The Write Stuff

In Part I of Write Angle’s blog on “How to Repurpose Your Case Studies”, we pointed out how to repackage standalone stories in new assets.

Today, let’s look at how we helped Pure Storage extend the reach of a strategic case study featuring North York General Hospital.

As we all know, attention spans are being collapsed by the overwhelming amount of information we’re asked to sift through daily. Recognizing this, it’s often helpful to produce a “case study lite” version of material that truncates long-form content into a more digestible format.

The perfect vehicle for doing so is the corporate blog. In the case of the North York General Hospital story, the content was repurposed as a Q&A titled “Achieving Better Patient Outcomes With All-Flash Storage“.

Recasting and condensing content from the original case study into a conversational “give and take” accomplishes several things. One, it provides time-constrained readers a glimpse into a vendor solution directly through the lens of the customer. Two, it broadens the reach of the story by serving as an additional mechanism for attracting net-new (in this case, healthcare-centric) site visitors. And three, it provides yet another opportunity to leverage the story via social media outlets.

The takeaway? Make your assets work hard across multiple dimensions for maximum impact.

Every month, Write Angle posts a “Featured Project of the Month” that showcases newly developed assets.

Our most recent addition is a hybrid white paper for Pure Storage that discusses how healthcare organizations can take full advantage of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) powered by all-flash storage.  We say “hybrid” because the front end of the piece sets the stage for profiling real-world healthcare customers actively deploying VDI today.

Like any good white paper, it opens with an educational discussion of the benefits of VDI in healthcare: improved clinician productivity and patient care, greater security and better IT cost-efficiencies.  We go on to explain the role storage plays in a successful VDI implementation while citing four key challenges to “getting VDI right”.

What makes this piece so effective is the transition from the “why VDI matters in healthcare” to “here’s how it works in production environments”.

So, here’s the kicker. The origin of this hybrid white paper is a direct result of having completed four (previously standalone) case studies featuring Riverview Health, Unity Healthcare, Obstetrics & Gynecology of Indiana, and St. Luke’s Healthcare. The common denominator among these Pure Storage customers – aside from being healthcare providers – is their usage of virtualization technologies. What became clear in revisiting these case studies is that each organization achieved distinct benefits from VDI working in conjunction with flash storage solutions.

What’s the takeaway?  For starters, this is a highly effective way to repurpose hard-won customer references in the context of a significant market trend.  Rather than writing a white paper that discusses VDI issues in the abstract, this piece blends the theoretical with the practical.  And it does so without the burden of reinventing the wheel when it comes to explaining the customer experience.

More importantly, this piece overcomes two major challenges: 1) addressing the I’m-from-Missouri syndrome among skeptical prospects (i.e., “prove it”) and 2) extending Pure Storage’s credibility as an authority in healthcare and VDI.

We’ll discuss other creative ways to leverage case studies in future blogs.

Here at Write Angle, one of our long-held assertions is that technology marketers live in a publish-or-perish world.

Simply put, if you’re not producing thought leadership or educational content that can be repurposed on a regular basis, you can’t drive or shape industry dialog. And without a steady cadence of fresh assets that map to buyer personas at specific stages of the purchasing lifecycle, you’re stuck playing catch-up with competitors. Worst case, you run the risk of being rendered derivative, irrelevant or invisible.

Turns out that one of the most marketing-relevant solutions to what we jokingly refer to as “content interruptus” is the venerable (and often overlooked) content calendar, AKA editorial calendar.

If you’re like most clients, you have good intentions to develop one, but never get around to it. Even the more disciplined marketing departments that make the effort frequently fail to use it to best advantage. 

One of the challenges is how easy this tool is to ignore. Editorial calendars are just so 20th century, right? This is an unfortunate rap because the goal of attracting, converting and retaining customers makes a content calendar indispensable. It’s also ideally suited for modern tools associated with social media platforms. Think Kapost, Central Desktop and Contently, among many others out there today.

What it should do

Think of the content calendar as a GPS that maps all your content assets to your prospect “food chain” with guidance on how best to reach them in terms of timing and channels.
 
Say you’re making a blog post on a segment included in an eBook you just published. You may want to use multiple channels to re-purpose this material via email (auto-responder) or sites as varied as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Tagging the material (AKA meta data) with identifiers that label your target’s persona category (awareness, consideration or decision) helps you track the effectiveness of each asset. Same for SEO keywords and content type such as white papers, video or case studies.

Accountability is key. At the risk of stating the obvious, each asset should have a designated owner responsible for production and delivery. Your content calendar should also specify the asset channel: e.g. eBook, blog, buyer’s guide, solution brief, use cases, etc. And, since a calendar is a management tool, factor in workflow processes no matter how seemingly mundane: think proofreading, editing, legal review cycles. Equally important, honor deadlines for creating and publishing your assets. While slippages are a fact of life, don’t make them a habit. 
 

Setting it up

Here’s a 10-step approach to setting up an effective content calendar:

1. Content headline
2. Content type
3. Buyer persona
4. Call to action
5. Owner
6. Final review deadline
7. Publishing channel(s)
8. Publish date
9. Status
10. Metrics (page views, downloads, comments)

Refresh Your Calendar
 
It’s important to stay vigilant when updating your content calendar, especially if you generate one on a quarterly basis. Given the rapid rate of change in virtually every technology industry today, you don’t want to be caught flat-footed with dated material. Publishing yesterday’s news can seriously de-position an organization’s value proposition.

No matter what kind of content we’re tasked with producing – whether it’s a case study, new web copy, a solution brief or a ghost-written thought leadership article – invariably there’s an interview with a subject matter expert to guide the output.

That’s a given.

But not all interviews are the same, no matter what questionnaire template you design. In fact, they are like diamonds, snowflakes, and fingerprints: they are utterly unique.

So how do good interviewers extract the most meaningful information for content development purposes? In my experience as a former journalist trained in the art of asking probing questions, sometimes it’s the unexpected follow-up that yields the best results.

I’ll give you a good example. For the past two years, Write Angle has been producing case studies for Pure Storage. Yes, we’ve developed a questionnaire that asks about the nature of a customer’s business, their pain points, the evaluation process, selection criteria, key technical and business benefits and TCO/ROI results. And yes, the questionnaire has evolved over time to keep pace with product innovation and shifts in value propositions.

What’s not built into these interview guidelines is what I refer to as the art of the redirect or subtle insistence on elaboration. Sometimes a seemingly innocuous question can yield a dynamite response, especially with a difficult interviewee that isn’t terribly expansive.

A case in point involved a financial services customer whose corporate communications team sat in on the interview to “oversee” the interview. While this presented a gating influence from the outset, the subject of the interview was a “just the facts” spokesperson. After getting blunt and uninspiring input, I decided to shift gears i.e. utilize the redirect. I decided to ask about this individual’s history as an IT director so he could get comfortable talking about himself. Not only did this “loosen” him up, it provided some historical context that allowed me to probe for his experience with legacy storage systems and how this contrasted with his organization’s adoption of flash storage.

The results were dramatic. Suddenly, I had an expansive and engaged subject. By invoking the redirect strategy, I succeeded in pushing for greater elaboration to responses. This resulted in terrific real world examples of “before and after” scenarios involving his storage infrastructure. What had been a teeth-pulling exercise morphed into an engaging story with real drama: a subtle yet growing problem threatening a segment of the business; a proof of concept trial ripe with competitive give and take; and a powerful resolution with meaningful results that went well beyond technical metrics.

So what’s the takeaway? Like great jazz musicians, be prepared to improvise when leading an interview. Sometimes straying from the melody can take you in an entirely new direction with better results.

© Benjamin Haas

As writers of content for marketing, we at Write Angle work for companies of all stripe from nascent start-ups to large publicly-held brands. How to best measure the effectiveness of this or that content invariably comes up along the way and there’s never a shortage of opinions on how to do it. Which is the most important metric — click-through, volume of readers, new site visitors, orders, revenue?  We put this question to the Linked In community recently, asking  1) what measurement methodologies do you find to be the most effective and 2) how do you rank order your content assets from most to least effective and why?

We were prompted by Contently who passed along the work by Ascend2 and Research Partners: http://contently.com/strategist/2015/04/27/the-most-effective-and-difficult-types-content-marketing-in-one-chart/ Their research examines the relative effectiveness of articles/case studies, videos, infographics, research/white papers, webinars/online events, eNewsletters, photos/illustration and news releases.

We would now like to know what you think of these findings. Yes, it’s using an awfully broad approach to determining meaningful findings. Still it raises some fundamental questions about content categories and their respective “effectiveness”, presumably in triggering new site visitors, generating new sales leads, increasing conversion rates and driving revenue.

How do do you measure the value of the content your team creates?

© Arkadi Bojaršinov

From the beginning (2011), we’ve made a priority of handpicking a circle of preferred partners outside of writing services — in design, public relations, market development and branding.

Hate to say it, but we couldn’t put it much better.

Like most entrepreneurs, our team’s concept of time is slightly warped.  Maybe it’s due to living a life of deadlines.  Or perhaps it’s the relentless immersion in so many different avenues of technology on behalf of our clients.  Being perpetually busy makes time fly.  So it’s hard to believe that Write Angle has just completed its fourth year in business

And what a great ride it’s been so far.  We’ve had the good fortune to work with extraordinarily interesting clients across a broad spectrum of technologies.  From our first gig with Endplay, a leading provider of content management, engagement and monetization solutions to our multi-year relationship with Paxata, a red-hot provider of adaptive data preparation solutions, we’ve benefited from a steady stream of word-of-mouth referrals.  To our way of thinking, that’s the ultimate compliment of our body of work.

Of course, things don’t happen in a vacuum.  Kudos are due to some very influential and talented people in our industry.  And that includes a shout out to Tom Hogan and Carol Broadbent at Crowded Ocean who have been kind enough to refer us to amazing clients like Sumo Logic and the Exploratorium.  A shout-out, too, to Cari Jaquet who has engaged Write Angle not once but twice as VP of Marketing with SenSage and Paxata.

So what are Write Angle clients looking for help with?  It runs the gamut.  We are developing everything from case studies to white papers, ghost written thought leadership pieces, solution briefs, web copy, blogs, data sheets and press releases.

What makes life interesting is the variety of projects, clients and technologies we tackle.  From venture-funded startups like Cloudscaling (developer of OpenStack-powered hybrid clouds and recently acquired by EMC) to stalwarts like McAfee, we have to stay current on the blinding rate of change impacting multiple industries.  One day we may be knocking out a detailed data sheet on BYOX solutions.  And the next day we’re editing an eBook providing CEOs with guidance on corporate transformation.

When it comes to our work, we prefer to let our clients do the talking:

“Finding versatile writers that deliver compelling white papers, informative case studies and web copy that hits the mark is hard to find–if not impossible–in this market. We’ve come to rely on Write Angle–and Peter Davé’s quality, speed and smarts–to work with our most demanding startup clients.” [Tom Hogan, managing partner with Crowded Ocean]

“A good editor can make a world of difference in improving the clarity, organization and impact of an eBook. I was fortunate to work with Peter Davé who did a superb job of tightening the narrative, reordering content and strengthening the voice of my new eBook, The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Transformation and Renewal. His writing skills and editorial direction are second to none.” [Beatriz Infante, CEO and Managing Member, BusinessExcelleration]

“Finding great writers who can produce compelling white papers, case studies, web content and solutions briefs – especially for complex technology like machine data analytics – is always a challenge. Fortunately, we engaged Write Angle’s content creation services. And the results have been stellar.” [Puneet Pandit, CEO, Glassbeam]

And finally:

“We engaged Write Angle and Peter Davé to develop a wide range of assets ranging from an extensive array of new web copy to highly strategic use cases. Write Angle proved to be integral to our marketing communications efforts that played a key role in influencing our recent acquisition by EMC. Peter’s writing style is energetic and engaging. Equally important, his storytelling skills adeptly deliver technical depth while making a strong business case. Peter has my highest recommendation as a top notch writing resource.” [Teri Elniski, VP of  Marketing, CloudScaling].

Thanks to all for making our first four years a success.  We’re looking forward to our next chapter.

© Tetyana Kochneva

As Write Angle ramps up for what looks like a very busy 2014, it’s always good to look back at the variety of content development projects we tackled in 2013.

It’s no surprise that Big Data, Cloud and Mobility clients dominated our time.  But we also found opportunities to collaborate with one of the world’s most famous science museums and an emerging talent recruiting organization.

Here’s a short list of key clients and the projects we worked in 2013:

AppSense:   Write Angle was tasked with crafting copy for the company’s MobileNow web site as well as use cases, a comprehensive MobileNow datasheet, a BYOX white paper, a case study and a strategic iOS7 Readiness blog.

Cloudscaling:  Delivering elastic cloud infrastructure to enterprises, service providers and web application providers, Cloudscaling turned to Write Angle to help with a comprehensive web refresh.

Exploratorium:  In our second year of collaboration with one of the world’s most famous science museums, Write Angle was called upon to develop compelling content for the organization’s Annual Fund brochure and Annual Report.  Look for writing samples soon once these pieces are published.

Glassbeam:  Providing business intelligence from machine log data, Glassbeam once again utilized Write Angle to develop a key Service Revenue Generation solution brief as well as a case study featuring Hitachi Data Systems.

Paxata:  Emerging from stealth this year as a highly innovative provider of Adaptive Data Preparation technology for agile business intelligence, Paxata is working with Write Angle in the development of two major contributed thought leadership pieces that will publish in the Q1/Q2 timeframe.  Check back for a look at these compelling articles.  We also created a “Declaration of Data Independence” marketing collateral that supported the company’s coming out party at the recent Strata Conference.

Pertino:  As one of the most innovative providers of cloud networking solutions, Pertino turned to Write Angle to help craft its “Under the Hood” web copy.

SenSage/HEXIS Cyber Solutions:  Write Angle was called upon to deliver a wide variety of content for venerable SIEM vendor Sensage that was acquired by KEYW Corporation/Hexis Cyber Solutions.  We crafted a thought-provoking piece entitled “Defending Against APTs:  Looking For the Big Picture” that ran in the December 20, 2013 edition of SC Magazine.  In addition, Write Angle developed a comprehensive white paper addressing the The Event Analysis and Retention Dilemma.

TalentSky:  Formerly known as Devine Capital, the executive recruiting firm that helped Apple land CEO Tim Cook, TalentSky engaged Write Angle to develop an entirely new web site reflecting the company’s new brand and approach to talent acquisition services.

So what are your content marketing objectives this year?

Big Data is becoming an even bigger deal. And when things get big, it gets more important to stand out from the crowd.

Just this week, a group of Silicon Valley investment superstars, including Ron Conway and Andreessen Horowitz, announced another fund, Big Data Elite, targeted at Big Data start-ups.

 At Write Angle, we’ve done a number of projects for companies in the Big Data realm, including Sumo Logic, Glassbeam and Sensage (now Hexis Cyber Solutions). What’s clear to us is that the term “big data” means different things to different people – which is another way of saying it may mean nothing at all without the proper context. Big Data applications and analysis services run the gamut from information security to customer support to consumer marketing to social media.

As the volume of hype becomes deafening in the Big Data arena, it’s easy for a young company to be grouped together with other perceived players despite having little, if anything, in common with them. Market analysts, journalists and potential customers may not have clue about who does what in which space – or even if the space exists.

Would-be Big Data players must ensure that they differentiate themselves in terms of what market they’re targeting and how they serve that market better than anyone else. If you’re not continuously informing your market about who you are and what makes you worth paying attention to – with constantly refreshed content across your media platforms – competitors who articulate a more compelling story will surely pass you by.

© Iqoncept

How would you like to boost the perception of your B2B brand as one of your industry’s thought leaders, grow your blog readership over 2000% and develop relationships with the who’s-who of your business — all in less than a year?

This is exactly what Drillinginfo (DI) did. Today, DI, a SaaS vendor serving a sector not exactly synonymous with trendy social media, is positioned as a premier source of information in the oil and gas industry. And its forays into social media began only last September.

It’s been a given that a B2B brand’s social efforts are a long-term slog, so DI’s results merit a closer look. In fact, this report suggests that the company’s approach amounts to a study in best-practices that might be replicated in any industry, especially when it comes to blogging. To our way of thinking, these practical steps are actionable for any B2B blog:

1. Get your employees to contribute ideas and content.
2. Set an editorial calendar — don’t assign topics, assign people and let them write about industry-relevant subjects that they’re interested in.
3. Involve them in brainstorming topics and angles relevant to your products and customers.
4. Involve your contributors so they feel ownership. Teach them “blog-consciousess” by explaining what blog-friendly writing and content are all about.
5. Push content out to your email lists and social accounts (Linked In, FB, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.).
6. In your email to blog subscribers, include the full blog post, but include a custom call-to-action for readers to go to your website and make comments.
7. Compile interest-groups on Linked In (and elsewhere) of relevance to your industry and post your content there. Caveat: be absolutely certain that what you’re sharing is of genuinely useful value. If it isn’t, it’s spam.
8. Find out who the influencers are in your industry and publish your own Top 20, 50 or 100 list(s).
9. Set a big goal for your blog: Aspire to thought leadership.

What are you doing to promote your blog?