Tag: Content

Why create content? Do you ever stop to think about what the time and resource is for?

In the B2B technology sector, we believe content aimed at the right audiences can increase brand awareness and reputation, as well as play a critical role in helping generate leads for sales teams. It can be used and repurposed to demonstrate your brand’s leadership, skills and knowledge in a particular area. It’s also a way to show your customers and prospects that you understand their professional challenges – we call this ‘Content with Intent’ – and are committed to helping not only overcome them, but also helping them to reach their broader business objectives.

How to make your content work hard

Generating content is only one step in a much larger process. The campaign and the content within it needs direction, creativity, investment and a measurement plan. And more than that, each piece of content needs longevity and the ability to be used in different ways.  For example, it’s great to have fresh content on your website but how can you make that blog work harder for you? How does it tie into other campaigns? What about social media? What about a whitepaper or research project?

I’d like to share this five-step strategy to help you get the most out of planning your content, using a piece of proprietary research as an example at each stage:

1.   Define your ambitions
Each piece of content, be it an email, webinar, social media post, eBook, blog, video or article needs a purpose. Whether it’s to demonstrate knowledge, drive downloads or boost webinar registrations, this needs to fit into the broader campaign objective(s), which we, at Whiteoaks, define and deliver in a fixed, results-based way. The goals of the campaign ultimately influence your choice of assets, messaging, keywords, and the mix of channels you use.

If we take the example of a research project and working with an independent survey company, as we do, this will allow you to better understand an industry issue and speak to a sample of your target audience. This adds credibility to your narrative and helps position your business as a thought leader, allowing you to apply insight to the raw data.

2.   Perform a content audit
In the process of developing your campaign you need to take the time to find out what content you already have and decide what you need to generate. Again, think about longevity; compelling marketing content can be repurposed for different campaigns, for different audiences and different channels. So thinking long term about how you can get the most out of your assets is key and will provide better ROI.

Building on the research example, while you could just create a report, press release and infographic from the results, but your content audit would first show you what you already have, and whether blogs, articles, podcasts or social media tiles could be used to augment the results.

3.   Get it out there
You’ve got your objective, audience defined and content drafted, now you need to get your message out there. Whether it’s a thought leadership or social media campaign, a media relations programme, or a combination, as we’d often recommend in an integrated marketing campaign, you need to plan it, publish it in various channels with UTM links, and keep a close eye on how it’s doing. It’s also important you keep track of where it is — in terms of where it’s hosted, like a dedicated landing page, and where it’s located internally so that sales teams can make use of the insight for nurturing prospects and so other colleagues are informed.

For instance, your research report could be gated content hosted on your website, while an infographic could be ungated and sections from it promoted as GIFs on social media to drive people to the report.

4.   Measure it
Measurement is crucial for determining ROI. It also helps you understand what approaches, assets and calls to action are performing best so you can adjust the current campaign. You might change something that’s not working or do more of something that’s working well — and this gives you a foundation on which to build future campaigns.

For a project like a research report, your KPIs could be focused around report downloads or if you host a webinar to discuss the results you could measure registrations for the event. Other typical metrics include unique website visits, time spent on a specific web page, subscriber / follower growth, downloads (for gated content, for example), shares, likes or retweets (for social media), sign-ups and attendee numbers (for webinars), and click throughs from emails. Measuring effectiveness will be easier using marketing automation software, Google Analytics, IP tracking and other tools.

5.   Look to tomorrow
Developing a content calendar is a must. This is critical to the planning process, as well as in the content creation stage, as you’ll understand exactly what assets are needed for which campaigns, with associated deadlines. A research report and its associated assets is a good example of populating the calendar with themed content that drives a campaign across a few months and gives you milestones to work around.

Creating a calendar also gives you an overview so that you can easily see where any gaps lie, if there is content that can be repurposed, and makes the whole process more structured. Finally, this makes your content assets work harder over the longer term, which is exactly what you want.

Susan Richter, Marketing Communications Manager

The summer months are always a great time to take some time out and me and my fellow specialist Content Creators have definitely made the most of it this year with trips to the US, Belgium, the south coast and relaxing staycations. While the weather in the UK has certainly been unpredictable, being stuck indoors during a sudden downpour could be worse when there are so many good books and TV programmes to catch up on.

So, if like me you’re packing your bags to catch some late summer sun and are wondering what to take to keep you entertained on the flight or while lazing on the beach, worry not because here are our recommendations:

 

Ollie

I’m currently reading The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. It’s an inspiring but often horrifying story of people coming together to help each other out in the face of great adversity. The fact the story is embedded in real-life events makes it an incredibly sobering read.

Parks and Recreation is my current go-to show. While I love comedy, it’s not often TV shows actually make me laugh out loud. But Parks is certainly delivering the goods. On a bleaker note, I’m eagerly anticipating the return of The Walking Dead which is due in October. The last few seasons haven’t had great reviews but I for one have really enjoyed the show’s slow evolution from all-out blood ‘n guts horror to a story of survivalism in a post-apocalyptic world.

I’m currently addicted to the soundtrack of the TV series Better Things. I’ve not seen a single episode of the series (although I’ve heard great things about it) but was recently introduced to the soundtrack by a family member and I’m discovering a lot of great artists both new and old.

 

Susan

While most of us with a Netflix addiction have been enjoying the third series of Stranger Things (I’m a fan, don’t get me wrong), I binge-watched the entire first season of The Umbrella Academy. Fantasy, but in a different way to ST, it deals with complex (and well-written) characters, time travel, the apocalypse and family, all tinged with a bit of darkness that never quite lets the story fall into self-pity. The soundtrack is amazing as well, so for me, the show has been the gift that keeps on giving this summer, even when I’m sitting at my desk.

I’ve also been reading Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. It may sound like a new age self-help book, but it’s really a fascinating insight into our first impressions, intuition and how we make decisions in (you guessed it) the blink of an eye without quite realising how or why we do it. The books uses some great examples to get its point across and it’s well worth a look..

 

Richard

I’m currently reading a book by Robert Macfarlane called Landmarks. It is an ideal book to read in the summer months, when you are celebrating the chance to spend more time in the great outdoors.

Macfarlane has written a number of books on the landscape and nature generally.  He writes very elegantly but also with a real energy and passion for these topics. Landmarks is my favourite so far because it celebrates the language we use to describe the natural world but also shows how that language is shrinking as our green spaces vanish. While he was researching the book, a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary was published. Macfarlane calls out that many nature terms were left out and replaced with technology terms; “Deletions included acorn, adder, pasture and willow…the natural displaced by the indoor and the virtual. For blackberry read Blackberry.”

 

Hannah

I’m a bit late getting round to this one, but I’m reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt ahead of the film adaptation being released next month. It’s mainly set in New York and after having visited the city for a second time this summer I’ve really enjoyed being able to picture where the action’s taking place. I’m also working my way through the second series of Mindhunter on Netflix. It’s disturbing at times, but I love the true crime genre and this series is proving to be as compelling as the first. I just have to be careful not to watch it too close to bedtime!

My favourite thing to listen to at the moment is the Off Menu podcast in which comedians Ed Gamble and James Acaster talk to celebrity guests about their dream meal. It’s the perfect antidote to my boring commute and always gets me thinking about what my dream meal would be – the answer to which changes all the time!

 

Hugh

Currently captivated by Breaking News – The Remaking of Journalism and Why it Matters Now. This book is by The Guardian’s former editor Alan Rusbridger about how he grappled with the paper’s future, as the 200-year-old model of journalism was pulverised by the anarchy of the web. What exactly is journalism is when anyone can publish anything and the web giants take all the money? While answering that question he was orchestrating some remarkable stories (WikiLeaks etc).

I’m not naturally drawn to The Guardian, but at that time I was in a much smaller newsroom simultaneously battling and embracing the web. Nobody really knew which way to go, and the people at the very top of the organisation were pretty clueless, so Rusbridger’s agonising holds great fascination. The Guardian appeared to have a clear sense of direction. In reality, the dilemmas he chews over have not gone away.

I’m not watching anything. August is rubbish apart from the cricket highlights. This week I’m mostly listening to old acid house mixes from raves I never went to and clubs I never entered.

 

Jo

My summer reading is Wild Swans by Jung Chang. I did read it over twenty years ago but it’s on my book club list and my memory isn’t that good! It hasn’t lost any of its shock and awe the second time around either. The book was hugely popular in the 1990s and tells the story of three generations of daughters growing up in China. It is hugely inspirational and in stark contrast to our lives.  For example, while most of the team have enjoyed at least a few days off from work this summer, in 1950s China, officials were expected to work from 8 am until 11 pm, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.

I’ve also been binge-watching The Affair on Now TV. It very cleverly tells the story of several characters from different perspectives, which often leaves you wondering what actually happened. I love a good drama that makes you think so I’m hugely excited to find out that there’s a new series starting this weekend.

Image credit: Friday 5: Summer Pool Reads to Start Off the Season

I was brought up to regard America as brash. US slang was banned and my parents were so traditional I had to play football in a tweed jacket (all right, I made that bit up). But when punk rock erupted, I loved it. British youth culture started expressing itself in British accents, singing (shouting actually) about what mattered here, not over in the US. The Clash summed it up: “I’m so bored with the USA.”

US tech and the force for good

Now of course, I readily acknowledge the dominant role of the US in changing everyone’s lives (mostly for the better) through technology. But the language problem remains. As a content creator in B2B technology PR you quickly learn to de-Americanize (yes -ize as recommended by the Oxford English Dictionary) copy to make it relevant to the UK audience. It is not a trivial matter. While Britons can understand most American English, any heavily North Atlantic text gives the impression of remoteness – that the company responsible for the copy doesn’t really understand the UK market or regards potential British customers as an afterthought.

Where do voice bots feature in language battles?

This is, however, not another gripe about tech jargon. What intrigues me is where developments in Natural Language Processing, virtual assistants and voice-bots will take us in the journey across world English.

According to a Zion Market Research report published earlier this year, the global intelligent virtual assistant market accounted for US$2.3 billion in 2018 and is expected to reach US$19.6 billion globally by 2025, at a CAGR of 35 per cent between 2019 and 2025.

The global sale of smart speakers in 2018 was about 98 million units and is expected to reach 164 million units this year. Growth will be further driven by the autonomous vehicles market, using artificial intelligence and smart voice assistance to make the experience more reliable. In Europe, Germany and UK are projected to be the prime revenue contributors.

What kind of English?

But what sort of language will these assistants speak and who will do the talking? While voice bots will of course be in the native language or languages outside the non-Anglophone sphere, what kind of English will be used within it?

The tech giants who deploy voice bots will doubtless employ native speakers. (A recent BBC radio programme focused on this topic, presented by Jon Briggs – the first voice employed by Apple to present of Siri in the UK) But we can expect to hear American grammar and idioms wherever we go outside the UK. Does it really matter when billions around the globe are completely steeped in US culture through streaming services from Netflix to YouTube? We all know language is a living entity and it is not the job of business preserve its purity. We just need to effective communicators.

Do we need to learn languages anymore?

Similarly, does anyone really need to learn a foreign language anymore? Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa (powered by Microsoft Translator) and Siri all emerged pretty well from complex translation tests this year. Google Assistant will soon be able to act as a real-life translator in 27 different languages as it obtains a new “interpreter mode” that can translate in real time, enabling conversations with someone who speaks a different language.

Is there any point in the hand-wringing that followed a BBC investigation which found declines of between 30 and 50 per cent since 2013 in the numbers taking language GCSEs in some areas of England? Perhaps nobody can stop these trends any more than they halt the tides, because they arise from collective appreciation of how the world is developing.

We still need to pay full attention to the nuances of language

In time, the AI family of technologies behind voice assistants and bots will be capable of picking up and using all the tics, nuances and idiosyncrasies of spoken language. But we are not there yet, and we are not even there yet with the use of NLP to produce written text. In fact, whatever the method, whether through automation or painstaking keyboard-bashing and hand-crafting, we should all concentrate on using the most effective, relevant, direct and respectful language possible when communicating – especially in tech PR.

Unless you’re in advertising, where the role of the copywriter has existed for decades, the availability of writing-only roles is few and far between — and it got me thinking.

You can apply to be a marketing exec and writer; a PA and writer, or an account exec and writer, I discovered after a cursory Google search. It’s true that in PR and marketing there are many roles where writing is a required skill. It’s always handy to have a few people on the team ready and able to draft a synopsis, press release or blog.

But the lack of dedicated content creation or copywriting roles is concerning. Of course, this is just my initial impression based on a 30-minute online exploration and doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the case across all organisations or marketing disciplines — it could just represent a snapshot in time. But it does raise questions around the importance attached to creating good content.

The thing about writing, especially in the B2B tech space, is that it requires a specialised skillset. You’re taking technical information and reshaping that into something that not only appeals to journalists (in the PR space) but to end audiences as well. You’re giving them something relevant, meaningful and beneficial. Yet, you also need to ensure that it encapsulates the right messaging and hits all the right notes to get readers to engage with the content, whether that’s a press release, thought leadership article, eBook or email.

Can you do this effectively when your focus is split? The answer is almost always no.

The challenge when you’re juggling other responsibilities and tasks, such as account management or media relations, is that writing requires single-minded focus (speaking from experience here!) and the ability to meet the needs of the audience as well as the client.

Now for the part where I tell you how Whiteoaks is different. It’s one thing to say we’re different, but our team structure is one of the ways we prove it. Each team member at the company has a specialised role, whether that’s content writing, media relations, social media or account management. That’s not to say we work in siloes — quite the opposite in fact. We have dedicated roles which all combine to complete the integrated PR and marketing picture.

Looking specifically at the writing team (affectionately known at the Writers’ Pen, take from that what you will!) we’re an eclectic bunch of individuals with different career histories (marketing, teaching, journalism, PR) and complementary skills that ensure we add value to our account teams and consistently meet our client briefs.

We are well versed in tackling subjects from hybrid cloud and the state of retail, to cyber security, fintech and customer engagement, and transforming these topics into compelling narratives that engage and inform, forming part of a wider campaign.

If you need convincing about the importance of great content and how we can help you create it, why not get in touch?

Are you a value-adding brandividual utilising holistic storytelling to leverage your influence and drive agile new synergies? Or do you, like so many others, recoil at the very sight or sound of too many buzzwords?

Type the term ‘buzzwords’ into the Google news tab and you’ll find countless articles decrying their use. Many of these articles appear to be responding to LinkedIn’s ‘Buzzword Beaters Bracket’ launched earlier this month, which has generated, well, quite a buzz.

Presenting a fresh spin on the brackets used to keep track the progress of teams in sports tournaments, the Buzzword Bracket plays common buzzwords against each other to find the most annoying of the bunch. The winner (or loser) that surpassed all other contenders in irritating people the most was ‘disruption’.

For those who aren’t in the know, a buzzword is a word or phrase, often labelled as jargon, that is fashionable at a particular time or in a particular context. You could argue that ‘buzzword’ is in itself a buzzword.

In B2B tech PR, buzzwords are used often and in abundance. Once they enter the business lexicon, they represent a meaning that is universally understood. Rather than taking a whole sentence or paragraph to build context, you can do it with just one or two words.

For example, in supply chain management, the term ‘digital decisioning’ has become widely adopted as a way of referencing the process of making crucial business decisions based on insights that are informed by real-time data from various touchpoints across the supply chain network.

Imagine having to read that description every time a piece of content references the practice of digital decisioning. As the term has entered the lexicon it has become commonly used in content written around supply chain management.

In B2B content it pays to be direct. Buzzwords allow you to do this by writing more concisely while continuing to demonstrate value to the reader. However… there’s a big but…

Sifting through the countless articles that call for the banishment of buzzwords, the reason they’re so reviled becomes clear: people feel they are overused and lack originality. Of course, creativity is key to making your content original, engaging and thought provoking. But this has to be balanced with directness and functionality that gives your content purpose and drives your messaging home to the marketing personas you’ve defined.

And that’s exactly what buzzwords can be: direct and functional. Unfortunately, they’re most often overused, sending readers running and causing confusion about what the brand is really trying to convey. It’s why we ourselves recently set out to ‘break up with the cloud’ in a recent campaign we ran around Cloud Expo Europe.

Our view is that buzzwords can play a limited, focused and purposeful role in grabbing attention and signposting in virtual flashing lights what a piece of content is going to broadly be about. But when it comes to the heart of your content, use purposeful, tailored messaging that resonates with your audience instead of relying on the fallback of the buzzword.

We all know content plays a critical role in your PR and marketing strategies – forming the foundation for audience engagement and ensuring the right messages resonate with the right audiences. But what about when it comes to events? Your events calendar is most likely full of exhibitions, seminars, roadshows and conferences. Do you consider a content strategy to be vital here? Does it influence your tactics?

The answer to both questions should be yes.

These events are not isolated instances. They should be tied together by an overarching strategy that supports the marketing and PR goals of your business. In the same vein you need to ensure your content strategy does the same thing; joining all events together with a unified theme across the visual representation, presentations, collateral and event communications.

Whatever that may look like, by developing content in advance, you can use it to feed into activities, guiding sales teams on the ground, providing insights for spokespeople to deliver during presentations, and supplying valuable information to customers and prospects pre, during and post-event.

Strategy: setting the tone with theme and narrative

A good starting point is to review the objectives for the business and the marketing strategy for the year – and develop a theme aligned to these goals and the audiences you need to engage and influence. The theme then helps you develop your narrative, what you want to say and how you want to say it. In its simplest form, this all about storytelling; taking the audience on a journey, by capturing and keeping their attention with a valuable message that resonates.

The narrative will inform the tactical selection and determine what types of assets are needed and what they need to accomplish. Importantly, it’s not just about setting the scene at the event with the right messages, your narrative needs to stretch across the lifecycle of the event.

Relevance: the heart of your assets

The permutations of content are endless, from social tiles, infographics, blogs and emails, to eBooks, whitepapers, guides, top tips and video snippets. But what remains the same is the value they bring to your end audience; the content needs to be relevant, demonstrate that you understand their industry, their challenges and have the solutions to address those issues. More than that, your storytelling needs to engage readers and be less about selling to them and more about helping them solve their business problems. This in turn will build trust with your brand and keep it front of mind when an opportunity arises.

Tactics: delivering the content

Your content assets will vary from event to event, dependent on the aims of each. To illustrate an example, for the launch of a piece of propriety research, you could use a news release to generate industry coverage supported by interactive social tiles to create awareness across digital channels and use select statistics for a direct mail campaign to prospects, to tease the upcoming launch and drive registration to the upcoming event. The research report could then be exclusively launched at the seminar during speaker presentations and interest captured (a lead generation opportunity) to receive a full copy.    Finally, post event you could stage a webinar based on the key findings and supported with a series of blogs to continue to recycle the asset.

If the aim of your event is to further amplify your messaging, increase awareness and win share of voice at a busy show, you could use your narrative to create hype based on what you’re doing on stand and use interactive pieces of content like live demos and video, supported with social promotion live tweeting and blog content. Post event, you could release an exclusive eBook based on solving an industry challenge that’s linked to the key concerns for prospects.

Related: Event Series – Turning an event into a prime media relations opportunity

Related: Event Series – Getting the most out of your social media strategy at events

Related: Event Series Webinar – Redefining event marketing: Plan for success

Follow-on: moving beyond the event

The great thing about the assets you create as part of your content strategy is that they can be used before, during and after the event. They can be repackaged and re-purposed, and used for related (or follow-on) marketing and social media campaigns. Whether that’s giving prospects access to a hero piece of content, such as an eBook or whitepaper, or inviting them to a webinar or podcast and carrying on with a blog programme, your event content strategy can help you achieve the results you’re after, reinforce your messaging and guide prospects through the sales funnel.

Susan Richter, Head of Content

Tell Us Your B2B Tech Story

Read our eBook, ‘Making the Most of Industry Events’, and click here to download.

 

  1. What’s your career background, in brief?

I’d always wanted to have a career in writing but wasn’t quite sure what that might be. So after university, I interned for a while at a publishing house before bagging a role as a Publishing Assistant at Xbox. I then decided to give agency life a try so moved into the world of content marketing and SEO for five years before joining Whiteoaks tech PR agency last summer.

  1. What’s the most challenging job you’ve ever had?

During the summer between school and college, I worked at a nursery a couple of days a week. That was probably the most challenging job I’ve had as I was sixteen and had very little experience of being around small children. It was rewarding and a lot of fun at times, but definitely not for me.

  1. What apps, technology items and gadgets can’t you live without?

I couldn’t live without WhatsApp; my family doesn’t live locally so us all having WhatsApp means I get daily photo updates of my niece and nephew and can video call them once a week. Also, we swapped our TV for a projector a few years ago and I couldn’t live without that now — having a big screen experience for absolutely everything is pretty cool.

  1. What’s the best advice you’ve been given?

While it wasn’t given to me personally, I really like this piece from Dolly Parton: “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one”.

  1. Name one thing about your job that gives you a sense of satisfaction or makes you leave the office smiling…

I get a real sense of satisfaction when something I’ve written gets good feedback from a client or journalist – it’s nice to get that little confidence boost.

  1. Do you personalise your workspace?

I don’t, but I’m a big list writer so my desk is often littered with Post-it notes of things I need to pick up from the shops on my way home.

  1. What’s the first thing you do in the office in the morning?

I tend to get in fairly early so once I’ve turned my laptop on, I head straight to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and my breakfast.

  1. What are you reading, watching or listening to at the moment?

I’ve just started re-reading one of my all-time favourites, Persuasion by Jane Austen. I’m really interested to see if thirty-year-old me reads it differently to teenage me.

I’m the first to admit that I watch a lot of TV; at the moment I’m loving series 2 of Fleabag and am excited to watch the latest series of Queer Eye on Netflix. I’m a big fan of true crime podcasts so always have one of those on the go and enjoy listening to the weekly episode of pop-culture podcast The High Low on my drive to work.

Content is still king. We keep hearing it, we keep saying it. It forms the basis for almost all PR and marketing campaigns and is one of the most important ingredients to set a brand up for success in terms of building awareness, saliency and generating leads. But there’s a big caveat. To get your business messages across, impress your customers and prospects, and reach your communications objectives, it needs to be the right content.

Getting the basics right isn’t enough

Of course, it needs to start with good content — well written or spoken, cogent, relevant and smart — but that’s no longer enough. With so much content out there, being well scripted isn’t much of a differentiator. Yes, it’s important, and yes there’s a certain skill in doing it, but creating engaging content encapsulates so much more.

In the context of planning for a campaign, the variety of content must reach the right audiences with the right messages through the right channels. It’s about understanding their pain points, the industry they operate in and what they’re trying to achieve as a business.

Not all of this insight comes from desk research; in fact, your communication strategy is doomed to fail if this is your sole method. Instead, a critical part of campaign planning comes from talking to the people who know the audiences best. And that’s the Sales and Marketing professionals.

Different sides, same coin

The rivalry and discontent between the two teams has been well documented in the past — with much of it anecdotal. After all, it’s a better story to write about two groups at loggerheads.  Yet, our own independent research into the collaboration and understanding between Sales and Marketing leaders, ‘A Perfect Match: ABM and ABS’, yielded some contradictory results; 87% of the Sales and Marketing decision-makers we spoke to said they believed they were aligned with their counterparts. Catch the main findings from the research here and download the full report in the link above.

And that’s critical when putting together your content plan as part of an account-based approach to Sales and/or Marketing. Marketing adds value when it comes to the company messaging and the wider industry outlook; Sales on the other hand has the deep insights into customers and prospects in terms of their challenges and requirements. Both outlooks influence your content strategy and help you understand the audiences and personas that are being targeted in the overall campaign.

Down to tactical business

From strategy to tactics, the right content and understanding of personas helps shape the assets you’re creating; articles for thought leadership to educate and demonstrate knowledge; customer success stories for reinforcing proof points; blogs and vlogs to show both thought leadership and personality.

Related: Unleashing the power of buyer personas and account-based marketing

It also helps in determining which assets are better suited to the different stages (and aims) of the campaign journey. Long copy, like whitepapers and eBooks, is great for education and awareness, while shorter copy, such as blogs and social media posts, is ideal for reinforcement and attracting interest.

Don’t settle

Ultimately, having the right content (in terms of messaging, type and length) in place means you can start off your campaign on the right footing. And it’s worth remembering that good (ahem, really great) content doesn’t have to have a short lifecycle. It can be repurposed into other assets, used in different campaigns and can seed complementary social media plans. So while good content is… good, having the right content is even better.

In our recent webinar, ‘Partnering with Sales: A Marketer’s Guide’, I discuss much of this guidance as part of the broader content for marketers designing integrated marketing plans. You can watch the webinar anytime to suit you, here. I hope you find it useful.

Susan Richter, Head of Marketing Communications

Tell Us Your B2B Tech Story

Have you got your pencil case at the ready and your school shoes polished for a brand new term at our public relations academy? If so, let’s get started on how the UK’s leading B2B technology PR agency writes a headline grabbing B2B technology press release.

Regardless of the supersonic speed of breaking news tweets these days, the role of the humble press release has never been really usurped. It still remains one of the most important tools at your disposal as a marketing and public relations professional in B2B technology communications. Not only does it provide companies and clients with a strong format to present their news to the world, but it can also be used on their websites and various social media platforms.

When drafting a press release, there are four basic rules to follow.

1.     KISS – Keep it short and snappy

When announcing something new in retail tech, telecoms, broadcast technology and many other niche sector titles, your press releases should be short and to the point. Use simple, straightforward language and be mindful when using industry jargon. Concise sentences will make it easy to read and understand – An ideal sentence length should only contain 8 to 10 words, anything more than 25 words and readers start to nod off.

2.     All hail the headline

Make sure to grab the reader’s attention from the second they open their email. A strong headline (and, for that matter, an effective email subject line when you send out the pitch) will pull in journalists seeking good stories. Your headline should be as engaging as it is accurate. Keep the reader engaged with a captivating first paragraph and you are on to a winner.

3.     Answer the right questions

When you write a press release, you need to answer the following questions: Who, what, why, where and when, and each one should be answered in the first paragraph. The how can be addressed in subsequent paragraphs.

Who – Who is involved (you, your customer, your partner etc.)? What – What is the news hook that is going to interest the reader? Why – Why is this important (to the rest of the world – not just your company or client)? Include hard numbers where possible to give weight to your story Where – Where is the news happening/taking place? When – When is this happening? Or has it already happened? How – How did this come about?

4.     Write with your audience in mind

A press release should be written in the style of the target newspaper/radio station/social media/online channel, so it connects with the audience. The content should be accurate and not biased towards your company or client, product or particular point of view (it is not the job of the journalist to amplify your story – there should already be a legitimate news angle in the release itself).

For those that simply lack the time to put these tips into practice, where better to turn to than media relations agency, Whiteoaks, where our expert team of B2B content creators and writers have decades of experience in journalism and technical writing across B2B tech and consumer technologies, and across a huge variety of industries. For more information, please contact us and we would be happy to discuss your requirements.

Class dismissed!

 

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