“Don’t waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness. Expose these things for the sham they are.”
–Ephesians 5:11-21
Even God hates fluffy writing. But it’s so hard to avoid—isn’t it?
No, it’s not.
Good writing starts with a focused topic. I get a lot of requests to write ebooks and white papers on really broad topics, like risk management. A paper of average length on a subject that broad won’t have the elbow room to focus on any single useful aspect of risk management, and there’s no point in paying a writer to produce content that’s already on Wikipedia.
To narrow a topic, start with a business problem common to your customers. Even better, start with a business problem common to a particular persona in a particular industry segment of your customer base. What do CTOs in the insurance segment need to know about risk management? They need to know everything a CTO needs to know in any industry, plus they have the additional burden of heavy regulatory requirements, lots of legacy systems, and a pressing need to reduce costs.
Identifying those differences—compliance, legacy systems, and cost reduction—is the first stage of narrowing.
Get narrower. What’s in the headlines of their trade publications today? There’s sure to be synergy between their issues and your solution, or they wouldn’t be your customer. Say the recent headlines include a lot of articles about cloud computing. A paper about compliance issues around migrating legacy systems to the cloud would be interesting enough to get readers. Let’s give it a working title:
The Compliant Cloud
Migrating Legacy Systems Strategically
Do a quick check to make sure your idea isn’t old hat. You want to find some results that match your topic to be sure that your idea isn’t completely off base, but not more than one or two white papers that match, and those shouldn’t be exact matches. I just ran a search on the example topic and found one 3-year old white paper and a bunch of articles. Perfect. My imaginary company can easily find something new and useful to say.
Of course, companies don’t invest in white paper production solely for the sake of helping their customers. The papers need to help their makers as well. So it’s time to apply another matrix to the topic.
Next week, we’ll take a look at how to infuse your messages into your educational content. It’s sure to be a wild ride!
Jay Gitomer of Machines & Words helps companies selling complex technologies expose the real business value of their solutions and shorten their sales cycles with white papers, case studies, and slicks written in plain English. Over a decade of marketing experience in the tech industry has given her an understanding of strategy, technology, and B2B markets that translates into content that connects with your customers. Jay teaches digital marketing at the graduate level and is certified in inbound marketing by HubSpot. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and has an MA in English Literature and Creative Writing from NYU. In the cats vs. dogs debate, Jay is firmly on the side of dogs.
