Learn about Paul's background, experience, and approach

Hi there and welcome. 

I’m Paul Maplesden, a professional freelance writer specializing in Business-to-Business (B2B) content marketing. I mainly write about technology, finance, and business, explaining how your products and services solve problems and make a difference to your audience.

Working with a freelance writer is a big commitment. You’re trusting that someone else can understand what really matters to you and your customers. You need a content creator who will position your business in an ideal way, while sharing your products, services, and values. You want a writer who’s reliable and easy to work with, so they can take care of content while you run your business. Here’s what that means to me.

What I believe about freelance content writing

I have some strong beliefs about the type of content writing that I do:

  • Great writing is about creating trust and connections: That comes from understanding what your audience needs—the challenges they’re facing and the problems they want to solve.

  • People want to do business with others who share similar values: These grow from the things that make your business unique—not just your products and services, but your brand, tone, approach, ideas, and perspective.

  • Business is complex, but attention spans are short: That means simplicity is key—breaking down involved topics into easily understandable steps, providing context, and guiding the reader.

  • Bringing together reader needs with business values in a simple way is essential: Good content respects the audience—it informs, educates, and builds your authority.

You’re investing in content marketing because you want to bring people to your website so they will buy your products and services. Strong writing goes a level deeper—it looks beyond a purely transactional relationship to the things that improve the customer experience—listening, understanding, solving, and supporting. Successful content makes people feel good, and that’s a very powerful incentive.

My personal interests

Thanks for sticking around! In addition to writing, I am an avid reader. For non-fiction, I particularly enjoy popular science, sociology, psychology, and first-person journalism. When I’m reading fiction, I love science fiction and fantasy, with my favorite genre being magical realism. I love role-playing games, and I’ve been playing RPGs and board games for about 40 years, starting with Dungeons and Dragons but now with a focus on more narrative-driven games. I help to organize a horror-themed role-playing convention every year near Asheville in North Carolina, where I live. I listen to a lot of podcasts, again with a focus on science, business, and investigative journalism. I’m a complete productivity nerd, and have created more pivot tables than is ever necessary. I try to live a low-impact, compassionate lifestyle, including animal rescue and fostering. I also enjoy hats and Earl Grey tea, and can quote “The Princess Bride” in its entirety!

My freelance writing skillset

I’ve developed several useful skills that guide my B2B content writing:

  • Simplifying complex topics: I enjoy working on involved, difficult-to-understand concepts and breaking them down into easily digestible, jargon-free, bite-sized chunks.

  • Driving actions through short-form content: My clients often want readers to be able to accomplish a task or solve a problem, so my short-form articles and blog posts tend to focus on achieving outcomes.

  • Developing thought leadership with long-form content: More extensive pieces like white papers and long-form posts give me the space to build authority, tell a compelling story, and demonstrate your business expertise.

  • Supporting content with facts, quotes, and statistics: I don’t tend to write opinion pieces—almost all of my content builds upon and extrapolates from facts, figures, best practices, analysis, research, quotes, and statistics.

  • Carrying out extensive research: I like to get a very good understanding of the topics I am writing about, so I review current thinking, industry publications, and other trusted sources.

  • Writing for people, optimizing for search engines: I provide on-page search engine optimization (SEO) as standard, and combine that with writing that engages your audience.

  • Using a friendly and authoritative tone: My normal writing style is “Expert Friend,” which involves speaking directly to the reader in a familiar and understandable tone, while making key points in a direct and accessible way.

  • Creating readable content: I use descriptive headings, white space, short paragraphs, lists, examples, quotes, and formatting to signpost content and make it easy to scan, understand, and read.

  • Caring about our relationship: I want to make working with me a pleasure, so that means meeting my deadlines, being adaptable, keeping you up-to-date, billing fairly, offering my suggestions and expertise, and ensuring there are no surprises.

My professional background

I’ve been a full-time freelance writer since 2016, originally writing across many different niches. Early on, I realized that my writing was best-suited to a business audience—I’ve been running a business since 2006, so I had a good understanding of the challenges that business owners have to face! That made it easy to specialize into B2B writing, and my personal interest in technology and finance allowed me to deepen my expertise and understanding even further.

I have more than 15 years of experience owning a business, doing everything from marketing and customer acquisition through to relationship management, operations, and bookkeeping. I started the business, Freelance Editorial Services, to support my wife becoming a freelance copy editor and proofreader, and now use it as the basis for my own freelance writing career.

I’m originally from the United Kingdom, and emigrated to the United States in 2013, where I now live. 

Employment experience and content marketing

Prior to becoming a freelancer, I held several positions in IT services and communications management. I’ve included some of those areas below, and those experiences and skills have contributed to my writing expertise.

Organizational change and culture

My employer moved me into the HR department to help manage organizational change through IT. This involved dealing with very difficult communications and trying to maintain a positive culture while employees were dealing with major changes and layoffs.

Communications management

I was an interface between IT and the business helping them deliver major projects by communicating with end users. I was heavily involved in training, communications planning, managing stakeholders, strategy, and several other areas.

IT service and project management

I moved into a more senior management role. Part of my responsibilities were looking after IT services and dealing with incidents and problems that stopped those services functioning. I dealt with many other IT service areas including capacity, availability, change, and more. Project management was a growing interest, and I managed several small projects for IT service improvement.

Financial and business analysis

I was responsible for business analysis, working with business areas to understand the projects they needed and translating their needs into project requirements. I also carried out financial analysis to help manage IT and business costs. 

I have professional training across several areas:

  • Six Sigma Process Improvement

  • IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

  • Problem Management Practitioner

  • Project Management from APM

  • Making Metrics Meaningful (internal training)

  • Writing for Business (internal training)

  • Writing for the Web (internal training)

  • Effective Project Communications (internal training)

  • Stakeholder analysis and management (internal training)

  • Excellence Through People (internal training)

My professional interests

I’m fascinated by most aspects of business—how someone takes the seed of an idea and develops it into a fully-fledged organization that’s creating something purposeful, powerful, and new in the world. I’m particularly interested in:

  • The stories that data tells us, and how we can use information and analysis to make better decisions in our lives and businesses.

  • The importance of other perspectives, and understanding the issues, challenges, and unique viewpoints of our customers, partners, suppliers, and other stakeholders.

  • The interconnectedness of business, and how complex, interdependent systems like supply chains or financial markets impact on people’s lives and work.

  • The rise of automation and artificial intelligence, and what algorithms and integrations mean to how we process and act on information.

  • The need for continual improvement, and the idea that we can always be tweaking and polishing our operations and activities.

  • The demand that we become better environmental stewards, putting Environment, Social, Governance (ESG) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at the heart of good business.

  • The resilience of business to big risks and issues, like pandemics, supply chain disruptions, and other world-changing events.

Where you can find me online

If you want to find me or my content online, I’m active in a few different places: