Tag Archives: product marketing

What Knell Computer’s Product Marketing Means For…Another Firm

On June 1, I shared a little piece on Bredemarket’s social media channels, including a post on the Bredemarket Technology Firm Services page on LinkedIn.

It was an announcement from Knell Computer.

Knell Computer announced Friday that it is eliminating wi-fi capabilities from its business computer product lines.

“At Knell Computer, we strongly believe that the best work occurs in a traditional office environment,” according to Gabriel Knell, CEO. “Since modern offices are fully equipped with Ethernet cabling, wi-fi is an unnecessary expense. Removal of wi-fi allows us to sell Knell Computers at a lower price point than our competitors, providing cost savings to our customers.”

Knell will promote this innovation with an ad campaign in major city downtown business districts, where it will attract the attention of real workers.

Gabriel Knell: “If you’re an amateur who performs so-called ‘work’ at home in your shorts, rather than from a true cubicle office environment, feel free to buy wi-fi computers from our competitors. We are embarrassed to see the Knell logo in a coffee shop—or in a converted bedroom.”

In a related announcement, Knell will incorporate technology that “red flags” the use of any Knell computer in a residential zone.

Generated by Google Gemini.

For those of you who don’t know much about Knell Computer, LinkedIn’s helpful AI feature provided contextual detail, including answers to critical questions:

  • “What is Knell Computer known for?”
  • “How will removing wi-fi impact office environments?”
  • “What is the significance of the technology preventing residential use?”

All of these answers, sourced from information found in LinkedIn and on the Internet, were undoubtedly helpful.

But LinkedIn AI appears to have missed one teeny tiny thing.

Knell Computer is not a real company

By Frederick Burr Opper – https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.29087/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57725977.

Since I’m not engaged in full-time product marketing (although I perform some product marketing activities for my Bredemarket clients), I sometimes spend my time writing other things.

Like fake press releases for fake products from fake companies.

Who is the real Knell Computer?

But I think that most of you figured out that Knell Computer and its head Gabriel Knell are based upon Dell Computer and its head Michael Dell.

(Note the “angelic” naming here. And no, I’m not naming anything after Lucifer.)

Dell’s two classes of workers

And most of you know why Dell Computer was suddenly in the news in May, and actually a little before that, as this Forbes article indicates.

Dividing the classes. By 北京：人民出版社 – 中国人民解放军战史，北京：人民出版社, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6602601.

Dell’s new remote-work policy will categorize its workers into two main groups: remote and hybrid.

Hybrid workers must agree to come into an “approved” office at least 39 days each quarter. This is roughly the equivalent of three days per week. Remote workers do not have to come into an approved office at all. However, remote workers aren’t eligible for promotion or to change jobs within the company.

According to the Register, Dell confirmed the 39 days/quarter requirement, and explained why it believed it was important.

In a statement, a Dell spokesperson told The Register, “We shared with team members our updated hybrid work policy. Team members in hybrid roles will be onsite at a Dell Technologies office at least 39 days per quarter (on average three days a week). In today’s global technology revolution, we believe in-person connections paired with a flexible approach are critical to drive innovation and value differentiation.”

Are the hybrid workers coming to the office?

But the Dell statement didn’t say HOW Dell would know who was in the office. The Register supplied that additional detail; Dell was reported to use tracking and color coding.

Starting next Monday, May 13, the enterprise hardware slinger plans to make weekly site visit data from its badge tracking available to employees through the corporation’s human capital management software…

Let me just pause right there. Any time that you read something about “human capital management,” your antennae should go up.

Blue flags are good, red flags are bad

But let’s get back to how Dell is managing its carbon-based capital.

…and to give them color-coded ratings that summarize their status. Those ratings are:

Blue flag indicates “consistent onsite presence”

Green flag indicates “regular onsite presence”

Yellow flag indicates “some onsite presence”

Red flag indicates “limited onsite presence”

The dreaded red flag. By Denelson83 – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=498580.

Bredemarket’s fake press release…and you’ll never believe what happened next!

So that was the situation as of June 1 when Knell Computer issued its press release, complete with “red flag” capability.

I’m forced to confess that Knell Computer’s product marketing efforts didn’t really make an impact. (I KNEW I should have included the press release in the Bredemarket blog. Better late than never.)

But Dell Computer’s efforts truly impacted its employees…but not in the way that Dell Computer wanted.

We Don’t Need No Color Code

No, not the Steve Taylor song.

The Dell human capital management method that ranked hybrid employees based upon their willingness to work in the office.

“INSTRUCTIONS: Indicate days in office for proper color coding.” By Digits.co.uk Images – https://www.flickr.com/photos/195219893@N08/51922705847/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=116814379.

Dell employees make their choices

A few weeks after Knell Computer’s product marketing effort, stories began to emerge about what was happening at the real Dell. Here’s part of what Ars Technica said on June 20:

Dell announced a new return-to-office initiative earlier this year. In the new plan, workers had to classify themselves as remote or hybrid.

Those who classified themselves as hybrid are subject to a tracking system….

Alternatively, by classifying themselves as remote, workers agree they can no longer be promoted or hired into new roles within the company.

Business Insider claims it has seen internal Dell tracking data that reveals nearly 50 percent of the workforce opted to accept the consequences of staying remote, undermining Dell’s plan to restore its in-office culture.

But haven’t they killed their chances for promotion or lateral moves?

“But wait!” you’re saying. “So many people are willing to forgo promotion at Dell, or even to apply to new positions at Dell?”

Yes. Because here’s a dirty little secret:

Dell employees can leave Dell and work for other companies.

Granted many other companies aren’t remote-friendly either (believe me, I know), but those that are have an opportunity to scoop up Dell’s best and brightest.

Does Dell dissatisfaction provide an opportunity for me?

And as the Dell workers leave, this provides an opportunity for yours truly. After all, I’d be happy to report to Dell’s office in Ontario, California. So I went to see what opportunities I’d have.

Search conducted June 24, 2024: https://jobs.dell.com/en/search-jobs/Ontario%2C%20CA/375/4/6252001-5332921-5391726-5379439/34×06334/-117×65089/50/2

It turns out that Ontario, California is not one of Dell’s officially approved hybrid work locations. I’d have to drive to Utah, Texas, or Oklahoma three days a week.

But hey, I’m not the only marketer affected by Dell’s work policies. Silicon Valley marketers can’t work hybrid at Dell either.

We’ll all see what happens next

I’ll continue to monitor how this plays out. Perhaps Knell Computer may issue a second press release.

Which LinkedIn AI will take as the truth.

Maximizing Event ROI with the Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service

Part of the IBM exhibit at CeBIT 2010. CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10326025.

When your company attends events, you’ll want to maximize your event return on investment (ROI) by creating marketing content that you publish before, during, and after the event.

This is how you do it.

Including:

And I’ll spill a couple of secrets along the way.

The first secret (about events)

I’m going to share two secrets in this post. OK, maybe they’re not that secret, but you’d think they ARE secrets because no one acknowledges them.

The first one has to do with event attendance. You personally might be awed and amazed when you’re in the middle of an event and surrounded by hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands of people. All of whom are admiring your exhibit booth or listening to your CEO speak.

Technically not a CEO (Larry Ellison’s official title is Chief Technology Officer, and the CEO is Safra Catz), but you get the idea. By Oracle PR Hartmann Studios – CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47277811.

But guess what?

Many, many more people are NOT at the event.

They can’t see your exhibit booth, and can’t hear your speaker. They’re on the outside, TRYING to look in.

CC-BY-2.0. Link.

And all the money you spent on booth space and travel and light-up pens does NOTHING for the people who aren’t there…

Unless you bring the event to them. Your online content can bring the event to people who were never there.

But you need to plan, create, and approve your content before, during, and after the event. Here’s how you do that.

Three keys to creating event-related content

Yes, you can just show up at an event, take some pictures, and call it a day. But if you want to maximize your event return on investment, you’ll be a bit more deliberate in executive your event content. Ideally you should be:

Planning your event content

Before the event begins, you need to plan your content. While you can certainly create some content on a whim as opportunity strikes, you need to have a basic idea of what content you plan to create.

Content I created before attending the APMP Western Chapter Training Day on October 29, 2021. From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rS5Mc3w4Nk.
  • Before the event. Why should your prospects and customers care about the event? How will you get prospects and customers to attend the event? What will attendees and non-attendees learn from the event?
  • During the event. What event activities require content generation? Who will cover them? How will you share the content?
Some dude creating Morphoway-related content for Biometric Update at the (then) ConnectID Expo in 2015.
  • After the event. What lessons were learned? How will your prospects and customers benefit from the topics covered at the event? Why should your prospects buy the product you showcased at the event?

Creating your event content

Once you have planned what you want to do, you need to do it. Before, during, and after the event, you may want to create the following types of content:

  • Blog posts. These can announce your attendance at the event before it happens, significant goings-on at the event (such as your CEO’s keynote speech or the evening party launching your new product), or lessons learned from the event (what your CEO’s speech or your new product means for your prospects and clients). Blog posts can be created relatively quickly (though not as quick as some social media posts), and definitely benefit your bottom line.
  • Social media. Social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn can also be used before, during, and after the event. Social media excels at capturing the atmosphere of the event, as well as significant activities. When done right, it lets people experience the event who were never there.
  • E-mails. Don’t forget about e-mails before, during, and after the event. I forgot about e-mails once and paid the price. I attended an event but neglected to tell my e-mail subscribers that I was going to be there. When I got to the event, I realized that hardly any of the attendees understood the product I was offering, and were not the people who were hungry for my product. If I had stocked the event with people from my e-mail list, the event would have been more productive for me.
  • Data sheets. Are you announcing a new product at an event? Have the data sheet ready.
  • Demonstration scripts. Are you demonstrating a new or existing product at the event? Script out your demonstration so that your demonstrators start with the same content and make the points YOU want them to make.
  • Case studies and white papers. While these usually come into play after the event, you may want to release an appropriate case study or white paper before or during the event, tied to the event topic. Are you introducing a new product at an industry conference? Time your product-related white paper for release during the conference. And promote the white paper with blog posts, social media, and e-mails.
  • Other types of content. There are many other types of content that you can release before, during, or after an event. Here’s a list of them.

Approving your event content

Make sure that your content approval process is geared for the fast-paced nature of events. I can’t share details, but:

  • If your content approval process requires 24 hours, then you can kiss on-site event coverage goodbye. What’s the point in covering your CEO’s Monday 10:00 keynote speech if the content doesn’t appear until 11:00…on Tuesday?
  • If your content approval process doesn’t have a timeline, then you can kiss ALL event coverage goodbye. There have been several times when I’ve written blog posts announcing my company’s attendance at an event…and the blog posts weren’t approved until AFTER the event was already over. I salvaged the blog posts via massive rewrites.

So how are you going to generate all this content? This brings us to my proposed solution…and the second secret.

The second secret (about Bredemarket’s service)

By Karl Thomas Moore – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58968347.

The rest of this post talks about one of Bredemarket’s services, the Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service. For those who haven’t heard about it, it’s a service where I provide between 2,800 and 3,200 words of written text.

“But John,” you’re asking. “How is a single block of 3,200 words of text going to help me with my event marketing?”

Time to reveal the second secret…

You can break up those 3,200 words any way you like.

For example, let’s say that you’re planning on attending an event. You could break the text up as follows:

  • One 500-word blog post annnouncing your attendance at the event.
  • Three 100-word social media posts before the event.
  • One 500-word blog post as the event begins.
  • One 300-word product data sheet prepared before the event and released on the second day of the event.
  • One 500-word blog post announcing the new product.
  • Three 100-word social media posts tied to the new product announcement.
  • One 500-word post-event blog post with lessons learned.
  • Three 100-word social media posts after the event.

For $2,000 (as of June 2024), you can benefit from written text for complete event coverage, arranged in any way you need.

So how can you and your company receive these benefits?

Read about the Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service

First, read the data sheet for the Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service so you understand the offer and process.

Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service (June 2022)Download

Contact Bredemarket…now

Second, contact Bredemarket to get the content process started well BEFORE your event. Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket. Be sure to fill out the information form so I can best help you.

From calendly.com/bredemarket.

Alternatively, you can

But don’t wait. If your event is in September…don’t contact me in October.

True Stories

Image CC BY 2.0.

“If you’re not careful, you might learn something before it’s done.”

(Quote from William H. Cosby, M.A., Ed.D., L.H.D. (resc), from the Fat Albert TV show theme song. From https://www.streetdirectory.com/lyricadvisor/song/upujwj/fat_albert/.)

When I write about space aliens, there’s a reason. And that reason may be to warn identity vendors that silence is NOT golden.

Fake LinkedIn stories

As a frequent reader and writer on LinkedIn, I’ve seen all the tips and tricks to drive engagement. One popular trick is to make up a story that will resonate with the LinkedIn audience.

For example, the writer (usually a self-proclaimed career expert who is ex-FAANG) will tell the entirely fictional story of a clueless hiring manager and an infinitely wise recruiter. The clueless hiring manager is shocked that a candidate accepted a competing job offer. “Didn’t she like us?” asks the hiring manager. The wise recruiter reminds the clueless hiring manager that the candidate had endured countless delays in numerous interviews with the company, allowing another company to express interest in and snatch her.

Job seekers have endured countless delays in their own employment searches. When they read the post, they hoot and holler for the candidate and boo the clueless hiring manager. Most importantly, readers like and love the writer’s post until it goes viral, making the author an ex-FAANG top recruiting voice.

Even though no sources are cited and the story is fictional, it is very powerful.

Well…until you’ve read the same story a dozen times from a dozen recruiters. Then it gets tiresome.

My improvement on fake stories

But those fake stories powerfully drive clicks on LinkedIn, so I wanted to get in on the action. But I was going to add two wrinkles to my fake story.

First, I would explicitly admit that my story is fake. Because authenticity. Sort of.

Second, my story would include space aliens to make it riveting. And to hammer the point that the story is fake.

Now I just had to write a fake story with space aliens.

Or did I?

A repurposed and adapted fake story with space aliens

It turned out that I had already written a fake story. It didn’t have space aliens, but I liked the story I had spun in the Bredemarket blog post “(Pizza Stories) Is Your Firm Hungry for Awareness?”

I just needed to make one of the characters a space alien, and since Jones was based on the striking Grace Jones, I went ahead and did it. If you can imagine Grace Jones with tentacles, two noses, and eight legs.

With a few additional edits, my fake space alien story was ready for the Sunday night LinkedIn audience.

The truth in the fake story

As the space alien’s tentacles quivered, I snuck something else into the LinkedIn story—some facts.

Kids who watched Fat Albert on TV not only enjoyed the antics, but also learned an Important Life Lessons. Now I don’t have multiple advanced degrees like Cosby, but then again I never had multiple degrees rescinded either.

But my life lesson wasn’t to stay in school or pull your pants up. My life lesson was to blog. The lesson was in the form of a statement by Jones’ humanoid colleague Smith, taken verbatim from the Pizza Stories post.

“Take blogging,” replied Smith. “The average company that blogs generates 55% more website visitors. B2B marketers that use blogs get 67% more leads than those who do not. Marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI. And 92% of companies who blog multiple times per day have acquired a customer from their blog.”

The stats originally appeared in an earlier post, “How Identity and Biometrics Firms Can Use Blogging to Grow Their Business.”

Data source: Daily Infographic, https://www.dailyinfographic.com/state-of-blogging-industry.

And the fake story also talked about companies (unnamed, but real) who ignored these facts and remained silent on their blog and social channels.

A huge mistake, because their competitors ARE engaging with their prospects, with real stories.

Is your company making the same mistake?

Do you want to fix it?

Drive content results with Bredemarket Identity Firm Services.

I guess I should mention David Byrne. OK, I did.

Positioning, Messaging, and Your Facial Recognition Product Marketing

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

By Original: Jack Ver at Dutch Wikipedia Vector: Ponor – Own work based on: Plaatsvector.png by Jack Ver at Dutch Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=95477901.

When marketing your facial recognition product (or any product), you need to pay attention to your positioning and messaging. This includes developing the answers to why, how, and what questions. But your positioning and your resulting messaging are deeply influenced by the characteristics of your product.

If facial recognition is your only modality

There are hundreds of facial recognition products on the market that are used for identity verification, authentication, crime solving (but ONLY as an investigative lead), and other purposes.

Some of these solutions ONLY use face as a biometric modality. Others use additional biometric modalities.

From Sandeep Kumar, A. Sony, Rahul Hooda, Yashpal Singh, in Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education | Multidisciplinary Academic Research, “Multimodal Biometric Authentication System for Automatic Certificate Generation.”

Your positioning depends upon whether your solution only uses face, or uses other factors such as voice.

Of course, if you initially only offer a face solution and then offer a second biometric, you’ll have to rewrite all your material. “You know how we said that face is great? Well, face and gait are even greater!”

If biometrics is your only factor

It’s no secret that I am NOT a fan of the “passwords are dead” movement.

Too many of the tombstones are labeled “12345.” By GreatBernard – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=116933238.

It seems that many of the people that are waiting the long-delayed death of the password think that biometrics is the magic solution that will completely replace passwords.

For this reason, your company might have decided to use biometrics as your sole factor of identity verification and authentication.

Or perhaps your company took a different approach, and believes that multiple factors—perhaps all five factors—are required to truly verify and/or authenticate an individual. Use some combination of biometrics, secure documents such as driver’s licenses, geolocation, “something you do” such as a particular swiping pattern, and even (horrors!) knowledge-based authentication such as passwords or PINs.

This naturally shapes your positioning and messaging.

  • The single factor companies will argue that their approach is very fast, very secure, and completely frictionless. (Sound familiar?) No need to drag out your passport or your key fob, or to turn off your VPN to accurately indicate your location. Biometrics does it all!
  • The multiple factor companies will argue that ANY single factor can be spoofed, but that it is much, much harder to spoof multiple factors at once. (Sound familiar?)

So position yourself however you need to position yourself. Again, be prepared to change if your single factor solution adopts a second factor.

A final thought

Every company has its own way of approaching a problem, and your company is no different. As you prepare to market your products, survey your product, your customers, and your prospects and choose the correct positioning (and messaging) for your own circumstances.

And if you need help with biometric positioning and messaging, feel free to contact the biometric product marketing expert, John E. Bredehoft. (Full-time employment opportunities via LinkedIn, consulting opportunities via Bredemarket.)

In the meantime, take care of yourself, and each other.

Jerry Springer. By Justin Hoch, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16673259.

A 20-Minute Peek Behind LinkedIn Recruiter

If you recognize the musical reference depicted by this image, you may be entitled to age discrimination compensation. By Stemonitis – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14499898

Of all the technologies I don’t know about, jobseeker technology is the most important. Between July 2000 and today, I’ve spent over 30 months searching for full-time employment. So it helps to know how employers search for potential employees.

And a lot of those 30-plus months have been filled with self-styled experts advising people “how to beat the applicant tracking system (ATS)” (as if there were only one) and “how to access the hidden job market” (because of course employers don’t want anyone to know that they’re searching for talent).

From https://www.linkedin.com/posts/melanie-woods-3b406226_jobseekers-hiringandpromotion-careers-activity-7193606989250252801-mSLB/

So when Melanie Woods of CGL Recruiting offered 20 jobseekers the chance to see how their LinkedIn Profile appears to users of LinkedIn Recruiter, I really wanted to win one of those 20 slots.

I won a slot, and in our 20-minute session Melanie Woods imparted a great deal of knowledge, including the 7 LinkedIn Recruiter tips highlighted at the end of this post.

If I could boil all 7 tips down to 1, I’d emphasize that recruiters have limited time, and something a recruiter can understand in 0 seconds is much better than something that would take a recruiter 5 seconds to understand.

Melanie’s offer…and what she wanted in return

A few days ago, I ran across Melanie’s post that described her offer. It opened as follows:

Instead of spending money on advertising, my team is going to be taking a different approach and it involves YOU #jobseekers!

Sounds like a plan, since a word-of-mouth testimonial converts more effectively than copy written by a marketing hack. (But what if the testimonial is FROM a marketing hack?)

The offer

She then described the offer.

We are going to be offering 20 free 20 minute sessions to job seekers who are currently out of work. During your session I will pull you up live in LinkedIn Recruiter and test your profile to show you where you are coming up in searches and where you are falling out. I will help you adjust your profile so you can appear in more searches for the jobs you are targeting.

What is LinkedIn Recruiter?

As you can probably guess, LinkedIn Recruiter is the premium-priced service that recruiters use to search LinkedIn for job candidates. The top-tier package (“contact Sales” for the price) includes:

  • Unlimited LinkedIn network access: Find and engage anyone on LinkedIn
  • 150 InMail messages/month per license and bulk messaging
  • 40+ advanced search filters, including “Open to work” and “More likely to respond”
  • Multi-user collaboration tools
  • Prepaid slots to rotate job postings in and out as needed

A comparison of all of LinkedIn’s talent solutions is provided here.

If your company is recruiting more than 4 positions a year, the high-end version of LinkedIn Recruiter could be the tool for you.

But when recruiters use LinkedIn Recruiter, they don’t look at a candidate’s LinkedIn profile—they look at the LinkedIn Recruiter view of the candidate’s profile, optimized for their purposes.

Hence Melanie was offering job applicants the opportunity to see how their profile appears to a recruiter. Valuable information to have.

What CGL Recruiting wanted in return

But remember that the lucky winners had to provide “advertising” to CGL Recruiting in return.

Here is where the advertising piece comes in….if you feel that the 20 minutes was helpful to you and your job search, we would appreciate you doing a review of our services on LinkedIn and one other social media platform (your choice), sharing how the time spent was useful to you and your job search.

After I indicated my interest, and after Dee Daniel provided a boost to my application, I was one of the lucky 40 winners. (Yes, they increased the number of winners due to high demand.)

Melanie’s top 7 LinkedIn Recruiter tips

Melanie and I met via Zoom early Monday afternoon Pacific Time (late afternoon Central Time), and I received a firehose of information during the 20-minute session. I’m not going to cover ALL the information she provided; instead, I’ll confine myself to the top 7 tips.

  1. The first job on the LinkedIn profile is the most important.
  2. Use all 5 “job title” slots.
  3. Some employers AREN’T 1st and 2nd degree connections.
  4. You can have 6 on-site job locations, not just 5.
  5. Consider listing at least one college-related date.
  6. Ampersands are bad.
  7. Temperamental writers shouldn’t fall in love with pet phrases.

Tip 1: The first job on the LinkedIn profile is the most important

For my job search for a Senior Product Marketing Manager role, my Incode position is (maybe) more important than my current Bredemarket position. On my resume, I take care of this by listing Incode BEFORE Bredemarket. But because LinkedIn profiles are chronological, and Bredemarket is my current “employer,” I can’t reorder like that.

The LinkedIn Recruiter view of the profile doesn’t show all the positions, but only the top 3. And the first position takes great prominence.

LinkedIn Recruiter view of my LinkedIn profile, Monday, May 13, 2024, 1:30 pm PDT.

In the default view, the recruiter can’t see my fourth position (Strategic/Product Marketing Manager from 2015 to 2017), but only the first three. And only one of those three positions is product marketing-related.

Melanie zeroed in on my “Sole Proprietor” position, which tells a recruiter nothing about what I actually DO at Bredemarket. Sure the recruiter could click through and read about the marketing and writing services that Bredemarket provides…but recruiters have limited time.

I thought about her advice after the call, and for LinkedIn (and resume) purposes I’m changing my Bredemarket job title to “Product Marketing Consultant.” My work for my clients is all product/service-related, so the job title makes sense.

Now recruiters will see that two of my three most recent positions were product marketing-related, which makes me more attractive to the one position that I’m targeting.

One position? Wait a minute…

Tip 2: Use all 5 “job title” slots

That’s right. In my “job preferences,” my only listed job title was “Senior Product Marketing Manager.”

I can list up to 5.

Why not use all 5?

So now my job titles include the following:

  • Senior Product Marketing Manager
  • Product Marketing Manager
  • Marketing Content Manager
  • Global Product Marketing Manager
  • Product Marketing Consultant

So I have the position title from Incode, the consulting title from Bredemarket, two product marketing title variants, and a content marketing title for good measure (Bredemarket readers know why).

Now some people question why I’d list all these similar titles, since anyone who takes a few seconds can figure out that I’d be interested in a global product marketing manager position or whatever.

That’s the problem. Recruiters DON’T HAVE a few seconds. When hundreds or thousands of people apply for positions, recruiters need to get through the profiles as quickly as possible.

So Melanie wanted me to make her job easier.

Tip 3: Some employers AREN’T 1st and 2nd degree connections

You can control the visibility of your email address and your phone number on LinkedIn. While I don’t list a phone number on my LinkedIn profile, I do make my jobseeking email address (which is separate from my Bredemarket email address) visible. In fact, I configured my email address visibility for viewing by my 1st degree and 2nd degree connections.

But there was a fallacy in that tactic.

It became obvious in the session because Melanie (not a connection since her LinkedIn connections are maxed out) could NOT see my email address. Therefore, if recruiter Melanie wanted to contact me, she could ONLY contact me via InMail.

If you want ANY potential recruiter to see your email, increase its visibility to all connections. Obviously there are risks to this, so you need to judge what visibility is right for you. (Especially for phone numbers.)

Tip 4: You can have 6 on-site job locations, not just 5

While all of Bredemarket’s work is remote, and my previous work at Incode was remote, I’m not averse to on-site work. As long as it’s within driving distance.

To help local companies, I listed a selected five cities (the maximum) where I am available for on-site work:

  • Ontario, California, United States
  • San Bernardino, California, United States
  • Covina, California, United States
  • Pasadena, California, United States
  • Anaheim, California, United States

But Melanie pointed out that I didn’t need to list Ontario, since my profile already states that I live in Ontario. That freed up one slot to add another city. I chose to list Riverside, although I could have listed Brea or Fullerton or Industry or Pomona or Corona or many other cities. (LinkedIn, your on-site locations feature needs work.)

Tip 5: Consider listing at least one college-related date

Now let’s get into age discrimination talk.

If a company desires to discriminate against job applicants due to age, one effective way to do so is to look at the dates the applicants attended college. It’s pretty easy to quietly filter out the geezer applicants with no one the wiser.

Well, maybe.

“She’s a 2022 graduate; she’ll love our late night code marathons.” From https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/11/us/90-year-old-woman-graduates-college-trnd/index.html.

For this reason I didn’t bother to add my college attendance dates to my LinkedIn profile. Why give the discriminating (in a negative way, not a positive way) firm the ammo they need to get the young, cheap workers they really want? (Of course those workers are inexperienced, but that’s another topic entirely.)

But Melanie pointed out one truth about companies that want to discriminate: if they don’t discriminate against you when they read your LinkedIn profile or resume, they can easily discriminate against you when they SEE you.

Oh, and there’s one more thing: if recruiters search for candidates based upon their graduation dates, profiles without graduation dates will never been seen by recruiters.

So I mulled over her advice.

  • I decided not to list the date that I started attending Cal State Fullerton’s MBA program.
  • And I decided not to list the date I graduated from Reed College.
  • I certainly didn’t list the date I started attending Reed College. (But I will confess that this song blasted from the Old Dorm Block. And I’ll also confess that I could lose the last 4 1/2 minutes.)
From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4QSYx4wVQg.

But I did pencil in my 1991 graduation date from Cal State Fullerton’s MBA program. Since my LinkedIn profile includes ALL my biometric positions going back to 1994, this isn’t a shocking revelation.

Tip 6: Ampersands are bad

LinkedIn profiles can include skills. I’ve listed near the limit of 50 skills, some of which are tied to particular positions, LinkedIn Learning courses, and other education and certifications.

Among many others, two of my listed skills are “identity & access management” and “sales & marketing management.”

Technology experts immediately see where this is going. So why didn’t I?

Melanie immediately noted that the ampersand character in those two skill descriptions can wreak havoc with some computerized systems.

I swapped out those skills for some new ones: identity and access management, and sales and marketing management, removing the problem.

Tip 7: Temperamental writers shouldn’t fall in love with pet phrases

Melanie’s biggest concern about my LinkedIn profile involved the very first sentence.

The one that appears below my profile, name, and preferred pronouns, but above my city of residence.

John Bredehoft LinkedIn profile, public view, Monday, May 13, 2024, 1:30 pm PDT.

Senior Product Marketing Manager in identity/technology who is expert in describing why customers benefit.

She read that sentence word for word.

  • “Senior Product Marketing Manager”? She liked that.
  • “In identity/technology”? I guess she liked that; at least she didn’t comment on it.
  • The rest of the sentence? Not so much.

Regular Bredemarket readers are familiar with the last three words of that sentence, and realize that every one of those three words is critically important. Why rather than what, customers rather than producers, and benefits rather than features. I’ve devoted a post (plus another post) to those three words. If I only had a few seconds to explain the importance of those three words…

Um, yet again, recruiters aren’t interested in taking a few minutes to read everything I have written about Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle, customer focus, or benefits. They don’t even want to watch a short reel on the topic.

So I have to rewrite the last part of that first sentence. As I write this post, I’m still mulling over alternatives.

CGL Recruiting’s expertise was highly beneficial

The 7 items above were just some of the tips that Melanie Woods imparted to me, all in the space of 20 minutes.

Again, the common theme is that recruiters have limited time, LinkedIn Recruiter lets them maximize that limited time, and jobseeker data also has to let recruiters maximize that limited time. If you can do something in 0 seconds, don’t take 5 seconds to do it.

I haven’t even explored some of the other features that CGL Recruiting offers, including Melanie Woods’ YouTube channel.

But the 20 minutes I spent with her were certainly valuable.

Now I just have to figure out another way to say “why customers benefit.”

Cutting Through the Fog


Buonasera • CC BY-SA 3.0

How can your productmarketing message cut through the fog and get results vs. your competitors’ me-too messaging?

Two tips when planning and creating content:

  • When planning, the first question to ask is why. Once you know your product’s (or company’s) why, everything else just flows naturally.
  • When creating, call your first draft 0.5. Don’t show it to anyone. Between draft 0.5 and draft 1, take the razor out and cut ruthlessly.

The Best Way to Talk About Complex Technology Features? Don’t.

Are you a product marketer or content marketer at an engineering-focused technology firm?

The ALMA correlator. The full system has four identical quadrants, with over 134 million processors, performing up to 17 quadrillion operations per second. By ESO – http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1253a/, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23340651.

Have you been asked to tell your prospects about the marvelously complex features of your firm’s dazzling engineering products?

Well…why would you want to do that?

The complex product with a lengthy feature list

Many years ago I worked at a firm in which the products were driven by engineers, and therefore resulted in engineering marvels.

Two kinds of Segway PTs. By Source: aleehk82 [1]Derivative work: 丁 (talk) – https://www.flickr.com/photos/aleehk82/3144281707/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11852469

I recall one product in particular (not a Segway, but a biometric product housed in a tower) that was an impressive fusion of algorithmic and mechanical excellence. The complex design that went into developing the tower product resulted in a device that performed its function superbly.

The complex engineering also caused the product to have such a high price that no one would ever buy it…but I digress.

But there was another issue with the product. I was writing proposals at the time, and we certainly could have written up a product description that emphasized the product’s lengthy set of features.

But the people receiving our proposals wouldn’t have cared one bit.

Prospects don’t care about lengthy feature lists

You see, prospects don’t care about lengthy feature lists.

And they don’t care about your product.

Altair 8800 advertisement. By MITS staff – Scanned from the May 1975 Radio-Electronics magazine by Michael Holley Swtpc6800, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7219799

Frankly, they don’t even care about your company.

  • Even if your company has stellar engineers that develop wonderful products.
Elizabeth Holmes “invented a way to run 30 lab tests on only one drop of blood.” WIRED, February 2014, https://www.wired.com/2014/02/elizabeth-holmes-theranos/.
  • Even if your company has won prestigious awards for technical excellence, or as a great place to work, or whatever.
Business Week named Enron Chairman and CEO Ken Lay as one of the top 25 managers for 1999. From https://enroncorp.com/corp/pressroom/awards/executive.html
  • Even if your company just completed a successful funding round.
Transformco (post-bankruptcy parent of Sears and KMart) received $250 million in November 2019. From https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/07/sears-owner-gets-250-million-lifeline-says-it-will-shut-another-96-stores.html.

It’s painful to admit it, but prospects only care about…themselves.

From https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/its-all-me-andrew-scott/.

And the prospects focus on their problems, not your technical superiority.

For example, if your prospects work for certain government agencies, they really care about terrorists who try to board airplanes.

Aerial view of the Pentagon Building, September 14, 2001. By TSGT CEDRIC H. RUDISILL, USAF – http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/Assets/Still/2004/Air_Force/DF-SD-04-12734.JPEG Alternate: http://www.af.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/2001289439/ archive, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2152737

If your product stops terrorists from boarding airplanes, then and only then will they care about your company or your product.

If your product can’t stop terrorists from boarding airplanes, or if there is another product that is better at stopping terrorists from boarding airplanes, then your prospects won’t care about your product.

So how do you get prospects to care?

You don’t get prospects to care by talking about your extensive feature lists.

Let me give you a tip. If you find an employee at the prospect’s company who wants to spend a lot of time talking about your extensive feature lists, that employee probably DOESN’T have the authority to approve the purchase.

The people who DO have the authority to approve the purchase don’t have time to talk about extensive feature lists.

The approvers want to know, in 30 seconds or less, how your solution BENEFITS them.

Do you need help explaining your benefits?

Talking about benefits rather than features is just one tactic to successfully appeal to your prospects.

If you need help ensuring that your written materials (blog posts, white papers, web pages) resonate with your prospects, you can ask Bredemarket to help you.

Drive content results with Bredemarket Technology Firm Services.

Doing Double Duty (from the biometric product marketing expert)

I’ve previously noted that product marketers sometimes function as de facto content marketers. I oughta know.

sin, a one-man band in New York City. By slgckgc – https://www.flickr.com/photos/slgc/8037345945/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47370848

For example, during my most recent stint as a product marketing employee at a startup, the firm had no official content marketers, so the product marketers had to create a lot of non-product related content. So we product marketers were the de facto content marketers for the company too. (Sadly, we didn’t get two salaries for filling two roles.)

Why did the product marketers end up as content marketers? It turns out that it makes sense—after all, people who write about your product in the lower funnel stages can also write about your product in the upper funnel stages, and also can certainly write about OTHER things, such as company descriptions, speaker submissions, and speaker biographies.

From https://bredemarket.com/2023/08/28/the-22-or-more-types-of-content-that-product-marketers-create/.

That’s from my post describing the 22 (or more) types of content that product marketers create. Or the types that one product marketer in particular has created.

So it stands to reason that I am not only the biometric content marketing expert, but also the biometric product marketing expert.

I just wanted to put that on the record.

And in case you were wondering what the 22 types of content are, here is the external content:

  • Articles
  • Blog Posts (500+, including this one)
  • Briefs/Data/Literature Sheets
  • Case Studies (12+)
  • Proposals (100+)
  • Scientific Book Chapters
  • Smartphone Application Content
  • Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok, Twitter)
  • Web Page Content
  • White Papers and E-Books

And here is the internal content:

  • Battlecards (80+)
  • Competitive Analyses
  • Event/Conference/Trade Show Demonstration Scripts
  • Plans
  • Playbooks
  • Proposal Templates
  • Quality Improvement Documents
  • Requirements
  • Strategic Analyses

And here is the content that can be external or internal on any given day:

  • Email Newsletters (200+)
  • FAQs
  • Presentations

So if you need someone who can create this content for your identity/biometrics product, you know where to find me.

Drive content results with Bredemarket Identity Firm Services.

Avoiding Deleterious Forensic Nursing

Warning: this post discusses sexual assault and child abuse.

Hippocrates. By Unidentified engraver – 1881 Young Persons’ Cyclopedia of Persons and PlacesUpload by RedWolf 05:45, Jan 10, 2005 (UTC), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=164808

The Hippocratic Oath imposes duties on medical professionals, including this one:

I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.

From https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/first-do-no-harm-201510138421.

For people like me who do not use the word “deleterious” on a daily basis, it means “harmful often in a subtle or unexpected way.”

The dictates of the Hippocratic Oath lead us to forensic nursing (as defined by 1NURSE.COM), the invasive nature of some forensic techniques, and what companies such as Foster+Freeman are doing to minimize invasive evidence capture.

What is forensic nursing?

From the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, https://www2.fbi.gov/publications/leb/2002/jan2002/jan02x29x1.jpg.

As 1NURSE.COM notes, forensic nursing is multidisciplinary, operating “at the critical juncture of medical science and the legal system.”

Forensic nursing is a specialized branch that integrates medical expertise with forensic science to provide comprehensive care for individuals impacted by violence, abuse, or criminal activities. These professionals serve as a crucial link between the realms of healthcare and the legal system, collaborating with law enforcement, attorneys, and other professionals to gather evidence, provide expert testimony, and ensure justice for victims.

From https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/forensic-nursing-exploration-intricate-profession-1nurse-com-iedyc/.

When I started my forensic career 29 years ago, I was solely involved in the capture and processing of fingerprints from criminals. If I may be honest, the well-being of the individual who provided the forensic evidence was NOT an overriding concern.

But within a year or two I started to get involved in the capture and processing of fingerprints from NON-criminals who were applying for and receiving government benefits.

  • For that market we HAD to concern ourselves with the well-being of our clients, to make fingerprint capture as easy as possible, and to treat our clients with the utmost respect.
  • In the end it didn’t matter, because in the popular mind fingerprinting was associated with criminals, and benefits recipients didn’t want to be treated like criminals no matter how nice we were. To my knowledge, all of the benefits recipient fingerprint programs in the United States have all ceased.

Forensic nursing needs to gather the necessary forensic evidence while preserving the compassionate care that nurses are required to provide.

Invasive forensic techniques

So if we have to take care when gathering information from benefits recipients, imagine the level of care we need to take when gathering information from crime victims. Returning to 1NURSE.COM’s article, here are two of the tasks that forensic nurses must perform:

Sexual Assault Forensics: Specializing in sexual assault examination, forensic nurses provide not only compassionate care but also play a pivotal role in collecting evidence essential for legal proceedings. Their expertise ensures a sensitive approach while preserving the integrity of forensic evidence. Example: A forensic nurse conducting a sexual assault examination may collect biological samples and document injuries to aid in prosecuting the assailant.

Child Abuse Investigation: Forensic nurses are instrumental in assessing and documenting cases of child abuse. They collaborate with child protective services and law enforcement to ensure the safety and well-being of the child. Example: A forensic nurse working on a child abuse case may conduct a thorough examination to document injuries and provide expert testimony in court.

From https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/forensic-nursing-exploration-intricate-profession-1nurse-com-iedyc/.

The “compassionate care” part is important, as Foster+Freeman notes in a separate article:

We have focussed a lot on how the investigation works when looking for crimes of a distressing nature but not actually how this investigation process can affect the victim of these crimes and put the victim first. This period can be incredibly distressing for the victim, and the investigation can make this worse as it is making the victim re-live this experience.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/victim-first-forensics-focusing-victims-crime-foster-freeman-gnw6e/

As part of their duties, the forensic nurse has to capture evidence from the very parts of the body that were assaulted during the abuse crime itself. No one wants to go through that again. How can evidence capture be less invasive?

Three ways to minimize invasive evidence capture

While it’s not possible to completely erase the pain that crime victims suffer during a forensic investigation, there are ways to minimize it. The Foster+Freeman article highlights three ways to do this:

  • Capture evidence via non-invasive techniques. As a supplier of alternate light source (ALS) technology, Foster+Freeman notes that its products can discover evidence, even at the subdermal layers, without touching the victim. “Using an ALS is a non-invasive and non-destructive way to examine potential evidence on the skin. This is especially important when dealing with fragile or sensitive skin, as it minimizes the risk of causing further harm during the examination process.”
  • Capture evidence quickly. Forensic nurses do not want to prolong an examination. There are ways to gather evidence as quickly as possible. For example, rather than using multiple ALS devices, you can use a single one; Foster+Freeman’s Crime-lite® X Serology Search Kit is “a multispectral light source that has been made with five wavelengths of light integrated into one unit.”
From https://fosterfreeman.com/crime-lite-x/.
  • Capture evidence thoroughly. What’s the point of putting a victim through the trauma of evidence capture if it doesn’t result in a conviction? Because of this, it’s important to capture as much evidence as possible. A variety of alternate light sources accomplishes this.

Foster+Freeman is just one of a multifarious array of companies that supply evidence collection solutions to forensic nurses and other forensic professionals.

And no, Foster+Freeman didn’t sponsor this post, although Bredemarket is available to provide writing services to Foster+Freeman or to other companies who need to drive content results.

And now that I’ve successfully used “multifarious,” I need to find a way to use “deleterious.” Keep your eyes open.