
The Content Marketing Handbook - gedrap
http://priceonomics.com/the-content-marketing-handbook/
======
michaelbuckbee
One assumption that goes more or less unchallenged is that "content marketing"
== "writing blog posts". It's what they are really good at and what they've
optimized and hired for.

However, for developers, I think there is a much easier path in the form of
building online tools and mini experiences that just destroy "blogging" in
terms of ROI and traffic generation.

This is things like WPEngine's speed test, Site Checker's, Buffer's Pablo
Image tool, ForAGoodStrftime.com, etc. purposeful, useful tools that people
love to share as they are genuinely helpful.

~~~
natvod
Definitely agree with this. I'm surprised so many companies still bother to
produce content in the form of crappy articles on beat the horse to death
topics.

It feels like having a blog is a must-have to be a legit company these days so
a lot of companies hire someone to churn out $30 articles just to have one.

I definitely think companies need to reimagine content. First by moving away
from the incredibly boring blog format.

Examples:

Beautifully designed beginner SEO guide (almost feels like a choose your
adventure book): [https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-
seo](https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo)

Interactive visualizations:
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/13/us/politics/20...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/13/us/politics/2013-budget-
proposal-graphic.html)

Collection of email templates: [http://www.artofemails.com/sales-follow-
up](http://www.artofemails.com/sales-follow-up)

~~~
gedrap
>>> First by moving away from the incredibly boring blog format.

There is nothing wrong with the blog format per se. The problem is, as you
correctly identified, crappy articles.

What your examples have in common is that they provide value to the user.
That's the key no matter what's the medium you are using to do so. There's
nothing wrong with the blog format that prevents you from providing value.

~~~
clock_tower
But blogs do tend towards presentism, by virtue of how they present their
information... and those in the know are well aware of how easy it is to set
up a blog, making the medium a little contemptible compared to a well-done
"roll-your-own" webpage.

------
paxtonab
I'm normally skeptical about these types of articles (every SEO website has
one) but the intro is very interesting, and they hit on some fundamental
issues with content marketing right off of the bat i.e. every company blogs
because they "have" to, but very few get traction out of it.

The other issue they hit on was that half of the companies that pay for their
service never actually published anything. To negate this they decided to
"make content for companies based on their data and then just charge them
based on the performance."

While they are still charging for the content, I really like the concept of
paying for performance (and not in some shady black-hat SEO way that gets your
website banned from Google). No content marketing firms that I have ever
worked with have even had this as an option...

~~~
gedrap
>>> I'm normally skeptical about these types of articles (every SEO website
has one) but the intro is very interesting, and they hit on some fundamental
issues with content marketing right off of the bat i.e. every company blogs
because they "have" to, but very few get traction out of it.

Me too. A lot of startups have annoying popups offering me a _FREE_ ebook on
marketing/sales/whatever in exchange for my email address. Emphasis on _FREE_.
Please, write good content regularly and I will definitely remember your brand
(DigitalOcean did this right with tutorials) and maybe subscribe to your
newsletter, or even become a customer. In other words, provide me with value.

Reminds me of a trend a few years ago, companies offering their _FREE_
smartphone apps all over the place which used to provide no value whatsoever.
These strategies might have been effective for the first few players but I
seriously doubt about their effectiveness when everyone was doing it.

So, normally I'd have totally ignored a headline like this but in priceonomics
I trust :)

~~~
puranjay
Rohin Dhar highlighted a very critical issue in this industry: that marketers
hire writers who don't really have any stake in the company's success, or an
understanding of its core product.

If you're writing content for a CRO tool, you _need_ to know CRO yourself.

If you're writing content for a data analytics tool, you _need_ to have a
basic understanding of data analysis.

Those $50/article writers don't have that. If they did, they wouldn't be
writing $50 articles.

I feel content marketing has to evolve from mere "content" to "expertise"
marketing.

Sure, a great writer can research, but you need hands-on experience to write
something that truly stands out.

~~~
charshman
>>> I feel content marketing has to evolve from mere "content" to "expertise"
marketing.

I totally agree with this point.

The most trusted, shared, reputable content is either written by practitioners
or, like Priceonomics says, about a company's data or industry or people.

I am a content marketer for a CRO tool and make it a point to run A/B tests on
our marketing site and blog as often as possible so I know what I'm talking
about. It's my editorial duty to know as much as possible about the subject
I'm writing about.

------
colmvp
> Facebook is the New Television

> The phone has replaced the television set, and Facebook is the channel guide
> that tells you what content to consume.

This popped out to me given that this article
([http://nautil.us/issue/31/stress/is-facebook-luring-you-
into...](http://nautil.us/issue/31/stress/is-facebook-luring-you-into-being-
depressed)) about social media effects on mental health popped up on HN today
and still lingers in my mind.

~~~
EC1
I've lost the ability to focus on a single task for hours at a time like I
used to as a kid. Even if it excites me. My attention has been completely
ruined by social media and I don't know how to recover.

Always some sort of chat or something in the background. I really don't know
what to do, should I get counselling or something?

~~~
roneesh
I don't think anything is wrong with you. I've talked with lots of friends
(devs and not), who have noticed their attentions have changed over time. I
don't think it's causation that your attention has eroded with the rise of
social media, just a correlation from the times you happen to live in. I
suspect people in the 50's lamented vinyl eroding their ability to practice
music for hours on end.

I think the ability to concentrate on one task singularly is really a gift the
young get. I can't think of a single friend who has ever said it has gotten
better over time. Enjoy the positive changes that come with age though. The
ability to reason more objectively, the ability to control your emotions, the
ability handle defeat and disappointment with grace, and the ability to plan
larger things. Your body and mind change with age.

~~~
yodon
Everyone ages cognitively at a different rate, but unless you're approaching
70, which I doubt, that loss of ability to concentrate you're experiencing is
unlikely to be physical. If you're under 30 and you're feeling you've already
lost significant ability to concentrate you probably want to do a deep rethink
on how you allow web/mobile/social media/etc to impact you. It's hard to cut
back, because those distractions are an actual addiction.

------
ilamont
_Like almost every successful content marketing campaign we’ve ever run, at
first nothing happened. But gradually, after hitting the front page of Hacker
News, the post got in front of the right people. An industry blog called
Skift, which focuses on travel technology, wrote about it. Larger blogs like
Lifehacker, Gizmodo, and GigaOm wrote about it. Then the big guys started
covering it: CNBC, The Financial Times, TIME, Businessweek, and The Huffington
Post all wrote about our study and gave a nod to Priceonomics._

There are several examples of Hacker News providing an early boost to
Priceonomics, after a blog post floated to the top and a journalist (or
several) noticed. The inbound links helped them vault to the top of Google
SERPs for certain terms, and they were able to build a business around helping
other companies do the same thing--getting inbound links (and social shares)
by publishing unique information.

They give a few examples, such as this one:

 _This same strategy can be applied to any industry. Say you own an ice cream
shop. You know how many ice cream cones you sell per day. You can also look up
the average temperature of each day. Create a chart with temperature on the
x-axis and ice cream cone sales on the y-axis, and you’ve got excellent, data
driven content._

Another content marketing tactic: Use stories:

 _One of the core tenets at Priceonomics is that everyone has an interesting
story. Every person you come into contact with on a daily basis has a deep-
rooted story about heartbreak, triumph, tragedy, or comedy._

The part about all of this that I find a little hard to swallow is the
connection between publishing interesting data and stories and getting major
online news sites and MSM to cover it. One of the examples mentions sending
out an email to 50 Apple blogs about a Priceonomics blog post on depreciation
of old iPhones, and no one responded. Then they contacted Josh at TechCrunch,
who had covered Priceonomics launching a month before, and he wrote it up,
with scads of follow-on coverage coming soon after. I think practically anyone
else publishing the same bit of information would have been ignored.

To me, this suggests that luck, media connections, and submitting the right
link to HN at the right time are key factors in early content marketing
success. For organizations that don't have these benefits/skills, how much
will the Priceonomics content marketing formula help them?

~~~
gedrap
>>> luck

I believe we should define 'luck' in this context.

Luck is when you write once a year and it happens to get on the front page of
HN (or large subreddit, etc) and it attracts the critical mass of customers.
In this case, it's like flipping a coin (just the odds are not 50/50). Voting
on HN is far from deterministic and it's often the case that a link gets no
traction on the first couple of submissions and then gets on the frontpage the
third time it's submitted. So, yes, quite a bit of luck is involved.

In case of priceonomics, they are writing good content consistently so it's
hardly luck anymore. If you have 20% (or any other probability) to make the
front page and do it often enough, eventually it will happen. And if you keep
doing that, people will recognize your domain and more people will click on
the link, etc. While chance is still involved, it's quite far from the typical
definition of 'luck'.

------
wwickey
Love Priceonomics blog posts. Always high-quality. Always interesting.

I've also been using Tracker since the soft launch. It's a nice clean snapshot
of day to day blog performance.

I'm interested to see how the Priceonomics Data Studio concept mentioned in
the handbook intro works. It sounds like a good idea, but I do think there
will be challenges with outsourcing the Priceonomics content marketing
strategy to other businesses.

Someone from Priceonomics can chime in here, but it seems like they have the
luxury of identifying diverse topics that are likely to go viral, then go out
and acquire data specifically for that topic, tell a story, then move on to
the next topic (and perhaps even a different audience).

Other businesses are less flexible. They have to start with a limited amount
of data, then use it to tell many stories, week after week.

Not saying it won't work. I'm sure it will. Just interested to see how the
data gathering, analysis, and storytelling sides of things all come together
in the Priceonomics Data Studio offering.

~~~
puranjay
It's not that hard to stretch this strategy to other businesses.

If you're running, say, a plumbing business, you could teach your blog readers
so much about plumbing. Answer their questions and teach them real, useful
stuff - everything from fixing a leaky faucet to setting up plumbing for a new
house.

Unfortunately, most businesses think that writing a blog post means writing
100 posts on "10 reasons why you need to hire a plumber".

That's useless to readers.

Help readers learn something actually useful about your business and they'll
reward you with their loyalty.

~~~
wwickey
Yes. Good point. I don't mean to suggest the content marketing won't work.

Priceonmonics' bests posts (say, over 30k views) have a strong data-driven
component combined with great writing.

One of Priceonomics' tag lines is "DATA. LONGFORM CONTENT. ANALYSIS." They
excel at data crawling and visualization. Combine that capability with
talented storytellers, give those writers the freedom to explore a variety of
topics, and you've got a winning recipe for repeated virality.

A plumbing company is a great example. You can write great plumbing content,
(and definitely still accomplish your goal of getting people with plumbing-
related pain points into your funnel or driving awareness for your business)
but it's tough to make that type of content spread consistently, even when
well-crafted.

Combining the data gathering + analysis/visualization + great writing for
homerun content that generates leads on a consistent basis is the challenge
I'm talking about specifically. Moreover, the plumbing company does not likely
have a marketing department with all 3 of those skills sets represented.

Priceonomics just announced their 'Data Studio' offering to help companies in
that position (and there are plenty of them!).

btw, not sure if anyone posted the 6-page summary of the Content Marketing
Handbook yet: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/pix-
media/The+Content+Marketing+Han...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/pix-
media/The+Content+Marketing+Handbook+Summary+Version.pdf)

Obviously a great guide for duplicating what Priceonomics does at your own
company. Interested to see how the Data Studio works as an outsourced content
service.

------
cryoshon
This is a pretty good piece, but it did surprise me that they are casting
themselves as non-"traditional" PR while espousing more or less verbatim the
genera of paths to success in public relations as outlined by the father of
PR, Eddie Bernays. Most of the ideas discussed here bring 21st century updates
and explanation of platforms and propagation of information for profit, but
are comfortably within the Platonic forms espoused in Bernays masterpiece,
Crystallizing Public Opinion, [0] which I highly suggest anyone interested in
content marketing in this style to read.

[0]:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/193543926X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/193543926X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=193543926X&linkCode=as2&tag=fasdf0c-20&linkId=CJWXS7HVMJAPGNAN)

~~~
vonnik
And if we're going for PR classics, there's always "Sweet Smell of Success",
too. Inspired by Walter Winchell.
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051036/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051036/)

------
NIL8
Content aside, I am amazed that they didn't force the reader to click through
to a hundred different pages to read all of the content, like so many other
sites do. Good job.

------
patrickfl
Wow amazing post, did not have a chance to read yet but this is definitely
"print worthy" material. What I mean by that is when I run across really good
posts, I print them so I can read on paper outside etc.

Anyway, I did a skim and found this excerpt:

"You should write about information."

And can really relate to that. I've been blogging for about 7 years now,
mostly failing but the last year I've had a few big "hits" even one here on
HN.

Almost every one of my blogging successes were data driven. What I mean by
success is they went viral on their own without any artificial boosting other
than basic sharing with my followers.

~~~
TheLogothete
If you paraphrase that to "You should write about insight" I would more
readily agree. Data needs to be digested and that requires varying degrees of
effort. If you give away knowledge, people will take notice.

------
gk1
This is a good overview and closely matches what I've been telling (and
putting in place for) my clients.

It does lean a bit too much to the data side, which isn't surprising since
that's what _they_ know and understand well. However, don't take that to mean
that every blog post has to be about data and must contain some kind of chart.

Anecdotal stories, how-to's, and personal realizations can all make for very
interesting and successful articles.

------
pidg
Some interesting stuff, although confusing how it keeps conflating PR and
content marketing. They're very much not the same thing.

There seem to be swathes of this article that are about online PR and getting
coverage from tech journalists, rather than actually doing content marketing.

Anyone looking for real content marketing advice should check out resources
like Moz and the (excellent) Content Marketing Institute blog.

~~~
morley
"Marketing" includes all aspects of the price, promotion, product, and
placement of a company's offerings. PR is the "promotion" slice of that mix.
They aren't two independent. In fact, picking stories without considering the
audience (which includes journalists who would cover it) seems like bad
content marketing.

~~~
pidg
I agree journalists are a potential audience for materials produced by
marketing, but that's not the same thing as PR.

If you ever want a free firework display, tell any PR professional that their
role is a subset of marketing... don't forget to stand well back when you
light that particular touchpaper though!

------
kevindeasis
Very insightful, because of this article it's easier to connect the dots for a
content marketing newb like me.

