모멘텀 에피소드 15:
Chris Bass와 함께하는 콘텐츠 마케팅

Content marketing is the backbone of every brand's connection with its audience, bridging the gap between a company's products or services and the customer's needs.

But what makes it effective and how do you craft compelling stories that resonate with consumers while educating them on what your brand can provide?

That's what we'll be finding out on this episode of Momentum, a podcast by Jform where we talk about technology, productivity tips, insights, and best practices that help us move forward in business and life.

Today we'll be talking with our very own senior content writer Chris Bass. Let's get started.

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Maintaining momentum.

All right, so here we are with Chris Bass, senior content writer on the Jform marketing team. I have to say I've been looking forward to this episode for a while, so thank you for indulging me.

I know your job is to write, but today we're going to get you to talk. Welcome to the show.

Awesome, thank you. Glad to be here, honored to be here.

No, it's awesome to have you.

For anyone who isn't familiar, any Jform users out there who have ever read one of our announcement articles or posts for a new product we've released, there's a good chance that Chris has written that.

You've written I don't know how many tens of thousands of words for us at this point. Basically, you are one of our biggest Jform experts.

Today what we want to talk about is content marketing and specifically how that differs from other forms of marketing.

But as a content marketing writer, let's maybe just start with how you describe your own role and your purpose here at Jotform.

Yeah, I think the way that I would describe my role is that it's my job to communicate and interpret our products to our customers in the best way, in a relatable way, so they're able to take that information and make the most of their businesses.

It's a lot of product-heavy information, which a lot of people aren't used to reading. You want to put it in layman's terms, a way that normal people can relate to and take that information and run with it and apply it against whatever their business type is so that they can be as productive as possible.

Sure, I think that's an important distinction between something like technical writing or writing for support guides where someone has a specific issue or technicality they're trying to figure out.

They're able to look up on a support guide and find exact language and screenshots and all that. You're trying to essentially introduce new topics and ideas to the general public.

Everyone in our newsletter gets these, so it has to be in more layman's terms. You make it sound simple, but obviously it's a pretty significant undertaking, especially for a tech company where we're constantly coming out with new products and new ways our customers can use the products and features.

There's a lot of complex ideas that you have to break down.

Out of curiosity, for someone who does what you do and is at a senior level at a tech company, I'm curious how you ended up doing this for a living. What was your journey? How did you get on this content writing path and eventually find your way to Jform?

That's a great question. I think for me, I've always had a passion for writing, which started probably around my teenage years.

Writing doesn't always pay the bills, so navigating to a number of different jobs, I actually found myself working in a tech company kind of capacity for one of the first companies that I worked for.

I migrated over into affiliate marketing and customer success management, which was fun because I'm a relationship person and that's kind of a relationship market.

I really enjoyed that aspect of it, building relationships, understanding new businesses, how to help people grow their businesses online.

But after a while, I wasn't following my passion, and that was something I always had in the back of my mind that I wanted to do.

Thankfully, with one of the companies I was working with, they had an opportunity for a content hire, their first content hire. I interviewed like anybody else and got the role, and just took off from there.

Since then, I've been working in content capacities and kind of following my passion of loving to put words on the page combined with a background in marketing and pairing those together.

It's kind of an intersection of the two here because it's content marketing. You're on the content team obviously with a heavy focus on writing.

I'm curious, were your parents writers? We were talking a little bit about this before the show.

People who love to write are very different from the majority of people at our company, which is a tech company with a lot of software engineers and analytics gurus.

Here in the marketing team, we kind of have the right-brained people, and you would probably fall into that category as well. But I'm curious, did your parents write or have any other background like that?

Not really. My mom was an English teacher for a long time, so that kind of is part of the reason that a love of words and reading were instilled in me from a young age.

My dad was completely different, a math guy. So you got your mom's brain, pretty much, for better or worse.

Yeah, and so that's where they kind of came from with that.

Onboarding at a company like ours, you had some experience in technology, but I imagine given the depth of Jform's products, it was a little bit of a different experience from prior content marketing roles.

I'm curious, what was the biggest differentiator between what you're doing now and what you've done and written for in the past?

It's an interesting question. In my first content role, I was writing more for that same customer success affiliate marketing kind of industry language, which is a little bit different from the SaaS focus.

After that, I started working in a SaaS capacity. I'm lucky to have had both sides of the coin in terms of writing experience.

Jform has definitely been interesting and a new way of doing things when I got here because not only is it SaaS, but I also discovered there's a big full marketing team with a lot of dedicated roles already in place.

That's a big plus but also something you have to get used to, especially if someone is coming from a startup background where they may be the only content hire or the only dedicated marketing writing hire.

Coming into Jform was definitely a change.

You kind of paved the way a little bit. We always had content marketing and were always releasing new products, but especially when you joined, I think that was during the pandemic around 2020.

That's when Jform really started going through a transition period. Our team grew a lot, our release train got more packed, and we started releasing even more products and features.

We really started to continue our takeoff and positive trajectory. You had to pave the way for a lot of that precedent and communication.

The idea is that you sort of break down or use content elsewhere throughout the marketing team, like our videos and product videos, which follow your guidelines and articles.

You have to spearhead all of this, and I imagine it must take a lot of research, especially on products that usually aren't even finished yet.

I'm curious, what's your process when you have an article to write about a release that's not up yet? How do you go about researching and writing for a new release?

That's the special sauce. Can't give away industry secrets, but my process involves a lot of research upfront.

Before I start writing, I probably spend a good two days just researching the product.

We've since put in some processes that help with this, but before that, I would even sneak around in our Google Drive to find out what the product developers were working on, search for keywords, and see what's there.

I want to know anything that I can know that's available.

Once I finish the research phase, I go into writing. The first thing I do is create an outline, like back in school when your teacher said, 'Let's build an outline.'

Then I follow a process called the MECE principle, which stands for mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive.

It's a way of applying that principle to writing, meaning you want to answer a central question that you identify for the topic you're writing about.

You create content that is mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive, so you're not redundant but hit all necessary information for the reader to understand and feel motivated to act.

That's always in the back of my head when putting outlines and content together and writing it.

That's really interesting. I never heard of that acronym before, so I learned something new today.

You mentioned narrowing down to the central question, which is really important in how you relate it to readers.

It might be different from how the developers who made the product express it because your job is to communicate it in layman's terms.

You dig around in Google Drive and find files from developers but transpose that into really relatable terms for our larger general audience.

What would be an example of that central question for something you've written lately or in the past?

A good example is our most recent Jform App Store Builder.

It's a free-flow iteration still being worked on with many involved aspects.

The first question I ask myself is, for someone with a brick-and-mortar business or a small business or entrepreneur wanting to get online, how can they get online quickly and easily market their store to customers?

A great easy way is through creating your own app, which Jform thankfully allows many people to do.

Adding the store builder component is a way for people to get their products out to consumers in a very easy, fast, and professional way.

The central question from a merchant standpoint is how can I get online quickly, get mobile, and get my products to people as quickly and easily as possible? Jform Store Builder was the answer.

After identifying that, I write basically in the mind's eye of a merchant.

The process sounds exhaustive, and I remember whenever we go through every newsletter, we have a newsletter review, which is common on many marketing teams.

Everyone presents their piece, and when you present your big announcement article for a product release, it blows my mind the amount of thought that goes into it from the customer viewpoint and encapsulating all technical aspects too.

You have to include all components because some readers want different levels of detail, and some might just skim for main points.

You have to capture all of that in one article, which blows my mind.

I think this post was around 3,000 words, but you've written a 7,000-word release before for Jform Apps.

Yes, that was a big product, so you kind of have to.

I try to apply my internal editor when writing these, but unfortunately, there are a lot of bells and whistles to cover.

What's important, especially for something like Jform Apps, which is a premier product that lives on our website, is that the announcement post lives on the website as part of the actual page and doesn't go away.

I want to make sure specifically for those posts I include everything someone seeking that information can get.

With many apologies to my editor, I try to make it as reader-friendly as possible because I believe it's possible to write a long post but still have it be engaging.

That's why we include graphics, short bulleted lists, infographics, and different elements to keep reader engagement so it's not just a wall of text.

You have to plan and collaborate those elements, whether it's statistics, analytics, case studies, or graphics, which brings us to another interesting point in your role.

You're very much not siloed. You have to talk to many different teams to make the content from the very beginning when the product isn't even done.

You have to talk to developers, graphic designers, analytics gurus, and more.

How many touch points do you usually have when researching and writing one of these articles, and how does that cross-team collaboration look?

It's one of my favorite parts of the job because you get to interact with many different groups, and it's also how I learn.

Some of our processes have been refined. Before researching, the developer team puts together a product fit document listing common questions for any product release.

They've incorporated that into their process, which is super helpful and gets us started on the right foot.

During the creation process, I talk to the product developer, ask questions to fill in any gaps or anticipate customer questions.

I work with content operations specialists on graphics and different things that go into the article.

I work with the team putting together videos, sometimes needing big picture title sequences or whatever it may be.

Our data team is invaluable for writing because building trust with our audience involves including data.

We have a lot of proprietary data that boosts our brand authority, so I often talk with the data team.

Editors and post-review meetings are also part of the process, working with our VP and just about everybody.

It's a lot of collaboration, and that cross collaboration makes a better product because it makes the marketing team more aware of nuances and helps developers.

Normally, you have several weeks of lead-up before a product is featured in the newsletter, but they're still putting final tweaks on it.

Having communication with the lead developer about the product can help the product as it's finalized because you're looking at it through a different lens.

Having disparate people talking despite being separated geographically is really beneficial.

You even started spearheading having developers give the marketing team a presentation or demo of the product beforehand, which we didn't do prior to your arrival, and that's been super helpful.

Especially during COVID and remote work, it's been easy to silo ourselves, but having face-to-face or Zoom meetings with developers and Q&A is super important.

There are questions in development stages that maybe developers haven't thought about, and clarifying those ultimately helps product quality.

That's the crux of this episode's topic on content marketing because other marketing aspects like video focus on entertainment to draw people in.

The goal isn't to break down technical aspects, but content marketing represents the intersection of technical and persuasive communication, fulfilling both roles.

Content writers and marketers have to bridge the gap between these disparate components and teams more than anyone else, which is a cool part of your role.

What would be most surprising for someone to hear about your role?

Maybe the amount of research. I spend a lot of time researching products, not just ours but industry-wide, and topics.

Putting words to paper probably doesn't take that long, but all the work around it does.

Would you say the research and outline formulation take the bulk of the time?

Yes, for me, putting the outline together is the bulk of the time, maybe 50 percent.

That's a lot, but they teach you that in school.

What is one of the biggest challenges you face in content writing in general?

The biggest challenge is lack of information when there are holes or things that haven't been filled in or are still being worked on.

Putting together a big picture for the reader becomes challenging because you're guessing what things should be.

That can lead to writing something wrong and having to change it later, which takes more time, or holding on and being stunted.

There's extra pressure when you only have a day or two to finish things up.

Marketing products at the same time they're coming out isn't the case in every industry but is normal in technology.

It's a fast-paced industry where you need to release new innovations to stay competitive and market products that aren't completely done yet.

Content writers often find themselves in a product marketing kind of role too, which is a huge responsibility.

Content marketers and writers balance that line.

Has it been similar in every content writing position you've had, or is this specific to technology?

I'd say it's specific to technology. Engaging freelancers or contractors can also be tough because they may not understand the nuances of your business and products.

That's why a lot of our specific pieces about products or feature releases are written by someone like you, who is a full-time expert on Jform and can break that down.

Since you've joined, what have been some of your biggest learnings and how have you overcome obstacles, especially with the transition to tech?

The biggest learning was developing the product fit document, which gives writers all the information upfront.

Some of the best business advice I've gotten is 'know what's knowable,' a simple but powerful phrase.

To set writers up for success, give them as much as possible upfront and fill in blanks as needed.

The hunt for information is really what it's all about.

What is an example of the most interesting or difficult article you've had to write or launch?

Probably a tie between Jform Apps and Jform Approvals.

Jform Apps was a huge launch and product milestone that put us on the map in helping many businesses get mobile easily.

It was very multi-faceted, and I wanted to do a really good job with it, which is why it was about 7,000 words.

Jform Approvals was tough for different reasons because I hadn't been here long and it was a big release getting Jform on the approvals industry map.

Learning the intricacies and boiling that down to something understandable for everyone was challenging.

That was a big early project, but it turned out great and was an awesome release for us.

What do you like about what you do broadly speaking?

We have bios at the bottom of every post with a contact link, and my contact form has been filled out a few times with encouraging notes from people saying my writing helped them understand things or get their business off on the right foot.

As a writer, that's the biggest compliment a stranger can pay you, knowing what you've written helped them.

I try to keep that in mind when writing, hoping someone will send me that note.

That is incredible.

For a long article going over all the specifics about how to use a product, you might get many people who skim, but the occasional person who is scrambling to find a specific solution really benefits.

Finding a well-written article that breaks everything down into easily digestible portions is a godsend.

That might be one in ten people, but it makes it all worth it, and those are probably the people filling out the contact form.

You've had a successful career here. If a younger version of you wanted to get into content writing, what advice would you give?

Write as much as you can, whether professional or personal content, because the habit sharpens your skills to put thoughts together quickly and write well.

If interested in tech writing, spend time with developers and marketing teams and just hang out with them.

If a role opens, join it, even if it's not a content role, because you may find yourself in content later.

I worked in marketing for eight years before my company opened a content function, and I was ready for it.

So just write, hang around marketing and developers, understand what your company is doing and where it fits in the industry, then start writing and jump at opportunities.

Words of wisdom.

How much do you read? Your whole day is spent with words. Do you write or read for fun?

Yes, though I don't read as much as I'd like. I try to read about tech as much as I want to, and I do a lot of skimming.

Writing gets you used to rhythms of articles, so I skip certain parts to get to the point.

I love to read and write and have a blog that's been neglected that I need to get back to.

Can I ask what your blog is about?

It's about passions of mine like travel, style, and food.

It's called unsolicited.com, spelled without an 'e'.

Favorite place you've been to and favorite food?

Probably Naples, Italy, eating wood-fired pizzas from mom-and-pop shops that are little holes in the wall.

Back to Jform, anything else we missed?

I think we covered a lot about what you do, how you do it, where you come from, and your exhaustive process.

Hearing about it from your perspective gives me a lot of respect for the level of thought that goes into it.

Is there anything you feel like we didn't cover?

I don't think so, but I was surprised when I joined Jform by how many dedicated roles there were for marketing and other departments.

It says a lot about how we work as a well-oiled machine because many companies don't have that granularity in roles and collaboration.

That makes all the difference in timing development and marketing for releases and meeting deadlines.

People probably don't realize everything that goes into it, but you're absolutely right about that big team.

I'm glad for it as well, trust me.

That's all we got. This has been really informative for me. I appreciate you coming on the show.

Hopefully everyone watching has a newfound respect for content writing and everything that goes into it.

Next time we have a big release, be sure to check out the launch article. He'll probably have written that, and it will blow you away.

Thanks for coming on the show today.