Do we still need to write well in the digital age?

Content marketing is all the craze. Not only does it generate more organic leads in the long run than outbound marketing, it leads to more conversion than traditional in-your-face advertising. Beyond just writing ad copies or producing YouTube vids to market products or services, it’s really part of a bigger conversation in the way we participate as citizens in today’s digital economy.

And so it’s understandable why businesses spend thousands of dollars each month on digital marketing agencies for content creation. A huge chunk of the marketing resources could be in the creation of always-fresh-and-new multimedia to satiate the demands of our target audience in the way they make purchase decisions.

In the same vein, writing seems to have taken the passenger’s seat in content creation since the art of consumer persuasion is mostly emotive rather than logical in the social media space.

And so in the space of content generation, commercial writing is therefore often simplified / templated. It is because templates compartmentalise thoughts into chunks (or sections), which makes the task of writing less daunting (more accessible) for all levels of writers to participate in generating contents. This is good so long as the flow of thoughts is largely standard to be “patterned” or commodified. This is where templates are useful as entry points for anyone to write.

However, the cookie-cutter approach in templated writing can’t work in certain marketing writing. They are limited.

So far, commercial writing on socials is pretty much for the B2C market. B2C marketers tend to appeal to consumers’ emotions to make purchase decisions. From building awareness to generating interest and finally in calling for consumers’ action to click the “Buy Now” button, ad copies should be short and sweet.

But, this isn’t the same as B2B decision-makers extract information and making decisions. Similar to its B2C counterpart, the B2B sector is fast jumping onto the  bandwagon in content generation as the frontier of community marketing is pushing B2B players into the production of content generation to position themselves as thought leaders in their respective fields.

Take the example of White Paper writing as a way B2B players have to write these days. Traditionally, White Papers are authoritative documents used mostly in the governmental sector to communicate official reports or policy stances. Today, many corporations use White Paper as a content marketing tool to sell information, position themselves or provide a solution.

As such, many content marketing agencies produce lists and templates to promote B2B content marketing to anyone who wishes to start blogging. In the spirit of knowledge sharing, that should be the way forward. But there’re limitations.

Decision makers of B2B solutions need more extensive logical persuasion than what emotive marketing can achieve. Yes, aesthetics matter. Gating or not gating your white paper matters. But we need to differentiate the icing (for that matter, bells, whistles and all white elephants) from the cake. In the matter of building trust among institutional (or B2B) decision makers, logical persuasion is the cake.

Logical persuasion entails layered arguments and lengthier considerations in the art of persuasion. In order to persuade B2B readers (or decision makers), we need to return to the art of good writing. A good piece of writing is an extension of the writer’s quality or depth of thinking. Good writing engages with complex thought processes and interacts more extensively with infographics and data. Case studies are also used more extensively to evidence claims. These are all hallmarks in the way institutional decision makers look for in the process of making purchase decisions.

So, good writing isn’t and can’t be templated or presented in 10 steps (not until A.I. obtains sufficient data to achieve a breakthrough in this area).

What does this mean?

While bigger players in the B2B scene can engage established PR agencies to write, smaller B2B business owners may not be able to afford the higher cost that these agencies charge. Smaller B2B businesses may continue to turn to boutique agencies for their writing assignments, but they need to know what to look out for. Here’s 5 basic things smaller-scale B2B businesses should look out for when engaging writers for more complex writing assignments:

1. Structure. A basic structure may not sound sexy but it’s necessary. A simple structure such as [background - problem - solution] works because it follows a logical progression in helping the readers process any relatively complex issue. Most agencies propose various writing approaches. As long as there’s a logical flow to you in helping your readers process information logically, that’s probably a good start.

2. Saliency of Problems. Have you identified and articulated in words the key problem you have put forth? If you are unclear about the problem or the problem is abstract / fuzzy in your mind, then your readers may not find the concern pressing to read on. So, it may not be that the concern isn’t important, it means that you haven’t unpacked it clearly enough in your mind and also in your brief to your agency writers.

3. Sufficient information. Think about the proportion and sufficiency of information in each section. For example, if the aim is to get to the solution, then logically, you should devote more concrete details to unpack every part of the solution you’re offering. If the aim is to highlight a crucial problem, then provide sufficient and relevant details in the background and problem sections to justify the severity of the issue. However, it doesn’t mean we breeze through the rest of the sections which aren’t the focal point(s) of the writing. If you do so, you may not have held your audience’s attention sufficiently to read on to the crucial bits. You need to think about building up sufficient details (yet not over-emphasizing) to convince the readers to read on to the end.

4. Show that you’re authority. Usually, we demonstrate that we are experts in certain areas when we use nouns rather than verbs to talk about issues. The use of noun forms show that we can talk about a subject (or meta-talk) while the use of verbs indicate we know how to do something but may not be able to provide a ‘bird’s eye view of a subject.’ As a general rule of thumb, the use of nouns seems to be more prominent in the stating of claims and assumptions while the use of verbs is associated with the part of elaboration or evidencing of the claims.

5. Syntax. Grammar or the mechanics in the use of language are crucial. Good writing needs sentences to flow into paragraphs, and paragraphs to flow into chapters. This is because ideation involves more complex arguments that requires a lot more signposting to help the processing of meaning easier for the readers. This is unlike most social media writing that are shorter and simpler in arguments. In these cases, syntax isn’t important and readers can easily process information in chunks or even from the use of emoticons!

I believe the day will come soon when A.I. will be able to amass enough data to reduce the art of Good Writing to a science. Today is still not the day.

Writer

Dr. Katy Kan is a communication trainer and practitioner. If you’d like to find out more about communication training or projects, please reach her at katy@katydidconnect.com