The goal of Mike's technology marketing content creation process is a smooth, noninvasive experience for his clients.

Mike performs considerable research before a project starts. His research focuses on connecting your marketplace and your technology. That makes the kickoff meeting fast and productive--instead of teaching, you're correcting and adjusting what he's already learned.

Mike's research makes the kickoff meeting simpler and quicker. And more productive. Generally speaking, complete and solid orientation takes about half an hour. Longer-term clients find that the meeting becomes a five-mnute simple sync-up, since Mike's product line knowledge grows with each word he writes.

For more complex pieces (a white paper's a good example), Mike will develop an abstract. This is a single page of narrative "playing back" what was discussed and decided on in the kickoff meeting. Its primary intent is to ensure that what he's taken away from the meeting was accurate, and that he's on the right page. This is a course-correction milestone, to ensure Mike has understood both topic and need.

For most work Mike creates an outline (a short email and single web page being exceptions). This is another course-correction milestone. The outline forms a solid, build-to specification about which topics are to be covered.

Projects usually require no more than three drafts. Sometimes they require more. Mike creates as many drafts as required to complete the project.