Writing About Tech Without Falling Headfirst into a pile of Hyperbole: A How-To Guide
Tips from a professional B2B editorial content writer on how to talk about emerging tech without falling into the hyperbole trap.
Content Strategy For Non-Writers: A Crash Course
You know you need to start turning out some great content. You also know you’re going to need a solid strategy behind that content so it’s not just a random post, mixed with unrelated social posts, then wrapped a cozy blanket of zero clicks and even fewer conversions. What’s a person to do, right? Well, for starters, you could take a step back and realize how silly that sounds. But then you could set about creating your very own content strategy to ensure you create pieces that hit your audience right in the feels. And by feels, of course, I mean pain points. “But Jesse,” I can hear you muttering under your breath, “I have zero background in content marketing, or marketing in general for that matter, let alone writing, and wouldn’t even know where to start.” Let’s do this. 1. Identify your target audience I know, I know, this is really marketing 101-level stuff. But hear me out—if you don’t know who you’re talking to, how will you know what to say? Only by doing at least a rudimentary level of audience research will you start to come to terms with, well, what terms to use, what jargon to avoid, and what pain points to address. Create buyer personas. By thinking through their specific challenges and pain points, figuring out what questions they would ask about your product, and where they spend their time online, you will start to see your audience as the individuals they are. Get to know your audience. Once you know who you’re aiming at, go out and meet some of them. Put the word out through your network, post about it on social media, whatever means you have to compile a list of potential audience members…do it. Then ask questions and, crucially, listen to the answers. 2. Define your content goals Why are you doing this in the first place? Now’s the time to work it out before you get too deep in the weeds of writing pieces that might be properly targeted but lack real substance. If you’re going to wow your audience with your deep industry knowledge, you have to have somewhere to point them. Do you want clicks? Do you want demo bookings? Now’s the time to work that out. Decide on a short list (3-5 max) of goals for your content program. If you’re looking to build general brand awareness, you’ll be writing very different articles than if you’re aiming to generate direct leads. The more specific the goals, the better you can hone your writing to help achieve them. Make sure your goals are SMART. Again, marketing 101 stuff here, but it applies directly to creating a content strategy that can move the proverbial needle. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals will help more than nebulous ideas. Instead of “drive new client demo calls,” go with “increase demos by 20% in Q2.” 3. Focus on quality content that directly answers audience questions Remember those audience research interviews you conducted? Here’s where they come into play, as you’re going to use the exact questions they asked to power your content. If 7 out of 10 asked a form of the question, “How can AI help my company survive a wild market swing?” and your product is an AI-powered dashboard that identifies coming market swings with predictive analytics, you’re pretty well situated to answer that question, aren’t you? Create content that genuinely helps people solve problems. The problem is market swings, the solution is using predictive analytics. Nowhere in there do you talk directly about your widget, not yet anyway. Consider using the “pillar and cluster” approach to content design. The pillar refers to deep dives into the major topics you identified in your audience research as affecting your audience, while the clusters focus on more tangential, yet related, content pieces. “AI in the warehousing industry” would be your pillar, while “Algorithms for predicting shelf space needs” would be a piece of cluster content. 4. Create a simple editorial calendar to track your content This is my actual calendar for the Strategic Narratives blog. You can see how bare-bones it is, and that’s how it should be at this early stage. You’re looking to track what content goes out when, and where it’s posted. I’m not on social media, so I only have a column to track when I repost a piece to LinkedIn (which I clearly need to update). You make adjustments and additions for whatever platforms your research showed that your audience uses. Develop a simple calendar. At this stage, it needs to include the piece (maybe linked to a draft file), where it’s posted, when it was published, what the CTA is (if any), and who’s responsible for it. Tweak as needed. Start small. There’s no need for a complex or multi-tool process here. A simple spreadsheet like the one pictured above is all you need for now. You can always expand as you scale up your content program down the road. Consistency is far more crucial than volume at this stage. 5. Measure what matters with simple metrics I know, I literally just said consistency matters more than volume, so maybe don’t measure that one just yet. You do need to have a select number of metrics that matter to follow so you can get a handle on what’s working and what’s not. Set up basic analytics. Start with the basics and keep it simple for now. Traffic flows, time spent on page, social shares, and conversion rates will tell you what you need to know for the time being. Regularly review your collected metrics. Yep, here’s that consistency thing again. Not only should you be posting regularly, you should be tracking those posts’ performance regularly, too. This is how you know when and how to iterate and keep your audience engaged. The best content strategy is the one that mixes consistency, reliability, and sustainability. Focus on those three aspects of the above five steps,
5 Counter-Intuitive Questions Every Startup Founder Should Ask Before Writing Their First (or Fortieth) Blog Post
There’s a condition that gets little media attention but is rampant in online writing: Blinking Cursor Syndrome. It has a slightly less common subtype I call Blank Page Overload. This condition is especially prevalent among those who need to write online but who don’t have a background in, or training specific to, writing as a discipline. In my ongoing attempt to rid my clients of such scourges and to enable them to write to their heart’s content, today I offer a selection of my favorite slightly off-base questions you can ask yourself should you find yourself staring down the dreaded Blinking Cursor of Doom or even the Blank Page of Discontent. “What’s one contrarian thing I believe about my industry that no one else is willing to admit?” This one’s not so much about the writing directly, it’s more about forcing yourself to think about what you do from a different perspective. (Ed note: I’m a massive proponent of forcing yourself outside your comfort zone when it comes to “conventional wisdom,” as I find it all too often to be neither) The idea behind asking yourself this question is to push yourself to identify a unique insight or belief that your audience will benefit from understanding. It can be something that challenges the status quo in your industry, or something more specific to the way your product works its magic. The point is to show off your expertise in a way that also positions you as the thought leader to watch. Examples: “Most cybersecurity startups focus on selling fear, but I believe educating users on simple, proactive habits is a more realistic way to generate sustainable risk mitigation behaviors.” “In fintech, the current obsession with AI-this and automated-that is leading to people overlooking the value of human expertise in managing complex scenarios.” “If I had to convince someone of the opposite of what I believe about my product, what would I say?” This one’s all about critical thinking. If you can plan ahead and know what objections your audience is likely to raise, you can have your rebuttal ready to go. Crafting compelling, nuanced content that pre-addresses skeptics shows that not only do you know your stuff, you know your audience—maybe a little better than they do. Examples: “Our SaaS platform might be too complex for small businesses and better suited for enterprises with dedicated IT teams.” “The wellness tech market is oversaturated, and many apps don’t actually improve mental health—they just add to screen time.” “Which failure or mistake in my startup journey could be a valuable lesson for others, and how can I tell that story?” Nothing builds trust like transparency, especially when it shows your human side. Many people in your audience probably have a skewed view of what a tech founder is like, behind the curtains, so to speak. Putting your foibles (the ones that relate to your business, that is, TMI is real, folks) on display for others to learn from can go a long way toward building trust and authenticity. Examples: “We launched before validating the core problem with real customers, which cost us months of re-development time.” “Trying to scale too quickly before our product-market fit was solid led to cash flow problems and team burnout.” “What’s a customer pain point that we can’t solve yet, and what are we doing about it?” Contrary to popular belief (in some circles anyway), putting your limitations on display shows a great deal of strength and knowledge about the inner working of your product, not to mention your audience. Falling under the heading of transparency again, this question forces you to address those limitations for all to see—as long as you remember to tell them what you’re doing to solve things. Examples: “We don’t yet support integrations with legacy ERP systems, however, our library of integrations is growing every week, and we’re on track to incorporate the last of these systems by the end of this year.” “Our cybersecurity tool doesn’t prevent insider threats effectively, and we’re transparent about the need for complementary solutions.” “What’s a story from outside my industry that illustrates a problem my audience faces?” Sticking to the idea of addressing pain points, this question forces you to think laterally (anyone else hate that phrase? No? Just me, then.) about problem solving. Non-sequiturs are memorable, so drawing unexpected parallels can jolt your readers into remembering your content and, by extension, your name. It also demonstrates that you’re a creative thinker, not just another pretty face. Examples: “How a small-town coffee shop’s personalized customer service offers lessons for SaaS companies struggling with user retention.” “The rise and fall of a popular fitness influencer shows the dangers of overpromising and underdelivering in wellness marketing.” BONUS: “How would I explain our value proposition to a 10-year-old?” It’s pretty common for startup value props to be…how to say this politely…jargony, fluffy, jingoistic, and nonsensical. Thinking about it as though you were describing your product to your niece, nephew, or friend’s kid forces you to simplify not only your words but also your thinking—and that’s how you connect with a wider audience. Examples: “Imagine you have a big box of toys, but you don’t know where your favorite ones are. Our app helps you find the toys you want quickly, so you can spend more time playing.” “We make sure your computer is safe from bad guys, kind of like how a superhero protects a city from villains.”
Effective Blogging Strategies for SaaS Executives: 5 Things to Know
Effective Blogging Strategies for SaaS Executives: 5 Things to Know August 26, 2024 Rumors of the death of blogging have been greatly exaggerated. You can be forgiven for not having given much thought to a pastime many still view as something for angsty teens and influencer wannabes. What I’m here to do today is dispel that nasty rumor and ensure you leave with a clear understanding of just how powerful your words can be. The B2B SaaS world moves fast. You probably didn’t need me to tell you that. What you do need me to tell you is that that doesn’t mean people don’t read. Humans are a species raised on narratives. From our earliest days on the Savannah, humans have told each other stories. Stories about how we got here. Stories about what we should and shouldn’t be doing here. And even stories about how we should or shouldn’t treat each other while we’re here. Swirling around in that mix of stories is the one about your company. It has an origin story where the founder had the spark of an idea. It has a middle, where the company comes together around a central mission (a sub-narrative, if you will) to create a thing that will change how people do what they do. But who’s controlling that narrative? Executive blogging (sometimes called Thought Leadership) was, is, and will remain a potent tool for communicating insights, establishing thought leadership credentials, and more broadly connecting with your audience of existing and potential customers. Blogging, whether on your corporate website, LinkedIn, or even Reddit provide a plethora of outlets for your words. Words that can sway public opinion. Words that can explain how a product can help with a particular pain point. And words that can help keep your narrative moving forward while showing the human side of SaaS leadership. Here are my top five things to know when starting an executive blog. Please note: this is a living document (another benefit of blogging, right there), so remember to come back often to see what updates I’ve rolled out! Know Your Why The last thing I want anyone to do is start a blog because I said so. That’s the quickest way for a blog to fail, because you won’t have a ‘Why’ and I can’t give you one. Therefore, the first thing you need to know about your blog is why you’re creating it. Before you spend hours every week drafting up a compelling story to tell your rapt audience, you need to know why you’re doing it. Are you trying to help them solve an existing pain point? Convey updates about your product? Get something off your chest about the weather? There’s another Why in play: why should your audience invest their precious time in reading your words? What are you giving them in exchange for the 10-15 minutes you’re asking them to take out of their day? Blogging provides an opportunity to leverage a powerful communication channel. You have specific knowledge of your sector that your audience could potentially be using, right now, to help them power through or around a sticking point in their everyday lives. A blog can be your platform to build your reputation as a thought leader by sharing that knowledge. It can be a venue to influence tired industry narratives in need of overturning. It can be a way to foster direct connections with prospective customers and turn your existing clients into brand ambassadors. But how you proceed will be heavily influenced by which of those is your goal. Once you know why you’re starting this blog, it’s time to dive into the next, and potentially equally crucial piece of information: the who. Know Your Who As in, who do you want to read this blog? Before you can write even one word of advice, or help with a single pain point, or tell one amusing anecdote from last weekend—you need to know who you’re talking to. Think of it this way, would you tell that story the same way if you were talking to your grandma as when you’re talking to your co-founder? Or the VC? Or your kids? Every audience has it’s unique impact on how you weave your narrative, so starting with a deep understand of who you’re targeting is key. If you’re going to write a guide to addressing a pain point you know your product can help with (a common goal of Content Marketing for many SaaS platforms), you need to be sure you haven’t been targeting other SaaS execs, because they probably don’t care. On the other hand, if your blog is mostly about sharing your experiences in raising funds in today’s tight startup market, but you’ve been targeting those prospects…again, why would they care? Before you ask, yes, it’s perfectly fine for a blog to target multiple segments of an audience, just be sure you’re using tags, titles, etc appropriately so your audience can find the content that will resonate with them. Which brings us to the next thing to know…How. (I’ll be diving further into logistics like blog titles, categories, and the like in the future, so stay tuned if that’s something you’d like further guidance on.) Know Your How This one’s actually two-pronged. First you have to know how to write, duh. I’m glossing over that one for right now as it’s quite literally something I could write a book on (now there’s an idea…). For this intro piece I want to look at the How of posting your articles. Are you blogging? For yourself, or your company? What about starting a newsletter? Or maybe you’re looking to elevate your personal brand and become known as a thought leader on LinkedIn? Wherever you intend to post these essays/articles/ramblings, there are a handful of things you’re going to want to be sure you don’t overlook, which in the interest of time I’ve kept to my top three: SEO I put this first because I know