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Imagine trying to build a house without a blueprint, scale Everest without a Sherpa, or create boeuf bourguignon without a cookbook. Yes, it’s true that certain people can do these things unassisted, either by rote or by instinct. And some could probably do all three… at once. (I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Julia Child was a secret carpenter and mountaineer.)
Most of us, though, need guidelines to help us build, climb, or cook. It’s the same with blogging. Technically, you can create, write, and edit a blog without guidelines, but it’s probably not prudent.
Having guidelines is especially helpful if you’re creating a B2B blog like this one. We’re learning this here at Harding Marketing, as we go through the process of creating the very blog that you’re reading right now. We’ve written some guidelines, but we’ll need to expand them as we learn new things along the way.
Nobody likes rules—except maybe school teachers, the Marquess of Queensberry, and some guy named Robert. Plus every mom on earth.
So it’s not surprising that graphic designers—those free-spirited folks who make your brochures and websites look so spiffy—are offended by typographical rules. Therefore let’s not call these rules. Instead, let’s call them guidelines. Or helpful advice. Or typographical tips to enhance legibility and make your marketing communications more effective. In short, let’s call them the type of thing that can be helpful.
Get it? Type of thing?
In honor of today’s subject, this should probably start with a joke. Maybe something like: Did you hear the one about the man who laughed his ads off?
Okay, maybe not.
Maybe those of us in marcom should just forget about using humor because our responsibilities are, like, way serious.
But at Harding Marketing, we think that begs the question: serious to whom? Marcom copy is pretty darn serious to those of us who manufacture it, but who are we kidding? You and we can come up with brilliant strategies. We can focus on benefits. We can include bullets and callouts and subheads and a powerful call to action. But if we don’t write copy that readers enjoy reading (or listening to), our chance of success is reduced by a whole lot. Maybe even more.
If you’ve been tasked with either assigning someone to write a mission statement, or actually writing one yourself, you may be wondering: What is a mission statement, anyway?
You’re not alone. A large contingent of the population, especially outside the corporate world, doesn’t really know what a mission statement is. And probably a good portion of that group actually includes marketing professionals.
But writing a mission statement isn’t as Marketing 101-ey as you’d think.
Tech aversion therapy: writing technical copy for non-technical people
01/25/2010 in Copywriting, MarComments | Tags: Copywriting, Marketing | by Harding Marketing | Leave a comment
Not long ago, MarComments blogged about the adventures of preparing English copy for translation. Think of this as a follow-up. But this time it’s about an even trickier subject: converting technical language into English.
It’s tricky, but it’s important. That’s because you and we are often trying to communicate about highly technical products to not-so technical people. They might be very smart people with advanced degrees and whizzes at whatever it is they do. But that doesn’t mean they know bupkis about storage interfaces, including multifunction, Fibre Channel, RAID, iSCSI, and SCSI adapters.
Yet these people are often the decision makers when it comes to buying what you and we are selling. If we’re not careful, prospective customers will find themselves browsing through our brochures, white papers, and websites—and never know what we’re talking about.
This can lead to lost sales. Not to mention lost jobs.
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