A good marketing communications writer is versatile, but don’t push it. Everybody’s talent stops somewhere.

How thin can you spread your marcomm writer?

Can she do a good job on everything you need, like:

• white papers
• Web content
• technology overviews
• case studies
• press releases
• corporate backgrounders
• annual reports
• blog posts
• SEO copywriting (isn’t that redundant nowadays?)

Or, do you find you need multiple writers for the different stations along your Content Buffet?

Facts of Life about Writers

A man’s got to know his limitations.

-“Dirty Harry” Callahan

Doug Clarke of Hologram Publishing posts that “Good writers, like good singers or dancers, are versatile in numerous topics, formats and genres, and are not just one-trick ponies.” In fact, most marketing communications writers become drawn to other types of content by their clients. “You did an article for a local magazine; can you write our Web content?” Six months later, the writer is hanging out a new shingle.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but as a marketing manager, you have to be sensitive to where your writers’ limitations lie, and be careful not to push them past it, or it will blow up in your face.

4 Questions before Stretching a Marcomm Writer

Here are four questions it’s perfectly fair for you to ask before nudging your marketing communications writer one step closer to his limitations (especially if you’re not sure of what you yourself are getting into):

1. “Can you describe a project in which the format was new to you, and you delivered content that made the customer happy?” Let’s face it – I need the content, and you know writing, but I’m trying to reduce my risk. Tell me a story about when you went through this before, and convince me that you’re up to it; otherwise, I don’t want to chance it.
2. “Can you show me a sample from that project?” Slam dunk if he can, and still iffy if he cannot. He should be able to give you something to allay your concerns, or else point you to another writer.
3. “What method will you follow in writing this?” (Not, “Do you have a method?”) This is part of how he should persuade you that he’s up to the task. If he has written all of your press releases, but never done a case study, ask him how he would plan to go about it.
4. “What do you need from me to write this? Are you able to help drive the project, or do I need to do that?” How much support do you need as marketing manager to drive review loops, work with the designer, birddog subject matter experts or customers, and generally get things done on a project with which you’re not familiar? Somebody – either you or your writer – is going to have to run the project, so you’d better make sure that your expectations line up with those of your writer.

I recommend that you get satisfactory answers to these questions before you dive into the other important questions:

1. How long will it take?
2. How much will it cost?

If you’re not comfortable basing your business decision on the answers to the first few questions, then great answers to the last two questions won’t do you much good.

John White of venTAJA Marketing posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it.

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/neilspicys/ / CC BY 2.0

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Your marketing communications play a big role in earning your customers’ trust. Writers can help with this, but it’s not easy to get them to do so.

With its 2010 Trust Barometer, the public relations firm Edelman reports that 83% of U.S. consumers value

transparent and honest practices, and a company being a “company I can trust” as extremely important

and rate these their first and second priorities.

A company’s strong financial performance, which was consumers’ third priority in 2006, is their tenth priority now, far below treating employees well and pricing goods and services fairly.

So as a marketing manager, you’re thinking, “Hmm. We should do what we can to earn trust and convey trustworthiness in our communications, shouldn’t we?” Well, if you haven’t been doing it up to now, this would be a good time to start.

Does Your Writer Keep You Honest?

Who drafts all of those communications you put out, all of the vehicles on which your customers will evaluate your trustworthiness?

Your writers, of course.

Do you pay them to make you toe the line? When you engage them, do you say, “If you catch us trying to say something that sounds fishy or unreliable, let us know”? If they call you on a dodgy statistic, or doubt the veracity of your sources, do you thank them and agree to find more solid ones?

I thought not.

You could do that, but here are some reasons why it probably won’t happen:

1. This kind of purity may pit you against others in your organization. “It holds 985 megabytes of data,” says your Engineering team. “Call it a gigabyte and be done with it.” Your writer points out that there are 1 billion bytes in a gigabyte, so you’re stuck in the middle between the writer and Engineering.
2. You need to beat a deadline. Is your time more important than your customers’ trust? How much back-and-forth with the writer can you afford to boost the veracity of the piece?
3. Your writer doesn’t want to antagonize you. A common bit of professional camouflage goes, “Well, Bill, you know your readers and customers a lot better than I do, so I’ll take your lead on leaving that detail in the paper.” The writer wants to get paid and get hired again, so probably won’t go to the mat with you on a disagreement over your facts.
4. There is ALWAYS a fib somewhere, and the only way to avoid them completely is to say nothing to your customers. You may just find out this out if you empower your writer to grill you on your evidence. It’s a marketing piece, not a New York Times investigation.

Rude Questions from Your Writer

Jason Cohen, of A Smart Bear fame, posted recently on Rude Q&A. Pardon the unnecessarily rude first sentence of the post – bloggers often pride themselves on shock value – but Jason offers a valuable lesson in tough questions that come from investors, for which businesspeople should have ready, defensible answers.

If you hire professional, diplomatic writers, you should be able to go through at least some of Jason’s questions peacefully:

• What are the top three features your competitor has that you lack? How do you address that today, and what are you doing about it in the next six months?
• What are three tangible, undeniable ways in which your product/company saves more money than you cost, and saves more time than you consume?
• There are thousands of companies who make the same basic claims you make: high-quality, on-time, on-budget, good service, happy customers. What makes you any different?

You should already have gone through these questions internally before starting your project, and you should ask your writers whether they are up to posing them of you as well.

John White of venTAJA Marketing posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it.

photo credit:

emmma peel

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Writers' Networking Do's

Marketing managers are often looking to hire new writers, but they don’t like being assailed by them in networking situations. A few words to the wise marketing communications writer.

I’m pleased to be attending a networking mixer for the San Diego chapter of the American Marketing Association this evening, which will combine a presentation by people from the front office of the San Diego Padres with dinner and a game against the arch-rival Los Angeles Dodgers. These events get me away from the computer to spend a few hours among kindred souls seeking truth in the dark forest of social media marketing.

I hope that some writer doesn’t pester me to death for nine innings.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t mind the company of marketing communication writers. It’s the primitive networking skills most of them demonstrate that bug me.

Maybe it’s the amount of time they spend lashed to a keyboard listening to the little voices in their heads. Maybe it’s that they’ve chosen the profession because they’re uncomfortable in social, collaborative contexts. Or maybe it’s the odd sort of defensiveness and vulnerability most of us feel in a room full of people we don’t know, with the strange feeling that we ought to make an effort to meet someone new, since we paid to be here. (Boy, will I catch flak for this post.)

3 Networking Do’s

Keep in mind, though, that marketing managers, like everyone else, hire people they know, like and trust.

In the spirit of encouraging better networking etiquette among writers – and the hope of a change of pace for tonight’s ballgame – here are three techniques I’ve heard writers and other professionals use over 15 years of mixers and trade events:

1. Start with a simple ice breaker. Figure out a benign, non-invasive, socially smooth question to pose to a complete stranger. Then use it to break the ice. My favorite is the most obvious one: “What brings you to this?” You’re both at a venue for a presentation of some kind, so talking about what brought you there is pretty basic and non-threatening. Besides, after a few sentences, your interlocutor is likely to turn the same question around to you, which is the idea of the entire thing. Lousy ice breakers: “What do you do?” “What company do you work for?” “How about this weather?”
2. Keep the conversation moving. “A relationship needs to move forward constantly, or else it dies,” says Woody Allen’s Alvy Singer in Annie Hall, “and what we have here is a dead shark.” The ice breaker will get you so far, then you can begin networking; i.e., talking as professionals. Too many people dive for the jugular here and want to figure out whether you and your connections and your budget are worth the effort, with choice questions like, “So, who are some of your clients?” or “Would you like to see some writing samples?” I’d rather someone asked me something like “What have you been working on lately?” It lets me talk, it lets you learn, and it keeps the conversation from becoming a dead shark.
3. Have an elevator speech. K. Sean Buvala proclaims that the elevator speech is dead, but I don’t buy it. Unless your interlocutor is incorrigibly self-centered, eventually your turn will come to explain that you write, and these are the kinds of things you write, for these kinds of companies. Professionals accustomed to networking have this down pat; it’s easy to tell whether they’re at ease with it. Work something personal into your elevator speech, so that I know whether you’re the kind of person around whom I want to spend time, whether it’s the 10 minutes before the presentation starts or nine innings.

1 Networking Don’t

And because I haven’t completely suppressed my professional tendency to focus on the negative, here’s something I recommend you NOT do:

Don’t expect to land a new client.  It’s a networking event, not a bazaar. Don’t go slinging business cards like confetti, stubbornly convinced that you’re going to land a client that day or bust. Focus on what you’ll learn in the presentation, whom you’ll meet, and whether you’ll have a laugh or two. It’s a much easier mindset to take into a mixer.

Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack…

John White of venTAJA Marketing posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it.

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Don't market to me, tell me a story.

People won’t read all the way through your 250-word press release, but they will read your 1000-word story. Can your marketing communications writer deliver a story for you?

 

Susan Straight, professor of creative writing at University of California at Riverside, posted an editorial in the Los Angeles Times:

Over the years, some people have said to me that it’s frivolous to teach writing — compared with a practical skill like auto mechanics or biology or engineering. But I say that each of my students who learned to tell a story, who taught someone else how to tell a story, who read a story and thought about it and kept it inside until its meaning was clear, learned something vital. The world runs on stories. It is how we humans survive.

What I tried to give them, and what I hope to give my students this fall, is the power that comes with the freedom to write about themselves, to tell their own stories and the stories of their communities, populated by people they know, real or imagined.

Can you believe that, as a marketing manager, it is part of your job description to start a conversation with your prospects by telling a story?

How else are you going to do it, and not turn them off? To paraphrase Susan, “your marketing effort runs on stories. It is how your company survives.”

When you hire a marketing communications writer, ask for a story among the writing samples. Case studies and customer success stories are fertile ground for this, but not all case studies make it to the promised land of good stories.

Three marketing managers are walking down a road in Texas when they come to a bridge over a creek…

John White of venTAJA Marketing posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it.

photo credit: ardenswayoflife

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While most job-seekers rely on a résumé to describe who they are and where they’ve been, professional marketing communications writers often prefer a marketing piece more akin to a brochure.

Do you ever ask for a freelance writer’s résumé? What for?

Most freelance writers don’t deal in résumés. In some large companies, the function of hiring a freelance writer ends up in Human Resources, where the starting point for everything is a résumé. This is especially likely if the writer is a sole proprietor billing against a personal Social Security number.

As a marketing manager, getting a résumé from a freelance writer may strike you as a square peg in a round hole. After all, a writer is either:

1. freelance
2. full-time
3. pseudo-freelance while looking for full-time
4. your cousin

If he’s #2 or #3, he’ll have a résumé because he’s in the mood for a job. (Don’t hire him if he’s #4; I guarantee you’ll regret it by the next family gathering.) If he’s #1, he usually hangs out his shingle in other formats:

• E-brochure – The kind of thing you’d expect to see on a Website, with statements of capabilities and services offered. These have the stigma of being “not what Web 2.0 is about,” but how else can you as a marketing manager figure out whether you’re dealing with a writer or a refrigerator repairman? A tastefully executed Services page on a Website or blog readily answers the question, “Is there some chance you can solve my business problem?”
• Portfolio of writing samples – Unless he’s been writing top-secret papers for the intelligence community all of his professional life, the writer should have samples and be prepared to display them. If you don’t see them on his site, ask for them. Challenge the writer to show you something that is similar to what you need written; however, don’t shut the door just because you don’t see the 6-page white paper on interferometric modulation that you want him to clone for your company. You may need to assess the writer’s ability to digest a new topic and deliver a good technology essay based on it. Which leads us to…
• Testimonials – Referrals and endorsements from any marketing communications writer’s other clients should leave you comfortable that he will do what he says he’ll do – the cornerstone of any business relationship – and write the paper that you need. If for some reason he has no references and you still want to work with him, you can always try…
• Your network – He may know somebody you know and trust, and perhaps that’s enough of a shingle for you. There’s a lot of value in your network and the trusted relationships you have, and a connection like this may be all the writer needs to market himself. Some writers don’t bother with marketing material, samples or testimonials at all because their own network connects with yours, bringing all the work they can handle right up to their door. These people certainly don’t need a résumé.

In the context of hiring a freelance writer, these four formats go much further towards demonstrating to you his ability to solve your problem than a résume does.

John White of venTAJA Marketing posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it.

photo credit: SOCIALisBETTER

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When you hire a marketing communications writer, you’ll need to put some paperwork in place. Professional writers have these items ready and are prepared to send them promptly.

“Send me a contract,” you tell the marketing communications writer, once you’ve decided you like the cut of his jib.

It should be a bit more granular than that. It’s possible to put everything you need into a single contract, but that’s rather unwieldy. Keep in mind these 5 items when kicking off your relationship with a marketing writer:

• Proposal/Statement of Work – Before you sign a contract, you should get a statement of the work to be done. This sets out rather concretely what the writer is going to do for you and by when he will do it. (Don’t expect many details as to how he’s going to write your white paper or brochure; that’s up to him.) You should review the proposal and ensure that it makes sense to you, adding/editing/deleting language as necessary.
• Contract – The role of the contract is not to help us sue each other if it comes to that; contracts are to remind me of what I said and what the writer said, because memory and written notes are not always perfect. Most professional writers have their own contract, and if I have the choice, I’ll use theirs because they’re generally simple. Contracts from the corporate  side may be long, and that’s not a problem, but in some corporate contracts the terms are biased too strongly against the writer, so you may end up working with just a purchase order.
• Non-disclosure Agreement (NDA) – You’ll expose the writer to proprietary information. I can’t guarantee you’ll be glad you put an NDA in place, but it’s an effective way of telling the marketing writer that there’s a confidential aspect to what you’re telling him. Give the writer extra points if he has his own bilateral – the mutuality is important – NDA and offers to use it in your relationship.
• W-9 – This IRS form gives the writer’s tax identification number (Social Security number or Employer Identification Number).  The writer doesn’t need this, but you do.  Kudos again to the writer who has it signed and ready to send to you or your Accounting department.
• Down Payment Invoice – This is optional and negotiable. I don’t mind it when a writer asks for a down payment, because it’s a card I can play if his schedule suddenly starts slipping or he stops returning my calls: “I gave you a good-faith down payment and this is the thanks I get??!!”) A professional writer will let you know ahead of time that he’s going to ask for the down payment.

It sounds like a Big Bunch o’ Paper – and he hasn’t written a single word of marketing content for you yet – but any business relationship worth putting in place is worth putting in place correctly. I’d rather work with a marketing writer who has all these items in place and can send them to me preemptively, than have to scurry around the company and bundle them up myself.

And, if you’re aspiring to a paperless office, you’ll be glad to know that you and the writer can move all of these back and forth – including signatures – without ever using a printer. Between digital signatures on PDF (free), PayPal (2.9%) and electronic funds transfer (free at most banks), you and the writer can do it all without paper.

John White of venTAJA Marketing posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it.

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When you meet marketing communications writers in networking situations, here are 5 useful questions for qualifying them.

Believe it or not, freelance marketing writers do get out in the wild from time to time, where, if you’re shopping for writers, you can hire them.

You may encounter them at chamber of commerce meetings, industry get-togethers and networking mixers for your profession. Note that they don’t frequent the same venues as most technical writers or even copywriters. Some of them fancy themselves closer to the people whose custom they seek than to their colleagues and peers.

Still, they all want work, and they may even want it from you. Here’s a sequence of questions you can pose to determine whether to short-list the writer who approaches you in the wild:

1. “What do you write?” This is the first hurdle. Regardless of his industry or specialty, you want to know what kind of content the marketing communications writer generates. If you’re a product manager or an engineer who needs a white paper, and the answer comes back “direct mail copy and press releases,” this is a bit of a stretch. Or, if you need a grant written, and the answer is “case studies and LinkedIn profiles,” you’d better keep looking.
2. “Are you freelance?” Don’t forget that many agencies and companies have their own in-house staff of writing talent. There are freelancers who work for agencies, and that’s not an obstacle to your hiring them, but if they work as employees anywhere, they won’t likely have time to dedicate to your projects when push comes to shove.
3. “Do you have a card?” Asking for a card is just an expression of interest, not a tacit commitment to hire. You can’t judge a book by its cover, but I recommend you judge a writer by her card. A serious writer has a serious card. If it’s flimsy, or it reads “vistaprint.com” on the back, then you’re probably holding the card of an unsuccessful or fledgling writer. Maybe that’s all your budget can support, but know what you’re getting into. If she says, “I have a résumé,” that is NOT a business card; it means this person has not yet decided to make a living of freelance writing, and you should not yet decide to hire her. If she says, “I don’t have any cards with me,” then she’s an engineer – they never carry business cards with them (or are hopelessly stingy about giving them out).
4. “Do you have a Website or a blog?” A blog is the easiest thing in the world to put up nowadays; a small Website is the second-easiest. This question is another way of gauging the seriousness of the writer. If your needs will tolerate a good writer who is clueless about visibility on the Web – are there any left? – then don’t worry about the answer to this question. Otherwise, visit the site with measured expectations; it’s not going to look like disney.com, but it should satisfy your basic curiosity.
5. “Where can I see your writing samples and clients?” Frankly, hoisting lots of writing samples onto a site is rather laborious, so you may have to content yourself with e-mail attachments. Once I hired a writer who had NO electronic samples – he mailed me an envelope of printouts – but I needed his subject matter expertise. Note that there is a bad reason for having no writing samples: The writer is just getting started or is dabbling. Note also that there are good reasons for having no samples: The clients have so “enhanced” the writer’s work with typographical and other errors that the writer no longer feels any ownership, or the writer has written pieces which the client has not released externally.

In short, most real marketing communication writers have:

• a card with an address on it
• a phone that isn’t the house phone
• a Web site or a blog with occasional updates
• examples of their work
• a client list

In addition, most really professional marketing communication writers have:

• a compelling piece on why you should hire them
• a social media presence (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Ning, etc.) that demonstrates a following
• endorsements from clients

The kind of writer with which you want to do business DOES NOT have:

• excuses for any of these things

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• thinks about your content and sends you a bag of suggestions
• gives you freebies
• does what she says she’ll do
• asks to be on your newsletter distribution lists

Landmine:

• goes talking to people in your organization when he shouldn’t
• overwrites or ignores your changes
• never really seems to understand your industry or technology

How do you make sure that you hire the first kind of writer and not the second?

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Here’s a shortlist, happily unencumbered by research but underpinned by years of dealing with writers.

1. Go dark. How about those writers who “run silent, run deep,” don’t return your calls or e-mail, and pop back onto radar when you least expect it? Are you breathlessly relieved to hear from them again, or put out?
2. Overturn your edits. You spend two hours revising a draft and changing text, then get the next draft back with most of your comments unincorporated and no explanation from the writer.
3. Pull an end-run on you. Maybe they contact somebody else in your department without your knowledge, or send e-mail to one of your customers without copying you. This is felony-dumb behavior.
4. Tell you your business. You and your team have decided how you want to use the content you’ve hired the writer to produce. The writer may suggest additional options, but only a bad writer will tell you that you’re off message or pushing a rope or missing opportunities. That’s what marketing and PR consultants are paid to evaluate.
5. Avoid discussions about money. You’re a businessperson with a budget and a boss and a finance department and a recession on your back, not to mention the need to publish content. Isn’t it helpful to you to deal squarely with a writer about things like hourly rates, fixed bids, late payments and when you can get her the check? Sure, not everybody is Howard Hughes, but these are loose ends you don’t want to leave untied. It’s easier when the writer meets you on the level about them.

These and other sins generally boil down to two factors: communication and professionalism. Writers who have mastered these lost skills of business are an asset.

The others are a pain in the…

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A White (Paper) Elephant

One reader writes that a CPA hired him to write a white paper.

Why would a CPA need a white paper? Isn’t that like writing an annual report for a hot dog vendor?

Here’s the story:

I did a feature story on my CPA for a neighborhood paper a couple of years ago and he still keeps it on the receptionist’s counter for people to see as they come in. He wants me to do more work for him.

I saw him a week ago and I mentioned some research I’d done on writing a white paper. His eyes got quite large and he told me he was interested in a white paper for his business, so we’re meeting tomorrow so that I can outline what I think I can do for him.

Any thoughts on what I should do next? I haven’t a clue how to do this without it looking like a complete experiment.

A white paper for a CPA? Sounds like a stretch to me, unless it’s Deloitte, or unless the CPA has some kind of how-to in mind. Have you ever met a CPA with the time to devote to providing material for a white paper, let alone to reviewing it? I’d be surprised if the average CPA uses white papers. It sounds to me like writing a white paper for a grammar school: Overkill and a bad match.

I suggested the writer browse the sites of a few other CPAs of similar size and see what kind of content they’re putting up (case studies, checklists, strategies, quick takes), then ask which kind of content the client wants to pursue. This would serve three purposes:

1. It would demonstrate that the writer is more interested in the CPA’s overall content picture than in scoring an engagement.
2. It would keep the CPA focused on bite-sized content better matched to his ability to commit to the project.
3. It would save the writer from delivering a white (paper) elephant that nobody really needed.

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