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No matter how well crafted your white paper, case study, or product brief may be, an uninspired headline will doom it to obscurity.  Not to mention squandering your time and money as a publisher.  Readers won’t waste their time on content that doesn’t compel them.  This means an inspiring, irresistible headline is Job One.

Good headlines do more than grab attention

Thinking like a headline writer at the outset is key to whether or not your content is ever read.  It’s essential to strike an emotional appeal tailored to your readers’ personal interests — theirs, not yours.  Great headlines get audiences to click through.  You’ve got one shot at stopping a reader in their tracks.  So make the most of your opportunity.

Subheads and graphics pull the reader through

Engaging your readers at each level of the story with crisp subheads is valuable for two reasons.  First, it helps you organize your material into easily digestible chunks.  Second, it enables the reader to better retain your message.
Clear, lively infographics highlight and underscore complex data for better reader comprehension. And they attract “skimmers” who need visual prompts before scrutinizing material.

Then tell them what you told them

Like a dominant chord in a blues song, readers want resolution.  So give it to them with a crisp summary statement that reiterates your earlier refrain.  After all, if you’ve gotten them this far they’re likely to investigate further.

How do you know the right readers are paying attention to your content?  If you’re in doubt, what are you doing about it? How do you define the difference between content that is adequate and stuff that’s a must-read? How are you ensuring that you publish more of the latter?

Creating great content on your web site and keeping it fresh — and specific to your customer offerings — is key to higher, more effective market visibility.  Why?  Because fresh, compelling, customer-relevant content creates the links that elevate your ranking by the search engines.  The more relevant links you attract, the more you increase the traffic you want. This, in turn, generates more click-throughs, more trials, more orders.

So how to do this with so much else on your plate today? At Write Angle, we suggest doing as our colleagues over at HubSpot ceaselessly recommend: hire a creator of remarkable content, not some self-styled SEO ninja.  Start by identifying the most compelling storytellers in your domain. The ones who know your business and can write for the readers you want to attract.

SEO Scientist Dan Zarella , who is quick to distinguish himself from a “ninja”, unwrapped a new set of datapoints the other day. They underscore the notion that the online results we all crave come our way organically to the extent that we produce and publish more content more often.  And this means more blog posts that contain remarkable content.  “Re-markable” is defined as irresistibly share-able, re-Tweetable and forward-able links, all of which combine to enhance your search rankings.  Exactly what content creators are supposed to do.

Here are the key take-aways from the data:

1.   Blog posts are the simplest way to refresh your online content on the most frequent basis.

2.   Fresh content drives visits and traffic.

3.   You cannot post too frequently.

4.   Post the most topical material specific to your offerings that appeal to the current interest of your customers and prospects.  Avoid industry jargon and focus on words conveying timeliness and immediacy to your reader.

5.   The more targeted you make your content re #4 above, the greater your chance of being found.

6.   You are as much in the publishing business today as the business of your category.

Question: what’s happening right now in your customers’ world on which you have a provocative observation or thoughts worth sharing with them?  If you were a customer, what would you want to know? What would compel you to share it with your associates? What can you do to accelerate the sharing of these observations? When was the last time you published something that was conceived from the vantage of the visitors you want to attract to your site?



Case studies, white papers, solutions briefs, web content and blogging aren’t ends in themselves but the means to productive ends: more site visits, inquiries, trials, orders and revenue.  To help prepare you for the new year,  we’ve compiled a Top Ten list of representative tips for results-driven writing that we published here in 2011.  We hope they can contribute to your marketing mission as much they have stood the test of time in our own practice.  And here’s to a happy, prosperous New Year from Write Angle!

1.  More site traffic might make you feel good, but upping the number of visitors who actually make decisions about purchases is the metric the CEO will look for.  Here are five ways to make web content attract the right visitors to your site.

2.  There are a lot of wrong ways to produce content and the snake oil of SEO is more widespread than ever today. Beware. Here are some guidelines intended to help you avoid the three biggest mistakes in content marketing.

3.  If your case studies aren’t lead generators, is the time you’re taking to produce them really worth it?  Make the most of your time by applying these three things that make your case studies drive quality leads.

4.  Ninjas, gurus and wizards belong in video games, not on your content team.  The Web site metrics your content must drive are achievable by regular folks doing the right things.

5.  Making the most of your resources will be no less important in the coming year, if not more so. To create quality content on time and on budget, it’s incumbent upon the internal team to know how to get the most out of your writing consultants.

6.  “Ready, fire, aim” has never been a winning sequence when it comes to marketing and selling.  Carefully consider and answer our five questions to ask BEFORE embarking on a content-creation effort.

7.  Too many marketers undertake a writing project with an objective of getting it approved rather than making it effective. The objective of any content is to be consumed.  It must be read and passed along.  At Write Angle, we call it market-alism: how to write copy that customers want to read.

8.  It’s essential to see the world through customers’ eyes and to not look at customers through the lens of your offerings. Here’s an insider’s guide to outside-in writing.

9.  You want readers to heed your calls to action. To do so, those readers must relate to the story you tell. So it’s no mystery that citing examples that speak to customers makes your content hard to ignore.

10. McAfee, a brand that aims to protect itself as zealously as it strives to safeguard its customers’ digital assets, shares our views on why guarding the brand is Job One for technology writers.

What are your New Year’s resolutions on improving your marketing content?  What did you learn in 2011 that you intend to practice in 2012?



It’s a given that domain expertise is required to create content that’s technically accurate. What makes the content compelling and gets readers to click-through, call, request a demo or take the next steps toward a purchase or trial is the ability to tell a great story. And a key component of any white paper, solution brief, application note or case study calls for representative, real-world examples that get the reader to think, “Hey, that’s me.”

Today’s information-overloaded customers are as short on time as they are on attention.

In a matter of seconds you must convey that your product or service is tailor made to solve immediately recognizable problems.

This means spotlighting real-world examples just as prominently as the features and corresponding benefits of your product. Technical “tutorials” mean little to a customer/reader without a clear, concise description of the real-world benefits your technology delivers.

Consider a security company whose technology detects anomalous conditions from log files.  Readers need context to better understand what this means.  By adding key examples of anomalous conditions, such as “knowing what systems were accessed by an unauthorized user, what data they touched and where they sent it”, provides readers with an immediately identifiable problem they are on the hook to address.  By putting your domain expertise in context, you stand a much better chance of resonating with your readers.

In the case of the security company cited above, use cases can take on immediacy and drama when compelling examples are woven into the narrative.  Take technologies designed for intrusion detection and Advanced Persistent Threats.  Plugging in a real world example to orient readers to a specific problem is a magnet for further investigation:  “Being alerted to a user who typically logs into one or two corporate systems between the hours of 9:00 am – 5:00 pm Monday through Friday and suddenly attempts to log into multiple systems at odd hours of the day, including weekends, is a strong indication of a potentially hacked or compromised account.” Suddenly, your benefit — the critical role your product played in determining the violation and making the process so much simpler and faster for security teams – now takes on a new, compelling dimension.

Always be articulating or alluding to the tangible benefit of your offering with examples that speak directly to your buyer. Your domain expertise is essential.  You can make it pay off even more by showing your equally expert appreciation of the practical problem your customer is trying to solve.

What’s your view of domain-expertise as criteria for content creators? How do you do “reality-checks” on your content?  How do you select writers? On a 10-point scale, how do your rate your content for customer-relevance?

As writers of marketing content, we at Write Angle think different. For example, we believe that content, and the professionals  who produce it, can influence product strategy to a much greater degree than most people assume.  Can’t think of a better way to honor the memory of our former colleague, Steve Jobs, who “thought different” and shared this belief.

Here’s what we mean. Lost in last week’s deluge of Jobs’ tributes was broader recognition of what really separated him from the pack for so long: his uncanny instinct for making it easier for people to do what they already enjoy doing. Jobs had an innate ability to immediately recognize what users actually wanted from products and services. Then he worked ferociously to deliver easier, better ways for them to get it.  Long before anybody touted the so-called  “product experience”, Apple was pumping out the best experiences imaginable.  The wild popularity of these products proved it.  Apple (Jobs) did not invent the personal computer, the graphical user interface, the mouse, the music player, the cell phone or the tablet computer.  But they sure as hell made each one drastically easier and more fun to use –not to mention irresistible.   Apple products are consistently cool.  How many technology offerings can claim this?

So what does all this have to do with what marketing-content creators and writers can do? Plenty. Most engineers and product marketers, especially in B2B land, are justifiably proud of what they invent and take to market.  Problem is, being so close to the device or service can create blind spots when it comes to buyers, customers and users of these inventions.  So, when the time comes to describe the offerings and differentiate them in marketing and selling efforts, it’s up to content creator — namely, the writer — to ask the penetrating questions and extract the comprehensive answers that inform this all-important differentiation.

1. What job are we are trying to make it easier for the user to get done?  What’s our stuff actually going to do for them to make their lives easier and/or more productive?

2. What core positioning statement do we want to weave throughout the content?

3. What are the distinguishing technologies/approaches that we need to cite to clearly establish competitive differentiation?

4. What tangible metrics or documented verification substantiates our claims?

5. What are the three most essential messages — the takeways — we want readers to understand?

Don’t forget that it’s never enough just to ask the right questions.  You have to know if and when you’re getting a complete answer and keep pushing until you’re there. The writer must come away with the content of a comprehensive, no-doubt-about-it answer — and then articulate it in a way that resonates with the reader.  Not simply regurgitate what was shared in the sourcing session.  In the process, the technical team — the product jocks — will have to do their own diligence and homework.  This forces the issue.  Steve Jobs knew it wasn’t so much about “knowing” his customers as much as knowing what they wanted to do — and then make it easier and less hassle for them to do it.  It’s no different in the B2B world.

So what does your team do to understand what your users are trying to accomplish with products in your category?  Equally important, does your marketing content communicate this understanding? What more can you do to ensure that it does?

Understanding your audience/readership is central to the success of any commercial publication.  Ever hear of a thriving news organization oblivious to what its audience of readers or viewers want?  In the same vein, marketers tone-deaf to the proclivities of their own market, the content that customers will pay attention to, are short-lived.  In marketing today, more than ever, quality content is defined as the kind of material to which your buyer relates and identifies with:

1.  It’s about them, not you.

2.  It describes their situations, not yours.

3.  It makes them, not your brand, most prominent in the story.

4.  It’s eminently readable and compelling: the terminology is theirs, the style is engaging, the language vivid.

5.  It informs, educates, provokes thought–and it inspires sharing.

The above, by the way, could describe the best and most shared content on the web, on any given day.  Which is exactly what we mean by the term market-alism.

What are you doing to instill these practices in your own content: web copy, white papers, case studies, etc.?   How does your team ensure that your “out-bound” efforts maximize “in-bound” inquiries and high conversions?

For many years we’ve flogged the notion of the outside-in perspective and its importance to successful marketing. Essentially, putting yourself in the shoes of your customer, or the people you want as customers.  This “customer advocate” point of view is nothing new. It’s been around for as long as people have been buying and selling.

When it comes to creating the kind of content that gets people to do the things you want them to do, the point is this:  you have to talk to those people–not at them. To do this, you have to look at your subject matter through their eyes. From their POV.  Then you have to speak their language in their terminology — and sound like one of them.

This is where so much internally-produced marketing material falls short and how it devolves into fluff, assuming that people will resonate to what you think they should. It inevitably slips into company advocacy when it should be advocating on behalf of the reader.

You have to make a conscious, continuous effort to remain in their shoes.  From the inception of your concept right through final editing and delivery.  This requires fortitude and attitude.

Self-advocacy is an easy trap to fall into.  No matter how astute your marketing team may be, and we work for some of the best, when you’ve spent so much time and energy focused on your product, technology, competitors and company issues, it’s natural for your perspective to become distorted and biased towards what you’re selling. Unfortunately, this bias shows up in the way you describe it: in your terms, not the buyer’s.

Just remember: people have no intrinsic interest in what you sell. No knock on them, but the fact is that they are self-absorbed and self-interested when they’re in the discovery phase of the purchasing decision. As they should be.  So, your appeal will resonate with them only to the extent they instantly recognize–and feel–your awareness of whatever it is that interests them at that moment. This means their problem, their fears, ambitions, numbers, performance review and competitors.

If this sounds like it should be the template of your next piece of content and the platform of your message strategy, it’s because it should.  Take it from longstanding customer advocates.

In journalism and police work the five Ws — who, what, when, where and why — amount to the framework of investigation and the building blocks of a story or case. This also applies to just about any content-creation initiative you can name. The order of the questions may be different but the same regimen applies.

For example, a product launch or a major re-branding campaign might call for support materials, a web site makeover, an update to existing content and a variety of other deliverables.  Each piece will have its own objective but still be seen as part of a larger effort that should be greater than the sum of its pieces.

Making the whole exceed the sum of the parts requires a plan. Specifically, it requires asking these questions up front:

1. Why are we engaged in this effort in the first place? A product launch typically doesn’t necessitate a new web site but a re-branding would.  A major acquisition might call for something else entirely.  You may want to consider how to re-purpose existing material consistent with new messages along with creating something entirely new.

2. What is the objective or mission we want to accomplish? Giving reassurances to existing customers is not the same as acquiring new ones.  New versions of established products require descriptive material that is subtly different from the content created for an entry into a new market or an altogether new product.

3. Who is the target of this effort? An purchase influencer might respond to a very different appeal than the outreach you make to the actual buyer or the key decision maker. Once identified, “who” you are pursuing will tell you what it will take to get this target to act.

4. Where is the source material on which the content will be based?  Content creation is not the same thing as as creation of the underlying product or marketing strategy.  The content articulates the product’s benefits.  But those benefits were the outcome of rigorous efforts made earlier in a far different process.

5. When is the trigger event for delivery of the content? You may want to use the content creation process as an ingredient in preparation of the strategy – as a way to prompt ideas and new thinking. All assumptions should be challenged as a way to ensure validity and consistency with the current environment.  Best of all, it’s a good measure of how well prepared you are to embark on your initiative.  Better to know this in advance, than to find out “in real time”.

Success is based on asking the right questions at the right time. Ask the wrong questions, get the wrong answers. Get the wrong answers and you mobilize the wrong effort and waste a lot of resources.

What’s your process for content creation?  How do you create and prepare source material to generate compelling marketing content?

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?

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?