How do startups get their content marketing to work? • Hacker News Board

Re: How do startups get their content marketing to work?

#51

Post by revvx » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 3:19 AM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #36

revvx wrote: post #7

Some super-basic things I learned at a past job that might help newbies: 1. Use a subdirectory instead of a subdomain for your blog. That alone helped half of our customers get better ranking. 2. Keep editing older posts so they always stay up to date. Somehow Google picks this up, and people also bounce when they see outdated information. That was a quantum leap for certain blogs where we tested this approach. 3. Pi…

> Keep editing older posts so they always stay up to date. Sounds like a bit of a rat race compared to just writing more timeless articles, or just leaving dated topics for reference. While newness may be a great metric for Google I'm not so sure it creates the best incentives for building an Internet full of useful, quality content.

The metric isn't exactly "newness" but relevance.

Timeless or "evergreen" content doesn't have to be updated. It's alright to keep them as is.

But keeping obsolete content online is a pain in the ass for users, so they will increase your bounce rate. Either update them or show a big notice on the top with a link to a newer article. Google will hopefully pick them up and the internet wins.

Re: How do startups get their content marketing to work?

#52

Post by puranjay » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 3:34 AM UTC

endorphone wrote: post #23

sixhobbits wrote: post #8

You can keep trying to hack Google all you want, and you can definitely be successful for short periods of time if you invest enough time and money. But there's also the difficult but straight forward way out -- write content that people want to read. Digital Ocean, Cloudflare, and others have adopted this strategy with great success. Writing good quality content takes time, good copywriters, subject experts, editors…

Digital Ocean, Cloudflare, and others have adopted this strategy with great success This is a confirmation bias, however. There are a lot of orgs trying the same strategy to absolutely no success, great content that doesn't have the social proof rotting away in obscurity. Even among the ones who yield success, that tends to come and go. It's a very short path between "wow great content" and content that is cynically…

I run a content marketing agency. The problem you're talking about is, indeed, a massive one. But that usually happens when companies create content without thinking about its distribution.

While you certainly must create content that your audience wants to read, it is even more important that you have a clear plan for distributing it. If your content isn't supported by a strong SEO plan, and if you don't have a clear social media and PR strategy for it, you won't see results, no matter how good the content is.

Re: How do startups get their content marketing to work?

#53

Post by vonnik » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 4:25 AM UTC

revvx wrote: post #7

Some super-basic things I learned at a past job that might help newbies: 1. Use a subdirectory instead of a subdomain for your blog. That alone helped half of our customers get better ranking. 2. Keep editing older posts so they always stay up to date. Somehow Google picks this up, and people also bounce when they see outdated information. That was a quantum leap for certain blogs where we tested this approach. 3. Pi…

Can confirm: long posts that you update as new knowledge surfaces actually work well. Think of your site as a wiki.

Re: How do startups get their content marketing to work?

#54

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 5:33 AM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #52

endorphone wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital Ocean, Cloudflare, and others have adopted this strategy with great success This is a confirmation bias, however. There are a lot of orgs trying the same strategy to absolutely no success, great content that doesn't have the social proof rotting away in obscurity. Even among the ones who yield success, that tends to come and go. It's a very short path between "wow great content" and content that is cynically…

I run a content marketing agency. The problem you're talking about is, indeed, a massive one. But that usually happens when companies create content without thinking about its distribution. While you certainly must create content that your audience wants to read, it is even more important that you have a clear plan for distributing it. If your content isn't supported by a strong SEO plan, and if you don't have a clea…

[deleted]

Re: How do startups get their content marketing to work?

#55

Post by gregorygoc » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 5:38 AM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #52

endorphone wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital Ocean, Cloudflare, and others have adopted this strategy with great success This is a confirmation bias, however. There are a lot of orgs trying the same strategy to absolutely no success, great content that doesn't have the social proof rotting away in obscurity. Even among the ones who yield success, that tends to come and go. It's a very short path between "wow great content" and content that is cynically…

I run a content marketing agency. The problem you're talking about is, indeed, a massive one. But that usually happens when companies create content without thinking about its distribution. While you certainly must create content that your audience wants to read, it is even more important that you have a clear plan for distributing it. If your content isn't supported by a strong SEO plan, and if you don't have a clea…

Isn’t distribution of content is like just posting what you wrote on reddit or on HN nowadays?

Re: How do startups get their content marketing to work?

#56

Post by ColanR » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 5:51 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #32

NegativeLatency wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried duck duck go? In my experience it’s better for getting to Wikipedia for stuff like you describe

Years ago; didn't stick to it. I guess it's time to try it again, thanks for the reminder!

It's seemed to get a lot better in the past 6-12 months.

Re: How do startups get their content marketing to work?

#57

Post by manigandham » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 6:02 AM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #36

revvx wrote: post #7

Some super-basic things I learned at a past job that might help newbies: 1. Use a subdirectory instead of a subdomain for your blog. That alone helped half of our customers get better ranking. 2. Keep editing older posts so they always stay up to date. Somehow Google picks this up, and people also bounce when they see outdated information. That was a quantum leap for certain blogs where we tested this approach. 3. Pi…

> Keep editing older posts so they always stay up to date. Sounds like a bit of a rat race compared to just writing more timeless articles, or just leaving dated topics for reference. While newness may be a great metric for Google I'm not so sure it creates the best incentives for building an Internet full of useful, quality content.

Not everything can be "timeless". Plenty of content is about the state of X at time Y. Things change and if your article is good and getting a long-tail of visitors, it's in your best interests to keep it updated with changes, or at the very least add a note to where newer information can be found.

Re: How do startups get their content marketing to work?

#58

Post by metafunctor » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 6:05 AM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #52

endorphone wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital Ocean, Cloudflare, and others have adopted this strategy with great success This is a confirmation bias, however. There are a lot of orgs trying the same strategy to absolutely no success, great content that doesn't have the social proof rotting away in obscurity. Even among the ones who yield success, that tends to come and go. It's a very short path between "wow great content" and content that is cynically…

I run a content marketing agency. The problem you're talking about is, indeed, a massive one. But that usually happens when companies create content without thinking about its distribution. While you certainly must create content that your audience wants to read, it is even more important that you have a clear plan for distributing it. If your content isn't supported by a strong SEO plan, and if you don't have a clea…

Yep, don't forget to do the marketing for your marketing.

Re: How do startups get their content marketing to work?

#59

Post by manigandham » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 6:06 AM UTC

randomacct3847 wrote: post #41

FWIW the only reason I’ve heard about Lambda School is because people I follow either liked, retweeted, or mentioned Lambda School so many times that I could not have heard of it. I don’t know if there’s a name for it, but it’s basically “get your CEO and influential investors” to incessantly tweet about your company. Not sure if it’s considered pure content marketing but a mix of content + influencer marketing.

That's called "word of mouth", essentially people personally recommending something to other people because they like it. Social media has allowed for amplifying your reach to anyone who follows you but it's fundamentally the same thing.

"influencer" marketing is bullshit. The only real part of it is the same old celebrity/talent-agency business that has existed for a century.

Re: How do startups get their content marketing to work?

#60

Post by puranjay » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 6:51 AM UTC

gregorygoc wrote: post #55

puranjay wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run a content marketing agency. The problem you're talking about is, indeed, a massive one. But that usually happens when companies create content without thinking about its distribution. While you certainly must create content that your audience wants to read, it is even more important that you have a clear plan for distributing it. If your content isn't supported by a strong SEO plan, and if you don't have a clea…

Isn’t distribution of content is like just posting what you wrote on reddit or on HN nowadays?

Way more than that. It's a combination of SEO + PR + social media. So you'd have some content that other sites might be willing to publish or link to (say, in a weekly "best of" roundup). Some other content that would focus purely on keywords supported by a backlinking campaign to rank well in search engines. And some other content that would focus on topics that would resonate with, say, the HN crowd.