Monthly Archives: June 2008

Write a Better Technical Article in Half the Time

by

Good technical articles are challenging to write. They’re time-consuming, demanding to research and hard to organize. But they’re valuable weapons in the PR and marketing arsenal, and you need them.

If you can outsource the article, great. That’s what writers like me are here for. But if you can’t — or don’t want to — then read and apply the tips below to save time and energy on research and writing, and come out with a much better product.

Get Ready

  1. Review your resources – hard copy like books and articles, Web access, interview contact information.
  2. Arrange for interviews if you need them, it always takes a while to track down the interviewees. Note: If you’re ghostwriting an article for a company, you may not have an interview past the initial meeting.
  3. Make sure you know the following: a) the reader’s challenge, b) the key message relating to their challenge, and c) the type of reader you’re writing to.
  4. Understand the main message the client want to communicate. Many technologies are similar, but your client will have a defined slant on their implementation. (If they don’t, they should – this is your chance to offer them your strategic message building services.)
  5. Even “vendor-neutral” articles are written with a point of view – either the writer’s or the company the writer is working for. This is only a problem if the article bias makes for a misleading article, or tells a whopping big lie.

Outline

  1. Never skip this step, for your own or your readers’ sakes. Outlines speed up your writing, and readers will follow your argument much better.
  2. Organize your research into three themes. Some thematic organizations are obvious – for example, I wrote an article on three steps to optimizing your storage. In other articles, there may be several possibilities. There is probably no one right choice, so if two or three seem fine to you, just pick one and go with it.
  3. Remember your junior high school/high school/college outline lessons? They apply. If you don’t remember your lessons, here’s a reminder: I. Introduction (Outline problem, introduce solution, state theme) II. Body A. 1st major point B. 2nd major point C. 3rd major point III. Conclusion (short case study/example, restate solution, concluding paragraph)Put your outline on paper and let it guide you
    as you go. It’s not iron-clad – if a new organization presents itself while you’re writing you can change it – but don’t do it too much or you’ll defeat the outline’s purpose.


Writing the Rough Draft

  1. Here’s the key to writing your rough draft: Just Do It. Write without thinking about it. Paste in random chunks of text from your research. Write some more. Write in any bizarre, random order. All you want to do at this point is get down large masses of information onto paper.
  2. Keep going until you’ve got 2-3 times the words you actually need, then you can stop.Once you have your mass of information on paper,
    you can organize it into your outline. No big deal – just cut and paste paragraphs under the points they best fit.
  3. Now that you’ve slapped all of your rough text and research into your outline, guess what? The draft is done. Congratulate yourself and take a break.

Subsequent Drafts

  1. Now it’s time to whip this rough mass into shape. Start by saving your rough draft under a different name. You’re going to be doing a lot of deletions in this stage, and you don’t want to accidentally delete something you meant to use.Working with the new copy, start your edits.
    Paraphrase the notes you have from other sources — memos, product
    briefs, other articles, brochures. (Journalists do it all the time. It’s called “research.”)
  2. Download online research but mark it in a different color, so as not to commit the embarrassing – not to mention illegal — mistake of repeating someone else’s writing. When you’ve learned what you need to to from the research, capture the facts in your own words and delete the original notes.
  3. Borrow freely from your client’s Website and other materials. Don’t repeat the text – that’s bad policy and bad writing – but you’re not going to be accused of plagiarism. Laziness maybe, but not plagiarism.
  4. Music can be helpful on writing assignments. Personally, I like Vivaldi for drafting and movie scores for revising. Quite the combo. (As I edit this sentence, The Last of the Mohicans is playing.)
  5. You might find that dictating works better for you at the rough draft stage. Not the old-fashioned kind, where the hard-bitten boss called in his trusty secretary to “Take a memo!” You’re more likely to use an application like Naturally Speaking. This type of application needs a lot of training beforehand – the application, not you – but can be very helpful for writers who try to critique themselves right out the ballpark.

Writing the Final Draft

  1. You’ve done the rough draft, 1st draft, and are into the 2nd draft. You’ve put everything in your own words and are observing your outline structure. The article is starting to sound less like something you’ll get blamed for, and more like something you might actually claim.
  2. Edit for readability, grammar and style.
  3. Use active voice in all your writing. “Active voice” is a sentence construction where the subject performs the verb action. Don’t go to sleep on me, this is important. Example: “The dog bit the boy.” Quick, active, easy. Here’s an example of passive voice: “The boy was bitten by the dog.” Yikes!
  4. Technology writing is full of hideous passive voice construction. Here’s another example from a technology marketing document: “This successful vendor interoperability was demonstrated at the Summit in Chicago.” Ack! Instead, write: “Vendors successfully demonstrated interoperability at the Summit in Chicago.” See how easy that was? PLEASE use active voice. Everyone will be so much happier.
  5. If you learn nothing else about business writing in all your born days, learn to write in active voice. Subject all of your sentences to this simple little exercise and you will improve your writing 100%.
  6. Please don’t be boring, but don’t get too cute. I will stick in something funny every once in a while — mostly because I get a big kick out of myself — but don’t get too chummy.

Final Draft

  1. You’re almost there – you see light at the end of tunnel, and it isn’t a train. Now is the time to polish sentence structure and word choice, and punch up your paragraphs.
  2. Polish your opening paragraphs. Add a snappy lead, define what you’re talking about and why it’s important, and list the three or so points you’re going to make.
  3. Read through your article and make sure you’ve made those points. If you did an outline, the main points should already be subheads. (See why an outline is so great?)
  4. Polish your conclusion. The conclusion doesn’t have to be undying prose, but do restate your points and conclusions.
  5. Read through one more time for overall readability.
  6. Run your spelling and grammar check.
  7. Save and send – but be careful to send the right file! I accidentally turned in my rough draft once instead of the completed final. Luckily this happened with one of my oldest clients, so they contacted me and asked me for the real article. A new client would simply have assumed complete incompetence on my part.
  8. And for the final tip: everything gets easier with practice. Good thing, too.

The Working Case Study

by

Next to white papers, case studies are the most popular tool in the technical marketer’s toolkit.

The ubiquitous case study can range from a 3- paragraph online snippet to a full-blown magazine article. The most popular case study in the marketing/PR arsenal is the 500-700 word success story. They’re not as challenging to write as white papers, but you should structure them for maximum impact.

Different companies use different structures for their case studies, but all should follow the same general pattern: 1. Company overview and challenge 2. Project details 3. Positive results (of course)

Customer Overview and Challenge

Start with a 2-3 paragraph overview of the customer’s company. This should be very positive – since you’re going to detail a problem the customer was having, the last thing you want to do is make them sound like jerks. So compliment them. Feel free to adapt the overview from their own Website text, where they’re already placing themselves in the best possible light.

Then move on to the business challenge. Don’t make the customer sound stupid or incompetent. The challenge should always be centered on something good that is happening to them – fast growth, industry prominence, strategic IT changes – whatever. Their challenge should be applicable to your readers’ own business issues.

Project Details

No project goes perfectly, but save the debriefing for the longer-form trade journal article. These short case studies should report on the successful project by briefly discussing specific products and benefits.

Don’t go all over the map. If the project is fairly narrow or specific, you won’t have any trouble sticking with the main point. In the case of large and complex installations, concentrate on the main point. For example, Microsoft Great Plains has more modules than you can shake a stick at. Concentrate on the ones that had the most positive impact on your customer.

Business Benefits

Always quantify improvement when you can. Numbers can be dollar savings, percentages, or other measures of saved staff time, more efficient workflows, better customer service, etc. Be sure that the benefits you list are the benefits the customer perceives – hard costs are most easily quantified, but soft costs may have the higher perceived benefit to a customer. Ideally you will list both.

When NOT to Write a Case Study

What are the most common blocks to partnering with a customer for a case study?

  1. Your customer is really unhappy. They’d do a case study all right, but you wouldn’t want them to. If you’re the hapless individual setting up the initial interview, be sure that the customer really is happy and is open to talking to you. Otherwise they’ll just give you an earful. Fix: promise the customer that you’ll pass on all of his comments to the technical support team, or whoever you think will best handle it. Then do it, and forget about it.
  2. Customers who fear their market will punish them. Prime example: legal firms with security issues. Sure you helped them through a security project and now they’re Fort Knox, but they don’t want their clients to dream that a problem ever existed in the first place. Fix: Forget it. They’ll never give you permission to produce the study. Besides, they’re probably right.
  3. Your customer is an exacting IT type who is suspicious of the success story format. This customer considers the project a success too, but they dislike purely positive spins – and no project is perfect. Fix: If they are happy for the most part, get a buy-in that the project really was successful. Don’t put him off about the negatives, capture those comments too and promise to pass them on. (Then do it.) This is usually enough to secure the interview.
  4. Your customer is scared to be interviewed. This is usually the IT guy who did all the footwork, and prefers to stay behind the scenes. He (or she) will either be too nervous to talk, or will despise you because he doesn’t think you’ve got the technical chops. Usually both. Fix: Understand the technology you’re interviewing about. You don’t have to be an engineer, but you should understand IT pressures and issues. Ask leading questions, but if they clam up and won’t talk, thank them and hang up. Tell your customer contact that you’re so happy you got to talk to the technician, and now could you talk to a project manager too?

More Leads with White Papers: 6 Best Practices

by

New studies on white paper usage are yielding interesting results. For example, a recent TechTarget study showed that 79% of IT managers use white papers to learn something new about relevant technology and trends. This speaks to trust levels: the white papers could come from analysts or vendors and the IT managers still found them useful. Speaking to the sales process, 62% use white papers to educate themselves on products and implementations, so an educational white paper is extremely helpful in getting the vendor on the buyer’s short list. IT buyers are also using white papers quite early in their buying cycles. Vendors who know how to take advantage of this can influence purchase decisions early on by educating prospects and guiding them through the decision process.

Not all white papers fit the bill, but if you observe the following six best practices, yours will be one of them.

Your white paper should be a problem solver, not a brochure!
Your white paper should present the problems and issues that your qualified readers have along with a strong objective analysis of a technology that will help solve the problem. Then focus the discussion on how your products apply the technology to solve the customers’ problems. This approach educates the prospect on the nature of their problems, on relevant technology, and on your products’ capabilities in light of the solution they need. Including case studies helps the reader to align an actual implementation to their specific situation.

Titles are important
A white paper should always lead with a clear title and abstract. Attractive titles attract readers, and an abstract serves as the come-hither text for syndication blurbs, email ads and Website offers. Both title and abstract should clearly communicate a benefit and/or a solution to a known problem. For example, here are some top-performing titles from TechTarget’s syndication site:

  • Top 10 Reports Every Email Administrator Lives For
  • 7 Tips to Enforcing Corporate Governance Policy on Your Network
  • The Silent Killer: How spammers are stealing your email directory

Pick the right format
Popular white papers usually center around three different formats: analyst-written, vendor-written, and a hybrid white paper/case study format. Consider using all three in an integrated white paper marketing campaign.

Analyst-written. The vendor does not write these directly, but either assigns the research and writing to an independent third-party research or analyst firm, or sponsors an existing white paper because the research and conclusion support the vendor’s technology, company or product. The advantage is that IT readers assume objectivity on the analyst’s part.

Vendor-written. Vendor-written white papers should focus on customer problems and issues, analyze a given technology approach, present examples, and align the vendor’s products and capabilities to solving the problem. This is the most common type of white paper, and works very well in the sales cycle.

White paper/case study. This is not the typical 500-600 word customer success story, although they’re very useful. This is a full-on white paper with a detailed and practical presentation of the technology at work at a given company and how it solved their problem. These types of white papers are not as common as classic papers, but they tend to show excellent response rates and conversion percentages.

Registration
The jury is still out on registrations – whether or not to use them, and if you do use them what kind of information to ask for. The argument against registration is that you knock out perfectly good prospects that way because people don’t want to fill them out. The argument for registration is that if a prospect is really interested, they’ll register. Most agree that prospects turn away from long and involved registrations. One registration type that is testing well requires only basic information but also presents several optional questions. They have gotten an excellent response on the optional.

The second issue with registration is: why do it if you don’t follow up on it? A phone call following a download gives you live contact with a prospect who’s ready to buy, and if they’re not ready yet – but are still interested — lets you ask permission to send more information. The person then enters an integrated marketing campaign of direct mail and email, newsletters, Webinar invitations, and so on.

Effective promotion
Effectively promoting your white paper uses both passive and broadcast channels. Passive methods like syndication place your white paper before thousands of readers, while broadcast reaches highly targeted readers through mailings to in-house lists and legitimate opt-in ezines. This is where that title and abstract come in handy. The more compelling and customer-oriented they are, the more likely the viewer is to register and download.

Customized microsite
A great way to bring those registrations home is to have a customized landing page for the white paper, and better still a microsite devoted to supporting it. Create the Web pages with the registration form on the landing page, and two-to-three supporting tabs for more information. Like “What’s in it for me?” which explains how the white paper will help them, and “Learn more” with further resources to download like case studies and positioning documents.

Clear contact information
Include very clear contact information with a real person, not “info@uselesscompany.com.” In the same research study I quoted above, 64% of IT managers reported that they contacted the vendor company within one month of downloading their white paper, and a good 44% said they did it within a week. You want them to contact you easily.

White papers are the centerpiece of integrated technology marketing campaigns. They should support and gain leads for your newsletter, promotional mailings, Webinars and telemarketing. The more you contact leads with information that they accept and value, the more likely they are going to think of you when they’re ready to buy.

Cashing in with the Customer Success Story

by

Next to white papers, customer success stories or case studies are the most popular tool in the technical marketer’s toolkit. That’s because it’s one of the most powerful tools available to your sales force.

Why are they so popular? Because they are compelling to prospective customers. References and testimonials are great things to have but customer success stories flesh out those testimonials and give them teeth. And if you match the case study customer’s industry to the prospects, it’s clear to prospects that your company knows how to successfully operate in a given market.

The ubiquitous case study can range from a 3-paragraph online snippet to a full-blown magazine article. The most popular case study in the marketing/PR arsenal is the 600-1200 word customer success story following this pattern: company overview and challenge, project details, and positive results. Elements include:

Customer Overview and Challenge. Start with a 2-3 paragraph overview of the customer’s company. This should be very positive – since you’re going to detail a problem the customer was having, the last thing you want to do is make them sound like a jerk. So compliment them. Feel free to adapt the overview from their own Website text, where they’re already placing themselves in the best possible light.

Then move on to the business challenge. Don’t make the customer sound stupid or incompetent. The challenge should always be centered on something good that is happening to them -fast growth, industry prominence, strategic IT changes – whatever. Their challenge should be applicable to your readers’ own business issues.

Project Details. Everyone knows that no project goes perfectly, but save the debriefing for the longer-form trade journal article. These short customer success stories should report on the successful project by briefly discussing specific products and benefits.

Don’t go all over the map. If the project is fairly narrow or specific, you won’t have any trouble sticking with the main point or product. In the case of very large and complex installation, concentrate on the main product or application. For example, Microsoft Great Plains has more modules than you can shake a stick at. Concentrate on the ones that had the most positive impact on your customer.

Business Benefits. Always quantify improvement if you can. Numbers can be dollar savings, percentages, or other measures of saved staff time, more efficient workflows, better customer service, etc. Be sure that the benefits you list are the benefits the customer perceives – hard costs are most easily quantified, but soft costs may have the higher perceived benefit to a customer. Ideally you will have both.


Putting the Customer Success Story to Work

How can you use your completed stories? Some ideas:

  • Post them on your website. The more you have up, and the more frequently you post new ones, the more often spiders will find you and you’ll move up in the search engine rankings.
  • Include them in sales kits. If you have a lot of case studies put them in a separate notebook, which can be very impressive physical proof for a prospect.
  • Make them searchable. Encourage prospects to go online and search your case studies. Use parameters like vertical market, products, or customer challenges.
  • Use them as marketing support for resellers and integrators. The easier your product is to sell, the more resellers and integrators will push your product when they talk to their own customers.

The More the Merrier
How many customer success stories should you have on hand? The answer is the more the better. A large companies may have hundreds of them available on their website and in sales and marketing kits, and even many smaller companies commonly have 25 or more. Why? Because they work. Start capturing those customer success stories today, and watch those sales rise.

Profitably Using White Papers

by

1 Comment

Most B2B companies have a white paper under their belts or are planning to write one. But it’s not enough to write a white paper. You also need to distribute your white paper to your prospective customers and channel partners.

Using winning white papers

  • Channel executives can sharply increase qualified leads to pass along to their channel partners and can offer the same white paper for channel partner sponsorship.
  • Marketing executives can generate a steady stream of qualified leads, passing hot leads directly to Sales, and successfully grooming warm leads through the sales cycle.
  • PR executives can raise brand awareness in the marketplace and leverage awareness into qualified leads for marketing campaigns and Sales.

Marketing your white paper correctly will increase qualified leads making back your investment many times over.

#1 Target your white paper to readers who need your technology – and know it.

White papers are notorious for sitting on a company’s Website doing pretty much nothing. There are reasons for that:

A. The white paper isn’t right for its target market, or…
B. The white paper wasn’t written well to begin with or…
C. The white paper doesn’t compel readers to find out more or…
D. All of the above!

Don’t let this happen to you – wasting your investment in a white paper is like setting fire to a sheaf of bills. The money you spend to write the white paper whether in staff time or hiring a professional writer is a poor investment if nobody reads it or responds. But by marketing a well-crafted white paper to the right audience, you’ll dramatically increase your ROI – making a white paper your best single marketing investment and the core of your marketing communications program.

Who’s the right audience? Readers who:

  1. Know they have a problem and need to fix it.
  2. Can make a decision to purchase your product (decision makers/executives), or can alert someone who does (influencers/IT), or can resell your product to their customers (channel partners).

Decision Makers/Executives. Decision makers are the managers and executives who have the final say in spending budget and buying your products and services. They are often CIOs but may be C-level executives of any stripe who are interested adopting technology that serves their business needs. White papers written to decision makers should contain a strong business focus.

Decision makers are comfortable with white papers. They’ll use search engines to get to them and use search terms on technical libraries. If they like your white paper, they’ll pass it along to other executives and staff. They would much rather read a white paper before talking to a sales representative – in fact, decision makers are just the kind of long-term lead that Sales usually ignores, but who consistent marketing and marketing communications can bring on board within the year. The Sales department then enters the picture to confirm facts and negotiate the sale.

This role, which has decision makers proactively researching new technologies for business advantage, is an increasing trend: CIO Magazine reports that 68 percent of CIOs believe that CIOs should proactively envision business opportunities and apply technology to achieve them. Your white paper can help the decision makers do that.

Influencers/IT. IT staff and managers aren’t looking for a spec sheet but for a technology that will meet a pressing need. They’re using white papers much earlier in their buying cycles. A recent TechTarget survey reported that 79% of IT professionals read white papers to learn something new about technology relevant to their job, 73% of them consider white papers very valuable for keeping up-to-date on the latest technology trends, and 62% said they use white papers to get information on actual implementations.

This means that putting white papers where IT can find them will get their attention very early in their buying cycle and guiding prospects through the decision-making process so you’ll be top-of-mind when they’re ready to make their short vendor list. With 9 out of 10 prospects using white papers to research vendor capabilities, the last thing you want is for your white paper to sit around gathering dust.

Channel partners. It’s a real trick to get marcomm into the hands of your channel partners, especially if you have a large partner network. Even companies with partner portals find that their partners rarely consistently download product marcomm. One way around this is to actively distribute a compelling white paper on your technology to partners, who in turn can use the white paper to sell your product to their customers.

Using white papers with channel partners, especially during new product launches, increases sales, decreases expenses and reduces complexity.

Reaching Your Audience

Your white paper is useless unless the right people read it. Once you know who your best prospects are, you must offer your white paper where they’ll see it and respond by filling out a registration form and downloading a copy. Depending on the readership you’re trying to reach, this could mean electronic and direct mailings, newsletter sponsorship, content syndication and paid search/contextual advertising.

Top B2B White Paper Marketing Strategies

Strategy
Details
Mailings: email and direct Mailings, whether email or print, are a great way to reach your targeted audience. Use email to reach mid-level professionals and managers, and use direct mail with high-level executives. Use in-house and highly targeted lists like VARBusiness.com to reach channel partners and partner prospects.
Newsletter sponsorship Advertising in a newsletter targeted to your audience works very well with mid-level IT professionals. Since a popular newsletter can go to more than 10,000 subscribers, this is an excellent balancing technique to direct mailings. Use trade journal newsletters directed to resellers to reach the channel.
Content syndication Posting white papers on syndication sites like Bitpipe and TechTarget works especially well for white papers in hot categories. Ideally, links should point to a landing page that’s specific to your white paper.
Paid search / Contextual advertising Method of presenting ads based on user-entered keyword searches. Google Adwords is a popular method of paid search, and contextual ads extend keyword search into business and IT sites.

Channel executives. Reach existing and prospective channel partners through mailings. Email is ideal for partner sales reps while direct mail is best for high-level partner executives. In-house lists can be golden, but if you rent an outside list make sure it’s highly targeted to the people you want to reach and that it’s scrupulously cleaned. Also post your white papers on content syndication sites; you can pass on the resulting leads to partners as well as your direct sales force.

Marketing executives. Do all of the above. Send email and direct mailings in-house and other trusted lists, syndicated content on the top syndication sites, sponsor popular newsletters to your targeted prospects, and invest in paid search in Google and business/IT sites.

PR executives. Offer your white paper in mailings to media and include a copy in your press kit. Reporters that will dump a press release in a hot second will stop to read a good white paper. Suddenly your client’s approach to solving a business problem becomes a valuable resource for the reporter instead of an annoying intrusion.

Titles and abstracts

Compelling titles and abstracts pull readers to click on a link to download the white paper (content syndication sites) or be sent to a landing page customized for the white paper (everything else). Take a hint from extensive ad testing – headlines are responsible for at least 50% and as much as 75% of an ad’s responses rates. White paper downloads depend on the same element.

Here is an example of before-and-after titles and abstracts:

Before: Not compelling, to say the least
Title: “Protecting Your Email Directory with Guardian Software from SecureLock”
Abstract: “Many challenges are faced today by email administrators. This white paper from SecureLock describes how Guardian Software protects email directories from Directory Harvest Attacks.”

After: A whole lot better
Title: “How Spammers are Assaulting Your Critical Systems and How to Stop Them”
Abstract: “How secure are your critical messaging systems from outside attack? Most corporations say email security is a top priority, but all they do is set up a virus checker and call it a day. This white paper investigates the challenge of fighting off spam, hacking, phishing and harvesting attacks, and tells you how to protect your vital email systems today and in the future.”

Which one are you more likely to download?

#3 Once the prospect has downloaded your white paper, ask permission to contact – then do it.

Some prospects will be ready to talk to a salesperson right away. These so-called hot leads go directly to the direct sales force or channel partners. The challenge lies in the warm leads – people who are interested enough to register and download your white paper, but who aren’t ready to purchase in 3 months or less. These leads often get lost, which is a shame – a large percentage of them do end up buying within 6 months, and even more within the year.

Registration forms will allow you to capture the lead and to request permission to contact. One of the best ways to encourage a prospect to respond and give permission to contact is by encouraging them with a specific landing page optimized to your white paper. The great beauty of a landing page is that it vastly increases white paper requests and registrations, and increase permission responses to send the prospect other materials like newsletters, articles, and promotional mailings. This is key to warming up a lead and bringing them to a purchase decision: regular, permission-based contact keeps your product top-of-mind when the prospect is ready to buy.