perhaps, but in practical reality it’s always more complicated.

Constructive criticism isn’t for the thin-skinned on either side of the table.  Especially when you think you’re dead right about what the words should say.   But time and again, the clients who encourage writers to candidly engage in the work are more likely to benefit.  This is especially true at key junctures in a project when course corrections can determine success or failure. A writer’s willingness to play a vigorous devil’s advocate is indispensible. And even more so if a company finds itself mired in a stale or failing campaign, losing market share or suffering from being elbowed out of leadership.

Not all companies possess the DNA for thick skin.   Here are the warning signs and the antidotes:

1.  “We’ve re-invented our segment and don’t have any direct competitors.”  Really?  If so, chances are you don’t have much of a market, either. Better revisit the business plan.  Or do some market research right way.

Rx: Make your content reflect a rigorous understanding of your prospects and users. Choose writers who know the territory and express your competitive differentiation in the language users actually use.

2.  “Our value proposition is time-tested and we haven’t had to update our web site in more than a year.”  Ouch.  Keeping content fresh, provocative and current is a given in the Web 2.0 world of social marketing.  Not to mention that competitive environments in this mercurial world have a way of changing suddenly, regularly and disruptively.  Overnight.

Rx:  Do regular site checkups.  Get customers to give you feedback on your content and compare you to your competitors.  Engage your writing service to do a content audit and make recommendations.

3.  “We have more customers than we can service.” You might think of this as the lulled-into-complacency syndrome.  Getting comfortable is an open invitation to competitors looking to feast on your early gains.  Never forget the sage words of Intel’s Andy Grove: only the paranoid survive.

Rx: Lively, engaging content that spotlights the way users apply your technology can form the basis of much more than garden-variety application stories.  Dive deeply into unconventional applications as a way to showcase more features and benefits.

4.  “We’ve got a three year technology lead on our closest competitor.”  No you don’t.  Cling to this misguided notion and you’ll spend more time playing defense than you will on offense successfully marketing your differentiation and advantages that address your customers’ needs.

Rx: Concentrate on practical market education tools that explain your distinction in the market from a rational, pragmatic and credible point-of view.  No reader wants to be told how great your technology is.  They want to know how your technology is best suited to their requirements to determine if you’re worthy of making the short list.

5.  “Our carbon sequestering technology advances make us a lock for a feature article in The New Yorker.” Right.  The editors there are aching for a tutorial on multi-pollutant removal strategies because the readership is chock full of energy czars, sustainability directors and energy policy wonks.  Not.

Rx: Ask your writers to weigh-in on if and how your written pieces can be best placed or re-purposed.  Don’t ‘spray and pray’ your content.

Bringing new ideas to the table is the engine room of business.  But before adopting those great ideas as gospel, put them through a messaging stress test.   Unless, of course, you subscribe to the irony of David Brinkley’s collection of closing commentaries entitled, “Everyone is Entitled to My Opinion.”

What other signs of “thin skin” can you think of?  What does your team do to encourage outsourced content creators to “push back” on directives they believe are misguided?

Although it’s been said many times many ways (apologies to Mel Torme), most marketing content-related projects call for answers to at least a half-dozen questions.  And all members of the team should weigh-in.  As simplistic as they may appear, questions not unlike the ones below can reveal information that makes the difference between a worthwhile end product and an endless cycle of revisions and finger-pointing:

1.  Objective: What is the purpose of the proposed document and/or web content?

2.  Target: Who is the reader?

3.  Message(s): What are the key take-aways or leave-behind messages you want to create in the reader’s mind about your company and/or its offerings?

4.  Differentiation: What are the core, competitive differentiators of your offering(s) that you want this  particular content to convey?  How do they differ from competitive offerings and what is significant about this difference?

5.  Features/Benefits: Relative to the differentiation you describe above, specify the features that make it superior and explain the corresponding benefit(s) of each.  How to they “benefit” a buyer?

6. Substantion/proof points: What evidence or field results illustrate the validity of your claims (e.g., customer testimony, metrics, competitive superiority, etc.) ?

Is this exercise part of your own preparation today? What other questions would you ask?  What did we miss?

If you can’t get excited about what you’re selling, you cannot sell it

There’s nothing mysterious or magical about good writing for marketing and sales.  The bad news is that it’s hard work.  The good news is that just about anyone who is literate (and has the time) can do it — providing that what they write contains three essential ingredients:

1.  Above all, a product or service that delivers measurable value.

2. A passionate and palpable belief in the benefits your product or service delivers.

3. A no-less passionate belief in what you’re saying.

If this sounds like the secrets of successful selling, it’s because it is.  Writing for marketing and sales is nothing more or less than marketing and salesmanship in print. Or in pixels.  A sales professional who is less than excited about the product will never cut it.  Ditto for marketing people assigned to a product  in which they have no belief.  If you are genuinely excited about your offer and what it represents to customers, the excitement will shine through. It cannot help but breathe life into your words and inspire the interest of the people reading them.  And you can hold the exclamation points.

http://t.co/ogavStd

What do customers want to know when they’re looking for solutions to problems that you purport to solve?

Whenever we’re assigned to write clients’ Web pages we follow best practices as we do for all content.  What ‘best practices’ call for in Web content is not so different from other forms but the Web does force the writer and editor to become a little more brutal.  Actually, it’s the audience that’s the force at work.

We like to say that customers aren’t interested in your product (or service), they’re interested in their problem. Specifically, visitors to your site aren’t interested in you so much as the need they’re trying to fill or the hard facts they’re trying to gather as the basis of filling that need.  And this tells you two things:

1.  To the extent that your product or service is too much in the face of the site visitor, you increase your chances of a quicker “bounce”, or departure of this visitor.

2.  Ditto above if your content is jargon-heavy with with acronyms or industry-speak.

Except for those pages or links that are specifically tailored for existing customers, or prospects who are well down the path to a decision, you want your Web content to widen the top of the funnel.  So, you’re going to score points to the degree you show an interest and expertise in the problems they have, not the fixes you offer.  Not yet, anyway.  With this in mind, product-focused content should be avoided.  Your ‘welcoming lobby’ should be a pressure-free zone to introduce the visitor to your business, same as your social-media strategy should be at all times.  It’s where you start to build trust.

As for the language you use, choose your words carefully.  Use only those words and expressions that you are certain your prospects use.   Search engines use signals throughout social media for ranking search  results.  This means that your Web site is only incidental to the wider territory your prospects cover every day and in which they interact with other prospects online.  Be sure to use the words and phrases they are looking for, not the flavor-of-the-month terminology you think is cool.

The most powerful marketing content today, the content you should be striving to create, is the stuff that creates the right discussions in the right context among the right people.

If your content is all about your company, your brand and your products, you’re missing the point of what makes today’s marketing content more effective and memorable.  In other words, you’re not getting what you’re paying for.  If your outreach is basically driven by cultivating a few opinion leaders and staying in control of your message, you’re not making the most of the new landscape and the new tools available to you.  Worse, you’re likely losing ground to competitors who are.

To Bob Duffy, senior social-media strategist at Intel, it’s not about controlling the message so much as providing the context in which information is exchanged and interpreted.

Duffy told Social Media Explorer that brands, not unlike Intel, are doing a lot of what the traditional media (and industry analysts) have always done: publishing what they learn from developers, for example, revealing best practices and creating connections between different tech players. Like his counterparts at other technology brands today, Duffy is creating the context for important discussions in the industry that will ultimately pay off down the road for his employer.

The takeaway for today’s marketing pros? Reach out to anyone who could be part of your community and jump-start the discussions you want to be part of.  Discussions to which you can add value and build your reputation as somebody who’s worth engaging on a long-term basis.  Just keep in mind that you have to stick to the subject matter of the discussion and not be a shill for your brand.  Your community is street-wise.  It is more than capable of connecting the dots. Do as Duffy does: “We don’t try to control the conversation or message, we just want to provide the context.”

What are you doing as a marketer to instigate industry discussions and engage your communities?  What are you learning from, and sharing with, the people who matter to your brand?  What kinds of connections are you creating among them?  How are you measuring it?