Editorial Guidelines – Activate your experts in the right direction

I am often asked about editorial guidelines that our clients could share internally.  They have been written so they are easy to share internally.    Whether or not you use Passle hopefully these will be of use in your efforts to activate your experts online….

SUMMARY

• Talk about what you know not what you do
• Think about your client’s challenges and address them.  Even better think about your clients’ clients and their challenges!
• Do not talk about yourself and how wonderful you are – show what you know and clients and prospects will be driven to see what you do (that is what your website is for).
• Be broadly complementary.  Be positive.  No one likes a moaner.

WHAT IS PASSLE?

Passle is an expert-to-expert sales & marketing platform that enables busy experts (you) to easily create timely, digestible, and client-relevant content.  These insights are published onto the [CLIENT] website (ADD LINK TO PASSLE PAGE), can be shared across your social networks and directly into the inboxes of your key clients and prospects.

The facility allows us to lead the conversation online around topics that are important to our stakeholders, adding value by demonstrating our expert commentary on topical issues.  To get the most out of the service, it is important to bring your opinions and market analysis into your content.  In doing so, you will build your individual profile, position [CLIENT] as a leading firm and trusted advisor within the market and help to develop commercial conversations with our customers by challenging their thinking.

WHAT MAKES A ‘GOOD’ PASSLE POST?

Your post should answer a question for your reader and/or help them to better understand their challenges.  The types of content you should be looking to reference include:

• Innovative projects that are applicable to the manufacturing sector
• Industry best practice, raising awareness around particular capabilities
• Topics that answer the challenges of your key accounts
• Engagement in market discussions (including from clients & analysts)

It is generally best practice to avoid talking about explicitly [CLIENT]-related announcements. You can draw attention to new products by addressing the challenge they are resolving; however, we should not just be a megaphone for why [CLIENT] is great. 

Featuring excessive promotional content on [CLIENT] will not only fail to engage customers, but it is also likely to reduce your credibility as an industry expert.

Use this as an opportunity to help your clients and prospects.  This is all about you reinforcing your position as a trusted advisor in their minds.

HOW PASSLE WORKS?

• Install the Passle button – in order to create a post you will first need to have your Passle button installed on your browser/s. Go to www.passle.net/button and follow the instructions for your browser to install.
• Read an article online – highlight a quote or key point of an article online.
• Comment with your expert opinion – enter a title, your insights, and choose some relevant tweets to add context. Save and continue.
• Send for approval – Once live, share your post on LinkedIn and other relevant networks. Please see link for further details. If referencing any particular client work, please ensure that we have consent to do so.

THE PERFECT PASSLE POST: TOP TIPS FOR SUCCESS

Passle Title

• Create a headline that gives readers a clear idea of the content.  
• About eight words is good.
• Questions work well.
• Consider using a number in your headline to make it stand out.

Insight

Keep your tone light and clear, avoid jargon and acronyms (unless you have a highly technical target audience).

Write in your own style – don’t pretend to be someone else. Remember, this is not a client update – your style should be less formal and more ‘you’.

Break up longer pieces with paragraphs, bullet points, or numbered lists.

Avoid any sensitive topics and use a common-sense approach to what is appropriate.

Be generally positive

Post length

• The recommended length of your commentary insight should be between 100-350 words.  There is no min or max but this is longer than a tweet and shorter than a novel.
• The purpose of your Passle content is to act as a digestible update for your clients.
• You can also create more traditional longer form blogs. 
• You can include pdf, native video and native audio content to your Passle post

Image

• Always make sure to attach an image to your post – it will not only draw the reader in, but it’s also an opportunity to add value to your post.  In many cases, this image will automatically be added from the article you are sharing, but do check!

Tags

• Add 3-6 tags for your post to make it easier to find across the Passle network.

Sharing

• Share directly to a key contact using the ISTATOY (I Saw This and Thought of You) email feature which allows you to share content on a 1-2-1 basis over email.
• Your post will be shared onto the firm’s relevant LinkedIn and Twitter pages.

Tweets

• Include relevant tweets. If none are suitable, search for better ones using a hashtag or keyword.