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How to Write Technology Content
The Ultimate Guide to B2B Tech Content Creation in 10 Steps
John Himes
May 23, 2023
Let’s start from square one and build a content strategy for B2B tech from the ground up.
This complete guide takes you step-by-step to write technology content that drives traffic, positions your company as a voice of authority, and delivers real results to your bottom line.
It may surprise you that only one out of these 10 steps is the actual writing.
Other articles on this topic focus exclusively on writing, meaning they don’t cover most of the work that actually goes into creating B2B technology content.
They leave us wondering: where do we even begin?
That’s why we’ve created this article for you. We’ve written hundreds of B2B tech content pieces, ranging from AI white papers to smart manufacturing blog posts to cybersecurity ebooks, and we’re going to let you in on the 10 step process that we’ve developed over the years.
Let’s get moving.
Table of Contents
Step 1: Start at the end
The end goal of any B2B content marketing plan is to give value to your customer. Just like your tech business delivers value to your customers and their users, your content should prioritize your audience in the same way.
Answer their questions, address their pain-points, and solve their problems—that’s how you build trust and get clicks.
Think about the decision-makers. These leaders will determine whether their organizations will adopt your technology. They make up your target audience.
What are their struggles? What are their objectives? How technically proficient are they?
Take some time to formulate a big-picture view of how your content will be valuable to this audience. That could mean helping them to understand complex technology, providing trends insights, or explaining how to overcome common problems like integration.
At the same time, keep an open mind. Your research may reveal a new direction that leads to even more valuable insights.
Conclude this step by outlining the endgame for your business. Many companies set revenue as the key performance indicator (KPI) of their marketing efforts. While it’s true that this content is in service of revenue growth, I recommend setting your KPIs a bit closer to the content itself.
They could include traffic on your site, click through rate, newsletter sign-ups, or the conversion rate from visitor to qualified lead.
Step 2: Make personas
Now we’re going to take our thinking about the target audience one step further.
We’ll create marketing personas to make them more concrete. These personas can encapsulate roles like c-suite executives, head of IT, senior engineer, or anyone else that may have a say in whether a prospective customer decides to invest in your technology.
Think about how you speak to different people, even in your everyday life. Without even realizing it, we adjust our language usage. We choose different words when we talk to colleagues vs close friends, for instance.
Coming back to our B2B technology content marketing, we need to remember that we’re speaking to specific people, not just some abstraction. Personas give us a face and a name to which we can direct our thoughts. This direction then informs our diction and style.
Specifically for the tech sector, we need to understand how technologically savvy our personas are. Even B2B technology tech companies may produce some content pieces that target non-technical decision-maker personas, some that target technical personnel, and others that need to straddle them both.
How much tech-speak is too much? Do we expect the readers to recognize jargon or acronyms? What do they already know, and what would they like to learn?
Will they be offended if we speak down to them? Conversely, will
they find us pretentious if we overshoot it?
The great thing about personas is that they let us answer these questions with our intuition. Directing our thoughts towards a face and name lets us tap into the depths of what it means to be human: using language to form connections with each other.
When it comes time to write, that makes all the difference.
Step 3: Generate topics
The third step is figuring out what we’re going to write about. Again, this a refinement of the work that came before.
We’ll look at our endgame and our personas as we brainstorm topics to cover.
Start by asking yourself what questions those personas are typing into their search engines. Being able to provide more valuable content than anyone else on the results page goes a long way towards boosting ranking and positioning your company as a domain expert.
Approach it from multiple angles. Think about questions that current or previous customers have asked. Consider questions that you’re in a uniquely good position to answer because of your specific technology or expertise.
This is also a great opportunity for some keyword research. This is an essential B2B content marketing tactic.
Start by developing seed keywords that serve as a baseline, then get more specific with long-tail keyword phrases. For example, with the seed keyword “industrial automation,” we can answer questions like “How to integrate computer vision with industrial automation?” or “What is edge computing for industrial automation?”
Seeking an outside perspective is also a good move. When we’re so steeped in a topic or technology, it’s hard to spot our blog spots and check our assumptions.
By consulting with someone who isn’t so ingrained, we can find topics that are relevant to our target personas that we may not have considered before.
Step 4: Scope the project
The fourth step in the B2B technology content writing process is scoping the project. This is when we figure out how deep and how wide to go in our coverage of the topic.
It’s good to know, for instance, if we’re aiming for a 1000 word blog post or a 3000 word complete guide before we start writing or even researching the piece. We’ll also figure out whether we want to cover a lot of ground within those words, or if we’d rather focus more deeply on a smaller number of sub-headers within the topic.
One common mistake is trying to do too much in too little space. Covering five sub-headers in a 1000 word article, for instance, will give very little space for each talking point, making it difficult to provide sufficient detail. I generally recommend two or three sub-headers per 1000 words.
From there, determine where this content will fit into your overall content strategy. Will it be at the top, middle, or bottom of your sales funnel? How does it complement the assets in your current content library? These considerations will help guide some of our choices down the line.
Finally, determine if you’re going to ghostwrite the piece and then attribute it to someone else, such as an executive or product leader at your company. While ghostwritten content can give more credibility to the piece and position the attributed author as a thought leader, it’s crucial for the writer to take time to understand the role and voice of the person whose name they’re writing under.
Step 5: RESEARCH
Even if you’re THE subject matter expert (SME) in this domain, research is still a major part of the B2B tech content writing process.
Beyond researching the technology or topic itself, research will help you to find data points and expert opinions to back up your claims.
“Well-placed quotes from experts also give content weight and credibility,” explains Dawn Wolfe, Senior Editor at The Simons Group. “People pay more attention to content that includes expert quotes and information.”
See?
Thorough research goes beyond reading through the articles that populate the top of your search results. Besides knowing how to recognize and disregard AI-generated or poorly developed content, you need to know how to dig deeper, follow links, and get as much primary source material as you can get your hands on.
That can take several forms for our purposes. White papers are a great place to start, as are industry reports, especially from recognizable firms like Deloitte, Gartner, and McKinsey. It’s also worth searching through reputable publications, such as:
For even more in-depth pieces, such as a highly technical white paper project, take it one step further by delving into scholarly research. Arxiv by Cornell University is a great resource for free and open-access research papers. Open Education Resources (OER) Commons is another example of a “public digital library” where you can discover science and technology trends from researchers at the forefront of their fields.
Speaking of public libraries: for larger projects, such as ebooks or even a series of blog posts, it can be worth going to your local public library or a university library that’s open to the public.
It may sound old-school and low-tech, but a good librarian is a researcher’s best friend. Speaking from personal experience, I’ve found books at libraries that have proved instrumental to creating unique and thought-provoking content marketing assets.
The last research technique for B2B technology content is SME interviews. For instance, interviewing your in-house engineers or scientists is a great way to create unique content that’s truly reflective of your company’s expertise and perspective.
Whatever you do, make sure you take tons of notes during the research phase. Copy and paste quotes, links, statistics, and more into a document. Write quick summaries and takeaways. Make sure to capture plenty of data. By the time you’re done, your compiled notes should be way bigger than the content that you’re going to write.
Finally, take a look at your existing content library. If you can pull any themes from them or even link back to them, that’s a great strategy for both building a narrative and optimizing SEO.
Step 6: Outline
Now it’s time to tie it all together and develop a roadmap that will guide our writing process.
Neglecting to outline is an all-too-common mistake. It’s tempting to just get started writing, but you run the risk of creating a meandering, unclear structure that’s hard for the reader to navigate.
“Making a detailed outline before you begin writing is a good way to make sure your ideas come across in a clear and logical order,” writes the Harvard College Writing Center. “A good outline will also save you time in the revision process, reducing the possibility that your ideas will need to be rearranged once you’ve written them.”
Creating an outline can be hard. Where do we begin?
Again, I recommend starting at the end.
What’s the takeaway? What idea do you want the reader to remember or think about once they’re done reading your content?
A great takeaway is unique and compelling. It’s something that the reader may not have considered, and, in the best case scenario, it’s a piece of knowledge or wisdom that will help them to overcome a struggle or make a smart decision.
It may, for instance, give them the confidence to invest in your technology.
That’s why you should formulate your call to action (CTA) to match your takeaway. Whether you want to steer the reader towards demoing your product, signing up for your newsletter in exchange for an ebook, or contacting you directly, the transition between takeaway and CTA should be logical and seamless.
That’s why it pays to think ahead about how you’re going to manage it.
Just like planning a travel route, the next step is to think about what roads you need to take to get where you need to go. Think of your content in terms of a narrative arc. Then begin developing sub-headers that will act as signposts along the way.
From there, go back to your notes to start filling in the details. Slot in data points and expert quotes that you could use under their appropriate sub-headers.
Finally, revisit the keywords and keyword synonyms that you’re going to target in the content. Although you shouldn’t focus on cramming them in at the expense of your reader, it’s helpful to keep them in mind as you write. Remember that you can always come back to them later.
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Step 7: Write!
If you’ve followed each step up this point, writing should feel much more like assembly and arrangement than an act of sheer creation. Because you spent so much time developing the content, narrative journey, takeaway, and value proposition, you’ll be able to devote more of your attention to style than focusing on substance alone.
These are our top tips for writing engaging B2B technology content.
Getting started
Let’s start at the beginning. The first sentence is absolutely the most important one that you’re going to write. It’s worth devoting extra time and attention to making sure that it immediately captivates your reader’s attention. One technique is to skip it entirely and then come back to it at the end of the writing process.
Maybe it’s just me, but nothing causes me to click away from an article faster than when the first sentence begins with “When it comes to…”
Don’t beat around the bush, but don’t just jump in either. Take your reader by the hand to invite them on a journey. By the time they finish reading that first paragraph, we want them to think, “Wow, this author really gets me.”
Now, many of us—professional writers included—may struggle with writer’s block, especially when we’re staring at a blank word document. The best advice that I can offer is to just get started with something.
Put words on a page. They don’t have to be perfect. You can always change them later.
Just like any type of exercise, writing is governed by momentum. Overcoming inertia is the hardest part; once you’ve warmed up, you can let your thoughts flow more naturally, just as if you were having a conversation.
Speak directly to your audience
Speaking of conversation, remember who you’re conversing with. Go back to your personas. Close your eyes and picture them. This will intuitively influence your language choices and make it easier to write because you’re writing for someone.
Do you expect to have a good amount of English as a Second Language (ESL) readers who may not understand idioms or colloquialisms? Or, conversely, do you believe that a native turn of phrase may build trust and relatability?
Specifically for B2B technology writing, there’s one style point that goes against the conventional wisdom of general content creation. Most SEO gurus bid us to write for the lowest common denominator by prioritizing “readability.”
Take this excerpt from an article about B2B tech content writing:
“Readability measures how easy your text is to read. Not everyone reads at a university level. In fact, if you want your copy to be read and understood by the ‘general public’, the rule of thumb is to write for a reading age of 12 or 13, even for technical articles.”
This is terrible advice because your audience is highly educated, and you should treat them accordingly! I’m not saying that you ought to employ labyrinthine locutions—sure, keep it simple, but keep in mind that your readers definitely aren’t junior high students.
Respect your reader’s intelligence and they’ll respect yours.
At the same time, don’t expect them to be domain experts either. Spell out acronyms the first time you use them, and offer plentiful explanations and links to technical terms for the reader to quickly reference.
Techniques to take your writing to the next level
Use lists, charts, and other data visualizations. These features improve skimmability and make your content easier to absorb, especially for visual learners.
Analogy is also a powerful tool for distilling complexity. One of our favorite examples introduces the concept of algorithms by discussing some of the different ways to cook an egg.
Metaphor is an ancient technique for aiding comprehension, especially for concepts that are complicated, abstract, or beyond our mind’s reach entirely. Even going back as far as The Iliad of Homer, storytellers have used metaphor to provide clarity and to illuminate the hidden or the obscure by connecting it to something familiar.
Technology content writers can tap into this tradition to help their readers better understand complex tech. Just look at cloud computing. What is “the cloud” if not a metaphor?
At the same time, it’s just as important to stay grounded. Your reader shouldn’t have to stretch their mind around your analogy, nor should they be overly impressed with your cleverness. Retain a conversational tone, mix in some humor, and, most of all, keep it natural.
Don’t forget the expert quotes that you dug up during the research phase. As we discussed above, these add authority and credibility to your content. Make sure to cite your sources—just don’t link to your competitors!
Know when to bend the “rules” that you learned in English class. For example, you may have spotted a few 2nd person pronouns or sentences that end in prepositions in this piece. There may be occasions for a higher degree of formality, but, in general, content marketing should be conversational and friendly.
Finally, be sure to end your content with a clear and concise CTA. In most cases, this means inviting your reader to get more information, demo your product, or sign up for a newsletter. Remember to do your best to tie your CTA to your takeaway because that’s what gives the reader a good reason to take your desired action.
Step 8: Revise it yourself
Revise: from the Latin revisere, to look at again.
It may not be convenient, especially if you’re on a tight deadline, but, to properly revise your work, wait at least 24 hours after you’re done writing. That way you can look at it with fresh eyes.
It’s a well-documented psychological phenomenon that our minds fill in the blanks and make assumptions without even realizing it. Specifically for revising our writing, this manifests as a tendency to overlook errors, either in logic or composition, that we would notice if we weren’t so steeped in the work.
The best way to combat this is to simply wait a day or two before revising your work.
Of course, you’ll want to scan for typos, grammar, and awkward sentences. At the same time, you’ll pay attention to the logic structure and narrative arc of the content so that you can eliminate holes and make it easier for your reader to follow.
This is also the right time for SEO optimization. Go back to the keywords and synonyms that you listed on your outline, determine which ones you didn’t use, and make a good faith effort to include them.
However, be sure not to stuff keywords for the sake of keywords. Never compromise the reader for the sake of the search engine. Especially as search engines continue to develop better AI systems for sorting content, content marketers need to prioritize the reader above all else.
The last step in the self-revision process is to go back to your published content library and look for more opportunities to embed links to existing content within the new piece. Again, this is a best practice for both SEO and for helping your reader to find the information that they’re looking for on your site.
Step 9: Request outside editing
Make sure to have someone else read through your content before you hit publish. Even great writers and professional editors hire another editor to look over their work for many of the same reasons that we discussed above.
Only a truly fresh perspective can completely check our biases, assumptions, and errors. An editor will look at what the text actually says, not what we know or believe it says. It’s a fine but important distinction.
Though a professional editor is never a bad choice, hiring one may not be an option for smaller teams or startups. Remember that, professional or not, even just getting another pair of eyes on the content can help a lot. Share it with a coworker, a colleague, or even a friend, and their feedback will help you to refine your content.
Just keep in mind that you don’t have to incorporate every single edit they make!
For technology content specifically, it’s also a good idea to run it by a subject matter expert (SME) in your organization. They will be able to verify or revise any technical claims within the piece so that we can be sure that our content is 100% correct.
Step 10: Publish and promote
Great! Our content is ready for publication.
Or is it?
Even when the words themselves are ready to go, the content piece as a whole might need some more work. This is the time to loop in a graphic designer to enhance the piece with data visualizations, branded design, or other graphics that will enhance readability.
Whatever you do, don’t just publish a giant wall of text.
Now, once you do hit publish, the journey still isn’t complete. To get the most out of the content, we want to spread our net further.
For instance, develop LinkedIn posts and email newsletters to promote content with your existing audience. That’s because content does more than just generate leads. Content can convince someone who’s on the fence to take the next step, or it can build trust and drive repeat business for existing customers.
According to a Gallup report, “When customers strongly agree that their supplier is a trusted adviser, they produce 1.5 times greater revenue and are 2.5 times more likely to say they are ‘extremely likely’ to repurchase the company’s products or services.”
The final piece of the puzzle is to make sure that your salespeople know about the content, understand it, and know when to use it.
“B2B salesforce leaders, especially those in forward leaning industries such as tech, must create content that the field can bring to market, including white papers, 1-3 year technology transformation roadmaps, and standard pitch materials,” writes Gross, Piacentino, and Bombardi for Harvard Business Review. “These will allow salespeople to position themselves as thought leaders.”
The big picture
What a journey it’s been. If there’s one thing that you should take away from this complete guide to B2B tech content writing, it’s that there’s A LOT more than just writing that goes into this process.
In that way, it’s a lot like software development. Sure, coding is a big part of the equation, but user research, design, UX optimization, integration, etc. are just as important for creating a quality product.
Neglecting an early step—such as skipping user research or marketing persona creation because we want to get to work—may be tempting, but it has an adverse affect on both the development process and the final product. It’s worth it to take the time and be thorough in our preparation.
We’ve been through this process so many times that it’s become second nature. So whether you need help building out your B2B technology content strategy or you just want to add a professional’s touch to your content writing pipeline, we have the skills and experience to deliver real results.
Get in touch with us today to schedule a free consultation.
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