“So I have good news and bad news,” the director of marketing started off.

Just when I thought we were out of the tunnel on this campaign…

“The good news is that we’ve shown an early draft of the business-benefits piece to our CEO, and he quite likes it. In fact, he himself wrote a paper for a C-level peer at one of our customers a few months back that draws the business case around our product, and he’d like to provide it as material for our project.

“Obviously, that’s also the bad news.”

He laughed. I laughed. The agency laughed.

Drat.

Managing executive expectations for marketing content

As a kid, I spent a lot of time at Milne Brothers Bike Shop on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, California. Mr. Jenkins had a sign on the wall in the service department out back that read:

Labor Rates

$5.00/hr.

$7.50/hr. if you watch

$12.00/hr. if you help

I’ve thought about that as a model for managing customer expectations and involvement, but I doubt most businesses would get very far with it.

The point is that people who do know what they’re doing, don’t generally welcome the involvement of people who merely may know what they’re doing.

So consider these levels of involvement for the executives of your client-companies:

1. “Let me make sure we’re on the same page.” – When, as in this case, the CEO has devoted some time, thought and potentially high-value perspective to his own material, you cannot afford to have your marketing content run afoul of how your CEO sees things.
1. It’s probably better if you can convince the exec to let you review his material, instead of having him review yours.
2. “Let me just approve what you’ve written.” – This is smart. One of my favorite CEOs did this with all the content we generated beyond datasheets and product briefs. He never rewrote our copy, but he had his fingers on its pulse, and we knew that he had the ultimate say.
3. “Let me help.” – This is a pain for everybody. Execs rarely have time to help on these projects, and they become bottlenecks, if well-intentioned bottlenecks. Writing a paper or a thought-piece with a VP or C-level exec is usually very difficult. You’re better off recording her at a conference and turning that into a paper.
4. “Let me butt out.” – Optimal for most parties concerned, in the short run. Really, though, you should try to make your work visible to the execs, if only to justify your effort.

The sound marketing director

“I’m just kidding,” continued the marketing director. “I plan to manage the process so that we can keep our campaign moving ahead without delays. The CEO told me he’d like to see the early direction of the piece, and I’ve told him that I would like to review the material he put together.”

Whew. Option 1.1.

“He wants to be in the loop on this piece. I think he’ll have useful input, and he’ll be receptive to our description of business benefits. It’s a win for us, so long as we manage the changes smoothly.”

The sound marketing manager can make things like this work well. How do you handle it when execs want to help?

John White of venTAJA Marketing is a marketing communications writer for technology companies. He posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it. Download his eBook, “10 Questions to Ask When Hiring Your Marketing Communications Writer.”

photo credit: Kelvyn Skee

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I don’t care what Google’s stock price is. They build an enterprise and reputation their way, and we build it our way. We’re not letting employees shoot from the hip in a blog post.

Nobody has said that to me, but it’s how I imagine a client in that position would think.

And, truth to tell, I haven’t fought the lawyers. I would stand nothing to gain and lots to lose.

As a marketing manager, you can crank out – or have a marketing communications writer crank out – blog posts that border on the fanciful. Face it: you’re in the business of imagination, and to keep the interest of your company’s followers, you may be tempted to “push it” every now and again. That’s because:

1. People want to read controversy – or at least opinions – in a blog. They look to a blog for a peek behind the curtains at what’s going on in your organization. That’s usually the antithesis of legal review.
2. The opinions they want to read do not include how great your products are. They want to know how you regard the market and especially your competitors. Legal review is not set up for that.
3. Legal review slows down the blogging process and can deprive timely posts of their edge. Mostly, though, that’s a good thing.

So you can gripe and moan that all your best stuff ends up on the cutting room floor because it was censored. But keep in mind that the responsibility of legal reviewers in the content creation process is to ensure that you avoid publishing things you couldn’t prove if you had to. These people are trained to assume that you will have to prove it someday, and they’ve been correct often enough that their role is a valuable one.

Don’t fight them. And if you do fight them, let them win. Someday you can be David Drummond, senior vice president and chief legal officer of Google, and raise as many hackles as he did last month in a blog post about Microsoft and Apple.

But until then, just tell the truth “and make it rhyme.”

John White of venTAJA Marketing is a marketing communications writer for technology companies. He posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it. Download his eBook, “10 Questions to Ask When Hiring Your Marketing Communications Writer.”

photo credit: Mike Willis

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What happens when you take over the marketing reins in a mid-sized technology company?

“There were a jillion case studies, blog posts, newsletter articles, white papers and collateral pieces in various stages of completion, from dream state to staging server,” one marketing manager moaned to me. “I needed a marketing communications writer to help me get through everything, but I didn’t want to dive in too deep with an unknown entity and run the risk of having to do most of the work myself.”

She was tempted by the retainer model of, say, $3,000 per month for an all-you-can-eat writer, so that she could simply queue up work and start seeing progress in short order.

Instead of embarking on an ambitious editorial calendar from top to bottom, she found a writer and picked three discrete, small projects for him to work on. She made progress, albeit incremental, on her to-do list and became more comfortable with the writer.

This approach can even work for big-ticket items like white papers. Break these projects into two deliverables: outline and draft. If the outline is a train wreck, you pull the plug and find a different writer. You make progress on the project, without incurring too much of the risk of working with a writer who is an unknown quantity.

I’d recommend that especially for PR and marketing agencies whose clients ask, “Can you write a white paper for us?” and who say, “Of course,” even if they know they’re going to have to outsource it. The clients are the ones with final say on the paper, and if the agency dives in with the wrong writer, it gets stuck in the middle between the two ends. Breaking a project like a white paper into smaller milestones just makes sense for them.

How do you start out with new marketing communications writers?

P.S. I’m also pleased to point to my guest-post this week on new realities for the beginning writer at Make a Living Writing. Drop by and have a look.

John White of venTAJA Marketing is a marketing communications writer for technology companies. He posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it. Download his eBook, “10 Questions to Ask When Hiring Your Marketing Communications Writer.”

photo credit: Radhika Bhagwat

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When you assign a piece to your marketing communications writer – even a writer with whom you’ve worked before – are you certain she can do it?

No, I mean really certain?

Be honest with yourself and you’ll acknowledge that of course you’re not certain.

Good for you, marketing manager.

The Wisdom of Insecurity

Philosopher Alan Watts wrote a book called The Wisdom of Insecurity. I’ve read it three times and still can’t remember anything except the title, but that’s all I really need to remember. And, although people all around you scream for figures on ROI, there’s a wisdom about the unquantifiable parts of your job that make you insecure, one of which is assigning a challenging piece to a writer.

I had a lively chat last week with local colleague Joseph White, who told me about marketing pieces he’s done for a manufacturer of ruggedized equipment in nuclear containment facilities.

“How did you know you could write about it?” I asked.

“Well,” he replied, “I had a university professor from Texas who once told me, ‘Back home in Texas we say that if you’re not in over your head, you’re probably not having much fun.’ I’ve always remembered that. I think it’s at the heart of good writing.”

Your writer faces some in-over-her-head on most of the pieces you assign, believe it or not. And, when she’s having the fun that comes from it, your content is the winner.

It’s Risky Because It’s Natural

We all try to avoid risk, of course, forgetting that it’s nature’s way of reminding us that we’re alive. But assigning a tough piece to a writer is just an extension of the risk and peril you incurred when you got out of bed that morning.

And don’t forget that the writer, too, incurs risk. You both have plenty to lose and plenty to gain. I think it’s a strong argument for working closely together, which is another way of saying “managed risk.”

A new client underwent rigorous ISO-certification with the express goal of turning it into a part of their unique value proposition. “Most of our customers develop very specialized products,” one of the partners explained to me, “so they ask us a lot about the quality and accuracy of our consulting services. After 30 years of doing this, we know that their real concern is that they can’t afford risk. It’s against nature to try to eliminate all risk – nobody can do that – but the ISO-certification shows them that we’re serious about managing it.”

So let your writer get in over his head. Manage the risk by working closely with him and ride that risk to new content. You’ll be the better marketing manager for it.

John White of venTAJA Marketing is a marketing communications writer for technology companies. He posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it. Download his eBook, “10 Questions to Ask When Hiring Your Marketing Communications Writer.”

photo credit: Paul Sapiano

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Jean, a marketing manager for a new client, sent me a creative brief for some Web copy. As I was finishing the copy, she sent another short paragraph for review.

“I tried to update the existing copy myself,” she explained, “but it doesn’t feel quite right to me. Can you have a look and send me any suggestions?” I agreed and she sent me the copy with her changes.

The original text must have been written by a comatose monk. Jean’s version was an improvement, but it wasn’t as catchy as Web copy could and should be. I started in on it and learned (re-learned, really) Lesson 1.

Lesson 1: Editing is harder than writing from scratch.

This is understandable, but it bears repeating, because many marketing managers lose sight of it. To edit your text, I have to suppress the way it makes sense to me to express the same idea. This is like simultaneously pushing air into a bottle of soda and sealing it with a cap; a single-function machine can do it very well, but most writers are not single-function machines.

So, I decided I’d do Jean one better: I’d clean up the copy she sent me, and then I’d also rewrite it from scratch and let her choose between the two. I know the subject matter well and couldn’t resist the temptation to impress a new client.

Enter Lesson 2.

Lesson 2: No good re-write goes unpunished.

“Why did you rewrite it?” Jean asked me on the phone. “I just wanted you to look at my text and make suggestions.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I cleaned up yours, the way I thought you wanted, then tried a completely different take on it, given what I know.”

“The problem is that there’s a lot you don’t know about this topic,” she said rather sternly. “Besides, there are political strings attached to the original copy, and I have to live with them. I can’t drop a re-write on them as if it were a birthday present. Don’t do this anymore, because it frustrates me.”

This drove home Lesson 3.

Lesson 3: Writers don’t write. They suggest.

Everybody likes options, right? Well, not really.

It takes time and mental energy for marketing managers to weed through options. It’s unlikely they’ll prefer A over B and C just like that; more likely, they’ll prefer A, but can we take a little bit of B and the last point in C and put them into A, then take out the sentence in A that doesn’t fit now, then…

Sometimes the marketing communications writer is a one-stroke wonder, who nails the concept succinctly and delivers copy that yields only a few requests for change. More often, the writer’s job is to:

1. absorb information from topic experts
2. suggest in print how the topic should be explained (a.k.a. write a draft)
3. incorporate seismic changes from the experts

It’s easier for marketing managers to decide how to add, edit or delete when they are dealing with a single draft (or suggestion).

Writers are better off impressing a new client by doing their homework and suggesting something solidly consistent with how they understand the product or service. Launching multiple arrows at the target may seem more artistic or generous, but it burdens the client with an unwanted decision.

It also punishes your hourly average.

John White of venTAJA Marketing is a marketing communications writer for technology companies. He posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it. Download his eBook, “10 Questions to Ask When Hiring Your Marketing Communications Writer.”

photo credit:U.S. Army

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Marketing communication writing projects live and die on review loops. Marketers like talking about what needs to be changed, but writers would rather see it in print.

Bigglehole, our staff writer, would like to weigh in on this topic, and respectfully directs these four reasons to clients, in the spirit of delivering to them the high-quality content they want.

This is easy, so I’ll get right to the point:

1. No ambiguity. That’s pretty obvious. If you strike the word “approach” and replace it with “solution,” then I know your preference and I can propagate it through all of the work I do for you. If you write, “Title needs to convey automakers’ sense of urgency,” then I know what you want me to change and how you want me to change it. When you put your comments and changes in writing, it shows me how you would like the piece to look if you were writing it, and that goes a longer way toward helping me get you what you want than if you just talk about it.
2. You have to do some of the work. It may seem a bit perverse, given that you’re paying me to write, but I like it when you put some work into this, too. The fact of the matter is that most writers don’t write; we suggest. The combination of our suggestions and your reactions results in a better finished product.
3. Makes things go faster. I’m for anything that accelerates the process of getting from project-start to project-end successfully. To the extent that written feedback gets your point across to me more efficiently, it helps ensure that you too want to keep things moving. As Alvy Singer (in “Annie Hall”) might have put it, the writer-client “relationship is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.” We don’t want that fate to befall your project.
4. It shows that you care. When you take the time to go through a draft with a red pen or revision marks, it shows me that I’m not working in complete isolation. When I see you working on the piece, it makes me want to put more work into it to match yours. Conversely, when you complain vaguely over the phone, it suggests to me that what I’m working on is not very high on your list of priorities.

Having said all that, Bigglehole concedes that some clients are more comfortable and adept at providing oral feedback than written comments. “As long as they let me record the conversation and charge extra for it, I can work that way. But it still doesn’t get as close to the client’s target as written comments do.”

John White of venTAJA Marketing is a marketing communications writer for technology companies. He posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it.

artwork credit: Charles Napier Hemy

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Even after you’ve hired the writer, writing projects don’t just happen. Somebody needs to move them along, and it’s usually your writer (if you’ve picked a good one).

Nothing works because you want it to. You have to make the damned thing work.

-Thomas Edison (I think)

I saw that several years ago in a quotation-of-the-day calendar, and it has always stuck with me.

It applies to writing, doesn’t it? Writers realize that good content doesn’t emerge from their pen or keyboard because they want it to; they have to make it come out.

On a larger scale, as a marketing manager you should know that few of the projects you commission – white papers, Web content, case studies, technical articles – happen because you want them to; you (or somebody) has to make them happen. Facts need checking, reviewers need reminding, editors need prodding, interviewees need birddogging, text needs proofreading, final versions need approving…

Who does most of this?

Would you believe your writer does?

There’s a lot more project management to business writing than most people – including writers – realize. There are also a lot of steps you take for granted inside the organization on the path from idea to a deliverable, and in a writing project, most of them end up in the writer’s purview because nobody else handles them in a timely manner otherwise.

Paul Lagasse posted recently on the diplomacy that freelance writers need to exercise when their management of a project pulls them into onsite client meetings. Most marketing managers value writers for the “bricks” of good content, while overlooking the “mortar” of good project management.

One more Edison quotation to wrap up:

I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.

Your organization’s content is no accident either, and sometimes it’s your writer who contributes the extra work to make the content happen.

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: wikimedia

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Writer on the wrong path?

White papers – or any long pieces – need structure, and you need to agree on the structure before you write the paper. Be sure your writer includes these elements in an outline.

How often do you get started down a path in your work, only to realize you have to backtrack and go down a different path? Is there anything more frustrating than discarding work you’ve already done and restarting it?

For example, your marketing communications writer interviews three subject matter experts for a white paper you’ve commissioned, then writes up the interviews and sends you a draft. You read it. You scream.

“No!!!” you holler. “This isn’t where I want this to go. We have to tear this down and start over.”

White paper draft gone astray

Here’s what can go wrong on a long piece when the writer just dives in and goes straight to the draft:

• Off-topic – “This isn’t what I wanted you to write about,” you complain. “I don’t want the paper to describe the history of the industry. I want it to describe our technology.”
• Off-fact – Does the draft cover the facts I want in it? Think Thomas More in Utopia: “Include nothing false, omit nothing true.”
• Off-message – The white paper supports an organization’s goal and message – thought leadership, lead generation, sales support – and each paragraph needs to move the reader in that direction. If I’m trying to build trust over time, don’t give me content that bellows “Buy Now!”

You need to see structure before you see the draft. A good writer will take care of that for you by first providing an outline.

White paper outline

Look for these four elements in the outline of a marketing or technical white paper:

1. Summary – Sometimes airily called “Executive Summary” – hey, we’re all executives now, so let’s get over this – this will tell readers what they’re going to get out of the paper, and in a draft it tells you what the writer understands about the subject. Frankly, most people would argue that draft-stage is too early for a summary, but it shows you which path your marketing communications writer intends to take the reader. If you don’t like it, this is a good time to let her know.
2. Main messages – Three (count ‘em) bullets in a box either just before or just after the Summary. Bullet 1 states the problem and why it costs customers time and money; bullet 2 mentions the inflection point, or why things are ripe for change; and bullet 3 vaguely describes the new solution and how it will help customers save time and money. The writer must get these right, and you must agree with them.
3. Bullets for the rest – A reasonably well thought-out series of bullets that build the argument yet give readers the impression that they’re drawing their own conclusions from facts you’re presenting. Be sure they include nothing false and omit nothing true.
4. For More Information (How to Follow Us) – Homework for you. The writer isn’t responsible for what you want readers to do once they’ve finished the paper; that’s your job. By including this in the outline, the writer is giving you time to talk to Customer Service or your sales team or your Web team and put the plumbing in place for readers who want to take the next step.

Isn’t this the kind of structure you want when you’re spending big money on a project like this? What do you put in place to keep your writer from going too far down the wrong path?

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.

photocredit: pfly

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Skeleton? Outline? Draft?

You and your marketing communications writer should agree on an outline for larger projects. It’s helpful for business purposes, but sometimes it’s a creative pothole.

Have you ever watched somebody hang a picture or organize a workbench in a way that worked, but was alien to you? “It would never have occurred to me to go about it that way,” you say. “I’d have started at the ends and worked inward, or measured first.”

An outline presents the same problem. Some reviewers just can’t work with a mere skeleton. They need the body and prefer the skeleton hidden.

Problems with outlines

If you’re a marketing communications writer doing a paper for me, I want you to send me some evidence that you understand what I’m trying to convey, and that you can organize the message in a way that will make sense to my ideal reader. If we wait until the full draft, you can be so far down the wrong path that it will cost us both too much time and money to get back on track. That’s why I want to see an outline.

But the solution to that problem usually introduces a few more problems:

• Outlines are like slide decks: long on bullets and short on real meaning. You raved about a presentation you saw at a conference last month and asked the speaker for a copy of the deck. You opened it and went through it later, but all of the presentation juice was gone. Worse yet, you showed it to a colleague who got nothing out of it. The same thing can apply to an outline: You have an underlying message in mind for the paper, but you can’t tell from the outline whether the writer gets it.
• What’s the right amount of detail to put in? The writer wonders, “How much detail do I have to write up to show that I get it? (If I get it?)” The writer also doesn’t quite know the amount that the marketing manager wants to read and has to wing it.
• Some writers think that outlines get in the way of organic writing, and they don’t think creatively within the confines of an outline. (Larry Brooks posted on this a few weeks back in regard to creative writing, and the point is valid for marketing copywriting as well.) The outline they deliver feels forced to both the writer and the reviewer. Drag.
• Maybe the reviewer just doesn’t get it. Like the example of hanging the picture or organizing a workbench, some people cannot look at an outline and make enough sense of it. They want a full story they can modify right away. They don’t want to see the skeleton at all.

Making an outline work

Here’s a hybrid solution: Have the marketing communications writer give you a skeleton, but with a head (or at least a hand).

Ask for the bulletized outline of points and sub-points that the writer intends to cover in the paper, then have her write a couple of summary paragraphs that will go at the beginning of the paper and set its tone. Or, if she doesn’t plan to include a summary, then ask for the conclusion along with the outline.

Either of these will synopsize the paper and give you an idea of where the writer plans to take the reader. Each of them is an opportunity to use important terminology (and SEO keywords), so you can correct the writer’s grasp and usage of terms that your company values.

When you as a marketing manager can see a completed head or hand, it builds your confidence in whatever else will go onto the rest of the skeleton.

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: billolen

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When you hire a marketing communications writer, you should expect a description of her method. Ask for it, and be sure it makes  sense to you.

You’re evaluating a marketing communications writer to do a white paper or a case study for you. “So, how do you do this?” you ask her. “What’s your writing process? What steps do you follow in writing a piece like this?”

You should get an answer that makes sense to you, and that doesn’t sound like a rambling, off-the-top-of-the-head proposal.

Here are 5 steps a professional may enumerate for your writing project. If the writer includes these, so much the better; if not, at least you’ll know what to ask for.

1. Review existing materials. A good writer is willing to perform some research on your industry and specialty. To save her time and ensure that she avoids material that will muddy the waters, you should point her to the basic information – Web sites, analysis, published reports – she’ll need to know to conduct a fruitful interview.
2. Interview – Assuming the task is to take what’s in somebody’s head and get it into print, the writer will need to conduct an interview with those somebodies. This is not a grilling, broadcast journalist-caliber interview, but one designed to get the subject matter expert talking. Perfect interviews are rare, and few experts are adept at imparting their information flawlessly, but a professional marketing communications writer can always get something writable out of an interview.
3. Outline – For a paper or a report, it’s important that the writer lay out the piece and let you verify that it makes sense to you. While it’s not so important in short pieces like brochures and case studies, long pieces need to guide readers down a path to explain and convince. You need to see the path the writer envisions and ensure that it’s where you want to guide those readers, and the outline is the best way to do that. Extra credit goes to the writer who fleshes out the outline, say, by writing the introduction or conclusion, so that you can see whether she has picked up your messaging correctly.
4. Drafts – Once you’ve approved the outline, the writer hangs text on it and produces a draft. Most of the battle should be in the first draft, which should result in something close to what you had in mind. Circulate this, get comments, reconcile them and get them back to the writer for a second draft. The writer gets extra credit if she introduces ideas and angles you hadn’t seen before. This is one of the big advantages of hiring an outside writer: you breathe your own exhaust day in and day out; a good writer who sinks her teeth into your business provides outside perspective.
5. Final review – After the final draft, there’s not much for the writer to do, but her job isn’t yet over, either. Most content requires layout (Web, print, InDesign, Quark), and that effort begins after the final draft. You should have your writer review the piece once it has emerged from layout to find and resolve any discrepancies between her final draft and the pre-publication piece. (Hint: There will almost always be some, intentional or otherwise.) This is a good chance for the writer to clean up final typo’s and tell you what looks right and wrong before you go live with it. (BTW, as I’ve posted before, most companies omit this step.)

Don’t go into the writing process blind. Good writers have a method and they can explain it in ways that will make sense to you.

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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