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 [...]
When you hire a marketing communications writer, her responsibilities should include a final, pre-publication look at the piece, just before the train leaves the station. Your responsibilities should should include giving her that opportunity. Marketing writers don’t write; they suggest. You don’t need to apologize for changes you make to drafts, but you owe it [...]
“We want to position ourselves as a thought leader,” your boss decides. “We need a white paper that will help set us apart from our competitors so that prospects and existing customers will really want to work with us.” It starts with The Event. Maybe you’ve undergone an internal transformation, and you now have a [...]
What kind of criticism do you give your editor-writer? What does he do with it? This paper starts out awful and goes downhill from there. I’ve never said that to a marketing writer, but it has a funny, ironical ring to it. I would chuckle as I clicked on “Send” to deliver news like that, [...]
It’s not easy to keep your content machine fed, is it? You’re finding out that providing valuable content to your readers really does take some work, doesn’t it? When you were a kid, responsible for the family dog, your mom would holler up the staircase, “Timmy! It’s time to feed the dog again!” You remember [...]
Have you ever had too much content? It’s a good problem, isn’t it? Like having too much champagne in the wine cellar, or an infinitely empty stomach at an all-you-can-eat buffet. What does a Content Buffet look like? Let’s say you have a recent, huge win: a landmark new customer a long-held strategic goal reached [...]
A marketing manager told me about a white paper gone awry. How many errors do you see in this chain of events? The VP of Marketing wanted a white paper and told the marketing manager what he wanted the title to be. The marketing manager called his regular copywriter and told him about the project. [...]
Continuing on the topic of white paper projects that didn’t go well, today I describe the second of two categories. Didn’t Go Well and Resulted in a Bad White Paper (or None at All) These situations are frustrating for everybody, and it’s hard to control the resulting damage. Warning signs: Wrong writer – Sometimes it’s [...]
Do you have any white paper projects in your files that didn’t go well? Mine fall into two categories, and I’ll post on the first one now. Don’t Go Well but Result in a Good White Paper These are like the basketball games in which you make mistakes, bad passes and poor shots, but you [...]
Sign up by RSS feed
