
Kill your blog: Why side projects are the future of marketing - sdsantos
http://blog.crew.co/side-projects-better-than-blogging/
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plehoux
We launched our product ([https://missiveapp.com](https://missiveapp.com)) in
closed beta last Autumn, and I can assess from our experiments that the only
thing we did that gather a lot of attention was our "A Brief History of Email
Apps" ([http://email-apps-timeline.missiveapp.com/](http://email-apps-
timeline.missiveapp.com/)), a timeline of all the email clients released since
the '90, a side project.

All our blog posts failed to gather eyeballs. We tried on our blog
([https://missiveapp.com/blog](https://missiveapp.com/blog)) and on Medium
([https://medium.com/@plehoux](https://medium.com/@plehoux)).

We are probably not good at writing compelling and viral content. It's hard.
It's a unique and rare talent. You need to write about subjects that matter to
people, subjects of our time.

To me, 37 signals ([https://m.signalvnoise.com](https://m.signalvnoise.com))
are the master of this game.

I don't think blog post are dead; it's just harder to get noticed. But isn't
it the same for everything else.

I enjoyed the blog post and did, in fact, learned about the crew product. :)

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bchjam
marketing's incessant notion that lying to people is like a science of making
money just makes me sad. make a good product, be honest about it, change plans
if noone cares, what's so bad about that?

~~~
macNchz
The 'if you build it, they will come' mentality is awfully naive...marketing
doesn't have to be about lying, good marketing will get your product in front
of people who want to use it, who may never have stumbled upon it otherwise.

~~~
Sir_Substance
>good marketing will get your product in front of people who want to use it,
who may never have stumbled upon it otherwise.

The problem is there's only so much work that can be done in that area, and
way more marketing agencies than quality work. The excess labor bleeds into
mercenary work where advertising companies shill for whoever pays them,
regardless of merit or ethics.

Marketing helps products that would succeed anyway based on merit succeed
faster and harder, and also helps unseat incumbents who have inertia but a bad
product. It also allows products that should by every right sink like a lead
balloon lurch haphazardly above the waterline, leaving behind a wake of
cheated customers.

Oh, if only we could trust people in marketing to refuse help to the latter.

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6stringmerc
> _Articles that provided practical utility—actionable advice and tips—were
> shared far more than those that were merely interesting or even surprising._

Reading this gave me a bit of a chuckle, because this is exactly how bad
advice spreads too. Like bonsai kitten. At the end of the article, all I could
think about was how the post was basically talking about "diversification"
without ever using the term outright, even though it's a more suitable concept
to employ than "side projects" IMO.

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obilgic
And thats still a blog post.

~~~
goodJobWalrus
Yeah, quite funny that I learned of this company thru blog post.

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shockzzz
> You need marketing that isn’t perceived as marketing.

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TeMPOraL
I.e. you need to lie to people harder.

~~~
fweespeech
[https://cdnjs.com/](https://cdnjs.com/)

How is this lying to people?

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overcast
Side projects are always a good thing. Whatever your idea is, with time
permitting, get it out there. Regardless of how silly it may be seen from
others, it gets exposure, and gets you experience. Every side project I work
on, builds on some core technology I learned from the last project. I've got a
million ideas, and when I'm done with one, I move onto the next. Keep your
mind busy!

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userium
I agree that side projects are the future of marketing, and many companies are
already doing this. A while ago I made a list of companies that have created
inspiring side projects for marketing purposes:
[https://www.stayintech.com/info/sideprojects](https://www.stayintech.com/info/sideprojects)

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lifeisstillgood
I suspect this has some truth to it. I think we are seeing huge backlash
against "ads" as in dumb content constantly pushed out.

In this searchable world, ads don't need to be pushed continuously because if
the ad suits me, I will find it.

As such less effort needs to go into the "ad delivery network" and more into
the quality and specificity of the ad itself

Which used to be a blog post, but now seems to be a useful online tool or
project.

The ads get more expensive and more targeted, the distribution channel slims
down to search.

This comment seems at home on the Brendan Eich thread next door too.

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Sir_Substance
Heh, marketing has gone so far around the curve of wasting peoples time
they're approaching actually doing useful things for society from the other
side.

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perlgeek
The key is to provide value to the reader or consumer.

Blog posts can be valuable (by educating or entertaining, for example), but
writing valuable blog posts is a lot of effort.

Side projects can be valuable, but creating valuable side projects is effort.

So I guess it depends on what you're good at. A side project is usually
something you're passionate about, so it's a good starting point. But if you
like writing, blogging is still the way to go.

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yaworsk
After reading this, seems like this should titled "how to veil your
advertising in blog posts..." Not to sound overly cynical but this seems to be
again about pushing the new products created through content advertising.

That said, I did click on one and while howmuchtomakeanapp seemed cool, the
site was so slow that i closed it after two questions.

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waylandsmithers
Well, I guess this is a counterpoint to both: I've now read this blog, and
I've used unsplash for free photos, but I have no idea what crew is or does.

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kelukelugames
Hey dang, can we please kill the first part of the title?

