Techies…. or nerds…. they need to be left at their bearings. You ask them to code for 24 hours a day…. the glee u see on their face is irreplaceable, but u ask them to manage people…. brrr… they would show their attitude… the same goes with an expression of what would give when they are asked to write on tech stuff…. or sometimes even talk of it. They are content with what they do…. don’t wanna talk about it.
Write of it… are you kidding???…. that is much against their nerdy karma…tsk tsk!
So what would you do get them to give you content…?. I am talking here as a content manager… or as a glorified content strategist. Your KRA depends on what gets published on the website… and you cannot be posting “stuff “ from your own brain every time.
As per the rules of content marketer…. the stuff which is out of your stable has to be :
Engaging…. for other nerds… so that he would aspire to be part of this cool tech startup which is doing stuff in a very millennial way.
Nerdy but not so nerdy… the common man (a solution seeker), can read and understand what you as a company does and decide whether to buy this solution/service or not.
When an investor looks at you they need to see those keywords in your content , so that they also can boast in their VC circle, that they have invested in a loaded Tech startup.
Doomed we are as content marketers ! to meet these criteria…
Yes, sometimes I feel I really need a magic “content” wand.
One of the approaches which has made my life manageable so that I always have content on my calendar and I am not that person from whom the techies need to escape from, when they see me in corridors is presented here.
When you meet a Techie, ask them what do they do?
For this also…. you may not get a clear answer. Sometimes I have had answers like i am writing this code and I have this error. In these cases I don the software engineer hat for some time and sit with them see their code…. basically, empathise with them. If I knew how the code works, wouldn’t I have been a master coder by now? I ran from it after dabbling with it. Which I don’t tell them, but “empathise “ that those set of lines would come to life at some point in time. And tell them that time is very very near.
If you have caught them at this juncture, never talk of content to them, otherwise, you would be their worst enemy. They would judge you… how can she talk about content when the code is not working. My world is crumbling here and she wanna make a damn article! So veer away from your goals then, but breathe and be with them. The power of NOW…Is the only way.
One day he would find out, a comma was missing in that damn code and he made it “work”. He would surely report back when you meet him at the coffee machine, then the time is ripe….
Ask him once more what does he do… you would get a definitive answer now. I develop this software for this solution. Now it is the time to dig more and ask him if you want to write about it.
Then mostly the response or the expression on the face would “Are you kidding me?” They would then put all their guards on and say “You see I have this deadline looming over me or this damn code needs this much more development and I am gonna work on it the whole night!” Once more withdrawn to their shell… Tactic here….
hey, you don’t need to write it…but just give me some points and I can elaborate. What say? 2 reactions can be expected.
The face brightens up : bcoz they see light falling on their ideas. To add fuel to it, I would say, see the advantage of this is that you can boast of the same in you LinkedIn profile.. which is otherwise very dry as of now. And google search on you would be richer. You see at a later point of life…. you can boast to your grandchildren that you have publications to your credits, till they are 5 years of age. after that, they would know what a blog is and what it entails!
Am I taking it too far! Anyways some of these are told to them, which are facts as well. I am not marketing my content marketing. How it helps employees are multifold:
In addition to presenting to the world what technologies and solutions the company work on, it presents to the world the tech expertise which the employee foster.
It becomes easier to mine out which company does similar work and which employee has to be poached from it. Makes your life easier for the job hunt. Or your ego would be massaged on a regular basis by calls from recruitment agencies for prospects.
When you present your profile for conferences, job interviews or even for marriage proposals… you can boast of being a nerd with blogs to your credit. Girls are generally impressed by guys who talk tech-sense.
Now the next reaction: Am I that great to write tech stuff, that too for public consumption? Now it is counselling time, you need to resort to “tiny drops make the ocean” kind of approach in this context and explain to them, let us start with this blog and then we would reach whitepapers and patents at one point. It works most of the cases. Others are Nerdy nerds beyond you.
Most of the above ones are now convinced and then they collect their coffee and move on with a promise of sending me a mail with the “Idea”. I am hopeful too. But it never comes or rather most of the times does not come.
Now the next push tactic sent them a mail with these questions and ask them to answer objectively… they quite love these objective questions.
My set of the questions is these
What is the blog about (the subject you wanna discuss)
What are you currently working on?
What are the aspects you wanna cover
Is it a comparison with another solution?
or a case study,
or our usage in our development cycle
Or benefits of this particular software
Or comparison of this solution which we are using with the conventional software
Most of the cases, I get answers to these questions as 2 words and I am satisfied as well with it. “Something is better than nothing” is my policy.
Now my tasks begin, I work with our content writer to come up with a skeleton document with subsections and share with the contributor for approval. Now, things start rolling as nerd feels that he is in control and he can see his “vision” unfolding in front of him.
Caution here: He/She in his nerdy world would be convinced that a particular idea is “THE” thing to solve a particular problem. We need to do our homework to get convinced of it and also another way is to loop in an architect to confirm the same. Otherwise, you are at the chance of presenting to the world a wrong concept.
So the Content Development Life Cycle is
