[vegabook]

I cannot endorse this idea enough.

Paul Tudor (I don't know why anybody calls him Mr Jones. Anybody who has ever dealt with his firm calls him Paul Tudor) knows what everybody else in finance knows: you're dealing with people who have money, and when you have money, there are many, many, people trying to solicit your interest. This is not about the blog writing style, your deep intellect, your pitch. It's about "I get 10 really smart people 10x per hour trying to communicate with me (including my own employees). My bandwith is limited. You have 10 seconds. Get my attention".

This issue is less about tech, than about the basics of trying to get through to the wealthy/privileged in what is the biggest, most brutally competitive communication arena. Literally everybody wants Paul Tudor's attention. He's a financial genius, but he's just a man with a limited attention span and dozens of solicitations per hour. Make sure your 10 seconds count.

I was a fixed income strategist for many years. Realizing that there were 30 PDFs from my competitors hitting the target's inbox every hour, my successful strategy was to do what none of them were doing: sit back, really think about what was the essence of my piece that was different from the first principal component of everybody's obvious chatter, summarize that in a single line, and put that into the subject.

[whatok]

100%. People don't have time to dig into things and then get to the thesis. Several short bullet points followed up with whatever supporting data. Anyone in Paul Tudor's position is going to have an excellent BS detector; they don't need a million and one supporting exhibits that need to be sifted through before getting to the point.

[walterbell]

> My successful strategy was to sit back, really think about what was the essence of my piece, summarize that in a single line, and put that into the subject.

Any chance you remember exemplar subject lines? This technique also applies to blog post titles which eventually appear in micro-blog tweets, HN story headlines, and presentation titles.

[vegabook]

Impossible task because the subject in my domain (finance) changes so soften. Is it New Gingrich shutting down the government today? Is it Bank of America losing its shirt in Detroit? Or is it Greece failing to pay its debt? Or is is it Glencore overleveraged on commodities? Maybe it's China devaluing!

The only common denominator, in my experience, is not to try your best to be the first. The first is usually a computer, and that trend is only growing.

What you want to do, and this is a time honored principle, is to really think about what you want to say, before you say it, and make sure you know the unique aspects of what you're saying. Paul Tudor, like most AAA people, is hammered every second with the main-line thinking. His attention is only piqued with things that are oblique to the mainstream view. (notice that I use the word "oblique", not necessarily "orthogonal", because there are many unsubtle people who take the idea too far ie: "I want attention so will go wild with my thinking". You must never underestimate the extent to which high end people have seen it all before and have defences against charlatans). Your best bet is to be really honest with yourself, about what you're saying that's different but not crazy, make sure you can back up your claims, at least intellectually (the market often does not have time for proof), and make that the key point of your piece, upfront in the subject line/headline.

Then, be prepared to defend your standpoint, with credible arguments. No sloppiness allowed. Your 10 seconds turned into 5 minutes! Don't screw them up by not knowing your facts.

[walterbell]

> notice that I use the word "oblique", not necessarily "orthogonal", because there are many unsubtle people who take the idea too far ie: "I want attention so will go wild with my thinking" ... Your best bet is to be really honest with yourself, about what you're saying that's different but not crazy ...

That reminds me of a recent article (which I can't find again) that talked about the "optimal distance" between prevailing fashion and a new trend, based on studies of trend-setters.