What’s Your Philosophy of Writing?

The other day, I was talking to a marketing manager at a large technology company about a potential writing project. Usually, in an initial get-to-know-you phone meeting, marketing people will ask what types of projects I do and how I work—all  very tactical questions. But this woman asked instead, “What’s your philosophy?”

“Wow! That’s refreshing,” I thought. “No one’s ever asked me that before.”

Her question gets to people’s perception of writers. Often, people look at writing as a tactical task where the writer strings together sentences and polishes up the grammar. But when that’s all a writer does, marketers are invariably unhappy with the results and become distrustful of all writers. As one content expert recently noted, “Many writers seem to just not understand the topics, so while they may be grammatical experts, they destroy the message.”

By asking me my philosophy, this woman was saying that she understood that writing is a complex and strategic function that goes beyond stringing together sentences.

So What’s My Philosophy?

My writing philosophy centers around the type of writing I do and the process of writing.

Writing Types

With the idea of content marketing spreading like wildfire, marketers are actively looking to create content that describes how their solution helps people operate their businesses or do their jobs more effectively. The idea is that customers are actively looking for solutions for problems on the web and it behooves marketers who want to attract customers to give them what they’re looking for.

I come from a background of service journalism. In other words, I started out writing articles for niche publications that in some way, shape, or form provided information that helped people operate their businesses or do their jobs better. Whether it was a case study that showed how one business solved a particular problem, a comparative review of multiple products in a single category, or a trend piece that described changes an organization needed to be aware of, all of the articles I wrote always had a service bent. The white papers, case studies and other materials I write typically reflect that focus.

Writing Process

To create the type of materials I focus on, the writing process comes down to gaining a true understanding of the message the client wants to disseminate and then translating that into a piece that has meaning to the customer. The process is sort of like translating poetry from one language to another. This is more complex than it looks. After all, think about what would happen if you ran a poem through translation software. You’d get gibberish.

Why?  

Most poems are chock full of obscure references. If you don’t understand the references, you don’t understand the poem. But when you get a good professor to explain the poem, a whole new world opens up.

Similarly, pieces about technology contain all sorts of jargon, acronyms, and obscure references.

So for papers where the content is well defined, such as a white paper based on a sales presentation, the job of a writer is to be the poetry professor and translate the “poem” (in this case the technology) into language that students can understand. Since I’m not really an expert at any one technology, I do deep background research looking up obscure articles explaining the technology until I “get it” enough to explain to someone else.

But for many white papers, the client only has a 30,000-foot view of what they want to say. In that case, I need to come up with most of the content from scratch through interviews and research. I then shape it into something that meets the client’s criteria and that readers can understand.

So to summarize, what’s my philosophy to create value?

1. Create service-type pieces that help customers do their job or run their business better
2. Find out in a deep way what the client is really trying to say.
3. Make sure I get all the background I need to truly understand the message.
4. Learn what the customer wants to know and translate the message in such a way that the customer understands the value of my client’s message.

And that’s how writers add value to content during the writing process.

What’s your philosophy about producing marketing materials?

 

Comments

[Evelyn Walsh]

I would say that a great poem can be understood in many different ways. Some readers might get all the references, some may not-- but a great poem (or any great work of art) will just work differently for different readers. Or the reader might be first exposed to outside references in the poem. There may also be things in the work of art that the artist didn't consciously put there.

I do agree that for marketing writing, you should strive for clarity. Ambiguity is not appropriate.

[Evelyn Walsh]

Maybe the job of the marketing writer is to work as scholars and critics do with art...as translators. I like your example of the case study, which I think is always an invaluable marketing tool. One of the best.