6 Ways to Leverage Technical Articles
BY CHRISTINE TAYLOR
Technology vendors often contribute bylined articles to trade journals.
The articles are great exposure for these companies but they don't come
cheap – the trades rarely pay for these articles but the vendors spend time
and resources to assign pieces, write them, approve them and submit them.
Your PR agency can help your clients leverage their investment by wringing
top value out of these articles. Here are some possibilities:
- Reprints
- White papers
- Product briefs
- Booklets
- Speech outline and handouts
Reprints
It's pretty galling to contribute a byline to a publication, only to turn
around and spend major bucks for reprint rights. But reprints are good
things: they significantly increase your client’s exposure to the market.
Make sure you use the reprints anywhere you can, including press kits,
presentation handouts and conference take-aways. Post them on your site too.
Even if you haven’t paid for electronic rights you can probably link to the
publication’s URL, assuming they’ve posted your article online. (It doesn’t
hurt to ask.) If you’ve got digital reprint rights and are posting the
article on your client’s site, avoid using a scanned hard copy of the
printed article – the resolution is poor and not very readable. Create a
.PDF file and use that for posting and downloading.
White Paper
Please don’t use the published article as is for a white paper
— even if
you retain all rights it's shamelessly self-plagiarizing, and if the
publication retains all rights it's rather criminal. However, you can use
the article text to form the technology section of a white paper. Edit for
length as necessary and re-work the text to emphasize your client’s product
and technology take. Then add white paper elements like a beginning
executive summary and a problem statement. Follow these with your technology
section, and then add details on how your client’s product will solve the
problem, a customer case study, and a conclusion on how great the product
is. (You can always switch the order by writing a white paper first, then
editing the technology section into a bylined trade journal article.)
Product Briefs
The article can serve as a great basis for expanded product briefs – say
the front and back of an 8-1/2x11, or a longer technical brochure. Edit the
article for length and jazz up the text, and you’ve got a solid technology
basis for the marketing document. (Good marcom can explain what a NAS
gateway is, but not by yammering about “enterprise-wide intelligent data
management portals.” Puts readers right to sleep.)
Booklets
One of the best press kits I ever saw included a sharp and informative
booklet on the vendor’s technology. The booklet explained the general
technology’s development and background, presented the vendor’s product, and
listed clear customer advantages. It impressed both journalists and
customers in a way a press release or even a white paper wouldn’t have done.
Booklets are labor-intensive, so use your trade journal article as the basis
for writing your own.
Speech Outline and Handouts
Use existing articles as the basis for client speeches and presentations.
Since trade journal articles are usually vendor-neutral, they’ll work as-is
for similar talks. When the presentation is about a product you can still
use the article outline for the background technology and analysis then add
product details, customer case studies, and Q&A’s. You can use article
reprints as a handout, or turn the outline into speaker’s notes and use that
instead.
If your client gulps at the cost of developing a trade journal article,
don’t leave them gasping for breath – list all the ways they can leverage it
to increase market exposure and profits.
Christine Taylor — formerly a technology
journalist, senior editor of Computer Technology Review, and
editor-in-chief of both Storage Management Solutions and Storage & Government — is now president of
Keyword Writing
specializing in producing technical trade journal articles, white
papers, and press releases.
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