People researching tech solutions have a lot of content to sift through. Unfortunately, much of it is consistently dull and uninspiring. In this sea of sameness, how much of it actually has an impact? Does it position the brand as an authority and differentiate it from the competition? Does it get a return on investment by generating brand value or leads? Does it get read or downloaded?
To get readers to start reading, keep reading, and remember your brand, you need a good story angle and an engaging, conversational voice. In this blog, we’ll discuss story angle and cover voice in a subsequent blog.
A Strong Angle Attracts and Retains Readers
In writing tech content, success is more in the angle than the information. Google’s Gemini AI defines story angle as “the perspective or theme a writer uses to tell a story, which helps the reader engage with the topic. It can also be called a point of view or approach.” A good story angle is relevant to the topic and is unique and interesting. It gives the reader context, which is part of making content engaging and readable.
Story angle, or point of view, is one of the strongest ways you can position any piece of tech content for impact, readership, downloads, brand awareness or leads. It’s a time-tested journalistic tool that works for e-books, case studies, white papers, blog posts and even content like solution briefs and data sheets.
For example, a tech story written from the perspective of an engineer or a marketing professional will be different from one written from the customer’s perspective. The engineer gets excited about technical elegance. Marketers like to focus on the product. But readers want a solution.
Story angle gets around the inclination to write empty marketing hype or list out-of-context features and benefits. These approaches aren’t attractive to readers, so they don’t have an impact.
Focus the Story Angle on Your Solution’s Business Value
There’s a simple solution for developing an engaging story angle for tech content. It’s embedded into how your organization adds value to a commonly available solution.
Tech content readers are looking for a solution and are motivated to action by the prospect of a tangible business benefit. Lack of focus on a specific solution is one of the two things that drive white paper readers nuts.
The reality is that other companies have products and features similar to yours. This makes it difficult for readers to remember your brand over another. But other companies don’t have your unique approach. By positioning your product or feature as a solution, you’ll get more engagement.
Develop your story angle around how your company uniquely solves a vexing problem. By focusing the story angle on the unique, game-changing nature of your innovation or new idea and tying it to a tangible business benefit in a way competitors can’t replicate, you’ve differentiated your brand from the competition.
For example, an e-book on new storage devices with modern security features will be excruciatingly boring if it’s a laundry list of features and benefits. It’s pretty much the same list as your competition.
But if you angle the e-book around a solution to hackers targeting storage and how your solution makes that difficult or impossible, you’ll get the reader’s attention (assuming they’re in the buying loop for secure storage).
By focusing your case study, e-book, blog post or other tech content on your organization’s unique approach and how it solves a common problem, you’ve positioned your brand as the go-to provider of a sought-after solution. When it comes to differentiation, that’s pretty strong.
By giving readers what they crave, you emotionally bond them to your brand, something you can’t get with empty marketing fluff or a technical description of products and features.
Make Your Tech Content Impactful and Memorable with a Strong Story Angle
The short time it takes to develop a strong story angle is more than worth the effort. There’s real value to using a story angle whenever possible because it’s crucial to attracting and retaining readers while giving them a lasting impression of your brand, which is the impact most marketers are looking for.
For examples of how journalists develop angles around stories based on data and statistics, read this post from the Online Journalism Blog. It’s good food for thought about how to make a number interesting to readers.
For an overview of my process to develop a white paper or e-book topic and title that positions your brand as the go-to provider, read this.
Need premium tech content that resonates with your audience and gets them to act? Contact Mark Brewer at mark@markbrewerwriter.com to get the conversation started. See Mark’s portfolio.