
Content Marketing Tips from Experts at First Round Capital and A16Z - craigcannon
http://blog.ycombinator.com/content-marketing-tips-from-experts-at-first-round-capital-and-andreessen-horowitz/
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CPLX
I feel obligated to point out that First Round's content marketing has
literally made me hate them.

Their breathless hypey, smarmy tone yet content-free nature of their posts
makes them come off as profoundly silly and unserious. They sound like
something a Silcon Valley HBO writers room would reject as too cliched.

Given that they often make the front page of HN perhaps my opinion is an
outlier, granted.

~~~
benkarst
No, you're not an outlier. I want to know more about content marketing but
that was next level smarmy.

I think we all want more women in tech but Jesus, their arrogance is cringe
worthy.

~~~
smc90
I think our consistent results speak for themselves, hence the confidence
(never want to be arrogant! that's a bummer) but it's true, it was a friendly
wide-ranging conversation among insiders. [Another reason editing is good --
most podcasts ARE this way in original!]

But it's really too bad you are commenting on the women in tech thing as if
that's the point, or that it's a favor to us (when we earned our jobs through
expertise and competence and results).

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michaelbuckbee
I worry that too often startups and developers write off content marketing as
"more 500 word fluff blog posts".

As devs we have a tremendous advantage in that we can build tools as a form of
"content engineering" that easily have 10 to a 100x the impact of just writing
articles.

An article that gives advice and a tool that actually helps you put that
advice into practice while seemingly related - in terms of execution are in
wildly different categories in people's heads.

I'm deep in the mix of this right now and the one tool we have on our site [1]
has about double the traffic of our dozen (well written, authoritative, 1500+
word) blog posts combined [2].

I always hear from other developers that they aren't good at marketing. I'm
telling you - this is like a freaking marketing superpower.

1 - [https://sendcheckit.com/subject-line-
analyzer?ref=hn](https://sendcheckit.com/subject-line-analyzer?ref=hn)

2 - [https://sendcheckit.com/blog?ref=hn](https://sendcheckit.com/blog?ref=hn)

~~~
smc90
Personally, I think developers are the best writers/ content marketers -- when
I was at WIRED, I regularly mined forums and community groups to spot talent.
For one thing, a lot of developers are natural advocates for a point of view,
and for building community, and starting/hosting conversations, and content
marketing is a natural extension of that.

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indescions_2017
Start with being nakedly honest about what your strategic or business goal is
in investing in content creation. If it's just growing inbound volume, and
there is nothing wrong with that, use attention arbitrage. Find out where your
tribe is hanging out. And join the conversation. In an authentic, genuine way.

But if you have a larger mission. More than growth. Priming humans for a
multi-planetary future for example. Then you need to think deeply about design
and innovation. Not just for the messaging, but also the channel you will be
delivering upon.

It's like the difference between a marketer who reads an article in Wired and
thinks "we need to get our brand on VR". Then they assign a budget, hire an
agency to make some thing fast and drop it. Adding another bit of litter to
the already noisy and crowded airwaves.

Versus some thing like LEGO or IKEA's experiences that allow you to virtually
place new products in your living room and purchase on the spot. Serving as an
incremental move to a place where consumers can customize designs and even 3D
print products.

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philfrasty
Two feedback points for the a16z podcast which I listen to regularly and think
has some amazing in-depth content from a broad variety of topics:

\- a lot of episodes have too many people. It makes it really difficult (for
me) to follow the discussion while constantly trying to distinguish different
voices from one another.

\- a lot of episodes seem „jump cutted“. Question - answer - question -
answer. There really is no conversation coming up (which make Podcasts
attractive) and I immediately press next.

~~~
dpeck
\- a lot of episodes have too many people.

100% agreed, its tough to follow who is saying what, and especially difficult
to get what each part of differing views is really saying.

~~~
smc90
Def worth highlighting who is speaking as we go through more too!

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chubot
I watched this video and liked it. It seems like people on this thread are
looking for tips and tricks but they are talking more about the long game,
which I like.

And it's ironic that they mentioned the toxic culture of HN and there are some
pretty negative comments here.

Though I would like to know if there are any free tools that let you know the
point in the page where someone dropped off, or if those are all premium
products.

