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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?

Our flagship client McAfee invited us to participate in an exclusive writing workshop yesterday designed to better communicate the company’s brand promise. The practical tips and guidelines imparted during this exceptional session inform good writing for any technology brand.

When it comes to effective brand communication, McAfee gets it.  And it’s gratifying  to learn that we, as a writing service, share the same philosophy when it comes to creating content that engages readers and gets them to take action.

It begins with the “brand”, which means that it all starts with an understanding that your first responsibility as a content-generator is fidelity to the brand you’re writing about. To stay true to whatever it is that your client’s brand is promising to its buyers is your first obligation. To bend the rules is to break that faith. To over-promise and under-deliver is the death knell for any brand, all the more if you compete in a technology category where your product’s performance is so important.  As the chief steward or keeper of the brand promise, the writer has nothing less than a fiduciary responsibility to keep asking the right questions designed to keep the content honest – and by extension, trustworthy.  This may not always make you a favorite in product-management quarters, but anything less does a disservice to the brand over the long haul.

As it often turns out, it’s the folks inside the company who inadvertently put the bending pressure on the content they’re trying to create for this or that project. They want to stretch the truth. They want to make bolder claims. They want to disparage the competition.  They want to do those things that put the brand promise at risk. Quality control in these instances has multiple meanings and it’s the writers who must wear the QC mantle. It’s not about just ensuring readability and correct grammar, but strict fidelity to the voice of the brand.  At Write Angle, we “QC” the content by commencing every project with a set of questions that begin by simply asking for the project’s primary purpose and conclude with a request for the three, key takeaways the project team wants to imprint on their reader.  For what it’s worth, it’s all pretty consistent with the McAfee approach.  How does your process compare?

• What’s the thesis of the document being considered and why should the reader care? State why this is topical at the moment and give an example.
• Describe the competitive environment.  Specify the trends influencing buyers. Describe a few user problems (the more compelling the better) that set the stage for our offering(s).
• What core positioning statement do we want woven throughout the copy and how can we make it as relevant as possible to the reader?
• What do we need to say about our technology to clearly mark competitive advantage and its place at the cutting edge of the category?
• How can we substantiate our claims, e.g., where’s the beef of verifiable metrics?
• What other prestige brands are involved with us as allies and partners?
• What are the three absolute, gotta-have impressions we want to leave on the reader?



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?

We read last weekend’s NYT piece on computer-generated news stories with great interest (and we will quickly add that, no, this post is not being written by a machine).  The story reminded us of something we used to hear NetApp chairman Dan Warmenhoven say repeatedly to anyone who listened.  According to Warmenhoven, writing the plan isn’t so much about the the plan you end up with.  Rather, it’s largely about the process you go through to produce the plan.  What you think about, discover, debunk or become aware of as part of the diligence of the planning process can often force you re-think your strategy, tactics and even some of the fundamentals of your whole business.  This can make a huge difference.

Our experience with the process of writing white papers, case studies, speeches, or even blog posts is absolutely consistent with Warmenhoven’s observation.  The ideas and insights that can, and often do, bubble up during interviews — not to mention the reflection that happens during the editing process — provide the driving force a team may need to re-think its assumptions.  They can drive improvements to your strategy and a sharpening of tactics.  They can fortify a connection with a customer or a partner, especially during preparation of a case study.  We think of these things as being the equivalent of the “hallway conversations” you miss when your interactions are strictly via email, teleconference or webinar.   While we won’t  minimize the power and significance of machine intelligence, sometimes an “end product” includes what’s learned during production. Ask Dan Warmenhoven.

Do you see the content-generation process as way to make observations about your business or product strategy?  Do you look at producing case studies and white papers as a chance to broaden relationships with customers?

1. Trying to sell instead of tell.
The focus on Steve Jobs this past week reminded us of how fanatical the guy is about good, clean, corporate writing, the kind that never “sells” technology.  Instead, he insists on the kind that tells how the product would help the reader reach a goal.  Emphasis on the reader. And the reader’s goal or problem.

2. Complicating the message.
Jobs has a one-sentence description — or vision — for every product he has ever introduced.  Incredibly, every single piece of written content, in all marketing material, revolves around this simple sentence.  Study after study shows that people think in “chunks” and remember no more than three or four characteristics of anything.  That’s why the best content contains no more than three, core leave-behinds.  Your reader is busier and more easily distracted than ever. Make it easy on them.  Think about the most effective content you’ve read.  Chances are, the writer kept it pretty simple.  It’s why you remember it.  After all, no less a mind than DaVinci said that simplicity was the ultimate sophistication.

3. Failing to stay on message.
Begin with a clear expression — the single sentence — of what your content must convey.  Then think of it in three parts and sketch an outline of the “sum” of the parts: What? So what? And now what?  In other words, consistent with the core sentence, describe the problem being experienced by the customer/reader, (2) all the dimensions of why this is a significant issue at this moment and (3) what needs to happen for resolution of the issue (solution to the problem).

4.  Ignoring (boring) the reader.
If you’re not energized to the point of passion about your subject matter, don’t expect your reader to take up the slack.   Look at what you’re writing through the reader’s eyes. To what would you favorably respond?  Studies show that readers favor a graphic presentation of complex data, thus the popularity and more frequent use of infographics. What would make you keep reading? In your experience, which styles of content convey the most information most forcefully and memorably? Most important, what would make you want to know more about what the vendor has to say about this issue and what they have in the way of solutions?

What does your team do to optimize the readability and simplicity of your written content — including those white papers?  BTW, for an animated video of Jobs’ career, check this out: /08/26/ste…

 

Is the white paper dead?  Recent studies suggest they’re not, but there’s no denying that too many of them have fallen into a zombie-like state.  Fact is too many fall short of their sales mission.  But the findings such as those by Sirius Decisions last year reveal that white papers remain primary tools for building influence.

One out of every two B2B customers in the Sirius survey considered white papers the most important source of content when it came to making purchase decisions.  Even more important than analyst reports (54% vs. 39%).  A separate study by Eccolo Media showed that 47% of purchase decision-makers considered them “extremely important” in the buying process. The unmistakable take-away:  the venerable white paper is very much alive.  Now you just need to keep yours kicking.

So what’s the difference between white papers that make customers want to know more about you and the ones that make readers quickly turn to something else?  Turns out that the principles of producing a successful paper today are no different than what it takes to create any successful initiative across all marketing and sales.  It must be carefully targeted, well crafted, optimized for social media and oriented towards a specific result.  Last year, a study by Ziff-Davis revealed that the primary purpose of white papers in the buying process was to provide information during the customer’s research-and-discovery phase.  Message: Those customers will be looking specifically at what you know and have to say about their interests, not yours.

One out of three B2B customers utilize white papers to look for new ideas and solutions. Message: keep your content fact-rich but easily digestible.  Know when and how to use infographics to make a key point, for example.

Nearly one in four readers will narrow their vendor selections with the content found in white papers. Message: spotlight what makes your solution competitively superior. To the greatest extent you can, make your comparisons measurable, quantifiable and, if at all possible, graphic so as to be very quickly understood.  Remember that your reader is at least as busy as you are.

One out of ten readers will make the vendor selection based on white paper content. Message: readers will be influenced to the extent they are convinced your solution is a rifle-shot at their problem.  So you must be intimately familiar with what this problem is. Tailor the content to the customer’s need in the terminology they use and the issues they grapple with.  Know your customer.  Understand their anxieties. If this sounds like the age-old best practices of selling and marketing, it’s because that’s exactly what it is.