Category: Technology Copywriting

How to write an awards entry (and win*)

Posted on by The Radix Team

Ah, January. That strange post-Christmas period where B2B copywriters relearn how to juggle briefs like we’re in some kind of crazed copy circus, all while abstaining from things that we love. But hey, at least we’ve got awards season to look forward to.

And entering? Surely all it takes is to read the questions and have a wee gush about how great you are?

If only it was so easy.

Here at Radix towers, we’re flattered to have had our share of success writing clients’ awards entries. (Heck, we’ve even been nominated and won before in our own right, too.) And with deadlines looming, we thought it made sense to share a little of our secret sauce. Anyone can answer a question, but what does it take to actually win?

From our experience, it generally pays to be mindful of the following…

Knockin’ the judges dead (metaphorically, with words)

1. Stay on point.

Typically, you only have so many words to tell the judge why your candidate is so deserving of the award. Wasting time talking about how good Steve is at Magic: The Gathering wouldn’t win any us any favours – so we don’t (we’d need a lot more than 300 words for that, anyway).

Instead, we prioritise what makes our entry so unique, ground-breaking, and interesting – and present it proudly, right at the start. (With persuasive language, in an active voice.)

2. Provide evidence. For everything.

Our clients may love what we do, but if we can’t back up our grandiose claims with cold, hard stats, then we stick to the humble truth. If we are indeed the best (perhaps even the only) specialised B2B tech copywriting agency in the South West, then you can bet we’ll have the data to prove it. Nobody likes a blagger.

Wild, unsubstantiated statements undermine the credibility of everything else in your entry. So if you can’t prove it, don’t say it.

3. Tell a compelling story.

Who wants to read endless lines of self-congratulatory guff? OK, it may be the judge’s job to do exactly that, but let’s cut them some slack. Instead, we tell a compelling story that’ll seize their attention and keep them on our side.

Especially if you know the judging process includes a committee discussion, it pays to have a succinct, powerful “THIS is the one who did THAT”.

Of course, it’s still important to articulate why the candidate is so damn great, so it pays to break it down into a digestible beginning, middle, and end. For example: What objectives were set? How were these objectives met? And what super-amazing things happened as a result?

The judge needs to be able to describe exactly why you should win, in two seconds flat.

4. Mind the marking scheme.

The more we know about how the decisions are made, the better.

Sometimes, it’s obvious. If a question is worth double points, that’s the one where we really set our stall out. Often this means getting tactical; we may be itching to talk about a particularly juicy project, but in many cases, it pays to reserve the big guns for the highest-scoring questions.

If the scoring process is mostly numerical (each answer is scored out of ten, or five) then it’s a question of marginal gains: finding enough relevant things to say in each one, to gain a one-mark edge here or there.

But if it’s a group of people discussing each entry around a table, then it’s wiser to take the best shot as early in the entry as possible. It’s simple behavioural science: if they get a feeling early on that this entry is a good one, they’ll then see every subsequent point as a confirmation.

5. Check, check, and check again…

Slinging a first draft off for consideration may be tempting (gotta hit that deadline), but chances are we’d just secure a fast-track to the recycle bin. At Radix, we value quality – no rush jobs, no jargon, and no wince-inducing typos. It’s not like there are points for good grammar and spelling, but if it comes down to a gut decision, you need to look like a contender.

So we proof, we ask for a second opinion, we proof again… and then maybe (just maybe), we send.

[Editor’s note: it is an inescapable truth that the copywriting gods will now punish us for our hubris, and you’ll spot a typo in this blog post in the next three seconds. We can only apologise; such ancient and mischievous forces are beyond our control.]

The clock is ticking.

Most importantly, you do actually have to meet the entry deadline. (Yes, we know most awards end up extending the deadline “by popular demand” *cough* but you can’t rely on that.)

It’s not uncommon for an awards entry to run to 2,000 words or more. So if it’s going to be good, you do need to book out a fair chunk of time.

(Of course, nobody does… which might just be why a certain B2B copywriting agency finds late January tends to bring a sudden influx of urgent awards entries to write. Having ten writers in a room does mean we can turn things around pretty fast.)

If you have any questions about this post, or you’d like some help from Radix in hitting your own scary deadline, just get in touch at [email protected]

—

* Radix Communications Ltd cannot guarantee that you will win an award. Obviously. But by reading this far you have already won our esteem and our thanks. Well done you.

“How long will it take?” Five factors we consider when quoting for copywriting

Posted on by The Radix Team

As you may know from your own experience, quoting for any kind of project isn’t all about the money. A major component in delivering a job is being realistic about what’s achievable, so you can keep your promises. It’s how your client comes to know they can trust you to deliver.

Of course, it’s important to deliver jobs quickly, but quality is an important part of what we do – it’s what separates us from the content mills (*shudder*). So we have a clearly defined set of questions we need to ask before quoting for a project, which enable us to stick to deadlines, and ultimately, let our clients know exactly what they can expect, and when.

So, what do we look for before we put pen to paper? Here’s five things we consider when quoting for a writing project:

1. How complex is this, really?

We’ve been doing this for more than a decade (and we’re really geeky about our data). So when we get presented with a brief, we can usually work out how much work it’s going to entail at a glance. But there are of course exceptions.

For example, from time to time we get asked to copy edit an existing document (usually written by one of the client’s colleagues). It might need shortening, expanding upon, or something different to copy editing – like proof reading, or a rewrite. My colleague George has put together a great piece to explain the difference.

It’s only natural to take an optimistic view of an existing piece. But if we don’t quote properly for a project, we’re not helping the client. If the piece turns out needing a complete re-write, this could pose a problem when it comes to delivering the work to the agreed schedule. We pride ourselves on never being late, so it’s essential to get right.

The more information we have at the brief stage, the better we’re able to understand the true scope of the job. (And if we ask to see the content you’d like us to copy edit before we quote, this is why.)

2. Yes, we know B2B tech, but do we need a call, or extra research?

We understand enterprise technology; it’s what we write about every day. But that doesn’t mean we’re experts in every field. The nature of the industry means it’s constantly evolving, so we as much as anybody else to keep up with the latest trends and developments.

For some projects, this is pretty straightforward. But if it’s a key piece of content where you really want to add value for your reader, we’ll need to dig a little deeper, and uncover things your audience won’t already know.

This can mean doing extra research, or having a call with product experts – they live and breathe this stuff, so if anyone is going to give us invaluable insight, it’s them. (In fact, it’s so valuable we recorded a whole podcast episode about it.)

3. Who’s our best writer for the job?

One of the real benefits of having ten specialist B2B copywriters in a room is that we each have our own natural strengths. Like anything in life, we have subjects we find more interesting over others and special areas of interest – and our natural writing styles fit certain types of content.

This means we’ll always to try to match the job to the ideal writer and content lead. This can affect the turnaround time slightly, but it also ensures you’re getting a great piece of copy from a copywriter who has a genuine interest in the topic and, what’s more, truly understands what you’re trying to achieve.

The more specialised or important the job, the more essential it is to find just the right blend of interests and style.

4. Can we be certain of delivering quality work on time?

We know you’re busy, and you have deadlines to meet. If a job’s urgent, having 50+ hours of writing time at our fingertips every day means we can usually turn it around.

But like air traffic controllers at a busy airport, our account managers balance this hectic, fast-moving workload with the absolute need to get the job right. They’ll always have a clear, visual grasp of our writing diaries, enabling them to ensure the right writer has time to do the job well.

That’s why we need to receive a project brief, set out the breadth of the project, and understand who’ll write it, and when, before we give you a firm deadline. But once we have, you know we’ll absolutely deliver exactly what we say, when we say, for the price we agreed.

5. Have we allowed enough time for review, and amends?

To make sure you’re completely happy with our work, we factor in up to two rounds of amends as standard in our quotes – as well as our own internal review process.

This gives you the flexibility to question and edit what we’ve produced (within reason) if you need to, so we can refine the piece totally in line with what you want.

Quite often, that time won’t be necessary (especially if we’ve worked hard on the brief), but you’re safe in the knowledge that we’ve factored the time it usually takes into your project schedule – enabling you to confidently forecast your content schedule.

Ultimately, we’ll always be realistic and upfront with you

Getting copy projects turned around quickly is great, but getting them done properly – and reliably –  is even better.

In our experience, clients are much more satisfied with the end result (even if they’re in a hurry for it) when we’re clear about what they can expect, and keep them updated at every stage. That’s why we’ll never overpromise or say yes to a project without reviewing a brief first.

If you like the sound of the way we work and you’re interested to know more, feel free to give us a call on 01326 373592 or email us at [email protected].

(Or if you’d just like to see a copywriting price list, that’s no problem either.)

What happens in a B2B messaging workshop?

Posted on by The Radix Team

Before you start writing any marketing materials, you need to know what you want to say and to who – ensuring it will resonate with their objectives. And you have to be sure that everyone who writes (or speaks) for your brand is saying broadly the same things so your proposition sounds and feels consistent.

This means creating a core set of messages that everyone can use as a foundation for their external communications.

The primary aim of a messaging workshop is to establish what those messages are, and to capture them in a document that’s easy to share with everyone who’ll be writing and speaking on behalf of your brand.

Who should be involved in the workshop?

Unless you represent a very small business, you’re bound to have more than one person with views on what you should communicate to the market. The good thing about a workshop is that it gets all those people together in one room to share their views and come to a consensus.

Different people bring different – but equally valid – perspectives to a messaging workshop. A product manager will have a good idea of what’s interesting about the product. A salesperson or consultant will have great insight into the problems customers need help with. A marketing person may have the best knowledge of what competitors offer and how to stand apart from them.

Can’t we just run the workshop ourselves?

There’s nothing to stop you from running a messaging workshop internally, but the risk is that a lack of an external perspective leaves participants believing that what they want to say is what the customer wants (and needs) to hear.

What the workshop needs is someone external to perform four functions:

  • Facilitate the session and tease out information that will form the messages
  • Mediate any differences of opinion
  • Challenge any messaging that seems self-serving rather than customer-focused
  • Provide a balanced, external perspective

When Radix runs a messaging workshop, those are the roles we play: facilitator, mediator, constructive critic, and impartial observer.

So, how does it all work?

Agencies and consultancies run messaging workshops differently, but here’s a rough guide to how Radix does it.

  1. Pre-workshop activities

First, we’ll arrange a call to understand what you want to achieve from the workshop and how you plan to use the resulting messaging. A workshop for a specific product may have a completely different goal from a workshop to reposition a brand, for example.

We’ll ask who you plan to invite to the session and what roles they’ll play. We’ll also ask who your main competitors are, and if you have customers we can interview – allowing us to get some insight into how your market perceives your brand, product, or service.

We’ll also ask about logistics, such as how much time everyone can commit – our standard workshop session is four hours, but we can make it longer or shorter – and which time zones the attendees will be in.

That gives us enough information to create and share an agenda for the workshop and to start on our pre-workshop research.

For competitor research, we’ll analyse competitors’ websites to help us collectively determine any differentiators and USPs we can use during the workshop.

For customer research, we’ll ask you to set up short interviews with three or four of your business’s current customers. We’ll talk to those customers about why they chose you, their experience working with you or your product, and where they think your strengths and weaknesses lie – this can be a valuable feedback exercise.

We’ll present our findings from both of these exercises during the workshop.

  1. The Workshop

Regarding the workshop itself, our view is that you’re not creating messages in a vacuum; you want to create a set of messages that resonate with your target audience.

So we’ll spend time in the workshop looking in detail at the following:

  • Who your target audience is, and what problems they’re trying to overcome
  • Whether there are diverse audience personas who might respond to different messaging
  • The different options your prospects have on the table and what might spur them to choose your product or service
  • What you’re selling, what it does, and how it’s better than your competitors’ offerings. We’ll also press you for proof points: what evidence you have to back up what you’re saying.

Throughout all of these discussions, we’ll capture everyone’s comments, ready for us to turn into a first draft of your messaging framework.

  1. The Messaging Framework

This is the output of the workshop: a document that sets out your key messages for your brand or specific products or services.

The format of the document will vary depending on the scope of your messaging project, but typically it might include the following:

  • An introduction: What the document is for, how it can be used, and by who.
  • A description of your target persona(s): Who you’re selling to, what their responsibilities and motivations are, their buying triggers, and what they’re looking for in a solution or provider.
  • Your value proposition: A succinct summary of the value your brand, product, or service offers to its primary audience.
  • Key messages: The main things you want the audience to know (or feel) about your brand, product, or service. We can supply these as copy blocks that can be pasted directly into marketing, sales, and PR materials.
  • Supporting messages: Secondary messaging to support the key messages, also as copy blocks.
  • Proof points: Evidence that shows what you’re saying is true, rather than just telling. Things like customer testimonials, analyst quotes, and certifications.
  • Strapline options: Often used as part of the brand mark, the strapline is a concise and memorable expression of your value proposition. We’ll give you at least three options to choose from.
  • Elevator pitches: Hardworking pieces of copy that can be used in slide decks, “About Us” pages, press releases, and LinkedIn profiles to explain succinctly what the brand, product, or service is about. We provide 25-word, 50-word, and 100-word versions for use in different contexts
  1. Approving the copy

It’s rare for everyone to be delighted with the first draft of the messaging. If they are, it usually means they either haven’t read it thoroughly or aren’t invested enough to give it further thought.

You and your stakeholders know your business better than anyone, so it’s unlikely that an external writer will get everything you want to say and how you want to say it on the first attempt. That’s why we allow for two rounds of edits to the messaging framework.

How that works: we give you a few days to review the first draft, then we’ll have a call with you to go through your feedback. You could bring your stakeholders to that meeting or collate their feedback in advance. Either way, we’ll take it all on board, ask you any additional questions, and produce a second draft.

If we’re doing our job properly, the second draft will be very near to the final version. If it’s not quite there, we’ll apply one more round of amends to get it to where it’s ready for you to share with your marketing, sales, and PR teams. We’ll deliver that final document as a PDF, Word, or PowerPoint – whichever works best for you.

Sounds wonderful – but how much is all this going to cost?

Aha, the million-dollar (not literally, you’ll be relieved to read) question. We find that messaging projects tend to differ quite a lot in scope, so we don’t have a standard price for one. But if you contact our team, we’ll talk you through your options.

And if you’d like to discuss a messaging project with us directly, call us on +44 (0)1326 373592 or email [email protected].

When copywriters show their working, everybody wins. Here’s why.

Posted on by The Radix Team

Notes:

  • Hi David. Below you’ll find the copy for my next Radix blog post.
  • As agreed, it discusses why I often include notes at the start of my copy documents, explaining how I’ve responded to the brief and the key decisions I’ve made along the way.
  • It’s a bit shorter than our usual posts – but I’d rather keep it to the point than pad it out unnecessarily.
  • Other than that, there shouldn’t be too many surprises – though as you’ll see, I’ve opted for a rather meta opening. It might be a bit much. See what you think.

A great piece of writing is built on great decisions.

Decisions like: “I’ll put these product features in a sidebar, so they don’t ruin the narrative flow”, or “I’ll drop the retail message, because we’ve such limited space, and it’s only relevant to half our audience”.

A good writer will put a lot of thought into these decisions. But when you – as an in-house Marketing Manager, or an Account Manager at a marketing agency – open up the copy they’ve submitted for you to review, you won’t see that thought at all.

You’ll dive into the copy, and surface, sometime later, with a host of questions. Questions like: “Why are the product features in a sidebar?”, and “Where’s the retail message we included in the brief?”

That’s why, for years now, I’ve been adding notes at the top of my copy documents explaining my rationale in creating the piece.

Why it’s great for me as a copywriter

This transparency is great for me in a number of ways:

  1. It forces me to understand exactly why I’m making the decisions I’m making. And that makes me a better writer and editor.
  2. It helps reassure the client I’m writing for that a professional, experienced copywriter has really engaged with their brief. Instead of some copy in a word doc, they see something crafted by human being who has their best interests at heart.
  3. It gives me a chance to foreground any tough decisions I’ve made, and quickly set out the logic behind them.

Why it’s great for our clients

Our clients benefit from these explanations too.

  1. If I’m writing for a marketing agency, the Account Manager can use my notes to help frame the copy when they share it with their client.
  2. If I’m writing directly for a B2B technology company, the Marketing Manager can use my notes to help frame the copy when they share it with any other stakeholders – e.g. the product team.
  3. Whoever’s reviewing my copy, the notes put them in a better position judge the work, and feedback quickly and to the point.

To sum up…

Where a cold copy document can quickly become the basis of confusion and suspicion, a document with a few intelligent, relevant notes at the start is more likely to foster understanding and respect. Communication flourishes. Projects get signed off faster. Everybody wins.

That’s why including notes – where they’ll be helpful – has just become Radix policy.

At least, that’s what we agreed this morning in our Writers’ Meeting.

And now I’ve announced it in this blog post, for all our clients to read, so…

Webinar: 5 terrifying risks you should definitely take with your B2B content

Posted on by The Radix Team

Five terrifying risks you should definitely take with your B2B content

Here’s a sad fact: behind every piece of bland, lifeless, me-too B2B content, there’s a marketer.

A marketer who wanted to do something different. Who had a better, bolder idea, but had it rejected – or shelved it because they’d never get their stakeholders to agree. Who’s frustrated, because they weren’t allowed to take a risk.

And that’s why the internet is full of  bullshit like “experience our end-to-end digital solution” and “in today’s fast-moving digital world…”

Standout content necessarily involves an element of risk – otherwise it wouldn’t stand out. But the right risk, the right way, at the right time. And that’s what our first ever webinar is about.

Spoiler alert: I’m NOT going to tell you to be braver. But I am going to share five ways you can take a sensible, calculated risk that will set your content apart. Importantly, I’ll also talk about how you can get your clients and stakeholders on board.

After the presentation, we’ll have plenty of time for questions and answers, to swap nuggets of best practice, and to tell stories from the B2B content trenches.

If you write, create or specify B2B content, I solemnly swear it will be a valuable and thought-provoking use of your time.

Hope to see you there.

David

Note: This webinar has now ended. Thanks to all who took part.

Webinar: What does good B2B content look like? 15 essential checks

Posted on by The Radix Team

What does good B2B content look like? 15 essential quality checks
Thursday 7th November, 4pm GMT / 11am EST

It’s hard to create great B2B content when everyone’s idea of quality is subjective. You get vague, unhelpful feedback like “this reads well”. Eight sets of conflicting amends to consolidate. Stakeholders – who should be fine-tuning technical accuracy – spending precious time changing “use” to “utilize” because they think it sounds “more professional”.

It’s a lot of noise. And importantly, there’s nobody speaking up for your reader. The process that was supposed to improve your content ends up focusing on the wrong things, and ends up making it worse.

At Radix, we can’t afford to work like that. We write a lot of B2B content, and every scrap of it is reviewed by our own editors before it leaves the warehouse. We need to work fast, and keep our standards consistently high, or we’ll be broke.

And that’s why we created our 15-point content checklist, covering everything a piece of B2B content needs to work – from basics like grammar and spelling to audience value, voice and tone.

In this one-hour webinar, we’ll take you through every point of our list, and give you some tips on how to create your own. We’ll also talk about how you can use it to:

  • improve your content
  • wrangle your stakeholders
  • guide your training and development

As B2B content creators, none of us have as much time as we’d like. So I solemnly promise to cram as much valuable stuff into the hour as I can. Spaces on the webinar are limited, though, so do reserve yours ahead of time.

This webinar has now finished.

7 ways to liven up old-school B2B copy

Posted on by The Radix Team

B2B tech copywriting has come a long way over the years. Not just in the technology we write about, but also how we write about it.

In B2B, writing in a snappy, engaging style is an instant, effective way to differentiate your brand. When your text gets to the point, in sentences that are quick and easy to read, it shows you value your reader’s time. It also proves you know your stuff well enough to explain it clearly.

And that’s an opportunity, because many brands still take a formal or “old school” approach to B2B content. A lot of your competitors are making noise, but not much more.

So, what can you do about it?

There are plenty of easy tweaks you can make right now, to give your copy a little more impact and set your brand apart from the old-school crowd.

Let’s take a look.

“Old school” writing wastes readers’ time

For the purposes of this post, “old school” writing is the traditional style of copy that’s been used in B2B marketing for several decades.  You know the stuff: it’s academic, formal, sometimes stuffy, and is often wordy where more concise sentences would do.

There are people who believe there’s more legitimacy in a formal, academic-style – which can be fine in the right format or environment. It’s all about audience and context.

The problem is, reading complicated text takes longer, and B2B decision markers are time poor. People often don’t have the time or attention span to read dry and complicated content.

Research by Prezi suggests that longer content can still hold attention, but people are being more discerning with what they read. This means that it’s more important than ever to make your content as interesting as possible.

Here are seven ideas to get you started.

1. Look outward and focus on challenges

The most effective copy in any format talks about the reader and their challenges – not about you and your capabilities. This is your opportunity to empathise with your audience and offer solutions – and only then bring in your products, services, and expertise.

Instead of talking about what you do and what you can do for your customers, focus on your audience. What do they care about? What challenges do they face?

Moving from a feature-led approach to focusing on the benefits to your reader will ensure your customers aren’t left thinking “so what?”

(In fact, my colleague David created a fantastic short video explaining how this works with web copy.)

2. Be specific

There’s more content being created than ever before and it’s only set to increase. But here’s the problem: there’s also a skills gap, so you’ll find that there’s a tonne of re-hashed topics out there.

You’re unlikely to win customers’ attention with content they’ve already read elsewhere.

The fact is, to break through the sea of content out there you need to say something unique or useful – and a great place to start is by being more specific than your competition. Think about the particular people you want to reach: their challenges, their hopes, their attitude to work. Then ignore the crowd, and write directly to your ideal customer.

Remember: if you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.

3. Be careful with jargon

How much jargon does your audience understand?

If you’re writing for a non-technical business reader, maybe not a lot. And you might want to dial things back a bit to make your content easy to digest.

But if they’re engineers or techies, the likelihood is a lot; potentially, more than you. And in B2B, that’s potentially a bigger worry than blinding your audience with science. You need to speak their language, and if you mishandle industry terms your reader uses every day, you’ll blow your credibility in an instant.

The crucial thing is: make sure you and your audience are on the same page, and understand the same thing by every word you use. Scattering jargon you don’t understand is a bigger risk than using none at all.

4. Get to the point

For me, a long, wandering preamble immediately puts me off reading a piece – and I’ll never get the chance to find out how interesting the subject might be. Because if the language you’re using is boring, the automatic assumption is that the subject matter will be boring too.

And I’m just a B2B copywriter. Imagine how little patience a time-poor B2B decision-maker would have.

That’s why it’s vitally important to get straight to your argument, cut the waffle (remember: more words don’t equal greater value), and inject your own personality into the copy, right from the start.

5. Lose the passive voice

Switching from passive to active voice is one of the most effective ways to give your copy more punch – and give you an edge against your competitors.

Grammarly has some useful advice on how to spot if you’ve written a sentence in the passive. Simply, if you can add “by zombies” after the verb (highlighted in green in the example below) it’s passive.

For example: “the new servers were installed overnight” would become “the new servers were installed by zombies overnight”. The sentence still makes sense, so it’s the passive voice.

(Whereas “the company installed the new servers overnight” wouldn’t make sense as “the company installed by zombies the new servers overnight”. So it’s active voice.)

6. Appeal to emotion (where appropriate)

Most decisions – even in a business context – aren’t made using logic or reason. They’re based on challenge-driven emotions (and then rationalised later).

It’s why using emotive language that taps into people’s challenges is far more effective in selling your products or services than simply setting out bare facts.

One of the best ways to resonate with an audience is to set up a piece of content with relatable challenges that make people say, “these guys genuinely understand my issues and what I’m trying to achieve”. You can tell a compelling story, and offer the immortal copywriters’ phrase “if this sounds familiar…”

Only then should you propose your solutions to these challenges.

7. Use design to your advantage

And finally, no matter how great your copy, it’s worth investing in some decent design work.

If your content looks eye-catching from the off, it will not only be able to shine through the masses of other content out there, but your audience will also be more likely to engage with it.

After all it looks different, and it sounds different. Why wouldn’t they want to find out if the content is different too?

Graduate from the old school – one step at a time

If you think these changes might be a bit much for your stakeholders, remember: you don’t need to make them all at once. Even applying a couple of these tips will have a significant impact on your content, and once you start to see results, it’ll be easier to justify doing more.

Or, if you’re not confident in your ability to make the break into a clearer, more modern style of content, feel free to get in touch with us. It’s exactly what we do all day, and we’d love to give you some idea of how a fresh approach to your writing might sound.

Keywords and a crowbar: a rant about SEO copywriting for B2B

Posted on by The Radix Team

Keyword stuffing is cheap, tactless and ugly. And yet, it continues to go unchallenged by some as an acceptable SEO practice. Why? Because in the early days of SEO, keyword density mattered.

Today, in theory, quality is what counts. But even in an era where purposeful, relevant and well-written content is the benchmark for all B2B marketing, copywriting briefs still regularly come with a whole spreadsheet of awkward keywords attached.

Let’s make one thing clear: there’s nothing wrong with expecting a copywriter to adhere to your SEO strategy. But when that strategy is “use abstract keywords from this oblique spreadsheet as many times as Google will allow it”, we need to talk.

Keyword stuffing: as rubbish as it is pointless

OK. Imagine you’re an exhaust pipe manufacturer, and you’ve got an exciting new website that you want customers to find with ease. You’re also convinced that you’re the best in the business, and you won’t settle for anything less than hitting the front page of Google for all the most relevant search terms. But those relevant terms? “Car”, “Exhaust”, “Rust Resistant Exhaust Pipes”.

One of these terms is reasonable enough. Use “Rust Resistant Exhaust Pipes” in a couple of strategic places – in a piece of web copy about rust resistant exhaust pipes – and sure, we’re cool.

But asking your writer to stuff “car” into your web copy as many times as they can is just undignified. It’ll only make for word soup. More to the point, it’s a waste of time: do you really think you’re going to outrank the combined might of the entire automotive industry? (Also, an honourable mention to Fintech startups who insist they want to rank for “bank”. Just stop.)

The same goes for vague, overly-long technical terms. By all means, commission a compelling deep dive into your latest tech innovation, but don’t expect multiple instances of “z-buffer techniques for legacy GPU emulation” to make for a graceful read. Just ask Harry Kapur about life before he became Head of Writing at Velocity Partners.

I once had to crowbar “personalized phone cases for Samsung Galaxy S7 or S8” into multiple 400-word articles. 8 times each. I do NOT miss ‘article marketing’.

 – Harry Kapur, Head of Writing, Velocity Partners

Ouch.

In short, keyword stuffing is a quick way to make your copywriter hate you and (more importantly) instantly undermine your credibility with your audience. And the worst part? It doesn’t even work.

Google’s relationship with keywords: “it’s complicated”

With the launch of its Panda algorithm back in 2011, Google began demoting low-quality, duplicate, and unhelpful content. Subsequent updates like Google Penguin homed in on keyword stuffing, actively prowling copy for the unnatural use of keywords as well as low-quality backlinks and narrow anchor text.

To quote John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google back in 2014: “Keyword density, in general, is something I wouldn’t focus on. Search engines have kind of moved on from there.” In fact, many SEO influencers now argue that the ideal keyword density percentage is a myth, and the recommended minimum target density of 3-5% once preached by “experts” is now moot.

The law of SEO changed again in 2013 when Google launched its Hummingbird update, shifting the way Google reacts to different types of queries. Rather than locating content containing similar terms to those typed by a user, it takes a more natural, conversational reading, and locates content that best matches the user’s intent. It’s an approach called Latent Semantic Indexing, or LSI.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI): a quick introduction

LSI keywords are conceptually related to the main subject. They help search engines to understand content at a deeper level, including what it is about, and what search terms it relates to. For example, if a blog contains keywords like “stylus”, “cartridge”, “oxidisation”, and “anti-static brush”, the search engine might identify that the content is likely about record player maintenance (regardless of how many times the actual words “record player maintenance” appear in the text).

Why? Because, as Google says, it uses “words frequently occurring together” to understand the content topic. That’s why using keywords like “car” in a blog about exhaust pipes acts as more of a backbone to the wider piece, just not the exact word you would want to rank on.

The trick is to separate your LSI keywords (other relevant terms you’d reasonably find on a page about this subject) from the thing your content is actually about.

What’s more, Google has become smarter about offering up content types based on conversational searches. So by searching “how do I clean my stylus”, you’re likely to end up with a blog about record player maintenance. Or, for example, by searching “how many albums has Radiohead released”, you’ll get both a quoted number in bold, and a top link leading to the band’s discography.

Be realistic about your keywords

Google’s search algorithms are now so sophisticated that they can tell pretty much off the bat whether your copy is junk or not. So, the trick is not to have your writers write for Google, but for people who use Google.

As long as Google exists, it’s unlikely that keyword research and lists will go away. But the job now is to use that research as information, to help us create content that matches user intent. Let me sign off with this quote from our very own Creative Director, David McGuire.

As B2B web writers, we need to remember that our reader is not Google… but they are using Google, and we need to make that easy for them. The job is really to look at each search term, picture the page that user most wants to see, and write it.

 – David McGuire, Creative Director, Radix Communications

 

How can I make complex B2B content readable and compelling? | B2B Content Tuesday

Posted on by The Radix Team

Great B2B content is clear, understandable and engaging – however complicated the subject. But it isn’t easy to simplify technical content without losing technical authority. In fact, we’ve written this blog about readability scoring in B2B, this blog about readability techniques, and even recorded a podcast with readability professor Chris Trudeau on tackling the task.

So when we were asked to cover the topic in our B2B Content Tuesday Q&A webinars, we jumped at the chance.

In this blog, we’ve put together our top three tips to help you reduce unnecessary complexity, and answered some of the great questions we were asked during the live session about readability tools.

(And if you’d like to watch the discussion in full, you’ll find the video at the foot of this page.)

Three tips for simplifying complex B2B content:

Tip 1: Complexity and jargon are not the same thing

Understanding the difference between jargon and complexity is vital. Jargon is the technical language your audience uses every day in their jobs. But complexity can also include the overly long sentences or unnecessary buzzwords that creep in with technical specifics. And that’s the stuff you can do without.

Look out for passive voice, nominalised verbs or anything that could be considered marketing waffle.

And “use” is almost always better than “utilise”.

Tip 2: The water-cooler test

Imagine you are reading your copy, out loud, to a single reader in your target market. Does it make you cringe? Are you being patronising? Or feel like you should be explaining something?

Try running it through the water-cooler test (patent pending):

Two IT engineers (or whoever you’re writing for) are conversing by a water cooler. The language they use will be absolutely specific to what they do, and they’ll use the correct technical terms. But they won’t surround it with any really complicated stuff – or speak in a way that you need a degree to understand.

(They might well say something like: “This is the third time the nozzle-alignment flangelator has corrupted this morning. I think the embedded system needs an update.” They certainly won’t say: “I am experiencing significant downtime as a result of nozzle-alignment flangelator’s sub-optimal reliability. Surely we must acquire and implement an automated embedded system update solution without undue delay.”)

Ask yourself: can you imagine what you’ve written being said over the water-cooler?

Tip 3: Readability algorithms are helpful – but not the be-all and end-all

From Flesch-Kincaid to Gunning fog, each readability measure has its own nuances and measures different things. Indeed, tools like Readable will let you grade a piece of text against several scoring methods at once.

As a general rule, the more complex a topic is, the harder you should work to make the copy easy to read and understand. Because readability algorithms tend to measure combinations of word difficulty and sentence length, they can help you to retain this balance – forcing you to make your prose simpler to compensate as jargon increases.

Having an objective readability score can also help you to avoid disagreements over your copy’s style.

If you don’t write for a living, it can be easy to think that complicated writing is somehow “better” content – although in fact it’s quite the opposite. Using a readability measure can help you move away from subjective conversations about writing style towards concrete, objective criteria.

Remember, though, that calculations based on word count and difficulty are still a fairly crude measure of our content’s quality. Algorithms can be a useful guide, but don’t be too slavish about aiming for a particular number.

Q&A: Measuring readability in B2B content

Q: What readability scoring model is best for B2B?

David: “Flesch-Kincaid grade level is quite simple and user-friendly. However, the way it’s aligned to an educational grade system might prove confusing for some stakeholders.

“For example, I’ve seen pieces of content about managed IT services, that have a Flesch-Kincaid readability level of 21 – that’s incredibly difficult, post-doctorate level text for an eBook on managed services. But if you talk about it in those terms to a stakeholder, they may point out that your audience do have doctorates, and assume it’s fine. In fact, they might decide anything less is “dumbing down”.

“But the truth is, most of the content we read at work is much, much more readable than that. Broadsheet newspapers have a Flesch-Kincaid grade of around 9, and they’re hardly simplistic.

“In that case, a model that gives you a readability score rather than a grade level could be more useful.”

Q: What readability score should B2B content aim for as a general rule?

David: “That really depends on your audience. For example, you might think about how many of your readers will engage on mobile, or have English as a second language.

“But in the areas of B2B tech where we work, I commonly see Flesh-Kincaid grade levels of 15 and more. Some sectors, like consultancy, are higher still. So if you want B2B content that is more readable than most, but without ever appearing simple, a Flesch-Kincaid grade of around 10 or 11 will help you to stand out. At that level, you can include pretty much all the technical detail you need, without overcomplicating things.”

Q: What tools can I use to judge the readability for microcopy?

David: “Unfortunately, most of the algorithms need 100 words or more to provide you with a reliable answer, as otherwise one long sentence could throw it off.

“But there are a few that could be useful for judging its readability: take a look at Readable and Hemingway.

“And for conversational interfaces, or chatbots, you could take a look at the XKCD comic site. They have a text editor that will keep you to the 1,000 most common words in the English language. It’s surprising how much you can write within that limit.”

Thanks again to everyone who attended the webinar, and took part in the Q&A. Here’s the full discussion:

Welcome to the Radix Copycast – a copywriting podcast for B2B technology marketers

Posted on by The Radix Team
Emily recording the Radix copycast
Emily at the controls in the Radix ‘podcasting studio’

This week we unveil the Radix Copycast – a new podcast exploring trends and issues in B2B technology marketing through a copywriting lens.

Direct download available here (right click and “Save As”). Or listen in the player at the top of the page.

In this first episode, Emily and Fiona discuss email marketing and B2B video marketing.

With 36% of emails now being accessed through mobile devices, what needs to change in email copywriting? What sort of subject line works best? And how can copywriters get to know which tactics work, and which don’t?

We finish with a look at the rise of video in B2B. It’s a relatively expensive medium, so how can content marketers create videos that make the right impact on the audience – and how can the script help with that?

Here are links to some of the things we talk about in the podcast:

Hope you enjoy it, and look out for future episodes, when we’ll be talking about whether it’s OK to use jargon in tech copy, and what Google’s recent algorithm updates mean for online copywriters. We may even have a guest expert or two!

Music by Industrial and Marine.