Some of the most outstanding, successful content you see by fast-growing tech companies came from a tiny content team and a lean, focused content production. These teams know that superficial content doesn't cut through the noise, so they made the deliberate effort to focus on impact and quality over sheer quantity.
In this session, we'll unpack those successful pieces of content to see what makes them unique and a valuable investment. After that, you'll get hands-on tips, processes, templates, and tools to implement their approach in your content marketing efforts.
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Hi, so I think this is my graduation speech, if I'm graduating. Is that what's happening? Love it. So thank you so much for being here, I'm very honored after all those years sitting where you are. I just wanted to say that Brian at some point in the intro opening talk said that he was afraid that Turing was not going to happen and that there's not going to be Turing and that would be very sad.
I cannot imagine a world without it. So I am so happy we get to hang out and spend time together. I'm gonna make a couple of assumptions on why you're here. I'm gonna say a little bit about what I do in context of this.
But the first one is, you might be creating so much content because you've been told that that's what you need to do, and you haven't really seen much results from it, it did nothing for you or very little, then maybe you worked long and **** ** fewer pieces of content and they actually did something.
They created results, but you don't really know how to scale that and replicate that with your current team or your current budget, and then you haven't done much content at all, but you have mastered your cold outreach, your sales process, and you want something in place that will scale that and bring that new leads and give sales people something to work with.
So, basically you want to publish content intentionally. You want to make sure you're not burning money and energy and time, creating things that just don't create results. And when I say create results, I don't mean just fluff, I mean demand generation, leads, sales, money, all the good stuff.
And so, I've been on the execution side as a writer for teams and Hotjar and HubSpot as Brian said, Shopify. Like it's been very fun to work with a very lean content operation in each of those, and it's like one to five people every time that's in the team.
And so, I wanna walk you through what makes that content successful. So, that's like the first half of what we'll cover. And then the second half, I'll share tips and tools and processes that help you make that kind of content. I'm out of breath, so forgive me.
Okay, so first part, that's like the first half. What is it that successful companies do with content? Number one, this is so big and so important and I'm so happy Ed just mentioned it in the previous talk. They deeply know their customers, so they don't speak to everyone, instead they know the exact pain points and triggers and goals that people want to achieve as their customers or potential customers.
And this is how that looks like in content. So we have Convertkit, they're an email marketing tool, but they're also not for everyone, they're not selling to everyone. They're for creators meaning podcasters, newsletter creators, authors, musicians, things like that. They also have options to sell paid newsletters and digital products.
In fact, they call themselves the creator marketing platform, is kind of like a new term I guess in the area. And then instead of generic email content on email marketing statistics and benchmarks and things that could really apply to everyone, they publish inspiration focused content like here you can see they have creators stories, creator sessions and also docu series about creators.
So this is very different than what you would typically see from an email marketing tool. Then there are deep dives, how to guides on various marketing approaches, these are super deep, they're like ten thousand words plus because they have different sections and things they're built out of.
And then they have educational blog posts that focus on specific parts of those topics. And so, I can tell you, there are so many companies right now especially with creator economy that do this stuff, like they do they sell to creators and or they sell email marketing products, but no one does this.
This is pretty new, this is the combo that makes ConvertKit unique, they stand out and that's why creators do choose them. Then we have Teamwork, who are a project management platform but not for everyone, not for everything. And so they specifically focus on client work meaning agencies.
So if you're not an agency, you'll probably want to skip this. It's on their homepage, it's on their features and pricing, so they call out specific benefits and options for agencies. And then there's their content, like they talk about things that are, I don't know if you can like read titles, but it's you can see that there's a pattern.
They speak about what agencies serving clients need in order to manage projects well. And they're not speaking to most professionals, they're just speaking to that. Then we have FreeAgent, I love you FreeAgent, I know you're in the room. They're an accounting software for small businesses and you don't really need to go far to realize it, I mean it says on the home page they're also literally called FreeAgent, and so their blog is where it's really at because they have topics on like self assessment tax and
small business profitability, overdue invoices, managing clients, things like that. And so if you were like an accountant in a fortune one hundred, you will pretty much move along, like you will not be reading this. But if you're a small business owner, this is where you stay.
So in essence, content that stands out is not one that tries to speak to everyone and everything in hopes to just like catch everything, like throw spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks. It doesn't want to push people into a funnel that they don't want.
It's content that resonates, so it tackles a challenge and a pain point and a question that's been stopping a target customer to reach their goal. And so I like to think that instead of how can we hit our goals as a company, so traffic and conversions and revenue, these companies ask, how can we help our target customers hit their goals in their job, and therefore that's going to help us grow our business and hit our own goals.
Second one is they make their content uncopyable. This is a word I did not make it up, I googled it. Just so you know, just so it's clear. So there are certain elements in content that make it really unique and impossible to copy, which sounds weird but it's possible.
And I promise once you start noticing these when I call them out, you will see them everywhere, you won't be able to unsee them, and you'll see content in that different way. So first is insights unique to your company. So this will be things like assets, successes, expertise that your company has accumulated over time.
If you have customers or employees and or partners, you have this, you just maybe haven't noticed it. So it's like customer success stories, partner contributions, in house experts, product capabilities, things like that. And so we have Shopify who features their customers and partners in educational content.
They have a process around getting this into the content. And so what better way to show your stuff than to let your customers give you quotes on it and tell you what happened and how they did something and shine through your content. Then we have Remote.
So Remote is a company that offers remote work solutions. They're a remote first company, it's deeply in their culture, it's deeply in their product, it's what they do, and they want that culture part of their product. And so they have quotes from their own in house experts, but they also tell you how they do things at remote.
It's very unique to them, can't really just take, if you're like their competitor, you can't just take it and you know do the same thing. And then there's Ahrefs who uses their products like screenshots and guides and things like that in tutorials and educational articles, and please just take note if you ever read any of their articles, just how they don't tip toe around it, they are very unapologetic.
You won't see them say, Oh sorry, we don't want to be pushy, or you know, we don't want to be mean, but this is really good. They actually just show you how useful it is, they don't shy away from it. I have to drink water.
Second one is contributions from external experts. Now you could argue that this part is copyable because another company can totally interview the same experts that you do on the topic that you did, but this is hard work, easy to skip, so people will skip it and building a wide network of experts you can regularly tap into will set you apart, promise.
You can like tell your boss send them to me. It will also help you approach topics like a journalist and it will add credibility to everything you do because not just you and your echo chamber, it's other people talking about the stuff that is important to your customers.
And great examples are referral candy, you will regularly see five or more people contributing and this is from people who belong to their target audience. So this is like from e commerce businesses. And then there's Octane AI who will often feature like seven or more experts especially on like new all of the gray things are contributions as you can see them.
They will offer do this with like super new topics which is what they often write about, this is about NFTs. And then there is a unique take on a big industry concept. So this can get a little bit spicy because there will be people who disagree with you, but as long as you know what you stand for, why you stand for it, how it fits into your product and what you do, you'll be good.
So this is Hotjar, Hotjar does this with the topic of best practices. So basically they believe that you shouldn't pick up a best practice someone else shared and just blindly apply it to your business, because a best practice is by definition something that worked for someone else in the past, not in your context, not for your customers, and so they have a whole article just talking about that.
Then they also mention it at various other posts and also in a case study which is the one on the right. And finally, custom branded graphics, that's the fourth part of the uncopyable thing. So, we have things like definitions, quotes, explanation, examples, templates, whatever you have created you can turn it into a graphic to make it consumable in some new way for people to screenshot it, share it, print it out, give it to their team, whatever you can think of.
And it adds extra value. So we have CodeSchedule that does this regularly with almost every blog post, which has like a color palette for it and then they add these like stronger points with graphics. Then we have Litmus, this is a great example because they talk about like email warm up for IPs and they give you like a decision tree to show you whether you need to be doing this or not.
So it's not even they're trying to push you into a piece of content that they don't know what you need. This is a quote from Gail Marie, she's a director of content at Animals, which is a content agency, and she says that content benefits from a thesis.
Meaning that even if you choose a topic like twenty CRM tool roundup, it shouldn't be random. So it can be an exhaustive list, list of suggestions by experts, your opinionated list based on your experience, things like that. And so when you look at this through the lens of these elements that make content unique, it's easier to come up with your thesis for content.
Is it going to be like super unique with graphics? Is it going to bring something new to the table? Is it going to be your personal opinionated experience? Things like that. Alright, and they treat each piece of content like an investment. So instead of a one off expense, they make sure that this is something that's going to last them a long time and that it's a worthy investment of time and money and energy of course.
So, instead of considering their work done when they press publish, they know that this is only when the long term work is starting and it's just the initial effort actually that's been done. So one off effort is one off result of course, and this is what it might look like, obviously this is very like generic and taken out of context, but you might get like initial peak from social media, email promotion, things like that, but with time when you stop doing that, it will die down slowly.
And yes, it could pick search ranking and spike at some point later, but then algorithm can change, reader needs change, other content gets published, and it gets pushed down. And so it eventually drops unless you go back to it and do something with it.
And so, as you do that more, that process repeats itself. And it's not sustainable, know, it's exhausting. It can burn out your team, it can feel really demotivating, demoralizing to go through that. And I've seen that happen with many teams, and so there are two ways to keep a piece of content from doing that and you know, destroying your moral.
And so promoting it in the long run and repurposing it. So sharing it in like, you know there are so many better ways to just share it once as a link on Twitter or LinkedIn, and I have found the master of this approach.
It's not software as a service or anything like that, but it's a wonderful crossover of a media company and motor sports. Any Formula one fans in the room? Yes, I have a few. So the gist is, for those who don't know, so races happen on a Sunday, it's like twenty to twenty three or something times a year.
There is a build up on Friday and Saturday, but it all ends on a Sunday. Like Sunday afternoon, two hours go by, the race is over. So if this was the only thing that F1 shared, the traction would really just dip, you know, peak and dip within those forty eight hours of the weekend.
But once the race is finished on a Sunday afternoon, the two hour replay, so no new content, no nothing, so the two hour replay is then turned into all of this, and this is just a limited selection. So, this is like different lengths, different formats, some of this is for paid subscribers, some of this goes to YouTube for free.
Then we have them cut into shorter snippets, go on Twitter and then on Instagram. I haven't counted, but I think there is fifty plus, probably close to a hundred pieces of content altogether that happened just from that one race with no new content having to be built around it.
And so this gains millions of views, every one of these Instagram posts is like one point something million views, and there's like dozens of them. And so that's pretty smart, But this obviously, you're not F1, you don't have that budget, and so you know the scale and the resources of F1 are pretty specific, so how can you apply this and how do tech companies apply this?
There's Shopify again, this is a blog post with books recommended for e commerce leaders by e commerce leaders and they have turned it into a Instagram carousel post where they tagged on each of the slides, they tagged a person who recommended it and then also the author and so this kept being shared on stories and you know on people's Instagrams and things like that.
Then we have Buffer, they turned a library of blog posts into a twenty five day email course, no new content, they only recorded a couple of videos for some of the emails, and then this brought like eighteen thousand plus new sign ups. Then we have Moz and Webber Fridays, very well known.
They turned it into a blog post and also graphics because it just makes it so much more consumable, easy to share, easy to find highlights and things like that. And then we have a fun example with Semrush who runs a Twitter chat, I think weekly or biweekly, and then they turn responses into these custom graphics, which means they basically take the responses out of the Twitter void and make them their own, and so they can keep sharing it and do other things with them.
And then the second way to treat your content like investment is regularly updating it. And so, it means like coming back to articles that were accurate and relevant and performed well early on, but then after a year or more has gone by, you know, some points need updating, needs of your readers have shifted, and there are plenty of studies that show that this really really pays off often and very often more than creating new content.
This is a case study from Single Grain, they had a piece of content that had about one hundred organic visits, went up to three thousand within six months of updating, kept going up from there. Then there's CXL who updated plenty of blog posts, they had a whole project around it, I was part of a section of it, and each of them brought an average of additional fifteen hundred users in the weeks following the update.
And so they have a whole library of blog posts, this was a very very worthy investment. So which articles should you update if you choose to do this? So those that have performed at some point but started going down, those with longer time since you published them or updated them, and those with a high risk of being outdated, meaning they reference something that is likely to change like an older case study or something like that.
And what to pay attention to, points you're making, is there something to add or remove, old links, broken links, examples that have happened since, new content you've published since you can link to from inside of it, and makes just everything smooth for your audience.
So, what can you do? So, we've gone through like twenty something examples, I don't know, and that was the example. So, what can you take from that and turn into action? I'll share some tips, tools and processes also. I share a link at the end which will have links to everything I mentioned, also like extra reading and following and communities and things like that.
So first is create a buyer persona to guide all your content efforts and everything you do with content should be based on this. We've heard jobs to be done yesterday, also customer experience and success, and today also Ed talking about focusing on what the real person wants and so this is where I tell you to do that.
So, if you only take one thing, this is so important, if you only take one thing from this section, make it this, do not, please do not make it age, sex or marital status. It doesn't matter because you know who has the identical demographics, like identical.
These two people. Okay? They are both seventy two, they are men, they are married, divorced and remarried, they have children and grandchildren. I'm one hundred percent sure you would not be selling to them as if they were like the same audience, I guess.
And one is literal royalty, right? And then the other one has been like touring the world as a heavy metal musician. Differences are very obvious and so instead focus on your customers' roles, responsibilities, who do they trust, what do they read and listen to, what's bothering them in life, in work, in like all of the areas that you care about, and what are their goals and what's stopping them.
And so let's flip that example of the two seventy two year old men. So this is superhuman, it's a fast email experience, you want to use this if you deal with a lot of emails quickly and efficiently, and this is me, I'm their customer, I'm thirty year old, I'm a woman, I'm a writer, and I also own a small business.
And I did some research on Twitter and found that also these people use superhuman, these are obviously like hidden identities, but these are real, like there are men and women, they're different ages, different jobs, they do like project management, they're law firm partners, there's like everything going on.
And so our demographics are different, our job titles are different, but we have similar needs and the nature of our job makes that happen. And so we want a fast email experience, one that is supported by shortcuts and automation and beautiful design and great search.
And so email and connections are a big part of our job and so we naturally belong to what superhuman thinks is a ideal audience, ideal customer. And so instead of relying on demographics, my suggestion is to interview and survey your customers. So why did they choose you?
Why didn't they choose your competitor? Or why did they move between the two of you? Was there something they were struggling with? What were they insecure about? Who did they trust? What podcasts, YouTube channels? What are their goals? What's standing in their way?
Things like that. And Ed also mentioned a great way to listen to your customer recordings and things like that, so I suggest reviewing that talk as well. Second is to divide all content efforts into one of three categories and give it one job.
So if you're asking, can a piece, like one single piece of content you know rank in search, get you sales, get you leads, get you attention, get you like everything, the answer is no. Because it is way too much to ask of a piece of content, because it's diluting, it's what it could do because you would add all of these different things trying to make it happen.
It just wouldn't work. So you would get mediocre results at best. And so instead I recommend this approach, this is by Ryan Law, he's a VP of content at Animals, And basically you have these three jobs, so search optimize, thought leadership and sales enablement.
And the difference is search optimize is something you do to rank for an important keyword, answer an important question, this compounds traffic and generates leads. However, there's thought leadership where you get to share your guiding principles, messaging, and so your unique take on the industry.
And so this is way more interesting, gets more links, it kind of codifies your messaging, and it also grows your audience because people want that. Then sales enablement, so case studies, customer success stories, product comparisons, this sits at the end of your sales process, so used by our sales team, email sequences, people close to buying who have questions, and so you need these three different things rather than one doing all three of them.
You will track the right metrics, get the right results, create content that supports your goals, and then when your goals shift, you will also be able to shift which of those three you are focusing on. Choose your execution mode. So this is basically how you will do your day to day stuff.
So at this point you might feel, I need so many people internally, how will I make this happen if I don't have a fifteen, twenty, fifty people team inside? And if it feels like a lot of work, that's because it is, like it really is.
And I've seen kind of all ranges of content go through this, and it's a lot of work because you need people who know what they're doing. And so, it's not about a large internal team, but just about working smart. I know it's a horrible thing to say because like that's old, work smart not hard, all that.
But anyway, I will tell you about, you know, I'll tell you that I've built content, like really high performing content with companies with one, two or three people in a content team. Because it wasn't about the volume internally, it was about a lean operation with external help and with processes in place.
And so these are the seven roles, like this is very broad obviously you can tweak this, but you need to cover in your process. So you will have big picture stuff, then the day to day management and kind of fires that you need to handle, writing, editing, design, publishing and promotion.
And then obviously with updates you might go through these processes again. And there's three ways to do it, in house content roles, so your content lead, editor, writer, strategist, SEO, whoever it might be. You can have agencies, you can have freelancers which also could be editing, writing and design and things like that.
The best part is you don't have to settle for just one of them, you don't have to like pick a lane and just keep going until you know, you have to. You can mix and match as it suits your goals and budget and priorities, and you can add and reduce people, especially external ones as your needs change.
And so this is first example, so you can have like a content lead and SEO internally, just two people, and then have externally a freelance writer and a freelance designer. Then you could potentially have a content agency and an SEO agency outside, and then just a content lead and editor inside.
You could have, this is like a slightly bigger team, so a content lead, a couple of writers and a designer, still like four to five people, and then freelance writers, freelance editors and a virtual assistant. This is by the way closest to a set up I've worked with for a while.
And also you can have just one person, a content lead who works with an external content agency doing everything else. So it's really whatever the time you have, whatever money you have, it can kind of you can work out the balance that you need.
And if needs change, can update your setup. And if you need to refresh your content strategy because you rebranded, hire an agency for a quarter, get a freelance designer on board when you want to experiment with like a visual thing. You want to scale up something that has been really giving you results, you can hire more freelance writers.
And if you want more people inside because they want to be product specific with content, Zapier did this recently, you can expand your internal team of writers. So options really are endless. And my final section is setting up your process and toolkit. This could be like a whole presentation on its own, so grab me afterwards if you have any questions.
Basically you need a stack of tools, templates, processes that make it easy to build projects, assign tasks, it should match the quality you expect, all that kind of stuff. And obviously there's tools like CMS and Google Analytics, that's pretty table stakes, I'm not going tell you to have those, but I suggest some other things to consider and to implement.
So one is a content brief, this is my template, I will give you the link to it later. It's basically a central place to establish key parameters for a piece of content, so things like internal links you want to use, focus keyword, target audience, things like that.
It kind of avoids burying important details in email and Slack messages, And as I said, yeah, I'll share that with you. Then editorial guidelines, so you can have kind of a consistent way of formatting voice tone, streamline your messaging, things like that. You know, how do you capitalize titles, how do you spell and capitalize your product names, things like that.
This is an example from Mailchimp, there's a bunch available online, so publicly, so just go ahead and find them for inspiration. Then database of sources, as I mentioned interviewing super valuable for content. So, as you build your network, make this happen and then share it with your writers so that they can kind of tap into it as they need without you having to intervene, this is super useful.
Also a template I will share with you, and then project management, who's doing what, when are things due, know, what's considered done, is everything on track, do you need to tweak anything to get things back on track, And then you'll get this like bird's eye view of projects, see if anything needs shifting.
And this is like Asana Monday, ClickUp, they all have good solutions for this. SEO analysis, Ahrefs and SEMrush are the first two that I kind of use the most with clients. Research keywords, track content, efforts, things like that. It will give you context to your results rather than just seeing if something ranked or not or the traffic that it got, things like that.
And then finally, or not finally, second last, content optimization tools. I will just say I use ClearScope with a lot of my clients, the results are insane what we get when we use it for search optimized content specifically. And then audience research tools like SparkToro, so you can basically find out how your audience behaves online from a perspective of like podcasts and YouTube channels and things like that.
And I'll just make a note that don't go wild with tools, keep them lean, define what they're used for so that you don't have like one person using Ahrefs and the other one using SEMrush and things like that. So that's just like a tip at the end.
Have fifteen seconds to tell you that I'm very grateful for you being here and that's the link to grab all the examples and suggestions and things like that. If you want to keep chatting, I'm on Twitter and also around here. Thank you so much, I appreciate you.
