Scale what sticks to as many places as possible
Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2025 6:32 am
Content, especially in the B2B space, should help readers solve a problem, and any advice should be specific and actionable "how to". Useful content is the most important indicator of quality.
Here are some rules of thumb that I use on our team to ensure that each section is useful and meaningful:
Include links to resources, tools, or platforms that will help the reader do what you're telling them to do (ideally industry-specific, and try to include resources you've tested).
Include a sample or template of what you are telling the reader.
Include examples or case studies of other organizations that have successfully accomplished what you are telling the reader.
Include statistics/research to support the importance of doing what you recommend.
Include your own experiences and lessons learned.
DON'T MONETIZE UNTIL LATER
The easiest way to get caught up in short-term thinking tunisia phone number list and make content mistakes that will hurt you in the long run is to start monetizing too early.
Even after five years, we still don't see direct monetization of content as a priority.
Aside from some links to relevant software directory pages (like the one I'm including right now so you can check out some content marketing software ) and an affiliate link here or there, we've found the main benefit of content for our business is indirect .
SEO, brand building, visibility to new clients, and relationships with industry experts and influencers indirectly bring in a lot more money for a business than the few hundred thousand a month we could make by filling a blog with ads , paid products, or thinly veiled flyers.
And by not being driven by direct monetization, we can remain objective and long-term, which improves the overall quality of our content.
But we still don't always get it right, which brings us to the next important lesson we've learned.
Lesson 4: Test Lots of Different Things
Ninety percent of your content will be wasted.
And this is a conservative estimate.
If you're familiar with the Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule), you know that, overall, 80% of your results come from only 20% of your efforts.
In content marketing, this ratio becomes even more extreme.
We mirror the vast majority of content organizations, where 1 to 10% of our content generates 80 to 90% of our results.
Results for Pareto Traffic of Platforms Content
Our successful content distribution
The truth is, you really don't know in advance which content will be a runaway success and which will disappear without a trace.
But there are things you can do to increase your hitting percentage.
Here's how we deal with hyper-paretonic content:
Try a lot of things to see what sticks.
TRY A LOT OF THINGS
Since you don't know in advance what content will work best for your audience, you should aim for a relatively high volume of posts. We do this once a week for each blog category, or about two to three articles per author per week.
This allows you to try out a variety of different types of content and topics with your audience to see what really resonates.
This is where you can get far beyond market and competitor research; to really know how your content will perform, you need to publish it - small differences in audience, channel, and even how Google crawls your domain can impact content performance in ways you can't predict.
So, content marketing is an organic process of discovery, exploration, and experimentation. There is no mathematical formula for successful content in your niche; you have to feel what works.
If you follow an overly regimented process, researching, planning, and writing out every little detail, and only publishing when your formula says it's perfect, you'll paradoxically reduce your chances of discovering the next "hit" because you'll be publishing less content. (The caveat, of course, is that content quality standards still need to apply.)
Here are some rules of thumb that I use on our team to ensure that each section is useful and meaningful:
Include links to resources, tools, or platforms that will help the reader do what you're telling them to do (ideally industry-specific, and try to include resources you've tested).
Include a sample or template of what you are telling the reader.
Include examples or case studies of other organizations that have successfully accomplished what you are telling the reader.
Include statistics/research to support the importance of doing what you recommend.
Include your own experiences and lessons learned.
DON'T MONETIZE UNTIL LATER
The easiest way to get caught up in short-term thinking tunisia phone number list and make content mistakes that will hurt you in the long run is to start monetizing too early.
Even after five years, we still don't see direct monetization of content as a priority.
Aside from some links to relevant software directory pages (like the one I'm including right now so you can check out some content marketing software ) and an affiliate link here or there, we've found the main benefit of content for our business is indirect .
SEO, brand building, visibility to new clients, and relationships with industry experts and influencers indirectly bring in a lot more money for a business than the few hundred thousand a month we could make by filling a blog with ads , paid products, or thinly veiled flyers.
And by not being driven by direct monetization, we can remain objective and long-term, which improves the overall quality of our content.
But we still don't always get it right, which brings us to the next important lesson we've learned.
Lesson 4: Test Lots of Different Things
Ninety percent of your content will be wasted.
And this is a conservative estimate.
If you're familiar with the Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule), you know that, overall, 80% of your results come from only 20% of your efforts.
In content marketing, this ratio becomes even more extreme.
We mirror the vast majority of content organizations, where 1 to 10% of our content generates 80 to 90% of our results.
Results for Pareto Traffic of Platforms Content
Our successful content distribution
The truth is, you really don't know in advance which content will be a runaway success and which will disappear without a trace.
But there are things you can do to increase your hitting percentage.
Here's how we deal with hyper-paretonic content:
Try a lot of things to see what sticks.
TRY A LOT OF THINGS
Since you don't know in advance what content will work best for your audience, you should aim for a relatively high volume of posts. We do this once a week for each blog category, or about two to three articles per author per week.
This allows you to try out a variety of different types of content and topics with your audience to see what really resonates.
This is where you can get far beyond market and competitor research; to really know how your content will perform, you need to publish it - small differences in audience, channel, and even how Google crawls your domain can impact content performance in ways you can't predict.
So, content marketing is an organic process of discovery, exploration, and experimentation. There is no mathematical formula for successful content in your niche; you have to feel what works.
If you follow an overly regimented process, researching, planning, and writing out every little detail, and only publishing when your formula says it's perfect, you'll paradoxically reduce your chances of discovering the next "hit" because you'll be publishing less content. (The caveat, of course, is that content quality standards still need to apply.)