Deconstructing the Technical Writing Process with Morgan Norris

The following transcript was created by an AI Bot which has yet to learn slang words and decipher Wendy's Texas accent. While it is no substitute for watching/listening to the episode, transcripts are handy for a quick scan. Enjoy!

Wendy: If you were tasked with writing technical content for your company and you're not really sure where to start or what process to follow, then you'll definitely want to listen to today's episode. I'm joined today by an expert at technical content development, and she'll walk through beginning to end her writing process and provide tips on creating a more efficient process, working with subject matter experts and how to make the most of this content once it's created.

Let's do this.

Narrator: Welcome to Content Marketing, Engineered. Your source for building trust and generating demand with technical content. Here is your host, Wendy Covey

Wendy: Hi and welcome to Content Marketing, Engineered. On each episode, I'll break down an industry trend, challenge, or best practice in reaching technical audiences. You'll meet colleagues, friends and clients of mine who will stop by to share their stories. And I hope that you leave each episode feeling inspired and ready to take action. Before we jump in, I'd like to give a shout out to my agency. TREW Marketing is a full service agency located in beautiful Austin, Texas, serving highly technical companies.

For more information, visit our site. And now on with our podcast.

Hey, everyone. I'm here with Morgan Norris. She's a senior brand and content strategist here at TREW Marketing, and she's been on the show many times in the past. So she'll be a familiar voice and face to many of you and today will be talking through the writing process. So welcome to the show, Morgan. Thanks.

Morgan: Thanks for having me. Glad to be back.

Wendy: I think this will be a fun episode because we're talking about your favorite subject, which is writing and creating really strong content. So, Morgan, why are you so passionate about this subject?

Morgan: OK, so writing is critical to content marketing and I think we know that, but it feels like something that we should easily be able to kind of outsource or just tell somebody else to do it. But the second you sit down to actually write content, you realize just how challenging it can be.

And I know you recently talked about the the research reports to the state of marketing to engineers,  and just the fact there that sixty two percent of those research respondedents surveyed said that they complete more than half the buyer's journey online. So they're looking for content and they're either going to find your content or they're going to find your competitors content and they're going to use that content to decide who they're going to trust and who can who understands their pain points and who they want to work with.

And so you want them to decide on your company. So not only content, but you need really strong content. And I think this is one of the things that parallels well, even from our personal lives and the B2C market. Right. So we've all downloaded or maybe it's just me, but those ebooks that have 12 healthy dinners to go for your family or how to DIY your own countertops and measure for new ones. And then you download that content and you end up with an ebook that has 12 variations on macaroni and cheese and a countertop demo ebook that is basically just a sales pitch for a new color of chords.

And so in a way, the B2B market is the same. If you're going to create an ebook about a simulation for engine testing and it's targeted to a test engineer, but it's all about your product or the information's really vague and it's more or less what they've already seen on Wikipedia and a couple articles, they're going to go somewhere else and that content that you needed for somebody to build trust in you is actually going to become a detractor. And so I just feel very strongly about, you know, marketers really investing in their writing skills so that the content they're creating is is good.

Wendy: And it sounds like that content needs to be very specific to meeting someone's pain points and light on the promotional aspects of trying to push a particular solution.

Morgan: Yes, absolutely.

Wendy: So we agree. And here on some some basic principles and obviously the importance of content. But I knew where a lot of marketers struggle in companies at large is just the process.

You know, it's difficult to create technical content. It does take a lot of time. And just where to start, you know, staring at that blank word document on your desk, you know, how does a company go from figuring out that they need a write, they need to create content and actually getting words on the page.

Morgan: Yep, it's a huge barrier and we've all sat there. I mean, I I'll walk you through kind of the process that I use and I have used as recently as this week. Right. Because we all sit there and you stare at a blank page and you go, I know I need to write this. Where do I even really even start? And so, like you mentioned, we we need content that's heavily educational and light on the sales process.

And I think that a big aspect of that is taking a step back. So I always sit down kind of with what I need to write and take a step back and look at the brand story and what this is going to do. It's going to help you understand where your customer is. It's going to put you in their shoes, and then it's going to remind you that you're providing a piece of content that's part of their journey. You're not trying to tackle their entire journey in one piece of content.

And so if you think about, you know, your favorite movie or book, it's a story that starts with a character. And here in your piece of content, that character is your your prospect, your customer, and you want to really compel them into knowing kind of your brand and their journey. And so first, you want to identify who that customer is. And I know you've talked about before and a lot of your listeners know about buyer personas and so really understanding who's the persona that you're writing this piece of content fo, and then unburden yourself from all of the other personas.

This piece of content that you're creating does not need to be for everyone at every time. It's going to be for a certain persona at a certain point in their their buying journey. And so you can start to ask those questions. What industry are they in, what kind of challenges are they facing? How do they make a purchase decision? What are their biggest frustrations? And so get yourselves in their head kind of as you're thinking through that. And then from there, you can kind of go through.

And I like to take the next step and kind of amplify that problem. What's going to happen if you don't solve it? Are they going to have downtime that then creates a headache for them later, or are they potentially going to lose their job if they don't get this right? Are they going to miss major deadlines where a product doesn't get to market if they can't figure out exactly how to test it? And so figure out kind of where that that crux that problem comes to a head, and then that'll position you to be able to kind of make that customer the hero.

You're going to provide a piece of content that is going to help them avoid that kind of deadly end that they don't want. And that's what you're going to create. And then you're going to be able to position your company and your solution as kind of the guide. This piece of content is going to help get them there. And from there, you've taken a step back. You understand where you are in the journey and you're able to kind of free yourself from from being everything to everyone and start getting in the mind frame to really write that content.

So that's the first piece I think.

Wendy: I can see where that would provide a lot of clarity and direction to the writer, you know, whoever's charged with this piece or whatever. I like the word you said, unburden yourself from covering the entire buyer's journey and every persona and really narrow this down.

And I could see where you'll have a much higher quality piece. It's going to speak to someone's pain points if you get that specific. So I like where you are headed with this.How do you decide what types of content to write? 

Morgan: Yep, so, you know, if you come to me and tell me you need you know, you need content, we're going to take a step back, figure out kind of where those those points are in the buyer's journey, that you need that content. And then we identify the piece of content. I think a lot of times people just say, I wanna write 20 blog posts. Well, let's look at that and decide kind of where's your biggest need for content and how do you keep people moving through that buyer's journey.

And so, I mean, if you tell me you need 20 blog posts I am going to ask you what you're trying to achieve with that. So you've got different types of content, main kind of content pieces. I usually focus on our blog posts, ebooks and white papers, case studies, news releases, even corporate slide decks that walk through the overarching corporate brand story.

And so we look at those from the perspective of the buyer's journey. You're going to use blog posts and news releases to attract customers, but then you're going to be able to use white papers and ebooks to really convert them where then you might need a final case study that shows hard facts to close those customers. And so it it just depends on where you are in the buyer's journey. But really identifying where you are is an important piece of deciding what content to to write, and man, and just as a reminder, this all happens in the writing process before any words are on the page yet.

And so it feels like a lot to kind of sift through at the beginning. But your writing process is going to be so much easier and so much faster and more effective if you make these decisions up front, because it's pretty difficult. If somebody tells you to write a piece of content and they're expecting an ebook, and you can, you know, come up with a few blog posts, you're not going to to fill the need that you have.

And so really defining kind of where you are in the buyer's journey is helpful.

Wendy: Before we move on to the writing process, because I can't wait to dive into details, what about thought leadership content such as contributed articles or long form LinkedIn posts? How do those fit into this process?

Morgan: So those definitely fit into that kind of brand story process. For thought leadership in particular, those longer form LinkedIn posts contributed content sort of you might be a test engineering company, but it makes sense to seek out some opportunities where you're writing contributed content for a more B2B business type of publication and sharing your thoughts that way. One thing that that we really like to do for that is if you're really approaching thought leadership is sit down and decide what messages you have some leadership over.

So to be a thought leader is not to be a thought leader in everything. So the same thing where we're talking about identifying your company narrative and what point your buyers are in the journey as far as a thought leader. I really always encourage our executive leadership that we work with to we sit and figure out what are three topics that you are really ahead on and can provide a lot of value to people who are companies, who are smaller companies who were in your shoes two, three, five years ago and will identify those topics and come up with some key messages around those.

And then what are the supporting bullets? What are, you know, maybe you need you might need a case study to show your thought leadership in a certain area, but we really decide what those messages are first before we start to just jump into content for those.

Wendy: So same thing, a lot of thoughtful discussion and narrowing the field down where you're unburdening yourself again from trying to be everything to everyone, but picking those specific areas of expertise.

Morgan: Definitely and this comes at this a little bit of a change. If this comes up a lot on you, we'll have executive leaders chosen for panels and things like that. And so just making sure if we've got that messaging for them already, that they're going back to the areas where they're key on because  if you're vastly a thought leader in one area, I want you to spend 90 percent of your time talking about that versus 90 percent of your time answering general questions and 10 percent of your time talking about the thing that you're specialized in.

We want to focus on what you're really, really good at.

Wendy: So key theme: focus.

So let's then focus in on the actual writing process. So you're ready to start typing what what are the key steps here Morgan? What process do you want to follow?

Morgan: You are ready. So you have identified what type of content you're going to write. You have a topic now that you know, because you know where you are, the buyer's journey, and now you've got to research and go through all the research that we've done. We see that engineers trust content created by engineers. Every time, right, so they want content that's created by a trustworthy source, that does not mean that the engineer has to write the words on the page, but that means that they're their mind and expertise needs to be fueling what's in that content.

As a writer, as a marketing writer in particular, you're going to make that content organized. Easy to read. You're going to make it really easy to digest for a prospect. And so we want to leverage the subject matter experts that we have. And this is a touchy process. So what happens is your engineers might be the expert. And I used the Hardware Loop simulation earlier, so they might be your HIL simulation expert and you've identified a gap that you need some content around this topic.

And so now you need to go to the SMEs and work with them to figure out kind of the answers to your questions and really understand pain points their customers are having, how to solve them, how to think about them. So what you want to do is reach out to the subject matter experts. Engineers are going to work one of two ways. Either they'll they'll want to write down their answers so that everything's exactly correct and send them to you that way, or  they'll get major writer's block. And when they have to go write something out specifically. And so they'll need to talk to you through it. It's your job as a writer to understand how they communicate best and adapt to that. So you're the writer, you're the communicator, you're the marketer. You can adapt. You've got to get the information out of their head. The easiest way possiblethat you can get that.

And so that's really important. You want to make their life as easy as possible. They are doing, you know, highly billable technical skills. They're working with customers on projects, and so be as efficient as possible.

And some of those things are: ask for source material before hand, get any data sheets, product info, anything they've provided to sales before so that you know exactly where you need more information and ask him about that.

I also love and ask ask them what they're reading, ask them what the most difficult customer challenge they faced this week is, and you'll start to get into their heads a little bit about what's important. And I think that's really helpful. Provides a lot of color to the pieces that you're writing, other ways to research our industry publications, looking at kind of their customers work, what their customers are trying to achieve. Doing any of your background research kind of on Wikipedia, I always make a note, if there's something that my subject matter expert is talking about as if it is a commonplace topic, but it's not something I've heard of yet, I'll just jot it down and assume I can go research it later rather than ask questions that you can find.

Wendy: Yes, yes. You can find it elsewhere. Don't waste their time. Don't waste their time.

Morgan: If it's not proprietary information out of their head, just keep going. I like if we have if we're doing this on a call where I'm just verbally getting the information, I'll record it so I can go back and listen.

But those are kind of all ways to research and then keep their their time as brief as possible. And then once there are research, you want to plan out your piece of content. So this looks like some form of outlining now for blogs or white papers or ebooks. You'll do kind of a formal outline. And then for things like corporate slide decks, you might want to do more of a storyboard where you're kind of going section one, section two, section three, different slides.

But the outlines, you'll see, you go back through notes and what content topics, what topics overall kind of bubbled up and start just reorganizing your information. And there you'll probably find you've still got some gaps and you need to either fill those in with the research that you're already doing or going back to that subject matter expert with a few specific questions. I like to just ask those questions, stand alone, I don't show them the content until I'm ready for them to look at it, but I'm going to go ahead and just ask them a few targeted questions to fill out my outline with details.

Because we want we may have decided that there are these few key topics that are coming up, but then my last topic I know is important, we had talked about it, I know it's important, but I don't have any of the hard facts that go underneath it. Or they had mentioned regulations, but we didn't ever talk about what exact regulations those were. Now I know that I need them and so I can go back and ask those specific questions and then from there.

We'll start to add in kind of any figure out any, again, just gaps we have. So are there is there a specific application that we can highlight that would show this point? Can we show the the idea rather than just telling it? Are there are there images that we can use? And so we'll start to think about what those are going to look like, and then we'll start to work on a headline and really create a headline that is going to compel that reader at the spot that they're at on their buyer's journey.

So general research shows that it's like 60 percent of readers don't make it past the headline, and you have about eight seconds to catch some these interest. And so the headline is going to be really important for engineers. For technical audiences, the headline cannot be a superlative. So the headline cannot be "the best way". 

Wendy: Oh come on, Morgan, but it's the best. It's the most innovative.

Morgan: And don't use the word innovative. They will never read it. So because they know that they're driven by fact and they know that that's not true. There's some other solution or they assume that at the point they read the article that your superlative is outdated. And so you've got to be really factual in that headline. But go back to the pain points that you identified when you were telling that story in the beginning and include those pain points in the headline so that you're really meeting them where they are in the challenge they're facing.

Tell them you're going to give them a path to a solution. And then lastly, kind of in that writing process, you want to just review your company's tone and voice, because often what happens is you've got multiple people within a company writing content that's going to be branded for the company. And so ideally, all that content should sound like it came from the same company. And so if the engineer if the subject matter expert that you talked to was extremely casual in their conversation, that doesn't mean that the piece you write should be casual.

It should mimic the tone and voice of your company. Do you use a lot of second person "you" type of language or as a company, are you, you know, very didactic and technical?

Make sure that that comes through in your writing.

Wendy: A lot of things for the writer to balance.

So obviously there's a connection to the overall marketing strategy that happened at the beginning. When you have persona development and in thinking about how to connect this to, you know, where this piece fits in the buyer's journey and bringing in the company and differentiators and things like that. But one thing, and this is a very tactical question, but also the writer needs to think tactically about optimization. Right? How will this piece end up being published? And so is their writing, how will the piece be found?

And it made me think about this when you were talking about headlines. So how does the writer keep an eye towards optimization as they're crafting the piece?

Morgan: Yeah, that's a great question. So one thing I think to keep in mind is you want to write for the reader first and then for the robot. Right?

So humans first. Humans first, humans first. Because we've all read something that sounds like it's written for SEO as well.

But I do like to ask the subject matter expert when we're when we're gathering information. Just, you know, what kinds of what kinds of terms are people looking for? I ask them a lot of times, are there are there non-negotiable terms for this where we've got to focus on this topic or, you know,  in the initial process with clients? Is there any disconnect between terms? Does our company call it this, but everybody else calls it that? For the marketing, for the piece that's trying to attract people and bring them in.

We need to call it what they call it. Who cares what we call it internally? 

And this happens a lot in technical companies where we create proprietary processes or solutions.

For example, a technical company might create a process for how they handle product design and test, and they call it the PEAKS test process. OK. No one cares.

Wendy: No one knows what that is.

Morgan: No one knows. And so it doesn't make sense. It's not a process someone is going to purchase, it is our product you're trying to promote. It's not something somebody's going to purchase. It's internally how you've created that. Awesome. I'm sure it creates a lot of consistency for your teams internally. Don't create a white paper around why we use the PEAKS process because no one's looking for that.

Right. So a way that that you can pivot from that because your process might be amazing and it might be the reason that people end up working with you. And so you need more people to know about it. But that white paper should instead be titled something like, you know, five critical aspects to product design and test that you may not have in your process. Something like that were then in that white paper. You walk through you you walk through the whole process and at the end you say, "we do this every single time and we call it PEAKS test, and here the key, the key aspects of it and here's a quote from three of our customers saying why this benefited them so much." And so that's what that content looks like. But writing you know, writing the headline for that looks like writing something that that your prospects are actually searching for benefits oriented terminology that's readily used.

Wendy: Oh, gosh. Great example. Morgan, thank you for sharing that. Yeah.

So, OK, so back to the writing process. So now we have a written piece. It's, let's say in the word document and the writer's feeling pretty good about it. You know what happens next? There's an editing process, I'm sure, and with technical pieces. Does that look different then editing for, say, a B2C blog post or article? So I think B2C type topic, you could turn over to just any editor, the facts, and it would be pretty easy to check if there are any.

But this technical piece you're going to have to go back to your subject matter expert, and have them review it one more time and you want to set expectations for this. So a few things that I always like to do are, I'll send a document over and say this is ready. As a reminder, here was the topic of this piece and here's the intention of it, because you and I went through that whole process where we identified where the buyer's journey this piece fits.

They don't know that. And so we need to remind them of this is what we're trying to accomplish with this piece. So  you don't need to add in a bunch of extra things that aren't.  If they're not in this piece, it's likely intentional, and so you want to set the expectation for them of what you're asking for, and typically I ask that they fact check accuracy and they make sure the flow makes sense to the potential reader who's having this specific pain point that we identified.

You'll have some people who just want to really mark up writing in general, not a good use of their time, so, you know, you're the marketer. You're the writer. This is your area of expertise. So because of that, I usually set a time expectation. So if it's a blog post, I'll tell them, twenty five minutes tops that they should spend on this, twenty to twenty five minutes, if it's something like a white paper, they're going to maybe need 45-60 minutes to review it.

So that doesn't allow for them time to like add a bunch of commas where we don't need them. But it does allow for time where they can go through and check facts and check flow and then circle back with me on that and I'll highlight areas. If there are specific areas that I know I have a question about. Go ahead and highlight those so that they focus on those areas. And then then you would piece back and now it needs editing,

Now, ideally, you've got somebody else  on your marketing team who can read through it. It's really hard to edit your own work, but it's definitely doable. And it's definitely the situation for a lot of people. You don't have somebody else to edit it. So what we do for editing is I have kind of a whole checklist cheat sheet that I run through just to make sure. And I'll share a few of the key things.

But biggest things that stand out in your work are you wrote something technical. There's likely bullets in a list somewhere, go through and make sure your bullets have parallel structure. And what that means is, is every bullet in a series should be able to complete the same sentence seamlessly. So if I say, you know, this podcast includes information on, an then a colon, everything in that list should complete the sentence. This podcast includes information on x, and so that means they either all start with a verb or they don't.

So they should all flow together. So go through and do that. Those get those often get even if they even if you had them in a good spot before you send it over for editing, if it was specs or something like that. Likely if some details got edited then your bullet structure is lost and it just makes your piece read so much better. The other thing is, is edit out passive voice. I'll give you kind of a good, better, best.

You can have a sentence that says this module is helping engineers.This sentence isn't very powerful. "Is helping" is passive voice, you're adding on extra words, so a better sentence would be "this module helps engineers" and actually the best sentence would be putting the action in the engineer. So you want your person reading your prospect, reading this content to be able to sit in the shoes of somebody succeeding in the problem that they're having. And so you want to say "with this module, engineers can," and it sounds a little nit picky, but it makes a huge difference to the reader that they don't even know about.

It's a difference between the the module being the hero and that engineer who's reading that piece, seeing that they could be a hero. If I get this module, I can accomplish I can solve my problems. And so eradicating that passive voice and then putting the subject as the active person kind of in your piece will.

It's a difference between a piece that reads OK and something that reads really strongly where you can't quite put your finger on it. That's a big piece.

Wendy: So you're bringing me back to my days in college? Yeah, I studied journalism and I remember all of this, a lot of red lines through these lenses. Yeah.

You know, also way back in the day, we used to write towards the lead, like making sure you grab someone right out of the gate. Does that principle still apply outside of newspapers?

Morgan: I would say yes, and so the lead is important as it always has been, and that lead is the thesis of what you're going to get across in the piece and then what is, I think, now of equal importance as we have moved towards just massive amounts of content and scannability is the subhead lines that are included in that content. Good one. And so you think about when you look at something, you look at an article, you read that those first couple of sentences and they they tell you what they're going to tell you.

But then you go look at those sub headlines and go, is this actually what I'm in need? And so that's so easy, right, to just quickly scan people and even make that first paragraph even in something long, like a like an eight page white paper, those headlines are still hugely important. Somebody is going to just flip through that and go, oh, yeah, this is going to be valuable for me to read. So those are important to break up the text, but also to to show that, you know what you're talking about and you know what you're going to walk them through in the piece.

Wendy: All right. Well, so the content is written. It's edited, and now we're really feeling happy with it. How do we get from this word document to a promotion ready piece?

Morgan: Yeah. So so now you've got it. You feel like you're done and you just you got the home stretch. So, you know, you think about a white paper or a case study or something like that that you've downloaded. It's got a design aspect to it. It needs some images and it needs CTAs. So they need to know where they're going to go next after they read this.

So as far as design, the barrier to good design has been lowered so much over the last five years, so you can now purchase templates, you can purchase PowerPoint templates, you can purchase if you have InDesign you can purchase design, but even InDesign there's such a barrier cost in functionality nd it's overkill for a lot of things that technical companies and writers need to do.

You can even design stuff in Word, but there are free tools like Canva, where you can go in and do a quick layout. You can add your style and branding colors in and you want to, you know, include images, include captions with your images. Ideally, you'll have images if you're talking about a product of the actual product and kind of use imagery sparingly. But you want to have real world images, ideally. One note, though, about design is you want to have your content completely done before you put it in design, because the second you start adding visual elements, it makes it really hard to go back and edit the text.

So just make sure you're done, but then add in images and then so you want a very clear next step. If it's a blog post, you can include inline links throughout the post to more information, but then you want to sell it at the end if somebody read this. What should they do next and who, again, that takes you back to that that that narrative story, where are they and what's next for them? And because you identify that narrative story to begin with, that's a really easy question to answer.

You know exactly where they are and you know what their next point is, what the next piece of information they need is. So give them that.

And then lastly, you want to be a really good coworker to whoever you're handing this off to to promote, and that may be you if you're doing this, if you're end to end and and we've all been there and you've got to do it all on your own.

But you want to create some kind of promotional graphic for that text and then the sort of hundred and forty character type of text that will go with that. So what we find happens often is somebody does all the the writing and all this hard work. And you created this white paper that's 10 pages and it's wonderful. But then you just hand it over to this brand new intern and they're supposed to post it on social media.

Well, they don't know that you just spent three weeks with this topic. They don't they don't know the topic. And even if they best case scenario, they're going to read the entire thing and then stew over what to write in the 140 characters, you write it. So when you hand that off, you hand it off with an image, hop into Canva, put the put the piece title in a graphical image, include one of the images from that you used in the piece and make that little designed image in Canva and then hand that over along with that one hundred and forty type character little tease that that says why somebody should click to read this.

And so that's an important last step that gets forgotten. And for the same reason that, you know, we sit at our writing desk and go, oh my gosh, what am I going to create? Don't put that headache on the next person so that they're saying, oh, my gosh, how in the world am I going to promote this? Just give them the tools and then it makes it so easy and saves so much time.

Wendy: I could see how much more efficient that is. The writer is so close to that material, they're going to know what to extract out. And I would think it's not just one post, but maybe several, right? And give it some legs. This does seem like a mistake that companies make. They spend all this time creating that piece of content and then fail when it comes to the promotion part. So, yeah, I'm glad you touched on this.

Well, Morgan, I feel like we could have talked for hours and hours about the writing process, so I know we've a little bit scratched the surface.

So where can our listeners and viewers go to find resources to help with their next writing project?

Morgan: Yeah. So we're going to do a webinar on March 25th. It's called How to Write Content That Converts Technical Audiences.

And if you're looking for just more resources and some visuals will walk through a lot of examples of the type of process that we just talked about. That webinar is going to do it. So it's again, March 25th. If you go to trewmarketing.com/writingwebinar, then there's a sign up for it right there.

It's free and it's a great resource for marketers or even engineers that are looking to kind of create content or engineers who are having to work with marketing teams and writers. A lot of times really appreciate just kind of hearing what the process looks like and so is, well, marketing teams. So this is a good kind of opportunity as a webinar for like a lunch and learn to all kind of get level up, get on the same page with the process and what it looks like to really create solid content.

And then after that, in late April, we're actually launching Content Writing, Engineered, a course with complete lessons, as well as live coaching for participants where people will actually create an entire piece of content. And for some people, you know, you hear what we just talked about in the webinar, in the webinar might be enough to just get you started, get you on the right page, get your head in the right spot, start creating content.

But for others, you know, really, you need somebody to walk you through that process and get the coaching along the way. So we'll teach you exactly how to create an outline and then you're going to create it and then we'll talk to you about it and how to strengthen it. And that course is it starts April 19th. It's a five week course every week. There's somewhere between like one and three hours of On-Demand instruction that you'll be able to go through and then you'll have an assignment that you do.

And each of the assignments each week build on each other so that at the end of this final. Designed, promotable piece of content, and then every week during the course on Fridays, we'll have a one hour live group coaching session where we'll talk through strengthening all the things that that you're creating. And so it'll be a really beneficial opportunity for that. And that's people creating blog posts, white papers, ebooks, case studies, news releases, corporate slide decks, interactive content.

It's all of these content types that are necessary through that buyer's journey. So the course does have limited availability, but it's available for sign up today.

Wendy: I love that it's a group setting and then it's facilitated so you can get feedback as you walk through the process and start to create these deliverables, but also talk to other people that are in the same situation as you are learning how to improve their writing. Working in it, technical companies were often you might be the only marketer. 

Are those the types of people that should take the course, the solo marketer, or are there other types of people that it would benefit?

Morgan: So if you are on your own tasked with, and I feel for you, if you're on your own tasked with creating content, you probably have to plan and promote the content, too. And so this is definitely a course for you, as well as marketing teams doubling down on just creating more content and all getting on the same page. And so I've been asked if teams of people can take it together and that answer is definitely yes.

So we know we've experienced this for sure with our clients and in our own careers, but it is really hard to train technical writers. And so a piece of this course as well is just being able to kind of have a team take some seats together and learn and have that professional development and training together. And then if you manage a team of people like that, at the end of it, you're going to get a piece of content from every single person who took the course.

So, yeah, so we priced the course at sort of a fraction of the cost that you spend outsourcing that piece of content and you're going to get the coaching along the way. The other thing is, is we'll have the lessons available for a year after you take the course. And so you can go through, you know, go through the entire course, get your coaching and create your wonderful piece of content. But you're not alone. When you start the next content piece, you can just walk yourself back through those courses.

And so really try to create that repeatable success in a content marketing program for people. So, and if you go to trewmarketing.com/writingcourse, you'll see all the course information, trewmarketing.com/writingwebinar has all the webinar information for March 25th.

Wendy: OK, and I'll be sure to include those links in our show notes which you can find at trewmarketing.com/podcasts. So I write a blog on each of these episodes, they have all the resources and transcripts and all sorts of fun stuff.

So. Well Morgan, how can people connect with you if they have questions? Want more information?

Morgan: Yeah, if you have questions about the webinar or the course specifically, you can reach out to me directly at morgan@trewmarketing.com, we've gotten just a lot of questions about it and are ready and happy to chat with you just to see if it's a good fit to talk to you about your goals and stuff. So feel free to reach out to me directly.

Wendy: All right. Well, any last parting advice for writers about to tackle their first or next piece and get get started so that you know the best time to start with?

Morgan: Two weeks ago, and then the next time is today, so so jump in and start because it just staring at that blank page, get some resources under your belt, start with that story narrative and really just break through that, the initial step of getting some words out on your page so you can do it and it'll really boost your marketing program. All right.

Wendy: Thank you for your time today, Morgan. Appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks for joining me today on Content Marketing, Engineered for show notes, links to resources, visit trewmarketing.com.podcast. While there, you can subscribe to our blog, and out newsletter and order a copy of my book, Content Marketing Engineered. Also, I would love your reviews on this podcast, so please, when you get a chance to subscribe and leave me your review on your favorite podcast subscription platform.

Thanks and have a great day.