But if you have an idea for a software application, mobile app, or web solution and you don’t have the technical skills to create it yourself, how can you make your idea a reality?
One avenue is to engage with a product development firm that can perform all aspects of product development from concept to launch:
design
development
testing
launch
Google Gemini.
And if you engage with the right firm, you will receive expert handling of your development effort, an intuitive user-centered design for your solution, an agile and scalable product, and (most importantly) rapid time to market.
If you have product development needs, talk to Silicon Tech Solutions. Offering a complete suite of services (custom software development, digital transformation, product development, and IT outsourcing), Silicon Tech Solutions addresses multiple needs for small and mid-size businesses. With a team that has gained experience from employment at Amazon and Facebook and from multiple consulting projects, Silicon Tech Solutions is ready to help your firm.
Content, proposal, and analysis (“CPA”) marketing and writing services.
But what in the heck does Bredemarket DO?
During the first 21 days of March, my biometric, identity, and technology clients received blog posts, an ebook, emails, a landing page, slides, a press release, a Request for Information (RFI) response, a process, and other things.
Can I help your firm? Let me know on my “CPA” page.
All too often, Bredemarket confines its writing discussions to the traditional ABCW (articles, blog posts, case studies, white papers) categories.
But what if your content needs are non-traditional and fall outside of the usual nice neat business writing categories?
From the 2023 Route 66 Cruisin’ Reunion, Saturday, September 16, 2023.
If you are an Inland Empire business who needs words, but not in the traditional “ABCW” (articles, blog posts, case studies, white papers) business types, Bredemarket will help you with your non-traditional writing needs.
Take a look at the examples I’ve provided below, and if these spark interest within you, authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.
Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket. Be sure to fill out the information form so I can best help you. For example, if you’re an Inland Empire business requiring non-traditional content, fill out the form accordingly.
I won’t go into all 22 types again, especially since some of them are internal content rather than customer-facing content. But I’d like to highlight the “ABCW” four types that I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, plus a couple of others.
Articles and blog posts
I’m lumping articles and blog posts together, because while some “experts” try to draw hard-and-fast distinctions between the two, they’re pretty much the same thing.
Whether it’s a blog post on your website, a post or article on LinkedIn, or even some extended text associated with an Instagram picture or a TikTok video, what you’re creating is some text that entertains, persuades, inspires, or educates your reader, or perhaps all four. You set the goal for the article or blog post, then tailor the content to meet the goal. (I’ll talk more about goals later.)
Case studies
From “How Bredemarket Can Help You Win Business,” available via this post.
Case studies show your readers how your solution was applied to someone else’s problem, and how your solution can benefit your prospects with similar problems.
Maybe your prospect is a city police agency that needs a tool to solve crimes, and your case study describes how your solution solved crimes in a similar city. Again, you set the goal for the case study, then tailor the content to meet the goal.
White papers
On the surface, white papers are informational, but when a company issues a white paper, the “information” that the white paper provides should gently guide the reader toward doing business with the company that issued the paper. Using the example above, you could write a white paper that outlines “Five Critical Elements for a Local Crime-Solving Solution.” By remarkable coincidence, your own solution happens to include all five of those critical elements. Again, you set the goal and tailor the content.
Briefs, data sheets, and literature sheets
One-page sheet for the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service. More information here.
Perhaps you need to provide handouts to your prospects that describe your product or service.
Regardless of whether you call these handouts briefs, data, sheets, literature sheets, or something else, they should at a minimum contain both “educate” and “persuade” elements—educate your prospects on the benefits of your product or service, and persuade your prospects to move closer to a sale (conversion).
Again, you set the goal and tailor the content.
Web page content
If your business has a web page, I hope that it has more words than “Under construction.” Whether you have imagery, video, audio, text, or all four on your web page, it needs to answer the questions that your prospects and customers have.
You know what I’m going to say here, but it’s still important. You set the goal and tailor the content.
But…what if your business needs content that doesn’t fall into these traditional business categories?
Non-traditional content: going to a car show
I went to a car show this weekend—specifically, this year’s Route 66 Cruisin’ Reunion in downtown Ontario, California. (Yes, I know that Route 66 actually passed three miles north of downtown Ontario, but work with me here.)
While some of the exhibitors were personal, some of them were businesses. As businesses, what was the major marketing collateral that they generated?
Not a blog post, or LinkedIn article, or any of the traditional business media collateral.
In addition to the car itself, this exhibitor included poster boards with words describing the car.
Another exhibitor did the same thing.
So while these car show exhibitors didn’t choose a traditional way to convey their words, they shared written text anyway.
Your non-traditional business communication needs
Maybe you don’t have a classic car. Maybe you don’t have a car at all. Do you need to share words with your prospects and customers anyway?
Now I don’t know your business communication needs. You do. But I can guess a few things.
Do you need to tell your clients/potential clients why you do what you do?
Do you need to tell them how you do it?
And last but not least, do you need to tell them what you do?
I know that this may seem like an unusual order to you. Why not start with what you do?
Because your customers don’t care about what you do. Your customers care about themselves.
If you keep the focus on your customers, the answer to the “why” question will induce your customers to care about you, because it shows how you can solve their problems.
Let’s illustrate this.
Why and how Bredemarket creates non-traditional content
You may be asking why I create content in the first place. There are countless content creators, both human and non-human. Why turn to me when OpenAI and its bot buddies are a lot cheaper and faster?
Normally I include my recent professional picture, but I have been writing since my college days (on a typewriter back then).
Bredemarket’s service is independent of content type. I don’t have a “Bredemarket blog writing service” or “Bredemarket data sheet writing service” or “Bredemarket case study writing service.” My services are based on word length, not content type, with my most popular service targeted to customers who need between 400 and 600 words of text. From this perspective, I don’t care if you want the words to appear on your website or your social media channel or a paper flyer or a sign next to your car or a really really long banner towed behind an airplane. (Read about the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service here.)
Before I write a thing, I ask your some questions. It won’t surprise you to learn that my first questions to you are why, how, and what. I then move on to questions about your goal for the content, the benefits of your solution, the target audience for your solution, and many additional questions. (Read about the Six Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You here.)
Once the questions are out of the way, content creation is collaborative and iterative. I create a draft, you review it, and we repeat. The Bredemarket 400 service includes two review cycles; longer content needs include three review cycles. The goal is to ensure that both of us are happy with the final product.
Bredemarket’s process applies regardless of the specific content type, so I should be able to support whatever content you need, whether it’s traditional or non-traditional.
I can’t share work samples that I created for Bredemarket clients, because they are ghostwritten “works for hire” that are not publicly attributed to Bredemarket.
(For the same reason, I can’t share most work samples that I created for my previous employers.)
But I CAN share work samples that I created for…Bredemarket.
The video containing this image can be found on various Bredemarket properties.
Actually, you can search through the entire Bredemarket website and social media outlets and find them.
Or you can just watch the video below, which summarizes everything.
So you’ve decided that you are going to create some content for your business. But which content type should you create first? Audio? Blog post? Case study? Social media post? White paper? Video? Something else?
But coming up with a complex content creation matrix is silly, because selecting a content type isn’t that hard. (This post does have a content creation matrix, but it’s easy to understand and pretty straightforward.)
The first question
What is the first question you have to answer before deciding which content to create?
First, you need to look at your online presence and see which outlets you have, and which ones you don’t have.
Do you have a website?
Do you have a blog?
Do you have social media accounts? If so, which ones, and which types of content do they support? (Threads, for example, supports text, image, audio, and video content.)
If you don’t have a certain outlet, then that makes your decision a lot easier.
For example, if you have social media outlets but don’t have a blog, then don’t worry about creating blog posts (unless you have LinkedIn and want to create LinkedIn articles). You’re not going to create blog posts on Instagram or Threads or Twitter (unless you’re a blue check person).
Similarly, if you’re not on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram, videos are less important. (Although a lot of services support video.)
Create content for your outlet(s)
So now that you know which content outlets you have, and which you don’t, you can create content that is supported by your outlets.
Here’s a handy-dandy table that suggests the content types you can create, depending upon your online presence. These are suggestions, not hard and fast rules.
Content Type
Website
Blog
Social Media With Audio
Social Media With Images
Social Media With Text
Social Media With Video
Audio
Yes
Blog
Yes
Case Study
Download
Social Media Post
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Video
Yes
White Paper
Download
Some of these are fairly obvious (yes, if you have a blog you can create blog posts), but it helps to say them.
Don’t worry about the content outlets that you don’t have. If you don’t have a blog today, don’t worry about creating one just so you can write blogs. Go with what you have.
(And if you don’t have ANYTHING right now to promote your business, then the easiest thing to do is to create some type of social media account: Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever. They’re free, and it’s easy to create content for them.)
As I said above, these are suggestions, not hard and fast rules. For example, the table above says that case studies and white papers are best if you have a website from which prospects can download documents. But some social media services allow you to embed documents (such as case studies or white papers) into your social media posts.
Think about what you’ve got, and create for it.
Repurpose
And once you’ve created the content, don’t be afraid to distribute it on other channels, or even to repurpose it on other channels.
Have you uploaded a great video to YouTube? Embed the video in a blog post.
Did you write a great blog post? Repurpose it as a downloadable document. (That’s what I did.)
You may choose to only issue a specific piece of content using a single content type. But if you feel like repurposing the material for other content types, go for it.
Don’t be afraid to fail
Finally, don’t be afraid to create content, even if it’s not perfect. I’ve (re)committed myself to video, and spent yesterday creating multiple videos for multiple outlets. Two of the videos that I created ended up havingproblems…but I left them up anyway, and learned in the process.
I figure that the more content that I create, the better that I will get at it.
You will find that the same holds true for you.
Do you need help with textual content?
Now when you are ready to create content, do you need someone to help you create it?
But if you need help with the text for blog posts, case studies, white papers, and the like, I can help you. Especially if your text involves biometrics, identity, or technology. Contact me!
But I thought I’d better check the “Who I Am” page before resharing it to Facebook. And it’s good I did, because I realized that it required one important update.
Well, perhaps the page didn’t require the update, but I personally thought the update was necessary. I’ll let you judge for yourself.
Regardless of whether this edit was needed, static web pages certainly can change.
The “Who I Am” page before the change
If you haven’t seen my “Who I Am” page, it starts with a description of me and my writing background, then transitions into the story of how Bredemarket came to be. After describing the events that prompted me to establish Bredemarket, I concluded the section as follows:
So I formally registered Bredemarket with the City of Ontario and San Bernardino County, and with other private businesses that allowed me to offer my services.
It’s a nice little story about the establishment of Bredemarket in the fall of 2020, but as originally written the “Who I Am” page doesn’t describe the changes to the company that took place in the spring of 2022.
So I just inserted some material between the two paragraphs reproduced above.
For nearly two years, Bredemarket was my primary source of income.
As mentioned above, I have limited time to spend on Bredemarket, and revamping the entire website is not the best use of my time.
Of course I could pay someone to do it, but Bredemarket’s revenue is also limited.
There are also SEO considerations. Some time ago I knew of a company that performed a complete (and necessary) website revamp, despite the hit that it would deal to the company’s search results. And yes, search results did take a hit.
So I’m not going to chuck the existing Bredemarket website and start over.
However, I am going to try to slowly refresh the existing static web pages (currently 39) as I encounter them, so that the existing search results will be improved.
In January of this year, I wrote a couple of posts about websites with outdated content.
The posts were obviously self-serving (since Bredemarket happens to sell services to update website text), but the second post backed my points up with data.
Specifically, a study noted that when people want to research a solution, 53% of them perform a web search for the solution, and 41% of them go to vendor web sites.
I used this data to make the point that your website had better be up to date, if you want your potential customers to have a good impression of your business.
An outdated website looks bad.
But I just ran across something even worse.
Worse than an outdated website
I’m not going to provide specifics, but I just saw a Facebook post in a local business group that promoted a service. This happens to be a service that is popular with individuals and businesses. The Facebook post stated that the service provider was the best provider in the local area, and was better than the competition. The post then gave the company name of the service provider, and…
…a local phone number.
You can guess what I did next. Like 53% of you, I searched for information on this particular company. I started on Facebook itself; since the individual made the post on Facebook, I figured that the company had a Facebook page.
It didn’t. The company had no Facebook presence.
So I got out of Facebook and went off into the World Wide Web and (like 41% of you) searched for the company’s web page.
I found no company web page with that name in California, but I did find a company with that name in another part of the country that coincidentally provided the same service. But I could tell that this was a separate company.
So I went back to the original Facebook post and asked a question.
Does [COMPANY NAME] have a website, or just a phone number?
I received a response from the original poster.
Bredemarket, no, just a number.
I made no further comment, but it got me thinking.
What’s worse than a website with outdated content?
No website or web page at all.
And I’m not talking about a fancy-dancy website. If you’ve seen Bredemarket’s website, it’s not fancy-dancy.
I’m just talking about a simple page. It doesn’t have to be on your own domain; it could be on wordpress.com (like my jebredcal site) or wix.com even facebook.com (Bredemarket has one of those too). Just something that ideally tells you the company name, the person who runs the company, the address of the company (yes, UPS Store addresses are acceptable; I know), a phone number, and an email address.
When all of these elements are available, and they’re present on a website, you have at least some assurance that the company is a viable concern. (I’ll grant that this can be faked, like Abdul Enterprises was faked, but at least a name, address, email, and phone number suggest that the company is real.)
A company name and a phone number with no website, no email address, and no company ownership information is…well, it’s sketchy.
So how does a company without an online presence establish one?
There are a variety of ways to establish a company online presence. You could pay for a website, you could set up a free website via a variety of service providers, or you could simply set up a social media page such as a Facebook page.
Now Bredemarket doesn’t create websites, and Bredemarket doesn’t create Facebook business pages. Facebook offers step-by-step instructions on how to create a Facebook business page, and there are guides on how to create complete websites such as a Wix site (and you can do it for free if you don’t need a custom domain and use accountname.wixsite.com/siteaddress).
Creating the site, however, is only part of the story.
Bredemarket can help you establish the initial content for a website or a Facebook page. (And if you desire, I can help you refresh the content also.)
Let’s look at the simplest example, where you just want to establish a presence with a few hundred words (say 400 to 600 words).
Topic. Well, the topic is your business, of course, but how would you summarize your business in one sentence?
Goal. What is the goal of your site or page? Do you want people to immediately buy something online? Do you want people to rush to your business location and buy something? Or do you just want people to talk to you about your product or service?
Benefits. I’ve talked about this ad nauseum, but it’s important to explain why people should want your product or service. If your explanation results in a “so what?” from the potential customer, then you need to refine your benefit statement.
Target audience. The message on your site or page is obviously affected by your target audience. A page intended for forensic scientists will have different messaging than a page intended for high school students who want an after school snack.
Other questions. These are going to vary from engagement to engagement, but it’s important to ask these questions up front to minimize any misunderstandings later.
After you and I have talked through these questions, I’ll start creating the text to place on your website. By the time we’ve gone through the process and we’re done, you’ll have an initial website presence for your business. People will be able to find your business, find out what it’s about, contact you, and give you lots of money.
But that won’t happen until the people can find out what you offer.
And it won’t happen if they only have a business name and a phone number.
If you want Bredemarket to help you establish an online presence with the correct words to woo customers:
(This past illustration describes something that I performed in my career, either for a Bredemarket client, for an employer, or as a volunteer. The entity for which I performed the work, or proposed to perform the work, is not listed for confidentiality reasons.)
A single company offered multiple products in multiple markets. Each product had its own web page, and the company itself had a web page.
The company requested that I analyze the products and recommend any necessary revisions to the marketing of the products.
SOLUTION
I analyzed the products and divided them into two groups based upon customer characteristics.
For one group, I recommended that the products in the group be marketed at the company level, and provided specific recommendations regarding how the products in this group be marketed.
For the second group, I recommended that the products in this group continue to be marketed at the product level. Again, I provided specific marketing recommendations for the products in this group.
RESULTS
The company thanked me for my thorough analysis. Unfortunately, due to external events, the company was unable to act on my recommendations at the time that I provided them.
Bredemarket 