Researching and Writing About a New Topic

The Client Request
For this project my clients were the product owners, Peter and Matt. Their goal was to find candidates who could grasp new technical concepts and develop these concepts into benefits a client would easily understand. Peter had established that I knew very little about headless commerce and had not been focused on ERP solutions for several years. Peter pointed out that the landscape is constantly changing and he wanted to see what my capabilities were. He requested that I develop a 700 word blog post and presentation on the topic of headless commerce.

The Research
Peter gave me a brief explanation about headless commerce. My experience with website content management systems and ERP solutions allowed me to quickly understand the benefits of headless commerce. I knew eCommerce from my experience as an event marketer, and through managing B2B commerce sites. To write a compelling end-user benefit would require a little more digging. I used context clues from my discussions with Peter and Matt. They had clear interests in automation, machine learning, content management systems, and eCommerce. They gave a few additional clues in the way their interests piqued around platforms such as EpiServer, Oracle, and Kentico. Their fascination with challengers helped me understand that there was something the competitor was missing which I needed to uncover.

I started my basic research via the internet. I needed to understand both client and competitor; strengths and weaknesses.  I then interviewed several of my personal contacts in the CMS and eCommerce space. Although two of my contacts were involved with national, multi-billion dollar eCommerce companies, neither had heard of headless commerce. When I explained the concept each person I spoke to got very excited. Through these interviews, and my research, I was able to establish a clear list of benefits I could write about.

The Writing
The turn around for this project was incredibly short. I did some final research and wrote a first draft on a Sunday. On Monday I edited and chose supporting statistics from reliable sources. By the time Tuesday came around I was mostly done writing and need to begin work on the presentation.

While the blog and presentation were separate projects I wanted to be consistent across the both projects. I wanted the end result to emulate an established marketing campaign. I began thinking about what style of presentation would resonate with my clients, Peter and Matt, as well as with their intended audience. Their company, KBO* uses clean styling with bold imagery. I chose to use all sans serif fonts. All images are bold but uncluttered. The writing style is short, clearly defined paragraphs with mixed length sentences to maintain reader interest.

 

*”KBO Walter” is a pseudonym to protect client confidentiality.