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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.

It’s become a cliche in marketing to say that a case study is supposed to be more about about your user, not about you.  Still, reading a lot of case studies will convince you that a relatively few vendors have gotten this message.

Case studies are valuable selling tools because buyers rely on them in the purchasing process, specifically in the discovery phase of research.  What do they look for?  They want to know how people like them solved problems like the ones they want to solve.  They want to read about those people and those problems much more than read praises for any particular solutions.

Here’s a suggestion to keep your case studies honest. Review some recent samples and screen them for mentions of your company name vs. how many times the customer or user’s name was cited.  Just do a simple “Search in Document” if you’re using Word, for example.  Our own experience suggests that your user’s name should appear at least 50% more than yours.  If your name is cited 10 times, for example, the name of the user in the case should come up 15 times.  If you show up 20 times in the case, your customer should be referenced 30, and so on.  This rule-of-thumb does two things: it forces the writer to focus on the main character of the story, namely, the user.  This, in turn, makes the case study spotlight the benefits to the user in the eyes of the reader. It also makes for far more compelling reading.

How do your cases measure up?  How do you ensure that they are less about your solution and more about the problem you solved and the benefits you delivered?

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?

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…

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?