“Conducting penetration testing” doesn’t exactly translate into compelling communication for executive audiences. Struggling to explain why technology matters beyond the engineers who built it is a problem many innovative companies run into. Bospar Content Director Meakin Armstrong understands that better than most.
With a career spanning journalism, content strategy and B2B technology marketing, he helps technical organizations bridge the gap between deep product knowledge and business impact.
In this Expert Insights Q&A, Meakin explains why so many companies mistake technical detail for meaningful messaging and why, as AI-powered search heats up, significance is becoming the defining skill of effective thought leadership.
Why do tech companies default to oversimplifying or hitting external audiences with barrels of technical language when communicating what they do?
They’re not thinking about their audience and what they want to read. Let’s say someone wants to buy a car, and the car salesman talks only about the engine and tech specs. That information will go over the customer’s head because they have no idea what the terms mean or why they matter. They want to know if the car is safe, has space for groceries, what colors it comes in or what it’s like to drive it. If the salesman just talks about specs, they’re not going to resonate with anyone other than a mechanic. It’s the same with tech companies and their content. If their external content focuses solely on highly technical subjects without conveying the information executives want to know, it’ll only appeal to tech pros.
If a CEO has a meeting in 30 minutes and needs to read a backgrounder on a company’s tech beforehand, they’ll want to know whether the tech will make their company more competitive or if they’ll fall behind without it. That’s what matters to the CEO: business impact. In PR, we have to show them the technology’s significance, not just the specs.
How does being too technical impact how executive audiences view messaging?
They wouldn’t read the article. Executives want to know two things: Why do they need to read this, and can they trust what’s being said? So the content must include corroborating information from well-known third-party sources and, ideally, additional supporting data from an analyst firm like Gartner. Otherwise, an executive will think that the content is just noise.
Once trust and credibility are established, executive teams are more likely to listen to what the company has to say and understand the stakes.
What are some signs that a piece of content explains a company’s technology well but fails to communicate its significance to an executive audience?
If the content says, “We have software that does this obscure thing twice as fast, and it has this new, expensive and complicated feature in it,” without the “why,” executives will either skip the piece or give it to a tech pro to translate. They need to know the business impact upfront, along with why they should care.
Does this new technology make their business more secure or productive? Talk about those things first. Then validate that assertion with a third-party source confirming the product delivers real results.
Years ago, I wrote a series of articles about a niche, complex technology called Kubernetes, an open-source platform that automates the deployment, scaling and management of containerized applications. Because Kubernetes accelerates software delivery, reduces infrastructure costs and eliminates reliance on specific cloud providers, it can drive a company forward, make it more competitive and save money. Trusted sources, like McKinsey, agreed and became early adopters. That makes the stakes high. If you can make that clear right away and slant the whole article toward business impact, then saying “I’m going to talk about Kubernetes” will mean something to an executive.
If companies only talk about their tech features without mentioning the stakes involved, they end up with a white paper, which, while valuable, is for an entirely different audience. Content can’t be one-size-fits-all.
How should thought leaders identify which information belongs at the top of an article, and what can wait until the bottom?
Stealing from my days as a journalist, I look at writing articles like an inverted pyramid, where what’s most important comes first and what’s less important is toward the end. Then, I follow the “who, what, where, when, why, how” framework similar to what’s done in a newspaper’s first paragraph.
Asking questions like “what’s the one-sentence takeaway” or “what is the headline you’re after” shapes what appears first in an article. The whole point of the inverted pyramid is so the stakes are known at the onset, which means the executive will get the information needed immediately. If they want more tech details, then they need to read those details toward the bottom.
How does AEO/GEO play a role in identifying the “so what?” in a highly technical subject?
The algorithms are changing, and they’re leaning more toward information. AEO and GEO are just an allied way of doing that.
Writing content for AEO and GEO requires you to be very clear about the stakes. It makes the fundamentals of writing even more important. If a company writes jargony, meandering, seemingly purposeless content that no one understands, then LLMs won’t trust it. AEO and GEO can influence creators to make better content.
Executives, like everyone else, increasingly turn to LLMs for search. Though Google remains popular, finding precise answers is more challenging because companies optimizing for SEO have manipulated rankings. Google has even recognized this and is prioritizing AI-generated answers over traditional indexed links now. Executives want straightforward information, which LLMs provide. As a result, companies need to anticipate the questions customers will ask an LLM and embed that information in the content. That’s not gaming the system. It’s taking into account what a reader wants. Asking yourself what the reader wants makes the content better.
