What your content brief says about you

Why clients send bad briefs is beyond me. Garbage out = garbage in when you send a bad brief.

What I Need From Clients to Write Tech Content and Copy

One of the questions I get from prospective clients is, “What do you need from me to start writing?” Great question. Every project and client is different, so it depends. Some of my clients send me fully-formed outlines with suggested backlinks, wording, and keywords. Others just give me a general

Case Study: From blog posts to white papers

Earlier this year, one of my clients asked me to write a series of articles comparing various marketing tech apps. I ghost wrote them for one of their martech experts and they were published under her name on the corporate website. Several months later, the marketing manager wanted to turn

Why I Ask Prospects 10+ Questions Before We Work Together

When prospects reach out to me about collaborating on a project, I have them pass through a quick Q&A before we even speak. They answer a number of questions on my contact form, where I cover questions on project type, budgets, and referral information. In my email response, I

Getting Back to Regular Programming (& Why I'm Unemployable)

It’s now been a month since I’ve been back to full-time freelancing and I have to say, I’m so glad I did. Sure, the regular paycheck I got from my employer/client was nice, but working that way isn’t for me any more. To steal Brian

4 Reasons Why You Should Care About the People in Your Database

I’m always amused when I get an email from someone asking if my “corporation” would like a free trial of some piece of software. That they “read” my blog and thought their product would be a good “fit” to be mentioned in one of my posts.  If they’d

Get Rid of The Filler From Your Tech Content

The B2B buying cycle might be long, but that doesn’t mean your tech content marketing should be. You only need to use the number of words it takes to convince your buyer to keep you on their vendor shortlist. That’s it. Stuffing your content & copy with unhelpful words

Case Study: Regular Articles for an Online Magazine

One of my services is article writing for B2B tech & SaaS companies. Slightly different than blogging, article writing is a little more informational, educational, and news-y (to use the technical writing term). I like working on these projects since they’re not made to persuade anyone to do anything. They’

What It Costs to Hire a Technical Copywriter

You’re more expensive than other copywriters out there. Many of my prospects… I hear that comment a lot, mainly from prospects. It’s actually one of the reasons I started publishing prices on my website. I want to be absolutely clear that I’m not your average copywriter. I’

Your Guide to Outsourcing Technical Copywriting

You’ve got your tech content marketing strategy ready, buy-in from upper management, and the budget ready to spend. Now what? You need the resources to execute your plans. More specifically, you need a copywriter to work on your campaigns, but you don’t have one on staff. This puts

How to Keep Your Focus in a Busy, Tech-filled World

With all the great SaaS tech available out there, it’s hard to avoid getting sucked in to a new purchase every week. After all, these are AWESOME tools that will DISRUPT [insert industry here], right? Surely, you NEED to sign up for at least a trial to see how

Case Study: White Paper for Non-profit

While not one of my core services, white papers are a powerful marketing asset for any B2B tech company. Use them to explain a complex tech concept, demonstrate your thought leadership, or spark engagement with your audience. I’ve written a few white papers in my time, mainly academic-sounding, stiff

Think Like a Publisher, Not a Marketer

Printer security isn’t a sexy topic. But HP knows it’s an important part of any company’s cybersecurity plan. So they decided to take their latest marketing campaign up a notch. Instead of just publishing some use case examples of how printer security is a serious thing, they

The Information You Need to Sell Your SaaS Product to B2B Customers

Who likes B2B customers? You do. As a SaaS company, you like selling to B2B customers. They boost your brand’s credibility and provide powerful social proof. Since they tend to stick around for longer than B2C customers, they lower your overall monthly churn risk. Not to mention the fact

Why I DO Use the Word 'Freelancer'

I still call myself a freelancer (a freelance technical copywriter, to be exact). It’s just a word, but one that I see getting trashed on a semi-regular basis online. Usually by someone else who does the same work as me: outsourced writing (copywriting or content writing) for companies, people,

What's New in Tech Content Marketing?

CMI put out their latest technology industry content marketing report and it’s always interesting to see what they find out about the circuitous route B2B tech sales and marketing take. Interesting tech content marketing stats I’m using “interesting” in the Confusian sense, since tech content marketing affects so

Case Study: Writing Monthly Blog Posts for ServiceRocket

One of my core services is monthly blogging for B2B tech companies. As I tend to get the same sorts of questions about this work, I thought I’d write up a case study of how that work went with one of my favorite clients. Without further ado, here you

Over to You: What's Your Biggest Tech Marketing Obstacle?

With the unofficial soft relaunch of my blog, I want to make sure I’m writing content that you want to read. So I want to ask you about your biggest tech marketing obstacles. * What item stays on your To Do list day after day because you just don’t

Publish Content with a Positive Spin and Go Get'em

Raise your hand if you’re tired of all the negativity online.  So why are you publishing negative content for your B2B tech company? Yes, you are publishing negative content with every post with the word “stop” in the title, every download on how “not” to do something, every webinar

A Day in the Life of a Website Owner

Today I completed one of the newest admin tasks of being a website owner: buying an SSL certificate for my website. While I don’t do any eCommerce transactions through it, nor is it an “official” corporate site, my site will still be marked as “not secure” for Chrome browser

Regenerating Content is Hard Without a Plan

Repurposing or regenerating content is easy to do with evergreen content, since you know it’ll always be relevant and valuable to your audience. But what about any net-new content you create? Is there a way to create it so that it’ll be easy to regenerate into something new

Use this Plan to Drive SEO Rankings for Your Business Blog More Easily

SEO. You’ve read all the posts on how it’s important for your tech and sports tech website. You’ve tweaked all the keywords on your site, made sure to include them in your webpages, and you’re still wondering where the traffic is. So you hire an SEO

8 Tools that Make Repurposing Your Content Easier

Repurposing content doesn’t have to be an overly complex process or activity. Simply take a good quality piece of content and see how you can transform it. Take a podcast and turn it into a checklist and blog post. A series of blog posts turns into an ebook you

4 ways clever marketers repurpose content

As busy marketers, we want to make our content work as hard as it can, right? If there’s any way you can make a single piece of content do double- and triple- duty, then you’re all for it. Your content is much more valuable than just as a

Speed of STEM: How NASCAR is Helping Promote STEM Education

Richard Childress Racing (RCR) recently teamed up with the Dow Chemical Company to launch an online education program for kids highlighting the importance of STEM education (science, technology, engineering, and math) in racing. The Speed of STEM program is a collaboration between Dow’s STEM Ambassadors and RCR to develop

Repurposing Live Content into eLearning

Today’s technology empowers learners to continue to learn by doing, by practicing what you’re teaching, and by asking questions without necessarily being in the same location. As learning designers, you’ve got to decide what’s the best format and mode for your content, and then help learners

Out of Ideas for LinkedIn? Here are 5 Repurposing Hacks to Save You Time & Brain Power

Publishing content regularly is important, but how do you come up with ideas to keep the pipeline fed? Here’s a secret: you already have all your ideas, they’re just in a different format. By taking the content you already have and repurposing it, you can plan out your

5 Repurposing Hacks to Save You Time & Brain Power

Publishing content regularly is important, but how do you come up with ideas to keep the pipeline fed? Here’s a secret: you already have all your ideas, they’re just in a different format. By taking the content you already have and repurposing it, you can plan out your

6 Reasons Why Repurposing Content is Essential to a Successful Content Marketing Strategy

Regenerating content. It’s not just for recyclers anymore. And what busy tech marketer wouldn’t want a faster way to produce helpful, useful content for their audience? You all want to do it, so why aren’t you regenerating content? If you’re still not sure, here are 6

5 Ways to Create Content When You Dislike Writing

It’s hard to face that blank page, that blank blog post page that you should be writing today. Yet it’s just one of the million things on your To Do list but it’s just too hard to face. You know you should be writing; not looking at

Settle Down! Why Using Too Many Exclamation Points Is Killing Your Tech Content

You’re proud of your tech product and you want to let everyone know about it. You planned it out and worked hard on it. And that’s when it happens. You start talking! Excitedly! About your product! And all the wonderful things it does! Oof, all that excitement is

Two Strategies That Keep People Reading Your Tech Content

At least once a week, two newsletters appear in my inbox that have nothing to do with marketing or copywriting: Further from Brian Clark and the RW rundown from Runner’s World. One is about living your best life, while the other is full of tips & advice for runners. They