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How do startups get their content marketing to work?

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

#81

Post by QuantumGood »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #5
paulcole wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very possible to outrank them but you’re not going to like the process. It’s very simple: write A LOT and cover A LOT of keyword variations. Over the course of about 3 years, I wrote around 500 blog posts about Amazon and specifically its 3rd-party marketplace. I wrote for a small startup making software in that space. This is a heavily covered topic by the mainstream media. MANY of my posts were shit that never…

We have published nearly 2,000 articles and Have ft journalists and a half dozen expert freelancers. We’ve done all the SEO optimization and are usually responsible for coining new terms and trends. As I mentioned the industry sees us as THE go to news source but Google doesn’t.

Are you saying that Forbes shows up significantly higher in search results for highly specific topic searches that you should rank higher in, or for more general searches, or something else?

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

#82

Post by tnolet »

capkutay wrote: post #80
tnolet wrote: post #30

From experience, it's f king hard. But common sense does apply. I'm 100% in on content marketing for my business and after roughly 2 years of dabbling, experimenting and honing my skills I think I sort of get it. For anyone starting out, all the common advice is true: 1. Create valuable, original content. This can be VERY specific to a VERY specific niche. People LOVE reading about how the sausage is made. 2. Go wher…

This might be a stupid simple question, but where do you post your blogs once they're live? just share on linkedin or other social media? HN is obviously one destination but its a tough place to get large visibility.

I have a list, but this is somewhat optimised for technical people

hackernews indiehackers twitter reddit linkedin stackshare

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

#83

Post by revvx »

capkutay wrote: post #79
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…

This might be a stupid simple question, but where do you post your blogs once they're live? just share on linkedin or other social media? HN is obviously one destination but its a tough place to get large visibility.

I don't really have a company but I've been in the industry for 5 years, my advice isn't much personal experience as it is insider knowledge. Hope it's ok.

The answer: it really depends on your audience and your goal with the blog post.

- 1. If you just want people to find you on Google with certain keywords, you really don't have to post it anywhere. This is very common for non-technical audiences, and they will mostly find it by themselves. Tell them in the end of the blogpost to follow you on social media and add an option to get their e-mail, if this is the kind of audience that does it.

- 2. If it's something that might interest to your current followers and further engage them (such as long form content), post on your own social media accounts and send to your newsletter subscribers. Avoid posting the things from #1 on social media unless it is interesting to your followers, because people will get fatigued.

- 3. If it's really high-quality content that will bring brand awareness, then post on aggregators. Hackers News and Reddit doesn't work for traditional marketing, keep that in mind. Examples: don't use marketing language ("by the way, did you know we make..."), never push readers to follow you on social media or subscribe to the newsletter (icons and a form at the end are more than enough) and don't even talk about your product unless it's absolutely necessary. People are smart enough to find about it by themselves.

- 4. Technical tutorials and wiki-like content, like Digital Ocean and Cloudflare do, work great for technical audiences. You only have to post the REALLY good ones into HN. People will find out about the others by looking into your blog sidebar, or archives, or by searching Google. There are aggregators and subreddits that allow other kinds of tutorials.

- 5. Try making tutorials and "behind-the-scenes" content for things related to features you release. Example: I just noticed that your company released a Google Cloud DB Migration service. Try to find out what kind of tutorial people need related to Google Cloud and put make a blog post. Then post them on aggregators related to Google Cloud. Make them easy to find via Google. Make specific mailing lists related to Google Cloud. Oh, and since your company is working with multiple cloud providers, comparison posts work wonders too ;)

A tip: take a cue from sociology/psychology and forget about your "target audience" for a moment. Instead, focus on two or three very specific "personas" that make sense for you business. Imagine a person and set a gender, an age, job, location, salary, everything. This will inform you where you need to post, how often, the language you have to use, sometimes even which platform you have to use.

TL;DR: Know your audience.

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

#84

Post by rchaud »

tyingq wrote: post #22

I feel like they are dismissing the value of backlinks too much. Google is better now at spotting unnatural ones. But (real) backlinks seem to still overcome everything else. They work better with good content, titles, etc, on the page. But those other things don't work at all without links.

Who even does backlinking anymore? If you link to an article on social media (where people are most likely to share), Google doesn't count it as strongly as an organic backlink that appears on a website.

Back in the day, people would create infographics and request other sites to embed it with a backlink. That type of link building strategy is old hat now, and feels skeevy to do if you're a funded startup.

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

#85

Post by NegativeLatency »

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!

I switched on my phone only and it’s been a much better experience.

No AMP either.

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

#86

Post by tyingq »

rchaud wrote: post #84
tyingq wrote: post #22

I feel like they are dismissing the value of backlinks too much. Google is better now at spotting unnatural ones. But (real) backlinks seem to still overcome everything else. They work better with good content, titles, etc, on the page. But those other things don't work at all without links.

Who even does backlinking anymore? If you link to an article on social media (where people are most likely to share), Google doesn't count it as strongly as an organic backlink that appears on a website. Back in the day, people would create infographics and request other sites to embed it with a backlink. That type of link building strategy is old hat now, and feels skeevy to do if you're a funded startup.

"Who even does backlinking anymore?"

Those "organic backlinks" aren't all so organic. There's a lot of grey between outright buying/begging a link and just hoping some links appear solely because you wrote such great content.

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