Dependable Solutions, a technology management firm based in Wisconsin, provides professional technology solutions for organizations ranging from small to large businesses, government, police departments, and K-12 school districts. In September 2007, the team over at Dependable Solutions contacted Young Copy requesting professional writing services for their upcoming K-12 conference. Aside from writing postcard copy for the conference, full website copy, and brochure copy, I developed a catchy advertising slogan to help the company boost revenues. Did it work?

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One of my favorite topics - developing a winning slogan. Aside from it being easy, at least it is for me, developing a slogan is one of the best things you can do for your company. But unless you understand the fundamentals of how to develop a catchy slogan that will stay in the minds of your customers, do not attempt to develop one on your own. So before you consider creating a slogan for your business, take a look at the following process I use when I create slogans for Young Copy clients.

First you need to understand there are two sides to every great slogan. One side represents what you do and the other side represents how what you do benefits your customers. Each side can consist of one or multiple words. And when you bring both sides together, you have an effective business slogan. For example, I wrote about Peer1's "We Get IT" slogan a while back.  Let's break the slogan into multiple pieces.

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If you work in the hosting industry at any capacity, you should be familiar with Parallels, a software company dominating the industry with their new virtualization and automation products. Back in December 12, 2007 Parallels announced their rebranding initiative, changing the name from SWSoft to the now popular Parallels. The new brand took off as expected, thanks to the genius marketing team led by Kurt Daniels, senior vice president of marketing and online at Parallels.

I talk to people in the software and hosting industry daily. And since one of my most popular services is press release writing and distribution, Parallels always comes up in the conversation. Either my client mentions the name first or I ask them to give me their 30 second history on the company. To date, everyone I talk to in the industry accurately describes the company's history. So how does a software company develop a new brand, launch the new brand, and become a well known name in the industry - and do it in less than three months?

Parallels® (formerly SWsoft) is a worldwide leader in virtualization and automation software that optimizes computing for consumers, businesses, and service providers across all major hardware, operating system, and virtualization platforms. Founded in 1999, Parallels is a fast-growing company with 900 employees in North America, Europe, and Asia.

I personally think Parallels has an impressive marketing strategy, dating back to Plesk, their hosting control panel company. The marketing team at Parallels knows exactly what it takes to build a brand and gain recognition in the industry. Based on what I see everyday in hosting news related sites, Parallels takes advantage of press releases. From mid January 2008 to today, Parallels has released at least 15-20 press releases. That's an average of five a month. I recommend to my clients they should release at least 1-2 times a month and if budget allows, distribute press releases four times a month.

Imagine what Parallels (or your company) could achieve if they utilized optimized press release writing services. 

In the future I hope to interview the brilliant minds around the new Parallels brand. Hopefully I can chat with Kurt Daniels to learn more about the new Parallels initiative. I am most curious to see how well their press release marketing strategies help increase sales for their flagship products:

Parallels Desktop for Mac
Parallels Virtuozzo Containers
Parallels Plesk Control Panel

Meanwhile, please sign up for the Young Copy feed by clicking on the "Subscribe to RSS Feed" graphic to your right. If you have questions regarding how a well planned, well written, and well executed press release marketing strategy can help you achieve better branding and more revenue, please send your questions via the Contact form.

I get a lot of requests for white paper writing. Companies are using white papers to produce new leads, educate prospects, and drive traffic to their websites. In the fall of 2007, I started working on a white paper for Applicure, an Israel based software company specializing in web application security. Prior to now I have not posted any white papers in my portfolio so I figured Applicure's Network Firewall Protection Is Not Enough white paper makes a great first impression.

If you have been reviewing my website, you know that I provide both promotional writing services and technical writing services. Since I mainly write for software, hosting, and technology companies, white paper writing falls under both types of services. That said, I decided to place the Applicure white paper in the promotional writing portfolio and the technical writing portfolio.

The Applicure white paper is a perfect example of how a technology company can successfully outsource their writing projects to an off-site, remote professional writer. I think part of the success comes from Applicure's marketing team. They did a great job in providing feedback to me during the white paper writing process. As a result, the white paper, the process, and the remote team communication turned out better than I expected. Team collaboration goes a long way and becomes extremely important even if team members are thousands of miles away from each other and located in two countries - (Cincinnati, OH, U.S.) and Israel.

Immediately following the white paper, the Applicure marketing team requested I write copy for a new brochure they planned to use to attract new prospects. The brochure's goal: reach new customers in the U.S. market with a target audience consisting primarily of executives and upper management at U.S. based data centers. I will post more about the brochure copy in a future post.

I recently published another article in Ping! Zine web hosting magazine called "Marketing With Press Releases" that list the top 10 rules for a winning press release marketing strategy. I have extracted those top 10 rules for you and placed them in their own document at Winning Press Release Marketing Strategy. The article makes my 10th contribution to the magazine.

As someone who practices professional writing daily, I have first-hand experience with how powerful a press release marketing strategy can be for companies. When you combine the 10 rules I listed in the article with optimized press release writing and optimized press release services, you can generate more traffic and more exposure to your potential customers, partners, and anyone interested in your products and services.

In the coming weeks and months I plan on writing posts and developing case studies on how well optimized press release writing works for my clients. The companies interviewed will be sharing the top benefits they receive from our regular press release writing, optimization techniques, and press release distribution methods. 

Blogs have been on the Internet scene for several years now. I have always felt compelled to implement a blog, but never had the time or at least thought it was the right time to implement one. If you have been reading the Young Copy website, you know that I am a professional writer and help clients with all their promotional writing and technical writing projects. But there is more to it than just being able to write great copy or technical documents. Everything I do as a writer helps educate customers and prospects, generate leads, and ultimately increase value and revenue for my clients. So a new blog - why now?

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