Why Brutal Honesty Is a Must in Tech Marketing

By Trevor Pott
Obfuscation is a longstanding tradition in marketing. While outright lies are generally avoided by reputable organizations today, half-truths and careful omission of facts are still considered normal. In the world of tech marketing, at least, a default approach of obfuscation to marketing can be catastrophic.
The internet exists. People can and do engage in research. Nerds are particularly good at it.  For those who lack research skills, we’re entering an era in which Artificial Intelligence (AI) digital assistants are good enough to detect a marketing team’s obfuscation.
If Amazon’s Alexa, or Apple’s Siri get to the point that they can debunk a claim, or at least add context to one, how long before someone writes a browser plugin for the same thing in real time for every page we view?
(more…)

Continue Reading Why Brutal Honesty Is a Must in Tech Marketing
AWS Summit 2017 in NYC: The Day I Owned Being A Cloud Celeb

AWS Summit 2017 in NYC: The Day I Owned Being A Cloud Celeb

By Jen Maidenberg, VP Editorial, IOD
One of the things I really love about working at IOD is our philosophy of transparency. Everything we do – including our communications with customers about the content we create – is honest and forthcoming. This works especially well for me. Why? Because I don’t have to pretend I know more about cloud or DevOps or cybersecurity than I actually do. In another setting, I might feel self-conscious about that. But at IOD, I don’t.
What I am an expert in is storytelling, editing, and messaging. I’m also really good at identifying and nurturing talent. I’m a bit modest off the page (another truth about me) so I won’t list all my credentials in those areas. But suffice it to say, Ofir, our founder and CEO, hired me because of my background in publishing, content marketing, and branding. Also I love getting to know and talking to new people. This is something I have to do often at IOD, as we’re always recruiting new freelancers to our team.
(more…)

Continue Reading AWS Summit 2017 in NYC: The Day I Owned Being A Cloud Celeb
When Google Isn’t Enough: How to Pull Amazing Content Out of Tech Experts

When Google Isn’t Enough: How to Pull Amazing Content Out of Tech Experts

By Talia Klein-Perez
IOD Expert Writer and Editor
Between you and me, I don’t know everything about everything. That might surprise you, because I write about everything to do with everything.
Therein lies the problem: Sometimes I have to write a high level, comprehensive, and comprehensible piece about something I know next to nothing about.
This isn’t always a serious obstacle, since many things can be learned through Google. But when writing a high level, complex piece of work for a hi-tech company, Google isn’t enough.
When I have to write about a niche technical enterprise such as AWS database migration, I often encounter many unfamiliar concepts. Before I can create engaging content, I need to fully understand the topic from the inside out. This can be near impossible when the topic is very technical and advanced and I have a deadline to meet! The client rarely has time to give me an intensive explanation, and I don’t have weeks to spend Googling concept after concept.
Enter the tech expert, a great model for tech content writing I’ve benefitted from since working as a writer for IOD. The tech expert is already familiar with the client’s industry, so it doesn’t take long for him to come up to speed on the specifics. He’s not able to write the document himself, but he is able to “translate” technical jargon into my kind of English so I can understand the issues properly.
(more…)

Continue Reading When Google Isn’t Enough: How to Pull Amazing Content Out of Tech Experts
The Key to a Successful Value Driven Buying Journey

The Key to a Successful Value Driven Buying Journey

content drive salesThe Key to a Successful Value Driven Buying Journey and the Role of Content in Driving Sales
Sales people are constantly trying to get into their buyers’ mind to serve them effectively. However, in some cases, we have misperceptions on how buyers think and behave. What makes it even more challenging is the amount of information available to buyers because it creates higher expectations from any interaction they have with sales people.
Buyers expect higher value in the form of efficient discussion that specifically addresses their needs and will help them move forward in the decision process.
The most successful salespeople deliver value to their customers throughout the entire buying process, not just at the end.
That is the essence of a value driven buying journey, teaching buyers something new and driving them to make the best decision.
Value driven selling alone shows your buyer the value they will generate from your service or product, which is important, but doesn’t cover the continued value that salespeople must deliver throughout the discussion.
Below I will outline five specific examples where sellers may have trouble landing their buyers, and recommend alternative approaches.
(more…)

Continue Reading The Key to a Successful Value Driven Buying Journey
How to Growth Hack Content for Lead Generation in 3 Steps

How to Growth Hack Content for Lead Generation in 3 Steps

Popular belief often leads us to think that simply creating quality content and posting it online (including social media outlets) makes for a good content marketing strategy. In reality, however, that is nowhere near enough. Combining outlets and orchestrating them with the right insights, along with clever money investment, and fully leveraging marketing software, makes for a real marketing strategy, with proven success of fully leveraging content for marketing needs.

This article will break down some of the myths surrounding content marketing and give you the knowledge to effectively growth hack content to the highest conversion rate possible. The successful marketing campaign for Cloudyn that was led by Cloudyn’s VP Marketing, Ophir Shalitin, and Cookie Jar Marketing will be used as a case study, showing how they managed to take content and turn it into revenue. (Disclaimer: Cloudyn is an IamOnDemand Customer)

(more…)

Continue Reading How to Growth Hack Content for Lead Generation in 3 Steps
How Often Do Tech Blogs Post? FYI: TechCrunch Published 1,076 Articles in January

How Often Do Tech Blogs Post? FYI: TechCrunch Published 1,076 Articles in January

The web is exploding with content and publications about the cloud and technology, which can make it challenging to garner attention for your own blog’s content. Consequently, we created Ideation, a tool that aggregates hundreds of thousands of articles from tech publishers ranging from giant tech blogs, such as TechCrunch, to small cloud startup blogs. All you do is search for a keyword(s) or topic, then Ideation automatically finds and ranks current related articles according to the amount of shares that they receive on social platforms. Ideation is comparable to BuzzSumo, but the big difference is that Ideation is free and is geared towards cloud technology-based content.
I asked our talented development team to provide some numbers about the articles that we’ve already aggregated to show you how often tech blogs and sites post and get an idea of how often you should, too.
(more…)

Continue Reading How Often Do Tech Blogs Post? FYI: TechCrunch Published 1,076 Articles in January
Ghostwriting, Content Farms and Google’s 2014 Update

Ghostwriting, Content Farms and Google’s 2014 Update

Ghostwriting can offer many advantages. Since not all experts and professionals have the ability, skills, or availability to write high-quality content, ghostwriters are used to bridge the gap between experts’ knowledge and their target audiences. However, the reality of today’s online content world has drifted far from these practices.

The Creation of Online “Fluff”

In an attempt to draw audiences to their websites and boost their online presence and pagerank, many companies and organizations turn to ghostwriters, SEO experts and content farms, to create articles. However, with the writers detached from the knowledge source (i.e. the experts), the odds of creating high volumes of quality content in a short amount of time are slim. The content that companies tend to receive back and then publish is often completely unreliable, inaccurate, and worst case scenario, just plain wrong.

(more…)

Continue Reading Ghostwriting, Content Farms and Google’s 2014 Update

5 Writing Tips for Cloud Evangelists (from Someone Who’s Created 400+ Posts)

shutterstock_128309906Nearly every IT company these days has a blog. Whether it is meant to explain products/services, announce new releases, or update readers about relevant happenings in a specific business niche, the ultimate goal is to engage your target audience. You may want to build trust over time, or convince them in a single post that your cloud product or service is what they need. While the goal seems obvious, actual implementation can be much more challenging.

Over the past year, I’ve created approximately 400 posts in the realm of cloud computing at IamOnDemand (IOD). We interview developers, evangelists, and CTOs to extract information from its source. We then turn that knowledge into clear content that keeps readers interested and wanting more. While some of the following tips may seem obvious, keep them in mind. You may find a need for them more often than you think.

(more…)

Continue Reading 5 Writing Tips for Cloud Evangelists (from Someone Who’s Created 400+ Posts)

oTranscribe, A Transcriber’s Dream Tool

The IOD team has generated over 500 articles for our customers over the past year, all of which have been original and unique in the world of cloud computing. Our technical writers and evangelists are measured by their efficiency and ability to maintain quality and accuracy. As a result, we are constantly on the lookout for ways to enhance our production capabilities, making sure to arm our staff with tools that make their jobs easier, including our own Ideation and Google docs to WordPress features. In this article, we would like to share an important tool with you that we feel every writer should know about.

(more…)

Continue Reading oTranscribe, A Transcriber’s Dream Tool

Cloud Content Marketing Through Knowledge

DevOps and Cloud expertiseMarketing through knowledge has gained vast popularity for enterprises and startups, alike. Creating educational content for your community, otherwise known as content marketing, has become the preferred method of marketing for a number of reasons. Instead of enticing a potential customer for a few seconds with a witty tagline or flashy banner, cloud content marketing engages potential customers through news, industry awareness, expertise, and storytelling. Educational content’s purpose is to arouse an audience’s curiosity, leaving them with more knowledge and questions about the subject. Conversely, traditional marketing methods, like copywriting, have a specific and usually very direct call to action. As a result, the reader will either take action or not, leaving the company and potential customer with very little room for engagement. Promotional content has its purposes in marketing, but education is not one of them. Writing content that educates rather than promotes has proven to be an effective way for cloud computing vendors to build customer relationships resulting in more than just sales, but community, as well.

(more…)

Continue Reading Cloud Content Marketing Through Knowledge