You’re tasked with creating solid and rich marketing messaging. Suddenly, everyone around you wants to weigh in on content—and the “messaging madness” ensues. Whether you’re developing the foundation for a multiproduct campaign or creating detailed product descriptions to support your latest release, the most time-consuming aspect of the process is getting agreement around central themes. [...]
"How to Write a Great…" Archive
Content Bureau teammates share their secrets for writing top-quality marcomm and other practical missives.
How to Write a Concise and Complete (aka Great) 25-Word Product Description
What can you do with 25 words? Write a note to your kids about how to reheat dinner. Make a grocery list. How about tell a complete, compelling story? It’s possible to finesse about two dozen words into a product description that’s not so high-level it glosses over everything, but also not so detailed it [...]
How to Write a Great Food Blog
In May the Content Bureau blog turns to a subject that we can all enthuse about ad infinitem: food. To kick off the May food raptures, Stacy interviews Amanda Haas, the lovely and talented founder of the acclaimed website and food blog, One Family One Meal. Stacy: Bless you, Amanda, for helping me with this [...]
How to Write an Edgy White Paper
Ho-hum. Another white paper. Most clients struggle to turn this staple of the high tech industry into something exciting, engaging, and most important, actually read. An edgy white paper is refreshing. Challenges your thinking. Shows true zeal. We’ve written hundreds of white papers. Though often few and far between, the edgy ones are my favorite. [...]
How to Ghostwrite a Great Conference Blog
Your annual user conference starts in two weeks. You’ve packed glossy brochures in cozy boxes. Printed thousands of badges. Reserved buckets of ice for your nightly foot-soaking. And to chronicle the big event on your company blog, you have your very own ghost eager to haunt the conference halls. Let’s call him Bob. To be [...]
How to Write the Perfect Valentine
I have mixed feelings about valentines. Here’s why: A college friend’s boyfriend presented her with the creepiest Valentine’s Day gift ever: a clear wine bottle, label scrubbed off and replaced with his own charming creation entitled, “100 Mini Love Notes.” YES! This is true! Inside were…. one hundred itty bitty teeny weeny hand-inscribed love notes, [...]
How to Write a Great Thank-You Note
Writing a thank-you note has long been perceived as a chore, especially painful for children, who don’t understand that civilization just might fall apart without such social niceties. It can seem like a race to get to the part where you sign your name (with great flair and panache, of course). Phew, you think, one [...]
Dear Santa Redux
We all love our holiday traditions, be they Black Friday sales, polishing up the menorah, or, as in my household, trudging into the Bureau of Land Management forest up in the foothills to find the perfect tree, only to forget the tree-cutting permit and get the truck stuck in the icy mud. As dedicated traditionalists, [...]
How to Write a Great Wiki
If your writers have ever written a wiki, they’ve probably done battle with the wiki editors. I’m convinced they post their objections gleefully. Writing wikis for a company or a product is particularly tricky—if your writers don’t tread carefully, they’ll likely get whapped with “This article is written like an advertisement. Please help rewrite this [...]
