The Rise of the Content Marketing Moron | Hacker News Reader

The Rise of the Content Marketing Moron

finchsells.com

23 pointsslarvtrax9 comments

Despite all his whining about people hustling to spread their content, in the end he is doing the exact same thing. These people have existed forever, there's nothing new here. Just the pot calling the kettle black.

The difference is that most other grey-hat SEO is now ineffective and the only "scalable" SEO left to do is low-quality content marketing.

There was a podcast interviewing an SEO company on HN recently that was getting upvotes: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4412907

His whole recommendation was hiring cheaper content creators on fiverr or elance for articles/videos to build links.

I've been on the receiving end of emails from content marketers and I absolutely despise them. However, I'm currently in a situation where I need to promote my business and make sure it ranks highly in search results and I've seriously been considering doing some of what the OP is railing against.

Whenever I write a blog post or write a comment on HN, I always try to add something valuable to the discussion (I don't always succeed, but that's a discussion for a different day). This is why I'm not a promiscuous user of HN/reddit/what-have-you, and this is why my blog postings are highly infrequent. I take satisfaction in giving back to the Internet instead of banging out flamewar-inducing piles of words, and the kind of writing I want to do takes time. However, "growth hackers" tell me that I should be posting content often, that I should be compiling easy to consume top-10 lists, image macros and videos. I've even seen some tutorials on crafting linkbait headlines to generate more clicks. Some marketing advice out there actually encourages people to start flamewars on HN and troll people to create discussion and ensure that their story stays on the front-page for a longer period.

Faced with this situation, what is a guy like me to do? I don't have an advertizing budget of thousands of dollars per month. I can produce bullshit lists that grab eyeballs, but I can't do that without feeling slightly guilty. Plus, I feel it kind of ruins your "brand". (Note that it's not all bad. I have some great ideas for quality content I can post on my company's blog, some ideas for videos and pictures that are actually useful, etc.)

Does anyone have an opinion on this? How do you go from 5 to 500 users without generating megabytes of fluff? How do you get word out on the Internet about your startup without seeming like a complete sleazeball?

EDIT: fixed minor stylistic snafu.

I've had a lot of success with web games, you can read about it here: http://blog.method.ac/advice/traction.html

There is no guy customizing emails, it's just a SEO CRM where they have metadata about your blog and it automatically e-mails you on the week if you don't respond.

Just hit the spam button and move along.

I'm sure that's true. But some content marketers have followed in those same footsteps thinking it's the 'correct' way to do things! It's sad when a human being can't do a better job - or be more creative - than the copy and paste button.

I appreciated this, as I've heard the phrase "content marketing" but didn't quite grasp what it was, aside from another form of spam, of course (because, "marketing"). This is a good example of how opinionated writing can convey a more objective understanding of a subject; the "neutral" explanations of this spam technique that I'd encountered left me hazy about what it actually entailed.

No problem with people hustling to spread their content. It's how they do it that causes the irritation.

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