I love January 1^st! The noise of Christmas settles down and life promises to get back to normal— whatever that is! But the New Year brings new possibilities. It brings hope and the promises of new and not so new passions.

Flowers bring hope and promise too. Somehow, every January my flowers push their little buds through the soil once again. They reach out with tender green shoots, testing the air for readiness. Each minute of sunlight brings them more strength to push on, yet they are patient, knowing that it takes time to reach the prize of a beautiful blossom.

Sometimes, they experience setbacks along the way. An early frost, a hungry bug, or a misplaced foot can cripple the tender shoot. But, that doesn’t stop the journey. Never missing a step, the bud heals its injury and keeps growing towards that eventful day when it can explode in full bloom.

What lessons can we learn by watching the flower?

1. Have goals you can reach for. Blossoms come in all sizes and goals do to. Not every goal has to be a stretch goal, sometimes it’s just as important to knock things off the to-do list. How about finally writing that white paper sales has been clamoring for?

2.  Take a risk. It’s easy to talk ourselves into waiting for just the “right” moment. But the flower pushes its new shoot into the crisp January air, braving the possibility of frost. What new marketing tactic will you try?

3.  Start small and grow. If a flower waited until it had a blossom before it broke ground, it would never happen. Don’t put off the journey until you know everything. The joy is in the discovery. Look for simple things you can do to improve the effectiveness of your marketing program.

4.  Announce your journey. Just as the flower pushes through the soil to let us know it will bloom again, a good marketing team will collaborate on the marketing strategy and share in the goals. Announce your team’s intentions by publishing your marketing collateral assignments on a shared calendar.

5.  Plan for setbacks. Sometimes the soil isn’t right, the rains don’t come, the tender shoot gets bumped and broken. Though the growth may be slowed temporarily, it rarely stops. The flower works on healing the wound and getting back on track. Take actionable steps with you lessons learn.

6.  Celebrate accomplishments! The long journey finally produces the ultimate reward – the beautiful blossom. The flower shows off his accomplishment in all its glory with color and fragrance, encouraging other flowers to do the same. Don’t be afraid to share your victory – you just might inspire someone else.

7.  Give something to others. With your cup filled, it’s so much easier to give of yourself to others. Having reached the blossom, the flower produces seeds and fruits that give life to other creatures and spawn new flowers! To date, I have developed eight websites for no cost to some of my favorite non-profits, including Friends of Gold Butte. Some have since generated paid work!

Take a lesson from the flower and set your marketing program in motion now so that it can bloom and bring you rewarding results in 2012. Happy New year readers and be sure to have a little fun while you’re at it!

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

Think you won’t reach IT decision makers with social media? Think again! UBM’s 2011 Social Media and IT Marketing research shows that 69% of IT decision makers use LinkedIn and 44% use Twitter for professional use. And, 84% visit corporate blogs for professional purposes and one-third of those contacted the technology vendor for more information after visiting.

Turns out IT decision makers are social too! The majority use social networking to stay connected to co-workers and maintain their professional relationships, which are down slightly from last year. However, one of the largest and growing reasons is around their desire to make informed technology purchasing decisions.

For B2B marketers in the high-tech/software industry, this information is key in creating a social media strategy that addresses what these IT decision makers are looking for. Unfortunately, many B2B companies are still struggling to embrace social media as a marketing and lead generation tool. Additional studies show that over 60% say they have no staff dedicated to managing social media activities.

Social media activities such as blogging and the use of Twitter require almost daily attention. B2B marketers need to incorporate them into the overall strategy including the editorial calendar, yet be flexible enough to know when to change direction when business or technical trends shift.
Most marketers and content producers have a good understanding of what the IT decision maker needs in order to make influence the purchasing decision. However, many have not fully utilized the social media channel for distributing that content.

For those that don’t yet have the content that the IT decision makers are looking for, like data sheets, case studies, and white papers, social media may take a much lower priority. The IT decision maker is out there, already engaging with vendors, both passively and actively. B2B marketers cannot wait until all of the content is complete before incorporating social media into their marketing activities. They need to start where they are and grow both their social media channel experience and marketing content at the same time. They need to be available and found when IT decision makers go looking.

These geeks have gone social and they’re looking for you. Are you there?

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

It used to be that if you were selling technology, you talked to IT. They were the ones who understood and controlled the role of technology, and they knew how to select a product that would support the business needs and still fit within the technical architecture. Technology vendors typically only called on IT with messaging focused mostly on technology and not so much the business value.

Then things began to shift. The “consumerization of IT” put technology in the hands of everyone. Apps and technology crossed the barrier from consumer to enterprise. Employees use their personal devices for work productivity. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps meant for consumers are now being brought into the workplace.

Business users have become savvy about how to meet their own needs. At the same time, they were given budget responsibility for projects that included technology. Business users began to select and implement technology outside of IT—many doing so without even letting their IT department know until they were ready to toss it over to production. Technology vendors were quick to respond to this shift by changing their message to support business value instead of IT integration.

This made the divide between IT and the business grow even further.

While much has been said about closing the gap between the business and IT, not much has been said about creating a marketing message that does so. As proof, I’m writing a white paper right now, geared ONLY to the IT reader that addresses only architecture, data, and security topics. The goal is to get IT on board with a product that the business already wants or even has.

It’s come to the point that the real customer is a blend of business and IT. It’s not an either/or. They should no longer be thought of as separate and in some cases may even be one in the same. The sales force needs to make sure that both teams are at the table together.

It’s not an easy job for marketing. They need to provide sales with information that supports both the business value and functionality, as well as providing the technical assurance that IT needs.  Marketing assets should include content with a combined message and deeper content that provides more specific information, geared specifically towards business function and value or technical features.

IT is not a necessary evil as some say. Nor are business users ignorant about technology. IT is an integral part of making the business successful, yet IT wouldn’t exist if the business didn’t see value in their services. While it may be easier to sell to just one side, technology marketers need to acknowledge that harmony between both will help their product be successful in the organization for the long run.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

I’m very pleased to have my white paper chosen as the winner of the 2011 Apex Marketing and PR Publications Award. I have written several Verizon white papers for my client Pivot Communications (who is terrific to work with by the way).

The winning white paper is Verizon’s “The Identity and Access Management Imperative.”  The paper speaks to enterprise security issues as organizations expand their boundaries globally, move data and applications outside company walls to the “cloud,” and extend access beyond employees to vendors, partners, and even customers.

APEX 2011 is the 23rd annual awards program put on by Communications Concepts recognizing excellence in publications work by professional communicators. There were over 3300 submissions in 11 categories. Apex handed out both Awards of Excellence and Grand Awards.

You can view the entire award list here. If you want to see the award I won, look under Pivot Communications, page 27, category 124.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

So there you have it—a nicely-written, neatly-formatted, white paper. You learned how to choose a topic and create an outline in part one, how to research and write the content in part two, and how to dress it up with graphs, quotes, and images in part three. Now, it’s sitting there, all shiny, just begging to be read. Now it’s time to make it available and get the word out.

The first thought is to add it to the resources section of our company website. But, how about adding a small blurb and link on the relevant product page? Even so, the “post it and they will come” method doesn’t work very well. We need to do more. Assuming you have a company blog, write up a blog post. You could format in an executive summary style—but don’t give away the ending! Keep the reader intrigued enough to want to read more.

Now it’s time to use your social media channels. Push your blog post, or at least a link to your white paper, to your company’s Facebook page. Tweet about it. Talk about it in a YouTube video. Write about it in your company newsletter. These are the low-cost/no-cost ways to get the word out, but they only reach the community you’ve created. What about the larger community?

This is where online content aggregators come in. For a fee, they will host your white paper on their site, get the word out to their larger community, provide optimized search methods so that your paper will more likely be found, and collect leads from prospects that download. These aggregators used to be specific sites like Bitpipe and ITtoolbox. However, more industry content providers and online magazines are offering similar services. Be sure to check the pricing and reach for each one.

Bonus Section

Here are some other ways to increase the value and usefulness of your white paper:

Online lead generation – One of the main reasons you may have chosen to write the paper in the first place is to collect leads. To reduce the risk that your prospects will choose not to download when needing to leave personal data, use a simple form to collect a minimal amount of information.

Sales meetings – White papers are great tools to leave behind after a sales demo or meeting. Research shows that most white papers get passed around and are read by more than one person. It’s a perfect way to keep your company and product top of mind.

Trade shows – Another great way to capture leads is by taking contact info in return for handing the prospect your white paper. These days, most attendees will let you scan their badge in return for “swag,” but when you have a more serious prospect, give them your white paper to take home.

Sales training – You’d be surprised what your sales team can learn by reading your white papers. They will gain a clearer understanding of the customer issues and the paper will help them articulate the solution and its value. Having been in IT and been pitched by sales folks, I’ve seen many who understand their product but have no clue how it would be used in the real world.

Repurposing – To get the most out of your white paper efforts, find ways to repurpose the content. Explore the issue in more depth in a blog post. Write more about the solution in a newsletter article. Submit a scaled-down version to your industry trade publications. Any time you can reuse content, you’ve just increased your ROI on that content significantly.

I hope you enjoyed the How to Bake a White Paper from Scratch series. It’s not easy to sum it up in just a few blog posts – just as it’s not easy to write a white paper! Many white paper ideas sit on the shelf waiting for someone who has the time to write them. If you have great ideas and no time, or want the benefit of a white paper and still don’t feel it’s something you can tackle, drop me a line. I’d be happy to help. In just a couple weeks, you can have your very own, shiny new white paper!

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

We’re now half way through the white paper creation process. In part one, you defined your purpose and determined your topic. In part two, you got down to business, starting with the outline and then putting the meat on the bones. Now you have a fully drafted first version of your new white paper. Although you’ve done the bulk of the hard work, you’re not done yet!

Unfortunately, you might have written the greatest white paper, but your readers will not be compelled to read pages of plain text. It just won’t happen. Decision makers today are very busy and now have a much shorter attention span. They are much more likely to read and stay with a paper that has shorter paragraphs that are broken up with visual interest. Personally, I try to add something visual to each page.

Let’s get started.

Formatting your paper – Begin with the easy part – the margins. Because we will use the margins to include additional, interesting content, set you margins at 1” top and bottom, 2.5” on the left side and 1.25” on the right side. Change the line spacing to 1.5 to open up the text even further. I like using arial font type with about 11 for the body and 14 for the subheads. Subheads may be colored to match your company brand, provided they still stand out.

Because white papers are more often read online, I prefer to use a single-column, left justified style to prevent scrolling up and down. Finish off with headers and footers. Add your company logo, white paper title, and the words “white paper” to your header. The footer might include page numbers, publication date, copyright, and web address.

Charts and graphs – In your research and writing, you may have come across data that would help make your point visually. Charts (tables) and graphs are a quick way to display a large amount of information. Make sure they have proper axis labels, they are assigned a number, and are located before they are mentioned in the text. Be sure you do refer to them and quickly describe the point the chart or graph is making.

Pull quotes – Your reader will read your paper in your voice. Additional (credible) voices will make your paper stronger and help validate the points you are making. Look for opportunities to add quotes from other credible sources. These should be just a sentence or two and added to the sidebar of your paper. Highlight the quotes using color, lines, italics and other methods.

Images and diagrams – Pictures are a great way to break up long text areas. You may already have diagrams that show how your product works or pictures of your product in use. Conceptual images can also be used, provided they add value and are not just space fillers.

I think that’s enough to keep you busy till next time where we’ll talk about cover pages, executive summaries, and getting your paper into your reader’s hands.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

Welcome to part one of the “bake a white paper from scratch” series. Here you sit, ready to start your new white paper. You might be a product manager who needs supporting collateral for sales, a marketing team member who’s been given the assignment, or perhaps you have a small or mid-size business, without the luxury of a marketing team, writing it yourself. Either way, you’re facing what might seem like a daunting project ahead. So, let’s take the mystery out of it and work through this together.

The first thing you need to do is determine just why you need a white paper. If you’re going to spend the time to create one, and believe me it will take much time and effort (remember your college final essay?), you better have a plan for its use. For example, will you offer it as a lead generator through a give-away in return for sign up?  Will you leave it behind after a sales call? Hand it out at trade shows? Or, will it just sit on your Resource page in your website hoping someone might discover it and find it worthwhile?

Assuming you have big plans or its use, let’s talk about some tips that will make your white paper a compelling read and successful medium. First off, white papers have been averaging 6-10 pages, and lately, as small as 4-6 pages (though I don’t think you can do a topic justice in such a short format). Expect your paper to be about 2500-3000 words. The tone of the paper should be in third-person (no using “you” or “we”). You want the paper to come across as unbiased as possible. Think of this as more of an educational tool than a sales pitch.

Now you need a topic your readers will relate to. You might brainstorm with your team or your sales rep to identify specific pain points your product solves—or perhaps you already know. Choose just one business or technical problem! If you solve more than one problem, or address vastly different industries, consider writing a second white paper.

Perhaps you offer a learning management solution that tracks employee training compliance and growth goals. Your white paper topic may be how to solve the tough job of assigning specific training courses to employees, sending reminders, and tracking successful completion. Imagine the pain in trying to do that manually with spreadsheets! Your white paper might not get distracted with assisting in employee growth through training (though may mention that as an additional benefit near the end).

Your first assignment till next time is to come up with a specific business or technical problem that your product or service can solve. In the next post, we’ll talk more about the specific details in the paper.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

If you were to ask me which marketing content product I’ve been asked to create most often, it’s hands-down the white paper. One white paper can serve many purposes and plays a very important role in the sales cycle process. However, there can be a bit of mystery about what exactly a white paper is.

For the past four years, I’ve taught the class “Writing White Papers” at Bellevue College. It’s become a required course in their Technical Communication Certification program. Students come in wide-eyed and confused, but leave the class fully understanding what it takes to create a strong, compelling white paper.

Watching that transformation has been rewarding, which got me thinking I should share it with a broader audience. Over the next 4 posts, I will take you through the steps you need to do to create your first white paper. At a high level, they go look like this:

Plan – It’s not enough to decide to write a white paper because you don’t have one yet. You need to plan upfront to determine the need, both internal and external, which will drive out the topic as well as how it will be used.

Create – While one post is not near enough, this is by far the longest, hardest part. Understanding which sections to include, what tone to use, and how it flows is key to a good, educational read.

Decorate – So, you’ve got the cake but it will be pretty unappetizing unless you decorate it. We’ll talk about adding items to help tell the story and how to best design and format the document to add punch and appeal.

Consume – Once a draft is complete, it needs to be edited. And, once it’s final, you need to get it in front of eyeballs that matter. You’ll learn tips for finalizing and distributing your new white paper.

Preheat the oven, get out your mixing bowl, and prepare to create your first white paper!

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

I was recently reading the latest B2B Content Marketing: 2010 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends survey by MarketingProfs and Junta42. I like seeing where content marketing is headed, how budgets are being reshaped to support it, and what kinds of challenges still remain.

Seemed like your typical stuff. Larger companies were greater adopters of a broader content marketing strategy, spent more money, and did more in house. Smaller companies—less so. Then I came upon the survey question that asked, “What is your biggest content marketing challenge?” The answers also weren’t totally shocking. The largest response was, “Producing engaging content.”

However! What did surprise me most was one of the comments by a survey-taker. The comment said this,

“Our biggest challenge is finding things for our potential customers to get excited about. The products we sell are not easy to get excited about.”

Wow. Either you need to find another product at another company to market—or give up marketing all together.

I tried to think of some products this survey-taker might be referring to. Maybe it’s data center racks and shelving. No, that allows data centers to expand and companies to defer building new, expensive centers. Maybe it’s an automated payroll system. No, that reduces the time and staff needed to process payroll, while reducing errors. Maybe it’s the grey paint they use on manufacturing plant floors. Certainly customers won’t get excited about that? No, it can extend the life of the floor, prevent moisture wicking or cement dust particulates, and is easy to clean. Couldn’t possibly be that either.

My point is every product – EVERY PRODUCT – should either fill a need or create an opportunity. Granted, they aren’t always sexy, fun, slick, cool, or whatever. But, there should be a reason your potential customer should care – and care enough to consider you.

If you’re still wondering how to get your customers excited about your product, it’s time to go back and do some homework. Start here:

1. Create  a USP – unique selling proposition. It’s your value statement. It’s the reason why you do what you do and why it’s better than the rest (or doing nothing). What is the need or opportunity your product fulfills?

2. Make a list of all your features. Then next to each feature, write, “so that you can…” Complete the “so that you can” statements and make a list of benefits based on the answers.

3. Step into your prospects shoes and make a list of the challenges they face by doing nothing, or using a competitor’s product. Will there be increased costs (staffing, time, liability, asset lifespan)? Will there be missed opportunities (new revenue streams, new customer segment, first to market)? Maybe serious issues (regulatory fines, lawsuits, negative PR)?

If you just do these three simple things and still can’t figure out why your prospects would not be excited by your product, I want to hear about it! Drop me a line. Let’s figure this thing out.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

I just finished reading this year’s latest marketing survey results over at the Junta42 site. It’s interesting to see the popularity of different marketing content pieces as part of the overall marketing strategy. You can download the report for yourself here.

Social media marketing (with the exception of blogs) is now in the number one spot. 72% of those polled have now incorporated social media into their marketing activities. What I’d be even more curious to know though, is have they seen and improvements? More hits to the website? More inquiries? Even more sales?

The next five things on the list are what I consider to be the new marketing sweet spot. They are the heart of content marketing. When done well, they cover the full spectrum of the AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) marketing concept. Each piece can serve one or more AIDA goals, but the suite should include pieces that cover the complete AIDA spectrum.

From the 2010 Content Marketing Spending Research by Junta42

Each of these content terms mean different things to different marketers. Personally, I’ve seen each term over-used and under developed. Too many times, companies will label the content with a term below and not fully back it up with meaningful content. These are the way I see each piece

1. E-newsletters – Publish monthly and include product and company news, customer success stories, technical “how-to’s”, and business ideas. Combination of short (100 words or less) and longer (up to 1000 words) articles.
2. Blogs – Keep topics fresh, at least weekly, and relatively short (less than 500 words)
3. White Papers – Don’t fall for the short attention span, 2-pager. Do your topic justice by demonstrating a business problem and how it can be solved. Typically 6-10 pages.
4. Articles – These might be in your own publications or industry publications and are probably best as a deep dive on a topic at between 1000 and 2000 words.
5. Case Studies – These can be as short as two pages, but make sure you provide concrete information about the customer’s initial challenge, how it was solved, and lessons learned.

Effective marketers take the time to do it right. It’s not an area you want to hand off to your already busy product managers or the new marketing coordinator you just hired. Make sure the topics are well researched, the “story” told is coherent and professional, and that you accomplish your goal of what you want them to think and do after they’ve read it.

Content marketing is not an easy task and not every company has the resources in house to get the job done well. This is probably why the Junta42 survey also shows that smaller companies are spending twice the amount (as a percentage) on content marketing as their larger counterparts. Find yourself a content marketing professional you can trust and start building your content library, making sure you get the marketing assets you need to be successful.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI