Gather Existing Information, Data, Ideas...
First of all, make an effort to gather all the information available. The available resources, stories, content, individuals with writing and editing abilities, industry and user contact people, etc. Gather all material which has been published in an attempt to create a stream of messages. NOT press releases, but real business and technical information. Even parts of customer presentations, data sheets, and success stories. If you have seen a good blog, even one that is not exactly on topic (to yours), store and print some of the stories and explain how they could be used on your blog. If you receive industry and competitor newsletters, feeds from portals or publications, use these as well. It is a common technique to add industry news to original stories in a newsletter. If you can put this in a nice package, print and bind it, and distribute to a few people, you can start getting an idea who will help and how to deliver the message(s). People do much better when they see something resembling the final product. Seeing a package of related stories, is easy to get them going. Remember that seeing a final product and working on it are different. You will need both aspects to show people if they are going to be convinced.Justify: Resources, Attention, Tools, Skills...
Next, you better have a very strong justification for the project. Anything well justified will get attention and resources. If you are totally new to this, you will definitely need the resources (not just budget and people). This includes the driving need for a blogging or newsletter program IN YOUR SPECIFIC OPERATION! While it is easy to see a blog that has been running for a while, some managers and VPS of marketing may not appreciate a part time writer added to their headcount. If you clearly show what the company will say, who will be involved, where the information will come from, this will help in the justification. In most cases this would be the need to keep current and potential customers informed. There are qualities of message streams which are totally new and unique. Newspaper writers and editors know this well, but the rest of us are not as familiar and experienced to them. I will eventually dedicate a few full articles to the justification, budgeting, start-up, and other aspects of operating a Web2.0 application.Define A Real Strategy and Tactics
This step will help both you and the people who are connected with your work. Strategy in this case can be simply to use a tool or a format to communicate certain information. It could also be a way of managing information which already exists. It could be the introduction of tools to the organization (acquisition, training, operation). The clarification and delineation of tactics is very important. This goes for the clear plan on software tools and hosting as well as management of the story writing and researching or buying information. Strategies and tactics need to guide writers and editors. It also helps readers and managers who use the blog as a communication channel. The marketing managers who comment and suggest how the blog develops need to understand what are the goals and the means of getting there. Don't skimp here, if you do not have a strategy in the early stage you will need one later. In the mean time, you will duplicate ad-hock strategy sessions over and over again.A Story About A Blog
Five months ago I started working on a blog / newsletter project. It started out as an experiment for a small Internet security company. The company wanted to target a small number of potential readers (approx. 1,000). The target reader attributes were well defined, at least that is what we thought. The idea was to write a blog or a newsletter and keep the posting frequency to once a week. The marketing manager did not think she can do it. But there was pressure from both the CEO and the sales organization for "a blog". At first we started planning the design, overall GUI (Graphical User Interface), and graphics (mostly free images). Different people in the organization wanted different looks based on what they have seen. This is not hard when looking at a blog, you just need to find examples and search for a similar template. Prototyping a design and layout is a great way to start. When it came to planning the writing and the topics things got a little strange. One camp wanted to have fresh relevant topics. In security market that means scanning the news feeds and writing about what is exciting NOW. This is sometimes a big virus or spam attack, what Microsoft is doing with the new Windows Vista release for security, what Mcaffee or Symantec are doing technically or marketing wise, or even a story about the politics of security. But there is another camp which says that the writing should be timeless and more marketing and technical in nature. This way the 'content' can be used and referenced as regular web site content (some people call this Web1.0 redone). All these voices from the corporate world are nice to know, but an editor, designer, writer is going to approach the task the way she sees most appropriate. Which for the these new Web2.0 'consumers' was difficult to accept. One thing to remember is that doing things differently will be hard to impossible for some. But that is the nature of this change.This brought me to a discussion on how to coach product managers and general executives about what to do with regard to taking the first step in running or developing a blog. This is quite different from an individual or a group who simply want to start blogging. Most blogs out there seem to be a stream of articles which are not necessarily related to and one specific topic. But products which need to be explained also need to have the steady stream of information, examples, explanations, and other type of writing a blog or a newsletter can support.
solostream.com offers WordPress teams, there are many helpful technical services out there for blogging and newsletters So I thought that it would be helpful to start searching for sources about writing for effective product marketing. There are good "old school" resources. There are mostly writing, editing, and publishing based. Without good writing, most readers are going to be turned off. But once a blog or newsletter writer has the formula for writing, the sources of information, either internal or external, and the flow of articles start to move, you have an operation.
My next step if to have some work books. I think that strategy, tactics, operation, planning, and other practical tasks can be put into a few pages of forms and examples. There are also great articles and resources for this work on the web, so send me your favorite and I will start posting it here.
