I subscribe to Fierce Wireless. Every day, they send me a free newsletter with wireless industry news. Big names – Cisco, Ericsson, AT&T, Nokia – sponsor the newsletter, so every week or so I get email with an ad.

I don’t mind an ad, but I do mind lousy copy in an ad.

And I really mind a datasheet that somebody mistakenly used as an ad.

The wrong copy for email

Twice in a week I received a sponsored email through Fierce Wireless from the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company (not its real name), an outfit that certainly knows a thing or two about marketing.

The email reads something like a product announcement, with lots of jargon-crammed bullets describing capabilities, features and benefits. It tells me all about active network abstraction and an XML-based Broadband Query Language (BQL) API.

I don’t care about this stuff.

I might care, if the copy talked about the problems that afflict people who need it. But the copy doesn’t even give me that chance.

The copy does mention (twice) that service providers and other network operators can now upgrade. But it doesn’t tell them why they should care.

The wrong email for the audience

Obviously, I’m not a network operator, so I shouldn’t have received this message. It was the wrong email for such a broad audience. It was wasted on me.

But it really didn’t have to be.

People are going to see your marketing communications – white papers, case studies, Web content, newsletters, blog – whether you intend those people as the audience or not.

At the very least, a poorly targeted impression should still help you as a marketing manager to build your brand. Your copy shouldn’t turn potential acquaintances off in a hailstorm of features and benefits.

Don’t put out dull copy. You never know where it’s going to land. Or whom you’re going to turn off when it does land.

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: foxypar4

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Can you imagine business life without a Web presence? How would you tell your story and do content marketing? How would new customers find you and existing customers follow you? What would you do if you couldn’t say, “Yes, let’s put that on the Website”?

It’s nearly inconceivable for most marketing managers, of course. When was the last time you tried unsuccessfully to find a business online, or heard one of your peers say, “We don’t have a Website yet”? It takes one back to the mid-1990s.

What? No Website?

Would it surprise you that many of the small businesses you’ve visited in the last month have no Website? Or that those business owners don’t feel that they need one?

In “Less than Half of Small Biz Have Sites,” MarketingCharts points out that

Less than half (45%) of small businesses have websites, according to data analyzed by online form builder Formstack. Formstack defines a small business as having maximum annual sales of less than $5 million.

A survey from Discover Credit Cards found that, although small businesses are beginning to embrace e-commerce, less than half of small businesses surveyed (2007: 33%; 2009: 45%) have a Website.

You’ve been in plenty of <$5-million businesses lately: day care centers, shoe repair shops, liquor stores, barber shops, corner groceries. Did they seem odd or unprofitable because they don’t have a Website? They have credit card relationships, according to Formstack and Discover, and cell phones and maybe even e-mail.

But they think that their business does not currently need a Website (41% of those without one), think it would cost too much money (19%), think it would cost too much time (16%) or think it would be too complex (9%).

Many corner markets, dry cleaners, bakeries and other mom-and-pop operations have enough neighborhood foot traffic that they really don’t need the Internet to turn a profit.

What must that be like?

Information cost and the Web

Why do Websites exist? Why do the marketing managers who run them and the marketing writers who populate them have jobs?

It’s because there is an information cost associated with getting buyers and sellers to find each other. Sellers create Websites and generate content in order to lower that cost to just a few clicks.

Isn’t it funny that such a large percentage of today’s buyers and sellers still find each other without incurring those costs, and without using a Website to lower them?

Could you go back to marketing without a Website? How would you do it?

*With apologies to Alfonso Bedoya, who had the privilege of delivering a similar but far more eloquent line in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948).

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: Maurice Koop

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Your keyword basket contains the terms people use most frequently to find you. Be sure to share it with your marketing communications writers.

Have you spent time and/or money researching the terms that people use to find your blog and Website, your “keyword basket?” Do you realize that you can pump these terms into the white papers, case studies, articles and presentations you hang out on the Web as well?

Your marketing communications writers should have access – and maybe even input – to the keyword basket that results from your search engine optimization efforts. They should be creating content that judiciously uses these keywords to help the pieces get found on the Web and draw more visitors to your site. Keywords aren’t just for stuffing into your <meta> tags, after all.

This occurred to me while I read a Stephanie Tilton article, “Buyer Personas: How to Deliver Relevant Content to B2B Buyers“. In the same conversation during which you tell writers about the piece you want them to deliver, you should describe the persona of the ideal reader AND you should talk about keywords of importance in the piece.

Of course, keyword baskets are still a novel concept to some marketing managers. I can think of three companies that are keyword basket cases because of how they handle – or don’t handle – their keywords. Here are the scenarios and how to avoid ending up in them yourself:

1. Company A doesn’t have a keyword basket at all. It has done an admirable job of growing business through sales rather than through marketing, so it hasn’t paid much attention to whether people find its content, let alone how they find it. The Webmasters have stuffed a few words into the <meta> tags on the home page, but there’s no concentrated, ongoing effort to assemble and maintain a keyword basket.
2. Company B has a well-oiled marketing machine behind it. This is a company whose Web team meets weekly to plan and work on a fabulous Web infrastructure for shooting content in huge salvos from cannon on the roof. The team disgorges disparate, technical content in an orderly manner week after week, but is wrapped around the axle when it comes to its SEO strategy. “People will find us,” the team believes, even though it could easily distill keywords from its content and analyze them from Web statistics.
3. Company C has a keyword basket that it gladly shares with writers, but it’s monotonous. The company stuck to the short, fat, dumb terms that drive 70% of visitors to their site, while ignoring finer, more subtle terms. The keywords in the basket are little more than permutations of the half-dozen or so words that most people would associate with its line of business. This makes for a simple basket, but not for very effective use in white papers or case studies, because almost all of the content from everybody in the category contains the terms. The basket is missing long-tail terms that describe in greater detail the nuances and unique value proposition in the company’s services.

Is your company a keyword basket case? What can you do about 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.

photo credit: Marshall Astor

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I was pleased to see that client Xiam Technologies was making excellent (re-)use of their white paper, “Make It Easy on Me – 3 Ways Operators Can Use Personalization To Give Customers What They Want On The Mobile Internet,” the fruit of our collaboration this past summer.

Xiam is using the white paper as a content-lead into msearchgroove, a knowledge portal on mobile search, mobile advertising and social media.

Personalization is also a topic Colm Healy — CEO of Xiam Technologies, a Qualcomm subsidiary providing discovery and recommendations solutions to mobile operators — will examine in a series of thought leadership contributions on MSG beginning later this week.

The first in the series will outline the key takeaways of the company’s white paper, titled “Make It Easy For Me: 3 Ways Operators Can Use Personalization To Give Customers What They Want On The Mobile Internet.”

Content like white papers, case studies and technical articles is rich in SEO-potential and industry authority. Why restrict it to the corral of your Website when you can give it away and get it to roam the plains of the Web, seeding your brand? (Tip of the hat also to msearchgroove, who obviously sees the potential for leverage.)

Never forget the Content Buffet. Xiam is one of those laying out a rich spread.

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: KVDP

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Before you try to write witty corporate or marketing content, know your ideal reader intimately. Otherwise, don’t even bother.

Witty? Says who?

Well, that’s really what it all gets down to, then, isn’t it? Who says your writing is witty? And who gives him/her the authority to judge it?

“Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth,” wrote Archimedes, and if you have been writing for very long at all, you know exactly how to paraphrase him:

Describe to me the ideal reader, and I will make him laugh.

It is, of course, your ideal reader who deems your writing witty. The more you know about that person, the more you can appeal to his sense of humor. If you don’t understand what makes that ideal reader tick, how can you expect him to read what you’ve written and find it engaging?

Witty content in a business context is a rarity, almost as rare as witty content about Catholicism. But consider IBM’s series of deadpan “Art of the Sale” videos, or just about any nun joke. The essence of their wittiness is The Great Unexpected, and you too can take advantage of that essence.

Consider a few content channels in our Web 2.0 world, and their likely receptiveness to witty writing.

Wit in Corporate Writing – Maybe

• Blogs - If you’re reading a blog, you deserve what you get. You expect to derive some eventual value or information, but the channel is so informal that you could land on a real gem of inspiration in a hilarious wrapper. I think this is the best place to start. And, when your blog is new and undiscovered, you can write just about anything you want, secure in the knowledge that nobody will be reading it. Yet.
• Customer success stories – Depending on the customer and the success (and the customer’s lawyers), you might be able to make this work. Your reader would be deep in The Great Unexpected when he came across a closing line like “We liked working with Acme’s new line of optical routers, and we have a good relationship with them. We just need to figure out what to do with all this extra pizza.”
• Web pages – Here is another place where witty content can thrive. Imagine an organization that describes certain aspects of itself and its history with good-natured self-deprecation. It would be a breath of fresh air, like hearing a head of state say something funny. Most organizations relegate such content to blogs, though.

Witty Corporate Writing Need Not Apply

• White papers – Face it: even with the evidence as you lay it out, these are an attempt to get ideal readers to think for themselves and draw their own conclusions at a certain point in the sales cycle. Wit in a white paper would probably feel like bumps on a smooth road. I would like to read a white paper infused with wit, but I cannot imagine what it would look like.
• Annual reports - Probably not fertile ground for wit. If you publish an annual report, your ideal readers are analysts, investors, chartered accountants and people who will drop your stock like a hot potato at the first sign of The Great Unexpected. Still, if your stock has already tanked this year, what do you have to lose?
• Social Media answers (e.g., LinkedIn, Yahoo! and other collaborative forums) – I’m not convinced that anybody who posts questions in these is really interested in the answers, which means that the ask-er is probably not your ideal reader. If you want to turn your wit loose on the answer-ers, however, you might get noticed.
• Twitter - Can you be witty in less than 140 characters? Will anybody care? One fellow has over 900,000 followers, but I don’t know where he’s leading them (us, really), if anywhere.
• Press releases – Don’t even bother. Journalists are always under pressure and they’re looking for extractable facts, not wit. If you want to flex your wit on these ideal readers, take them out to lunch sometime.
• Brochures, sales collateral – Again, you’re asking for trouble. By default, these pieces get used when casting a wide net, and it’s too difficult to define the ideal reader.

In short, if you don’t know your ideal readers or can’t get enough information on them, you’re skating on thin ice by trying to use wit. But when you do know about them and what will appeal to them, give wit a chance.

As usual, I’m happy to be proved wrong. Send me samples of witty corporate and marketing communications.

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: nukeit1

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Social media has been front and center for most marketing managers this year. Don’t overlook basics, though: You still need decent marketing communications writing on your Web site.

The folks at MarketingProfs do a magnificent job of conducting webinars and providing material for marketing managers. For about $200/year, you can have your fill of very good content that makes you think and helps you support your business cases with upper management.

They hosted a webinar today called “Rewrite Your Website to Engage Customers and Inspire Their Trust” with Erin Anderson of Brain Traffic.

About 20 minutes into the presentation, I realized that I hadn’t heard “social media,” “Twitter,” “Facebook,” “reddit,” or anything related to the category. It was like coming up for air after being underwater for 90 seconds. I’ve become so inured to hearing about social media over the last year that it actually seemed anomalous NOT to hear about it in a marketing presentation.

Good Writing for Websites

When you hire a marketing communications writer, you expect him to know and implement the kinds of things Erin emphasized in her back-to-the-barre presentation.

• Base your content on the right questions.

• • “What do I want to tell you?” becomes “What do you want to know?”
  • “What do I want you to understand about me?” becomes “What are you trying to accomplish?”
  • “What do I want you to do?” becomes “What do you need to feel comfortable and smart?”
  • “How can I make you care?” becomes “What do you care about…really?”
• Make your content useful, usable, findable and engaging.
• Top ten tips for good Web writing, including:
  • Get out of your reader’s way.
  • Give them the information they came for. Quickly.
  • Make your pages easy to scan; don’t worry about making them easy to read.
  • Read your text aloud.
  • Set up a review process, and make sure you’re not your own editor.

It’s easy to overlook guidelines like these in your headlong rush to dominate the blogosphere or monetize your SEO campaign or out-tweet your competitors.

Make sure your marketing communications writer isn’t overlooking them.

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: Lambtron

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What about optimizing your content for your Ideal Reader, though? It’s easy to fill your Website or blog posts with text written around keywords you’ve pulled straight out of Google’s Adwords Tool or Wordtracker.

But are you throwing out the baby with the bathwater when you focus more on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) than on RLPs (Real, Live Persons)?

Search Engine Optimization Is…

A potential business partner in Asia unveiled new Web content. “I would appreciate your thoughts on our site,” she wrote me.

I had a look at the site. It’s obvious to me that they hired a marketing writer to talk about the company’s features, benefits and “core competencies” (yecch). It’s an atrocious throwback to the days when the Web was just an electronic brochure onto which we all heaped our specialties and tried to shout the loudest. I can’t stand it, and might even consider it a liability if I were evaluating her company against her competitors.

Nevertheless, search engine optimization is in love with her Website.

• The copy is sufficiently filled with keywords to demonstrate authority (q.v. Brian Clark), though not oppressively.
• The site is well structured, including sitemaps on each page.
• The pages weigh in at the optimal 250-500 words each.
• There are links within the site for more detailed explanations of the company’s process and technology.

At least for the time being, search engine optimization is quite happy that they’ve submitted this site. It will need refreshed content before long, so that the search engines do not become bored with it, but otherwise, it embodies the main principles of SEO quite well. (I wish I could give you the link, but I consider it bad form to criticize publicly in this manner.)

Ideal Reader Optimization Is…

Do you know what your readers want from you? Do you know what they want to read? Are you giving it to them?

It’s easy to write about what your company does; it’s vastly harder to write about what your audience wants to read, because you have to know them well, or ask them what they want. Then you have to believe them when they tell you, then you have to hire a writer who can tell your story in a way that they want to read.

What’s the easiest thing in the world to write? A letter to someone you care about. Why? Because you know how to tell your story through filters that mean something to him or her. You already have a relationship in place, and the letter becomes one more piece of that relationship.

First One, Then the Other

You need to build your online presence around keywords and Search Engine Optimization. They cast the wide net that brings you readers, followers, future customers and fellow travelers.

Once you’ve hit your stride and have a mutual relationship with a body of readers, you pursue Ideal Reader Optimization. You stop worrying about embedding keywords in your titles and h1 tags and using “2-3 keyword phrases 2-3 times per page.” You come up with better titles that capture people’s imagination in a way that keywords cannot. You will lose some of the original audience, but that’s how it goes.

So, what are you hiring your marketing communications writer to do: Search Engine Optimization or Ideal Reader Optimization?

photo credit: kainr

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1. “This Paper Is a (Keyword) Basket Case.”

“No one, after lighting a lamp, puts it away in a cellar nor under a basket, but on the lampstand, so that those who enter may see the light.” -Luke, 11:33

When you hire a writer to tell your story, do you want to hide it under this metaphorical basket? Of course not, but you should hire a writer who will run it through your keyword basket so that those who enter your Website may find your story.

Your keyword basket is a list of the words and phrases people enter to search engines to research your products and services.

Keep in mind two important uses for keyword baskets:

Keywords inside your content

If you don’t have a keyword basket, hurry up and get one. I won’t go into all of the science behind this, but I’ll point you to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. It’s free, and you can spend an idle afternoon getting a yen for how prospects may find you on the Web. Once you know the words and phrases they use, you can begin to build a basket of them.

If you do have a keyword basket, share it with your writer. You do not want your content artificially jam-packed with these keywords, because the resulting copy will appear awkward and forced. However, a good writer knows that and will sprinkle the keywords prudently throughout your case studies, white papers, Web content and articles.

Be sure to hire writers who are amenable to this practice. If they balk, or if there is no easy way to work keywords into the text, then consider the other important use.

Keywords outside your content

You can create text to describe your content, and your writer should be amenable to this as well. The high-end term for this is “metadata,” or “information about information.”

Typical examples:

1. Search text for images. The photographer of the image above labeled it with “Craft, Basket, Wicker, Making, Craftsperson, Willow Tree, Art, Craft Product, Human Hand, Manufacturing…” because text is what makes search go ’round. Without these keywords, nobody could find her photograph.
2. Metadata in PDFs. Search engines can find PDFs, not only by scanning the text in them, but also by referring to the keywords field. When you generate PDFs, edit them (Document Summary in Adobe Acrobat Pro) and drop keywords into that field before you publish the documents.
3. Meta-tags in HTML pages. Is your Web team taking advantage of the keywords and description tags in your HTML headers? The former helps people find your pages (to some extent) and the latter contains the description they see in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

So the best way to ensure that your content doesn’t get hidden under a basket is to have your writers deliver content that is a complete (keyword) basket case.

<meta name="keywords" content="write white paper, write case study, write technical articles, write web content, technical white paper, localization consulting, translation consulting">
<meta name="description" content="You've got a good technology story. venTAJA Marketing helps you tell it. White papers, case studies, Web content and technical articles that result in ACTION.">

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