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6 ways to take advantage of technical articles
Technology providers often contribute signed articles to trade magazines. Items are great exposure for these companies, but they are not cheap - Merchants rarely pay for these items, but vendors spend time and resources allocating parts, writing them, approving them, and shipping them. Your public relations agency can help your clients leverage their investment by extracting the maximum value from these items. Here are some possibilities:
- Reprints
- white papers
- Product overview
- Brochures
- Speech outline and handouts
Reprints
It is quite irritating to contribute a signature to a publication, only to turn around and spend a lot of money on reprint rights. But reprints are good - they significantly increase your client's exposure to the market. Be sure to use reprints anywhere you can, including press kits, presentation brochures, and conference recommendations. Post them on your site too. Even if you haven't paid for the electronic rights, you can probably link to the URL of the post, assuming they published your article online. (It doesn't hurt to ask). If you have digital reprint rights and are publishing the article on your client's site, avoid using a scanned hard copy of the printed article; the resolution is bad and not very readable. Create a .PDF file and use it for publishing and downloading.
White paper
Please do not use the published article as is for a white paper, even if you retain all rights, it is blatantly self-plagiarism, and if the publication retains all rights, it is quite criminal. However, you can use the text of the article to form the technology section of a whitepaper. Edit the necessary extension and rework the text to emphasize your customer's product and technology. Then add white paper items like an initial executive summary and problem statement. Follow these up with your tech section and then add details on how your customer's product will solve the problem, a customer case study, and a conclusion on how good the product is. (You can always change the order by first writing a whitepaper and then editing the technology section in a signed trade journal article.)
Product overview
The article can serve as an excellent basis for enlarged product briefs, for example the front and back of an 8-1 / 2x11 or a longer technical brochure. Edit the article to be longer and improve the text, and you have a solid technology foundation for the marketing document. (A good marcom can explain what a NAS gateway is, but not by talking about “enterprise-wide intelligent data management portals.” It puts readers to sleep.)
Brochures
One of the best press kits I have seen included a crisp and informative brochure on the vendor's technology. The brochure explained the development and background of the general technology, presented the supplier's product, and listed clear benefits for the customer. It impressed journalists and clients alike in a way that a press release or even a white paper would not have. Brochures are labor-intensive, so use your trade magazine article as the basis for writing yours.
Speech outline and handouts
Use existing articles as the basis for customer speeches and presentations. Since trade magazine articles are typically vendor neutral, they will work as-is for similar conversations. When your presentation is about a product, you can still use the article outline for background technology and analysis and then add product details, customer case studies, and Q&A. You can use reprints of articles as a brochure or turn the outline into speaker notes and use it instead.
If your client swallows the cost of developing a trade magazine article, don't take your breath away; List all the ways you can take advantage of it to increase market exposure and profits.