It’s a genre known as the ‘inverted detective story’ — not so much a who-dunnit as a how- or why-dunnit. Way back in the 1970s, the American detective series Columbo popularised this approach: the audience would see the crime take place at the beginning of each episode and know who was responsible. The enjoyment came from watching Lieutenant Columbo work it all out.

There’s a strong argument for writing case studies in a similarly ‘inverted’ way, especially as companies increasingly move away from the traditional challenge–solution–results case study structure. If you have a really great outcome or result to share — like 20% revenue growth or 30% operational savings — putting it right upfront in the standfirst is a powerful technique for hooking your audience, enticing them to read on and find out how and why it was achieved. Using an outcome in this way will give your case study much more impact than simply including it in a ‘results’ section at the end.

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But a Bond novel is a Bond novel — even if Devil May Care tackled a new theme (drugs) and was set in a location never used by Fleming (Persia, now Iran). With her novel Death Comes to Pemberley, on the other hand, PD James set herself a very different challenge: to write a murder mystery — a type of novel that doesn’t feature in Jane Austen’s oeuvre — that would read like a natural sequel to Pride and Prejudice.

As a lifelong Austen fan, James had many rereadings of Austen’s work to guide her. In her novel, she successfully recreates the world of Pride and Prejudice, reflecting Austen’s narrative style and the original book’s themes of manners, morality, marriage, class and self-knowledge.

Using a consistent style, or tone of voice, and staying ‘on message’ — as both modern-day authors have done — was critical to maintaining the ‘brand image’ of the authors they imitated and to keeping faith with the original authors’ readership.

Staying on brand and on message in all your sales and marketing communications is just as critical to maintaining your organisation’s brand image with your audience — especially if you’re producing a new type of collateral. An up-to-date set of editorial, branding and messaging guidelines will go a long way towards helping you achieve that objective, by supporting the creation of consistently styled and themed content of all types across all your communication channels.

What do you think? How do you ensure your new content stays consistent with what you’ve produced before? Let us know in the comments section, or get in touch on Twitter and LinkedIn.

The post Imitation — the sincerest form of consistency? appeared first on HN Marketing.

Hilary Mantel: “First paragraphs can often be struck out.”

Sarah Waters: “Cut like crazy. Less is more.”

Diana Athill: “Cut… only by having no inessential words can every essential word be made to count.”

Even though these authors were talking about writing fiction, almost any type of writing benefits from concision. Many forms of expression in today’s connected world are limited in length, whether by design (such as Twitter’s 140 characters) or custom (blog posts tend not to exceed a few hundred words). Whatever we’re writing, the key is to get the message across in the fewest, most compelling words possible, in order to hold our readers’ attention through to the end.

As Elmore Leonard so deftly put it: “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.”

The post Cut, to keep your content relevant appeared first on HN Marketing.

Don’t be selfish:

Your audience have a choice. And if they sense that your content is all about you (‘me-oriented’ copy), not them, their choice will be to go somewhere else.

So don’t focus on the ‘I’, ‘we’, or ‘us’. Instead, construct sentences using ‘you’ and ‘your’. You-oriented copy attracts readers, keeps them interested, and cues them for action. It’s not about you, it’s about them, so focus on what your readers want, rather than simply what services you offer.

Don’t be self-absorbed:

You don’t buy from you, others buy from you. Your customers don’t really care about your business and your troubles nearly as much as you do— so keep you content focused on their business challenges. Keep it customer-centric.

Don’t be deceitful:

See selfish, above. If you don’t tell customers the truth, it’s probably because you’re selfish. How urgent can your needs be that you would sacrifice your future to get something now? Developing long-lasting and profitable relationships with customers is all about building trust.

Don’t be inconsistent:

Your customers are bombarded by information, daily; so they’re not paying that much attention. But when they do, it helps if you’re communicating in a similar way to what they have heard from you before—in terms of facts, messaging, tone of voice, language etc.

Don’t be lazy:

You should make your copy easy to read, and sometimes that means using the proper mechanics of English, such as when to end a sentence, when to use commas, dashes, colons and other punctuation. You should understand sentence structure, such as the need for a subject and a verb, how to use prepositions and conjunctions and phrases. Given that, don’t feel compelled to follow every rule of English composition. While you should not try to impress readers with your brilliance, you don’t want them to think you are illiterate.

The post What are the most common copywriting sins? appeared first on HN Marketing.

1. What’s in it for me?
The best way to keep your reader involved with what you have to say is to give them what they want. To show the reader that your article matches their interest, you need to let them know what to expect in the first sentence—or better still, in the heading. If they see that it’s what they want, they’ll keep reading.

Try writing the heading from the reader’s point of view. Why will the story be interesting to them? How will they profit from reading your communication? Answer their question:

‘What’s in it for me?’

2. Choose content carefully
A little rule I rely on when I finish writing, or when editing another’s article, is to go back and ask of every statement ‘So what?’.

Does each sentence add something to the copy? Does it support your central message or argument? If not, then is it just an unnecessary distraction? What value is it contributing?

Remember, all of your content should be working towards persuading your audience to take an action. So keep to the point.

3. Talk benefits not features
Don’t just say ‘we sell seashells’. Say what your seashells will do to help your reader.

By focusing on benefits specific to your prospects’ business model you’ll demonstrate that you have a thorough understanding of their requirements and give them confidence in your organisation. And make them want to know more.

4. Clear signposting
For writing a good article and keeping the reader’s attention, formatting is very important. Above all it should make the reading easy. Brilliant thoughts written in poor formatting can be as poor as worthless thoughts. So using descriptive subheads in your copy is a must. Subheads have two basic purposes:

• To break down your copy into easily digestible segments
• To capture the attention of those who quickly scan your copy to see if they’re interested

See, most of your readers, probably quickly scan copy to see if you’re talking about the results or benefits that they want. So make it easy for them to find what they are looking for.

The post How to keep your reader’s attention appeared first on HN Marketing.

Before sitting down to write anything, even if it’s for yourself, you need to be in possession of a good brief.

So what makes a good brief? These are some of the question we like to ask our clients:

1. What is the central message that this piece must communicate? What’s the story?

Capturing the central opinion you want to express, argument that you are asserting, or the one message you want readers to take away from the article, will focus the piece on what you need it to say.

2. What’s in it for me?

Why will the story be interesting to the reader? How will they profit from reading your communication? Answer this at the start, and the writer can make sure—by asking this of every sentence they write—that this is conveyed to the reader. So they keep reading.

3. Who is your target audience?

Describe the target audience and their business issues, and you will ensure the writer can tailor the messaging to their specific needs. For example, if the solution is a piece of new software and the audience is made up of business managers, it would be better to talk about the capabilities that the solutions enable, rather than their technical features.

4. What 360° research can you provide?

Convey everything you can about your products/service, your competitors and your target audience. These are the things that are typically left off a brief because they’re the ‘hard to complete’ sections. But they’re so important. For example, competitor information may be hard to come by or no one may yet have assessed its significance but without this as part of your brief it would be easy to wax on about certain features, claiming them as strengths, when in fact, your competitors are better.

5. What tone does the deliverable need to take?

What tone/approach will your target audience respond to best? For example, when marketing to senior executives, it may be best to take a consultative role to help, not sell—at least not overtly—and communicate with your prospects on a peer level, empathising with their challenges.

Think about style in relation to:

• • Formal vs. informal/conversational (The most obvious marker(s) of this being whether to use 1st, 2nd or 3rd person when talking about your organisation and your clients)

• • Educational vs. ‘salesy’

• • Neutral vs. ‘opinionated’ (taking a stance)

• • ‘Academic’ vs. ‘straight-talking’ language

• Using, using with explanation or avoiding technical jargon

Remember, one of the most important things about copywriting is about being able to see beyond the words, to the message being delivered. And this ability all starts with getting a good brief.

The post Know EVERYTHING – the importance of a good brief appeared first on HN Marketing.

Their instinct is absolutely spot on. We’ve written before about the value of repurposing or extending the reach of good content. It’s just common sense to make the most of the time and effort you’ve invested in creating it. Right?

Repurposing takes time and money

Right. Except that reusing content is not usually just a matter of waving a wand and, hey presto, you’ve got a new result. Occasionally it’s not far off — if you’ve done a really good job creating a presentation script that stands on its own, it can be pretty straightforward to turn it into a paper. But most of the time it’s not as simple as that.

Typically it takes some effort and expense to turn your video into a paper or your sales guide into a customer presentation. Even writing a short blog using existing content takes some time and thought.

What return will you get from reusing content?

So while the instinct to reuse content is a good one, it’s not enough on its own to justify doing so. As with any activity, you need to be clear about the return on your investment to get it done. Against the time and money it takes to complete an activity you need to consider how far it will shift the attitudes or actions of your identified target audience to achieve your stated aim for the activity (eg, to raise understanding, close a deal, increase loyalty, encourage advocacy, create a partnership).

Of course you also need to consider the activity in the context of other activities and their goals. The impact of any single blog may be low, but the cumulative effect of your blogging activity might not; or you might have other good reasons to blog.

Finally, one thing that is definitely true about reusing content is this: if you already have good, independent reasons for creating some content, always consider whether you already have content that the new activity could tie into, repurpose, adapt or use as inspiration. Doing so will usually make the new activity, which you’ll be doing anyway, more efficient or effective.

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