Why Engineers Hire Writers

"Written by Engineers … for Engineers"

-- Evaluation Engineering tag line

Most of my clients are engineers -- even if that is not their title or they delegate marketing to a non-engineer. At the end of the day, writing that sells technology translates technical value to business value. Most often that means writing in a non-technical way to a business audience. But sometimes, as in my recent ghost written article for Evaluation Engineering, it means writing in a technical way to a technical audience.

There is an old debate about whether better technical articles come from English majors or engineers. In my experience, they almost always come from engineers. Even before an article can sell, it has to be technically correct. Then, of course, some engineers are extremely good writers -- which is generally what you see when you read great technical copy on a website or in a brochure or article. As in any field, some engineers just have it.

Where some engineers get into trouble is by thinking technical accuracy is enough. It is enough if all you want to do is explain how something works, and the audience is committed to reading what you write because they are paid to. That’s a pretty low standard of performance.

A sales piece is a sales piece regardless of how technical or non-technical it is. All the technology does is add another layer of complexity, but does not fundamentally change the mission. Whether you are an engineer or not and whether you are writing to engineers or not, writing that doesn’t come to a point isn’t interesting. And coming to a point is always the same thing as selling.