I’ve seen several discussions on LinkedIn from IT marketing managers or executive leaders who wonder: “How do I get my busy techies to participate in the creation of marketing content?”

I know this issue from both sides, as a marketing expert who also has extensive experience in business process re-engineering. I’ve been both the “techie” and the marketing manager trying to get the information out of systems engineers and programmers.

Well, here are some practical and cost-conscious suggestions about how to “get the techies engaged”. First I’ll list a few practical tips for making the job easier on everyone. Then I’ll address how to get the necessary buy-in.

Some Practical Tips to Lighten the Load

Record, Then Write. Schedule a 15-minute dialogue with your technical staff on a particular subject. Do this with a digital voice recorder (or similar) in hand, and then turn the dialogue into an article for the team to review.

Encourage Bullets. Some willing technical staff members are still daunted by the idea of putting the information into a format that is engaging. Encourage the material to be submitted to you as bullet points—no need even from complete sentences. You can massage the material into the correct form.

Build the Big Ones Incrementally. Blog posts can be used to create longer pieces like articles, white papers, etc. So, one idea is to work on a series or group of blog posts that can be subsequently turned into a stock piece (like an article, whitepaper, or case story). This helps the technical staff to view the larger projects in increments.

Systems and Schedules. Create systems and schedules for content development and stick to them. Contact me know if you would like to know how to do this effectively.

Proposals Can Become Marketing Content. Technical folk may already be involved in the RFP response process. If performed well, proposal content should generate a source for marketing content. For example, past performance narratives can be made into case stories. If this isn’t the case... well, then you’ve got two problems!

Secure the Necessary Buy-In

Here are some interesting points that will help to bring technical staff onto the marketing train— particularly as regards to content development.

Do You Want to Have a High-Growth/High-Value Company? Research from the Hinge Research Institute has shown that high growth, high value companies provide marketing training to non-marketing staff. This is because companies are more successful when important people are engaged in the marketing process. This is particularly true of key technical staff. So, it is important for the executive team to figure out how to make marketing a priority for everyone in the company... not just for the marketing team.

Both Executives and Techies Must Understand the Process. But in turn, it is important for both the executive team and technical staff to understand the marketing process. For example, a common pushback from technical staff for writing web content is "Who comes to our website right now? If it is so few people, why are we spending all of this time writing for them?" or “How is this going to help the customers that I need to be serving right now?” There are excellent answers to this question... you have to be prepared to give them.

Ego, ego, ego. Technical staff may seldom be interested in marketing writing, but they often have good egos. There are two tactics that you can use to appeal to ego.

• Make sure that authors are credited where the material appears, whenever possible. If you don't do this, they won't be as concerned with the final outcome of the material.
• Emphasize guest blogging as a part of the web marketing strategy: it is a great way to get links back to your own site and to improve your SEO rankings. The staff might be willing to contribute content if they know that it is being seen by more people, including potential customers, partners, and their industry peers.

Building Not Just Company Value, But Also Personal Value. Finally, technical staff might not be willing to engage in content development for the company per se, but they might be willing to do it for their own motivations if you will facilitate and provide the platform. In other words, you should tell the technical staff that participation in both content development and social media like LinkedIn increases their market visibility and value. This can be a double-edged sword because raising the visibility of your individual staff members can attract the attention of recruiters, which in turn can result in higher turnover if your company is vulnerable to having its employees picked off.

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