Article Surfing Archive

Writing bylined articles for trade journals is a time-honored way to increase brand recognition and respect. Bylined articles:

 Build industry recognition for your technology.

 Position your executives and engineers as experts to your target audiences.

 Yield highly qualified leads that lead to sales.

All these good things can be had by submitting a vendor-neutral bylined article on your technology to a trade journal serving your targeted audience.

Q: But if it's vendor-neutral how can it work?
A: A vendor-neutral bylined article is not a brochure or a press release. The only place your company will even be mentioned is the small tagline at the end of the article and your product probably won't be mentioned at all.

Q: So what good is it?
A: It's good because the article strongly positions the technology you are selling. Let's say your product is called DiskEase, a software that tracks disk capacity, automatically provisions another disk at a preset capacity threshold, and then migrates data to the new disk. You can't mention DiskEase in the article. But what you can do is position your provisioning technology as the answer to a serious problem, simply by writing an informational article on this valid and interesting technology. Then in the tagline you put your company and contact information, usually a website.

Shift scene to an engineer has been losing sleep at night because he can't provision his disks on time - leading to network downtime and over-provisioning problems. He picks up the magazine, reads the article, and goes to your website to see if this technology will solve his problem. Of course it will and he'll contact you.

Leveraging High-Tech Bylined Articles

Another beauty of bylined articles is that you can leverage them. Here are some possibilities:

1. Reprints
2. White papers
3. Booklets
4. Speech outline and handouts

Reprints
Reprints are good things: they significantly increase your 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. (Be sure to work out reprint rights with the publishing magazine beforehand.)

White Paper
Don't use the as-is published article as a white paper, articles are structured differently from white papers and you'll run into copyright issues. Instead use the article text to form the technology section of a white paper. Edit it to highlight customer benefits since you don't have to be vendor-neutral for your own white paper, and add white paper sections around it including executive summaries, problem statements, in-depth product/technology information, etc. (Click here for more information about writing white papers.)

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, presentations and handouts. Since trade journal articles are usually vendor-neutral, they'll work for conference talks too. 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&As.