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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 [...]
In a customer interview, your marketing communications writer can get more out of interviewees or subject matter experts if she can make them think. Years ago, my boss at the time, a VP of marketing, gave me the secret to working with our infuriating, inscrutable, mercurial CEO: You’ve got to make him think. Frankly, I [...]
The last time you hired a writer for a white paper, did you have all of the information ready for her or not? Think about three scenarios before you contact – let alone hire – the writer: Ducks in a row You already have available all of the relevant material the writer will need. It [...]
“We need you to interview the VP of marketing at Zog Systems and write up a case study on how they use our software tools,” said the product manager. To me. “But if you want a technical case study, why interview the VP of marketing?” “He’s the interview we can get. Make it work.” Now, [...]
When you hire a writer to interview a subject matter expert (SME) or a customer, you have a bit of work to do on both sides of the relationship. Tell the writer about the interviewee’s specialty and personal characteristics, the kinds of information to elicit, and what you want out of the interview. If I [...]
Review loops rarely go fast enough for me. I spend a lot of time reminding – “pestering” is a less compassionate way of putting it – reviewers to turn copy around, because writers need time to incorporate changes, and some reviewers forget that until the eleventh hour, then expect final copy in no time flat. [...]
Corporate life is one slide deck after another. The success of a marketing manager is often measured by how well we design, organize and circulate them. There’s no denying, though, that most slide decks – pardon me for avoiding the trademarked term, “P****P***t,” from the company in Redmond – are pretty dry. There’s also no [...]
Creative brief checklist item #8: Put some ketchup on those fries. “Ketchup on fries” is the fast-food equivalent of putting personality in your writing. Does your company want that or not? On which pieces? White papers and position papers are notoriously devoid of personality. “Get the facts down, persuade the reader to see things in [...]
A fellow marketing manager – let’s call her Matilda – was stuck between the rock of her obligation to product managers to generate technical white papers and the hard place of an engineering group with little confidence in her ability to come up with meaty content. This is not uncommon (you should pardon the double [...]
