Go Beyond Blogging With Our 7 Cybersecurity Content Writer Use Cases

A cyber security content writer can supercharge your content marketing.

This is true whether you are marketing an established blue-chip company or a plucky information security start-up. 

Cybersecurity sales cycles are typically long (traditionally, it takes between 12 and 24 months for deals to mature), and IT decision-makers are often slow to commit to a new product or vendor. 

Between the moment a prospect notices a gap in their security posture and the day they decide to buy your solution, they need to see (and share) a host of sales collateral, case studies, whitepapers, and reports. 

Prospects will also search for similar solutions to yours on Google, read some of your SMEs’ thought leadership content, or watch a webinar you host.

This content-heavy marketing environment puts content marketing and content writing at the core of cybersecurity marketing success.

Without content, most cybersecurity sales wouldn't happen. 

Cybersecurity writers are essential for translating technical information into marketing material aimed at your target audience.

What about an AI tool like ChatGPT? 

AI can be a helpful tool for aiding the writing process (read our blog post on how to use Chat GPT4 for marketing to gain insights from reports and surveys). But it is not a replacement for a cyber security content writer. 

A skilled cyber security writer who understands your products and customers and keeps up with the cybersecurity landscape can do much more than "just write."

Here are some of the key benefits a cyber security content writer can bring to a cybersecurity vendor or service provider:

1. Develop SEO Content

In 2023, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about content. You can tick all the technical boxes, but without quality content, you cannot expect to rank on Google's SERP. 

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A cyber security content writer can work with your marketing team to ideate and produce SEO-focused content such as blogs, infographics, and other un-gated content resources.

There are three distinct tiers of SEO-focused cyber security content writers that a marketing team might hire:

• A standard cyber security content writer can use your resources to turn a detailed brief into a readable article or blog post and optimize it for SEO.

• A good cyber security content writer can work without a brief, conduct their own secondary research in a particular area (i.e., cloud security), and create engaging content based on the keywords you provide.

• A great cyber security content writer can do all of the above, plus conduct primary research by interviewing your subject matter experts and customers, as well as find keywords for you. A cyber security content writer at this level will understand your target audience, need minimal direction and work as a direct extension of your marketing team.

As Google updates continue to prioritize unique and authoritative content, a great cybersecurity content writer can be a powerful cybersecurity SEO resource. 

A great cybersecurity content writer will be able to use their understanding of the information security space to find creative angles for SEO content and help your team get ranked in SERPs.

2. Create Sales Material

To convert leads, your organization needs target audience-focused sales collateral.

A cyber security writer can support your sales efforts by writing:

Whitepapers

Cybersecurity white papers and reports give someone who reads your blog or watches your webinar a deeper insight into a particular security topic and your solution. Most whitepapers are between 1,500 and 4,000 words long. 

To produce a whitepaper that delivers real insight to potential buyers, you need to give your writer access to technical experts.

Tip: It's best practice to pair your cybersecurity writer with an SME inside your organization who can provide advice and insight.

Suppose you were going to write a white paper about how cloud asset vulnerabilities increase the risk of data breaches. In that case, you should connect your writer to a respected cloud solutions architect. Ideally, someone that works within your organization. 

A writer can conduct their own research and interview the SME to find new angles on your customers' challenges when migrating assets to the cloud.

Sales brochures

Also called "one-pagers" or "two-pagers," sales brochures give your sales reps the ability to leave lasting impressions on prospects and convince decision-makers within their organizations. 

When you have access to a skilled cyber security writer, you can use him or her to help craft your sales collateral. An expert writer will be able to step into the shoes of your buyers. They can then write a copy that addresses your customers’ fears and desires. 

In an industry as technical as cyber security, this skill set drives real business value. 

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Without a copywriter's insight, it's easy to end up with sales briefs aimed at non-technical audiences that feature headlines like "our solution is a machine learning tool that can lead to a reduction in the likelihood of non-positive security alerts." Which might be better written as "Our tool uses AI to reduce alert overload."

A writer with years of experience can also help improve your sales emails.

Even if your sales team writes their emails, having your cybersecurity writer proofread them and find areas for improvement can still be worthwhile. 

3. Website Copywriting 

A cyber security writer should help you create your website copy because your web copy must be:

1. Clear, easy to read and feature the right CTAs to turn visitors into leads.

2. Optimized for the right SEO keywords without sounding forced.

These two tasks sound simple but are anything but. 

In our experience, cyber security website copywriting requires extensive research into an organization's customers. It also needs a deep understanding of a vendor's products and how they help customers stop cyber attacks. 

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To create quality copy, your product team needs to work hand in hand with one or more skilled writers with experience writing about the information security space.

A cyber security website copywriter should be able to fit together the different strands of product and customer information and work backward from your goals. 

For example, if your marketplace is under-educated about the best way to secure a particular attack vector (like phishing) or risk management method, your writer can craft a website copy that highlights the problem your solution solves. 

In this case, your writer could help craft CTAs aimed at directing readers to download whitepapers and reports. In other situations, a writer could create copy that leads prospects to try a demo or get in touch with your sales team directly. 

Keyword optimization

Optimizing your product, services, and features pages for your primary bottom-of-the-funnel keywords is also important. 

These pages need to be written in a way that tells readers exactly what your product/service will do for them while also featuring the keywords you want Google to associate with your products.

A good cybersecurity copywriter can do this organically, i.e., in a way that doesn't make your copy unreadable or robotic. 

4. Write a Newsletter

Newsletters are one of the highest return on investment (ROI) digital marketing investments our clients make. Email marketing has an ROI of almost 40 to 1.

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A large part of this return comes from a newsletter brand engagement boost. 

A regular email newsletter keeps your business front of mind for existing customers. It reminds them that you are constantly improving your product and engaging with relevant security issues.

To create a cybersecurity newsletter, ask your cybersecurity content writer to create promotional content for recent blog posts and repurpose them into newsletter copy.

If you just published a blog about a new malware strain your team investigated, your cybersecurity writer could write a copy for an email breaking the news, i.e., "First glance at a new type of evasive malware, our team explains what you need to know."

5. Ghostwrite Guest Posts

Guest posting on online security publications like Security Boulevard and Dark Reading can boost your domain authority and put your business in front of decision-makers. Here are 31 no-cost cyber security marketing guest post opportunities.

A skilled cyber security content writer can ghostwrite articles on behalf of your internal subject matter experts (SMEs).

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Here is the kind of workflow our clients use to work with a cyber security writer to ghostwrite articles for third-party websites (online publications):

1. Come up with a talking point, such as a new angle on a recent industry trend. Ideally, you want this to link to your technology and be something your buyers will likely be interested in.

2. Ask your cyber security writer to create a two-paragraph pitch that you can adapt to different publications. The pitch should answer the questions of "why is this important" and "why now."

3. Send the pitch to a selection of publications, and follow up after a week if you are still waiting for a response from the editor.

4. Pair the writer with an SME within your organization to create a brief for an article.

5. Once the writer has finished an initial draft, share it with the SME for feedback.

6. Work with your cybersecurity writer to address the necessary changes and submit the guest post to the publication. 

Tip: Get buy-in from internal SMEs before you start this process. Iterating on a ghostwritten guest post can be a time-consuming task. 

6. Repurpose Content 

Most of the content you create can be repurposed. A webinar can become a blog; a blog can become a whitepaper; a report can become a newsletter. The list goes on. 

You can develop and edit content almost endlessly, transforming it from one form into another. A skilled cyber security writer is the only resource you need to do this.

Content marketing teams rely on content repurposing to get value from their insights. 

Commissioning a piece of original research or an in-depth survey can be extremely expensive. It pays to transform those insights into as many pieces of original content as possible. We call this the "content circular economy," aka content repurposing.

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A cybersecurity writer will help you do this by finding new hooks within your data or older content that can be used to transform them into new formats. Read our blog post on 8 B2B content distribution channels to learn more about how to use content more effectively.

7. Script Webinars

Rambling cybersecurity webinars are boring. To keep webinars to the point, you need scripts or a coherent list of researched talking points that a host work off. 

To help shape webinars, a cyber security writer can combine their own research with the theme of your webinar to either:

• Create detailed time-stamped scripts.

• Craft an outline that will give your webinar a better shape. 

Finding a Great Cybersecurity Writer

A great cybersecurity writer can do a lot for a security vendor or service provider.

We have years of experience helping security vendors transform technical information into effective marketing and sales material.

Contact us to learn about our cybersecurity writing services and pricing.