By Jen Maidenberg, VP, Editorial, IOD
In the time since I started a varied career that has always included some element of writing, the definition of “editor” has never been consistent. It changes depending on the publication or company I am working for, and has dramatically altered over the last 15 years as “features” have become “blogs” have become “content.”
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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.
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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.
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The 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.
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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)
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.
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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.
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.
I have been responsible for editing and publishing over 1,200 articles in the realm of cloud computing over the last two years. Besides creating articles, at IamOnDemand (IOD), we also review trending topics, cultivate relevant ideas, and select the right headlines for articles we create. Just like every organization that wants to grow fast while enhancing its service, products and customer satisfaction, we are constantly on the lookout for creative methods and innovative technologies that support robust and quality delivery.
One of the main challenges in content writing is finding a healthy way to integrate innovative and unique ideas into an already existing and ever-fluctuating market. You may have spent hours or even weeks writing an amazing article, only to discover that no one read it once it was published. Maybe people overlooked it; maybe they clicked on its title and left the page after reading two sentences. Ultimately, the post did not achieve the user engagement that you had hoped for, leaving you with an 80% bounce rate.
Curious? check out IOD Ideation or just keep on reading.
Here at IOD (I am OnDemand), we spend a hefty amount of time sitting in front of the computer learning about the latest and greatest updates in the world of cloud computing and turning that knowledge into valuable content. It goes without saying that, along with the rest of the world of IT, we spend most of our days sitting for prolonged periods of time in postures that threaten our health and well being. Personally, as a registered yoga instructor (RYT 200), I find it extremely difficult to sit for long periods of time and always make sure to keep my blood pumping, joints happy and stress levels low, one way or another, when working on the computer. In respect to the wealth of knowledge out there regarding the dangers associated with prolonged sitting and the specific ailments linked to countless hours on the computer, I thought I’d share a few tips on how to maintain a healthy lifestyle as a computer geek.
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.
For more information about IOD, our services, or opportunities to write for us, drop us a line below.
