Hacker News Reader

Comment by paxtonab | Hacker News Reader

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...

View on HN

>>> 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 :)

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.

>>> 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.

Do you think there's a difference between what's described here and "performance" and those of us who are just doing blogs?

I feel that I'm marketing awareness that I exist and am in some way at least professionally interested in my work. But I don't generate any revenue from it. I don't make professional contacts (people rarely contact me saying they read an article of mine).

But I do want more exposure, because why not?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com