B2B Marketers: Help Customers Browse Your Content

When will B2B marketers get the memo?

Minimalism is back.

The style's all the rage with runners, designers, gastronomers, photographers—even white guys.

But B2B marketers keep pushing bloated content.

When will they get it? When you subtract, you attract.  

Tight copy encourages browsing.

In their writer's guide Clear and Simple as the Truth, Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner implore writers to write in the "classic style," cutting the excess and making every word count.

Making words count boosts your content's value. 

And that discourages skimming.

"It is possible to skim certain styles," Thomas and Turner write. "Most after-dinner speeches are presented in styles that claim only part of our attention. Many textbooks and news articles are written in styles that allow us to bounce over words and phrases and still feel that we have extracted the sense accurately."

By making words count, you encourage readers to browse.

"Classic style allows browsing but not skimming. We may turn to just one paragraph, say, in an essay, or even to one sentence, and focus on just that. But once we focus on a unit in classic style, and intend to understand it, then we must pay attention to every detail. Writer and reader assume that every word counts. If the reader skips a single word or phrase or sentence, the sense of the unit may be lost. Classic style contains crucial nuances, which can be lost in skimming."

Skim-reading is mindless; browsing's another thing. Browsing is considerate. Browsing is window-shopping.

Customers love to window-shop.

So help them.

"Perfection is achieved, novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, "not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

Why Monkey with Your Brand?

Mathematician Émile Borel said a century ago, if you provided an infinite number of monkeys typewriters, eventually they'd produce Hamlet.

Today he might say, if you provided them smartphones, eventually they'd produce The Godfather.

Despite having limited time and money, marketers seem convinced amateurs can produce broadcast-quality videos.

Why do they monkey with their brands?

In his blog, Prathap Suthan, chief creative officer at agency Bang In The Middle, warns marketers of their folly.

"There are billions of sadly made films finding their way into the great social sewer. They comprise all kinds of trash. Including films made by big brands which they conveniently call web films. 

"Hello, your audience doesn’t realize the difference between a film made for the web versus television. For people, including all of us reading us, it’s a film. Most are badly made. Some are downright ugly. Very few are beautiful, and therefore shareable. 

"Now the thing is, take your eyes off quality and finesse, and you have a sad film representing your company, product, or brand. A social film has to be equivalent to a regular TV film. It’s not just a web film anymore. 

"Save yourself from the gutter and the clutter. Bad content is arsenic. It will eat your brand from inside."

It's 2016. How Do You Make Customers Click?

Powerful headlines grab customers' attention, as David Ogilvy insisted.

But that was in 1963. Only basements, barns and cartoons had mice.

What makes customers click in 2016?

Subheads.

Eye-tracking studies show customers dwell longer on headlines than any other part of a web page. (Ogilvy nailed it.)

But, even when you care to say the very best, headlines can't say it all.

Their smaller, wordier siblings, subheads can. 

Subheads expand and inspire. They let you telegraph additional benefits and urge customers to act.

Headlines hook customers. 

Subheads reel them in.

Want examples of effective subheads?

Here's a baker's dozen, courtesy of Hubspot.

Blowing in the Wind

An inveterate blowhard, Warren G. Harding popularized the term bloviation to describe his public speaking style.

Bloviation, Harding said, is "the art of speaking for as long as the occasion warrants, and saying nothing."

While contemporary office-seekers vie for his seat in the Valhalla of the vacuous, few can bloviate like Harding.

H.L. Menken thought Harding's appeal to audiences reflected their IQ. 

 "Bosh is the right medicine for boobs," he wrote.

The Dirty Little Secrets of a Technical Writer

Technology journalist Michelle Bruno contributed today's post. She covers technology and face-to-face meetings in her weekly newsletter, Event Tech Brief.

One might marvel at how I, someone who literally cannot navigate the remote controls of the television set, can write about computer networks and software. It’s really very simple.

The first thing I do when confronted with a particularly complex project is avoid panic. I know now there will be a point at which everything makes sense. It’s just a matter of time.

If the client has not given me source materials, which is rare, I create my own library of research—pulling from Google Scholar or scientific journals and magazines accessed from the library of a local college (a benefit of being an adjunct faculty member).

Almost always, I print the resource materials out on paper and highlight them with a colored marker. As I scan, I begin to formulate an outline in my head.

If I become blocked or overwhelmed, I take a nap.

No writer, even the most experienced, can know everything about everything. That’s why subject matter experts are my best friends. Most software engineers or network administrators are interested that I’m interested and indulge my curiosity.

No matter what I write, every word on the page is still a part of speech: noun, adjective, verb, adverb and so on. 

For example, network, cloud, and machine are nouns. Virtualize, orchestrate, and provision are verbs. It’s critical to get everything in the correct slot.

Structure is very important to me. Even in technical writing, I try to make sure every opening paragraph gives the reader a clue about what they will learn as they read on. 

Every paragraph I write has a topic sentence. If I start out with a list in the first paragraph, I make sure the explanatory paragraphs in the body are in the same order as the items in the list. 

While attempts to be humorous or ironic are normally ill advised in technical writing, I still try to be elegant and clever. Words are still my children and I try to present them in the best light possible.

When I’m not writing, I read. I look for structure and elegance even in the most technical of articles. It’s a blessing and a curse.

I edit as I write. Most of the time I spend more time on the opening paragraph than I do on the entire article. I can’t get comfortable until my direction for the piece is set.

When I finish a project, I deliver it to the client and never read it again for fear I might find a comma out of place or begin agonizing over a word choice.

Technical writers receive exactly zero feedback. Most of the time, my efforts aren’t even acknowledged (one reason I blog). So, to get some warm fuzzy, I share the paper with my husband, who always says, “How the hell do you write stuff like this? You can’t even turn on the TV set.” I just smile.

Postscript by Bob James: Want a weekly dose of wicked good insight?

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