We’ve written on this blog previously about the importance of content and how writing is often undervalued, whether for a press release, website, social media, email or really anything else.  Just as important as having the right content and writing well is having the right tone.

People connect with – and buy from – people, or at least the brand’s personality.  Make sure your approach to your content represents your company’s personality.  If you are a creative services company and a bit irreverent, your tone should reflect that.  At the same time, you probably don’t want your medical institution to attempt to be hilarious.  And, if you don’t know what your company’s personality is, this exercise did a great job fleshing out a bigger issue.

Then, make sure you are consistent.  Mike talked about this a bit earlier this week in his post Fall Cleaning: Clean Up Your Online Brand.  Ensure your content and tone carry over from one vehicle to the next, from your website to your emails, to your interviews.  Too many times we see this sacrificed — the classic mistakes of needing to get an email campaign out now and not having  the time to make sure it’s written right, or the belief that you need as much content as we can throw up there to help our SEO, it doesn’t matter how it reads are just two common examples.  Make sure you take the right approach and stay consistent.

Earlier this week we had a great meeting with a firm.  One of the first things they mentioned was that they wanted to meet with us because our website read just like it was written by them, that the tone was right in line with theirs.

Too often I end up reading content that reminds me of the boring guy in the corner at a party.  Sure, that person may have a lot of facts and information, but with zero personality it’s tough to really make an impact.  Think of that next time you write content yourself or hire a writer, it demonstrates that the tone is often even more important than the content.

After all, didn’t everyone like Norm better than Cliff Claven?

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow Will on Twitter for more commentary like this.

Content is king from a marketing standpoint – now more than ever.  Can you really market anything without some form of content?  Think about it for a second.  Review every marketing vehicle you use, and try to identify one that doesn’t involve some form of content production.

If content is king, then what is the king’s most important weapon?  Another easy answer.  Writing.  And it’s not even close.

Writing is one of the most undervalued pieces of the marketing puzzle.

Let’s do a quick review of some marketing vehicles and how poor writing impacts each:

• Press Release: Don’t even write it if you’re not going to do it professionally.  Journalists and your consumer/business audience will stop reading when they hit the first piece of evidence of poor writing.

• Website: You know that rule, the one that says you have 10-15 seconds to capture a visitor’s attention and convince them to dive further into the site?  You know what can expedite that departure time?  Poor writing.

• SEO: Writing is far more important for SEO than most “experts” are willing to admit.  Here’s one simple reason.  Let’s say you rank #1 on an important keyword, but your meta description tag (the one that smart people read to determine whether your site is relevant to the topic) is too long, which is often the case.  Fewer clicks.  Fewer leads.  Decreased ROI from that SEO effort.

Let’s check out an example.  When I search on “copywriting” on Google, here are two description tags associated with top 10 results:

Tag #1: “Copywriting advice for bloggers and online marketers.”

In case you’re wondering, this is an effective description tag, which happens to belong to a very popular marketing blog.  No surprise.

Tag #2: “Blues icon BB King was once asked how he found his heart-warming, bone-chilling sound. It’s simple, he said. I only steal from the best. After.”

This may lead me to a very cool article or blog post, but doesn’t matter.  I’m not clicking because I don’t understand how this description is relevant to my search query.

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In working with a lot of mid-sized professional services firms, we often hear the following statement from the Marketing Director or Partner in charge of marketing:

No one in our office, including myself, understands Twitter.  Can a professional services firm like ours use Twitter effectively, and what are the benefits?

First of all, the answer is yes in almost all cases.  Professional services firms should be using Twitter in some form or fashion.  Even if you think Twitter is a fad of some sort, it’s not going away anytime soon and the audience(s) you want to have conversations with are likely lurking on Twitter somewhere.  There’s almost no downside to trying Twitter, other than someone on your internal or external staff spending a bit of time listening, learning, following and finally tweeting.

Here are five relatively simple ways that a professional services firm can use Twitter:

1. Expand the distribution of your content or thought leadership material.

Almost every professional services firm already has content.  Some even have good content.  A few have great content.

For instance, my financial advisor puts out a simple yet solid “State of the Markets” newsletter and posts it on the firm’s website.  This type newsletter is an ideal piece to share with your Twitter followers.  Blog posts, new white papers, interesting articles, links to podcasts…these all work as well.  As long as you’re sharing with folks that have chosen to follow you and you’re not “spamming” your followers with irrelevant messages every 5 minutes, you’re in good shape.

If nothing else, you gain additional distribution for your content.  Can that be a bad thing?

2. Break company or client news.

Twitter breaks news faster than most sources and contains a built-in distribution list – your followers.  Use it to announce a new partnership.  Use it to tell folks about a new office location.  Use it to remind followers about an upcoming event.  You don’t always need a press release to break some news.

And by all means, don’t forget about your clients.  Assuming you’ve built up a nice client community, your followers may want to hear about each other’s news.  You may even end up connecting two clients that didn’t know they were part of the same community or industry.

3. Build the personal brands of your partners or executives

In most professional services firms, the partners or executives in the firm represent not only the face of the firm but also serve as the primary thought leaders.  After all, people come to professional services firms for counsel in a specific area, an area that your partners or executives are likely well-versed in.

Create Twitter accounts for the partners in your firm if you have to, and prepare a one-sheeter on how they should use Twitter.  Hell, go as far as providing example tweets that they might post.  Teach them how to find people to follow and how to attract followers.  Then let ‘em loose.

4. Connect with like-minded people or companies.

This is the most obvious one.  It’s what Twitter is built for.  By sharing your content and viewpoints and allowing others to share with you, you will discover prospective clients, partners, employees, investors…the list goes on and on.  Be yourself, either as a firm or as an individual that is part of that firm, and you’ll end up connecting with people you’d otherwise never meet.

5. Find new business.

I am leaving this for last as the firms or individuals that set out to use Twitter exclusively for this purpose usually end up annoying their followers and even non-followers.  That being said, talk to anyone that has used Twitter in an honest, sharing way for an extended period of time and they will tell you about a new client or partnership that was initiated, nurtured or otherwise influenced via Twitter.

Twitter is not Facebook.  I mention that because some professional services firms tend to lump social media properties together.  I can understand a professional services firm deciding to stay away from any organized Facebook activity.  Twitter, on the other hand, is worth a spin.

Seems that on a weekly basis a new article or blog post arrives on my desk that puts forth the idea that the press release is becoming useless as a marketing tool.  Not surprisingly, these articles or posts are often authored by “social media experts” or those that believe that embracing and executing a “social media plan” is the holy grail for businesses in this day and age. 

Our old friend the press release still serves some very important purposes for the average business.  I’ll give you an example.  Last week, a new company/service was launched in a similar space to one of my ventures.  Surprise, surprise…this company still believes in the press release, so they issued one via one of the popular wire services.  I wouldn’t have known about the press release or the company, but within 24 hours the following happened:

• Three separate colleagues delivered the press release to me, so clearly they found it somewhere in their daily web travels.
• I received it via RSS feed from a tech blog I subscribe to.
• Someone in one of my LinkedIn groups posted the release, and when I logged into my account I discovered the post and the release.

Guess what?  I don’t think any of these three things would have happened without the creation and distribution of a press release.  It turns out that this new company looks like it may represent a complimentary partner for our new venture, so this press release not only drove some awareness, but it may turn into direct revenue for the issuer.

And we haven’t even addressed what the release may have generated from a media coverage standpoint.  Still think the press release is dead?

Some companies call it Current News.  Others call it Company News.  Still others call it Latest News.  That part doesn’t really matter.  What matters is that you keep the content updated, relevant and consistent for your website visitors.

To further clarify, what I am referring to is the section of a corporate website that contains company news, sometimes in the form of press releases, sometimes in the form of articles in which the company was included, sometimes (hopefully) both.  I visited the website of a prospective software client today, and for the umpteenth time I discovered a newsroom filled with press releases and articles from 2006.  While there are a number of problems with this, I’ll try to sum it up briefly. 

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