{"id":11399,"date":"2018-11-21T11:27:39","date_gmt":"2018-11-21T11:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/visakanv.com\/marketing\/?p=11399"},"modified":"2019-10-10T09:45:18","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T09:45:18","slug":"content-marketing-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/marketing\/content-marketing-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"5 years of content marketing experience"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The following is a transcript from a lunchtime talk I gave at Saleswhale.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"instagram-media\" data-instgrm-captioned data-instgrm-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BoipnS6BC7M\/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading\" data-instgrm-version=\"14\" style=\" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; min-width:326px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);\">\n<div style=\"padding:16px;\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BoipnS6BC7M\/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading\" style=\" background:#FFFFFF; line-height:0; padding:0 0; text-align:center; text-decoration:none; width:100%;\" target=\"_blank\"> <\/p>\n<div style=\" display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;\">\n<div style=\"background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;\">\n<div style=\" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"padding: 19% 0;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"display:block; height:50px; margin:0 auto 12px; width:50px;\"><svg width=\"50px\" height=\"50px\" viewBox=\"0 0 60 60\" version=\"1.1\" xmlns=\"https:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" xmlns:xlink=\"https:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\"><g stroke=\"none\" stroke-width=\"1\" fill=\"none\" fill-rule=\"evenodd\"><g transform=\"translate(-511.000000, -20.000000)\" fill=\"#000000\"><g><path d=\"M556.869,30.41 C554.814,30.41 553.148,32.076 553.148,34.131 C553.148,36.186 554.814,37.852 556.869,37.852 C558.924,37.852 560.59,36.186 560.59,34.131 C560.59,32.076 558.924,30.41 556.869,30.41 M541,60.657 C535.114,60.657 530.342,55.887 530.342,50 C530.342,44.114 535.114,39.342 541,39.342 C546.887,39.342 551.658,44.114 551.658,50 C551.658,55.887 546.887,60.657 541,60.657 M541,33.886 C532.1,33.886 524.886,41.1 524.886,50 C524.886,58.899 532.1,66.113 541,66.113 C549.9,66.113 557.115,58.899 557.115,50 C557.115,41.1 549.9,33.886 541,33.886 M565.378,62.101 C565.244,65.022 564.756,66.606 564.346,67.663 C563.803,69.06 563.154,70.057 562.106,71.106 C561.058,72.155 560.06,72.803 558.662,73.347 C557.607,73.757 556.021,74.244 553.102,74.378 C549.944,74.521 548.997,74.552 541,74.552 C533.003,74.552 532.056,74.521 528.898,74.378 C525.979,74.244 524.393,73.757 523.338,73.347 C521.94,72.803 520.942,72.155 519.894,71.106 C518.846,70.057 518.197,69.06 517.654,67.663 C517.244,66.606 516.755,65.022 516.623,62.101 C516.479,58.943 516.448,57.996 516.448,50 C516.448,42.003 516.479,41.056 516.623,37.899 C516.755,34.978 517.244,33.391 517.654,32.338 C518.197,30.938 518.846,29.942 519.894,28.894 C520.942,27.846 521.94,27.196 523.338,26.654 C524.393,26.244 525.979,25.756 528.898,25.623 C532.057,25.479 533.004,25.448 541,25.448 C548.997,25.448 549.943,25.479 553.102,25.623 C556.021,25.756 557.607,26.244 558.662,26.654 C560.06,27.196 561.058,27.846 562.106,28.894 C563.154,29.942 563.803,30.938 564.346,32.338 C564.756,33.391 565.244,34.978 565.378,37.899 C565.522,41.056 565.552,42.003 565.552,50 C565.552,57.996 565.522,58.943 565.378,62.101 M570.82,37.631 C570.674,34.438 570.167,32.258 569.425,30.349 C568.659,28.377 567.633,26.702 565.965,25.035 C564.297,23.368 562.623,22.342 560.652,21.575 C558.743,20.834 556.562,20.326 553.369,20.18 C550.169,20.033 549.148,20 541,20 C532.853,20 531.831,20.033 528.631,20.18 C525.438,20.326 523.257,20.834 521.349,21.575 C519.376,22.342 517.703,23.368 516.035,25.035 C514.368,26.702 513.342,28.377 512.574,30.349 C511.834,32.258 511.326,34.438 511.181,37.631 C511.035,40.831 511,41.851 511,50 C511,58.147 511.035,59.17 511.181,62.369 C511.326,65.562 511.834,67.743 512.574,69.651 C513.342,71.625 514.368,73.296 516.035,74.965 C517.703,76.634 519.376,77.658 521.349,78.425 C523.257,79.167 525.438,79.673 528.631,79.82 C531.831,79.965 532.853,80.001 541,80.001 C549.148,80.001 550.169,79.965 553.369,79.82 C556.562,79.673 558.743,79.167 560.652,78.425 C562.623,77.658 564.297,76.634 565.965,74.965 C567.633,73.296 568.659,71.625 569.425,69.651 C570.167,67.743 570.674,65.562 570.82,62.369 C570.966,59.17 571,58.147 571,50 C571,41.851 570.966,40.831 570.82,37.631\"><\/path><\/g><\/g><\/g><\/svg><\/div>\n<div style=\"padding-top: 8px;\">\n<div style=\" color:#3897f0; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;\">View this post on Instagram<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"padding: 12.5% 0;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;\">\n<div>\n<div style=\"background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-left: 8px;\">\n<div style=\" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg)\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-left: auto;\">\n<div style=\" width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);\"><\/div>\n<div style=\" background-color: #F4F4F4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);\"><\/div>\n<div style=\" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;\">\n<div style=\" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BoipnS6BC7M\/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading\" style=\" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;\" target=\"_blank\">A post shared by Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.instagram.com\/en_US\/embeds.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Saleswhale talk from Visakan, ReferralCandy<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Left 3mo ago<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><strong>How the RC business model works<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">I was functionally the first marketing hire. I was #6 when I joined. The first 5 were engineering, technical. Founder was talking\u2026 consensus was that you needed a blog. So he knew he wanted to run the experiment of having a blog. Found me through my blog, invited me.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">~100-ish users. When I joined, referral revenue was ~$2.6m. When I left, it was $100m.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">When I joined it was about 1000 blog hits a month, when I left we had crossed about 120,000<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Helped with hiring, recruiting<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><strong>What ya\u2019ll would be interested \u2013 how we grew, how we built our marketing team. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">It was a very trial and error process for us. When I joined, prior to me joining, they would have a few freelance bloggers writing posts on the blog, they themselves wrote a couple of posts, but they didn\u2019t really have the time to think too much about it. There were maybe 20-30 posts. We were also posting on forums, blog comments. We were also on Facebook and Twitter \u2013 we didn\u2019t think anybody was going to sign up through those channels<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">First year or so, mostly comments + forum posts + blogposts, trying to make sense of our market. There\u2019s this kind of concurrent process going on \u2013 you want some sort of marketing output every day, week \u2013 be shipping blogposts, be shipping stuff \u2013 on the other hand you also want to be improving your understanding of your customers, who they are, what they want, where they hang out<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Along the way we realise, oh, people don\u2019t just think \u201coh I want a referral program\u201d, they think in terms of their platform. When we\u2019re producing content \u2013 on our end it feels a bit stupid, it\u2019s almost like you\u2019re changing the titles \u2013 \u201chow to setup a referral program for Shopify\u201d \u2013 each gets more leads than a more general post that the average potential user doesn\u2019t care so much about, so we had to figure that along the way<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">We realise that you need to care about SEO \u2013 search traffic, what keywords you want to rank for, what\u2019s the search intent. Am I making sense so far?<\/p>\n<h3>How do ya\u2019ll plan what to write on a monthly basis?<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">Good question. Early on it was super unscientific. My first blogpost was like \u201chow sharing makes us smarter\u201d \u2013 there\u2019s this whole funnel approach to thinking about this sort of thing. Eg ReferralCandy is a referral program product. And there are people who want a referral program for themselves \u2013 they\u2019ve seen referral programs themselves in the wild, \u201cget a referral program\u201d is on their action item todo list. Those folks, we can get them quite easily just by having a good product, a good website.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Then there\u2019s this larger group of people who don\u2019t even know that they want a referral program \u2013 so we have to educate them. But nobody types into google \u201cteach me about referral programs\u201d \u2013 you\u2019re not going to get taught about a thing you don\u2019t know about. So you have to figure out what are things that people already care about that are kind of adjacent to what you care about \u2013 we try to figure out what the interest groups are, content topics are.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">We decided to frame it in terms of word of mouth. People who are interested in word of mouth elsewhere \u2013 we would do blogposts analysing other companies\u2019 marketing strategies. Commence stores \u2013 think of an commerce brand like bonobos \u2013 they make pants. So imagine you\u2019re another ecommerce brand \u2013 making shorts. And you recognise bonobos, and you want to learn from bonobos. And in that blogpost discussing bonobos, we also talk about referral programs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">If you\u2019re not convinced word of mouth is important, we\u2019ll convince you that word of mouth is important.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">examples of guerrilla marketing. Or how \u201cX book\u201d talks about marketing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">A thing I learned about a year in that I wish I learned earlier. It\u2019s easy to forget when you\u2019re a writer that readers have some set of things that they already care about \u2013 so instead of coming up with something from scratch that they might not don\u2019t care about, you have to go after than with something that they care about, and then lead them from there to what you care about. And the connection has to be genuine, you can\u2019t just be like, \u201ccelebrity -&gt; AI chatbot\u201d. And of course you\u2019ll lose people along the way. And off course there\u2019s a drop-off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">That post has authority in google\u2019s eyes -&gt; link to a blogpost about Starbucks\u2019s marketing strategy -&gt; word of mouth -&gt; referral program. So it\u2019s about figuring out all the roads that lead to what you\u2019re trying to sell.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Figuring that out was like the first 2.5 years of my career \u2013 and it\u2019s an ongoing thing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Initially we had about 3-4 in-house writers \u2013 eventually we found that once you\u2019ve articulated your marketing strategy very well, you don\u2019t really need a lot of in-house writers \u2013 when they left it didn\u2019t make sense to hire new in-house writers vs hiring engineers, product people, etc.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">So we had freelance writer -&gt; one in-house writer, more writers -&gt; smaller again -&gt; freelancers. But now you know what to tell the freelance writers what to write, very specific instructions that fit your branding. All these pieces are aligned with what people come to expect<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">Why would you rather work with freelance writers?<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">It\u2019s cheaper! There\u2019s a whole science\/art to this. The way to get the absolute \u2013 this is my belief, not everyone will agree \u2013 the way to get the highest bang for your buck \u2013 is to find people who are very early in their marketing careers. to provide value to your writers \u2013 a few of my writers have told me that I\u2019m their favourite editor. Which allows me to pay them a lot less also ah. The thing is I don\u2019t feel bad saying that. How it works is I have a budget, and my budget is not that big.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">And I could pay one professional $500, or I could pay multiple students $50, $75, and because I give them such precise instructions, and guide them through the process, they get to write something that punches above their weight, that is of a higher calibre \u2013 than they would\u2019ve been able to do on their own. And some of them are now charging other people $200-$500 per post. Which I feel very good about. Even if I had a bigger budget, I get satisfaction out of helping these newbies become more professional \u2013 then they can go on and do what I do at a new team. I think this maybe also applies to engineering \u2013 if you hire someone else to join the team, they\u2019ll have a new set of things that the highest priority.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">How do you frame your marketing strategy?<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">So everything I\u2019ve talked about so far is content<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">I was the first hire \u2013 after about 1.5-2 years in, when we started to get clarity knowing what we\u2019re doing, we hired a marketing director, Dave. Dave\u2019s job was a senior marketing role relative to mine, and he has experience running marketing for another company \u2013 and in there is figuring out attribution, ads, a more wholistic, big picture \u2013 partnerships with other companies, webinars. Figuring out what everyone should be doing\u2026 when it\u2019s one person, you have to do everything, but once you have more people, it makes sense to specialise \u2013 like a football team \u2013 defender, midfielder, etc. I didn\u2019t have to worry too much about the overall strategy \u2013 it\u2019s not that Dave decides what to do and I do it without thinking \u2013 we have conversations about what\u2019s going on, and I understand \u2013 I focused more on producing content \u2013 this is just to give context as to how the marketing team was structured, how it takes shape as it grows from one person to more person.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Even within content there is content strategy \u2013 there are few different ways to look at it. One is to maximise for traffic, one is traffic to lead conversation, one is signups. I think we were very agnostic \u2013 the end goal is revenue \u2013 we were agnostic as to how we do it. we do several things at the same time, one person working on long form, one person doing short, snackable content. We trial and error, have a sprint process and quarterly goals \u2013 \u201coh this months we must get X backlinks or we\u2019re dead\u201d \u2013 but it\u2019s useful to decide to focus on one thing at a time. Instead of each thing going up a little at a time \u2013 it\u2019s like experimenting. If everything goes up a little bit, you don\u2019t really learn anything because you don\u2019t really know what\u2019s going on. But if you focus on a different thing each month, and you find that something has signups increasing in correlation to it, then that\u2019s a sign that it\u2019s something you should look into, explore deeper.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">One month, let\u2019s comment on everything. One month, social media like crazy, one month blog hard. Ooh, blog response is doing interesting, let\u2019s do more of that. Search intent is hard. One month lets do lead cap experiments, one month lets email\u2026 but it\u2019s possible to overdo that too, some things don\u2019t reveal their value until many months down the road. On that front it depends on the team, it depends on the organisation, can go all the way up to the CEO \u2013 what s the Vision that the company. Yesterday I met a CEO and he was telling me that he \u2013 every month they have things that are urgent for the month \u2013 and every month you know that if you did a content + community + branding push, 12 months down the line, it\u2019ll pay off. I\u2019ve never been the CEO of a startup so I wouldn\u2019t know how \u2013 it\u2019s easy to say as a content person \u201cof course you should have more content\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s a conversation that I think the team should have about their values and their interests and their long term goals.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">How do you think about distribution?<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">We\u2019ve had a few different distribution strategies over the years \u2013 long ago we\u2019d go on twitter, look for something that\u2019s being shared in the marketing space &#8211; Adweek, etc \u2013 we\u2019d search the URL of some post \u2013 and those posts are breaking news type posts so it\u2019s quite short, and we\u2019d manually tweet people who post A and share \u201chey we have a more in depth Post B\u201d \u2013\u00a0but over time it seemed like twitter shares of that sort of content isn\u2019t as legit, there are more bots, less engagement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The thing about distribution is you work backwards. Before you even write it, who\u2019s going to read it? Who\u2019s going to share it? Who cares? You should never write anything without a bunch of people in it. And don\u2019t quote Branson or Bezos or other big shots because they\u2019re not going to retweet your stuff \u2013 quote like the VP of marketing experience of Airbnb \u2013 that guy will be happy to retweet \u2013 it\u2019s like ego-bait. I have to retweet this and share with all my friends. It\u2019s a win-win thing \u2013 if ya\u2019ll make a medium sized person who\u2019s saying the same thing that a famous person would say \u2013 and you celebrate them \u2013 it\u2019s also relationship building, you know. Each new piece of content that we work on, we try to find people we can quote in it, email them, tweet them, they\u2019ll be happy, they\u2019ll show it off to their audiences.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">If you can take a point of view on something that there\u2019s an existing community about \u2013 analysing crossfit, post on \/r\/crossfit and people can argue about it. We\u2019ve actually done a thing \u2013 I get my other colleagues and we have genuine disagreements about an article while we\u2019re writing it \u2013 and that\u2019s great because then you can have that disagreement in the comments \u2013 and it can be interesting<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">A thing I struggled about early on \u2013 I want to write about X, but also in my mind, maybe not X? There are imperfections, flaws, things can go wrong if you do Y, it can go wrong if you do this\u2026 and it feels that it weakens your argument, but it\u2019s actually all about how you frame it. I\u2019ve written things like I write a blogpost, then disagree with my own blogpost in the comments \u2013 and then people have an interesting conversation. You can criticise\u2026 academics do this too, right, this study is limited, need more data, etc. invite people to have a conversation<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Once you learn how to do this, it\u2019s very sad to look back all the content you spent 2-3 days writing about that nobody cared about<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">What are the KPIs that y\u2019all measure?<\/h3>\n<ul class=\"ul1\">\n<li class=\"li1\">Blog traffic month on month<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\">Leads from the signup forms on the blog \u2013 popups, inline boxes that collect emails<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\">We have some attribution \u2013 when someone signs up on the site, we can tell who goes to the blog and then subsequently signs up, so we track that and we want that to go up. Oh we have 100 posts and 20 posts are the things people visit before they signup, so we make more posts like that. I think my manager\u2019s KPIs were signup and revenue, and there\u2019s \u201caverage revenue per new retailer\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s up to ya\u2019ll what you want to measure\/track.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p1\">I personally care about intangible stuff \u2013 long-term goals like building relationships with other people in the marketing space \u2013 every year people do a roundup \u201cbest marketing content 2017\u201d \u2013 and it\u2019s nice to be featured. It may not give you customers or signups overnight, in the long run \u2013 as an individual is nice to make that your personal goal. I think it\u2019s good for the brand of the company, makes the company look better.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">We\u2019ve had things like engineers go to Ruby meet ups and they hear \u201cey you\u2019re from ReferralCandy! I read the ReferralCandy blog.\u201d And when I hear that at lunch it\u2019s like yeahhhhh! \u201cIf you can do more of that or get more signups, I\u2019d probably prefer you get more signups\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s so context dependent and everyone has slightly competing interests. I think I would have made the trade the other way. But of course working in a team means having a compromise where everyone is happy.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">What do ya\u2019ll expect of your content person?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">I think it\u2019s good to be precise about what your expectations, what you want. Sometimes people will say things like, the blog user experience at RC was never *great*. You wake up, go to work, it could be better. But it\u2019s always so easy to say what you would\u2019ve done on retrospect.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The thing is the average reader doesn\u2019t really care \u2013 and even if they do\u2026 there are bigger priorities? It\u2019s good to know \u2013 it\u2019s to know why you\u2019re prioritising what you\u2019re prioritising.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">How do you balance awareness stage article vs talking about your solution<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">We tried to alternate, to cycle through the types of options. At one point we\u2019d try to do 3 pieces a week, one for each stage of the funnel. At some point we realised that there was an opportunity to get a lot of content in the middle-of-the-funnel range for quite cheap. At some point it was a 1-2-1 split. But I don\u2019t think readers really care, if they\u2019re mostly coming through search? When you do something balanced, and one part is doing extra well, it makes sense to prioritise the part that\u2019s doing well. There\u2019s always some way you could bring in a word-of-mouth perspective on anything marketing-related.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Early on we tried to publish as much as we could \u2013 there was a period of time where we were publishing almost every day \u2013 the content wasn\u2019t great, but we wanted to take as many shots as we could to see what would happen. I wouldn\u2019t do that now, because I have a better idea of what I\u2019m trying to achieve. You take as many shots as you can,<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>but you want some amount of confidence that the shot will be on target. So you optimise for shots on target. And initially you don\u2019t even know what a shot on target is, you\u2019re shooting in the dark.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Content should have something to say \u2013 I have all these <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@visakanv\/minimum-viable-content-real-talk-about-content-marketing-and-the-four-mistakes-youll-make-29b3088168fe\">internalised heuristics about what minimum viable content<\/a> is \u2013 take person X from point A to point B, describe both points clearly. If you can do that then it\u2019s a viable blogpost that\u2019s potentially useful to people. I don\u2019t know if you can do one a day. Depends on the complexity \u2013 there may be something you can do \u2013 but you\u2019ll probably run out fast.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">It really depends on how confident you are that you know what you\u2019re talking. Imagine say\u2026 a very strong subject matter expert in some part of law, and they start a startup that solves some law-related problem \u2013 he can write very quickly, what to do when X happens, what to do when Y happens \u2013 all the work is already done in his head. Very often a very good place to find these insights is from your customer support people. If they\u2019re repeating something to your customers regularly, there\u2019s likely something that will make a good blogpost \u2013 CST can even share the blogpost with future customers. It has currency, it\u2019s being used\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">It\u2019s easy to forget that everyone on your team is also a reader. You can always write content that\u2019s useful for people on your team, and then they can use it, share it. The \u2018currency\u2019 of the content is very important, useful<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Whenever somebody tells me that they use X to teach other people how to do something \u2013 even if the net traffic is not that much, the conversion rate of that traffic in terms of how people feel about your brand, is very high. \u201cI read a blogpost about how to do X from the ReferralCandy blog, you\u2019re looking for a referral program? Maybe check them out\u201d. The thing that affects this variable s that your content has to solve a problem. I wish there was an easy answer but there isn\u2019t really one.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">How does the composition of the marketing team look like<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">At first was about 4-5 general purpose junior marketers and one director. As each team member left we replaced them with more specialists. An ad specialist, an email marketing specialist, a content marketing specialist \u2013 ET built out our email nurturing campaigns. We had a remote guy working on partnerships and webinars, one person doing nurturing, one person doing content. Then another guy joined doing content, then I left.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Nurturing and content have to interact a lot \u2013 she\u2019d ask me, I want to nurture about X Y Z, and I\u2019m like yes, there\u2019s A B C content that does that job. And if there isn\u2019t, that\u2019s often a sign that I should write something. People who talk to your customers have insights \u2013 free blogpost!<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">&gt; ratio about blogposts \u2013 do you have a split in mind<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">One way I think about it is \u2013 there should be content about every aspect of our product. Anything that anybody might slip up on, if CST says people signup and don\u2019t know how to choose incentives then there really needs to be content about choosing incentives. We tried referral guide, but nobody wants to sit down and read through everything. For referral programs there\u2019s about 30-40 posts maybe that\u2026 not everybody needs to read every single piece of content. We just want to make sure that anybody who wants to know anything to know about their product, that\u2019s keeping them from signing up, doing well, those hot button issues \u2013 you want to make sure you have good content that addresses all those issues.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">It\u2019s worth doubling down and updating on past content if it\u2019s doing well \u2013 think of the aeroplane thing<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">When we did marketing strategy posts, we saw that those posts were getting lots of traffic, it\u2019s good for morale, good for getting backlinks \u2013 we always have some hypotheses or ideas about what are we not doing that we should try, every month we try something, I\u2019d say the odds of something weird being useful is maybe 10-20%<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Very early on I was curious, what are all the referral programs out there? We have a list of our own clients, but what else is out there? I searched for it and there wasn\u2019t a list. In the past you\u2019d get Starbucks, Delta Airways, etc as separate search results. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.referralcandy.com\/blog\/47-referral-programs\/\">I published a very clunky, ugly list<\/a> \u2013 but now it\u2019s the #1 example if you search \u201creferral program example\u201d \u2013 it wasn\u2019t part of a strategy, it was just something that I thought should exist. I had enough time and space to do it. But there\u2019s no way I could\u2019ve done that in its current iteration off the cuff. The cool thing about online content is that you can update it. You can\u2019t do that with a print magazine. If something works you can build. If it doesn\u2019t work you can delete it or ignore it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">So you pick any ratio as you start, double down on what works and cut down on what doesn\u2019t work \u2013 and it\u2019s probably different for different industries, products<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">&gt; education \u2013 how did you vs CST worked on how to educate your customers on using RC in the best way possible, vs internal account managers<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">I take reference from them. I defer to them because their KPIs are to keep people from churning, help them be successful \u2013 and over time they get a better understanding of how to talk about them. Everything that CST discovers is super useful because that\u2019s how our customers think<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">&gt; internal tone of voice?<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">Every so often we would bring it up as an action item in our marketing meetings and chats, we\u2019d do slides, we should be talking like this? I think everyone just followed the existing style. We have loose guidelines \u2013 use numbers, use links, don\u2019t be boring, conversational tone, use contractions, first person POV \u2013 but it\u2019s not like we\u2019re married to it\u2026 with my FL writers I send them my existing posts and say \u201cwrite like this\u201d \u2013 header image, paragraphs, subheads. But we\u2019re not dogmatic about it<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">&gt; paid strategy?<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">I wasn\u2019t directly involved in Adwords, I cannot speak about it with authority \u2013 whatever I know about it secondhand from my marketing colleagues. I don\u2019t think it was super useful for us, I don\u2019t know, my confidence level is like 30%. I think the keywords that we would have liked to rank for \u2013 we already rank organically for the keywords that matter for people who\u2019ll signup. Sometimes we have competitors who buy \u201creferralcandy\u201d and it\u2019s actually not a bad thing for us, since the real competition is not our competitors but that most people don\u2019t even care about referral programs. Higher up the funnel, it\u2019s more expensive and the conversion rate is not so good<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">If you try it you\u2019ll see results \u2013 $X go in, Y signups come out \u2013 it\u2019s then hard not to keep doing it, because you can justify it. even now if I started my own company and am trying to rank for stuff I am not a fan of paid ads, but maybe I\u2019m being naive or something on this front. I guess you have to test it? Monthly signup rate of X, and then you put in your paid ad, test it and see how much your signups increase, then turn off and see how much it drops, but you can\u2019t read the minds of the people clicking you have to test it ah. Not very useful but better than me giving you a confident wrong answer<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">re: content and SEO \u2013 how long would you say is a good time period to see results from what you\u2019ve written<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">The beginning is the worst, you get nothing. By the second or third year, everything I\u2019m doing has an almost immediate impact. If I publish a post it\u2019s going to rank on Google for its particular keyword\/phrase. It depends on what kind of content you have, how in-depth it is. My rule of thumb is, you probably\u2026 the first 10-20 posts probably won\u2019t get that much traction. It\u2019s almost like you\u2019re a band playing with no audience and you need to feel good about it yourself when you look at it, share it manually, solicit criticism.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">There\u2019s a know-how to this. If I start a new blog, I will be quoting people, emailing people, but there will be some traction \u2013 but still, google doesn\u2019t trust me yet, stuff like that. I guess 20, I was going to say 100 because I used to shoot things out anyhow \u2013 it depends on your personality, your style, what you\u2019re good at, it maybe good to encourage that. You can\u2019t just throw\u2026 I think readers can tell if the content is forced. You have to try and make it natural.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">How long should you give yourself before you expect any results\u2026 I would say a year to be safe. If I started now maybe 3-6 months, realistically about 9 months. If you\u2019re diligent about it and do all the groundwork and distribute and email\u2026 2-3 months maybe? You learn as you go. If you could be doing that you wouldn\u2019t be asking the question.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">What kind of metrics would you say define a great blog? What should one aim towards after year<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">For any company, you would want to have company that\u2019s respected as industry standard. A lot of companies \u2013 intercom has posts about what intercom does, people will share content about their stuff. Buffer. Zapier. Product blogs \u2013 there\u2019s a slight difference between wanting to be the best blog and wanting to serve the product \u2013 there are probably companies that might even over-invest in the content efforts but the product is not that great, and eventually they\u2019re talking about general stuff but they can\u2019t even celebrate the product. You can spend 2-3 years making a great blog that everyone likes but if your product is not doing well, then your product blog will also kind of stagnate by extension.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">I think ideally the product blog should challenge and inspire the product team to be better. What to expect\u2026 you should have some things that you\u2019re personally proud of. It shouldn\u2019t just be traffic. Optimising for traffic can lead to not good traffic \u2013 but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.referralcandy.com\/blog\/starbucks-white-girls\/\">Starbucks white girls<\/a>\u2026 I\u2019m proud of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.referralcandy.com\/blog\/referral-program-incentives\/\">incentives post<\/a>. Writing a very good \u201chow to\u201d post is something to be proud of, because then that piece of content is now like a living document that supports with people, and you can share it now they feel helped, you have improved their day. Sounds fluffy but it has measurable impact. Do you track the shares, yeah \u2013 actually the thing I care most about is backlinks \u2013 ahrefs \u2013 who are the people who are linking to your content?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Super simple level how google works \u2013 page rank \u2013 who\u2019s linking to who \u2013 and one way to bootstrap \u2013 the measure of significance according to google is page rank, who is linking \u2013 a single backlink from <a href=\"http:\/\/gov.sg\"><span class=\"s1\">gov.sg<\/span><\/a> is worth more than 100 crappy backlinks from random sites. In a sense you can reduce the act of content marketing for a startup into a \u201cgame of backlinks\u201d \u2013 to get that you have to have stuff that is worth linking to, so it\u2019s kinda circular. You can almost celebrate when you get good links from good places. Wanted to go knocking door to door. A thing I tried to start once but never got around to doing was content marketers in a region \u2013 without being deceptive or malicious \u2013 but it has to be honest and legitimately relevant, real currency.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">Do you target content towards engineers?<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">I\u2019m quite proud of <a href=\"http:\/\/bytes.referralcandy.com\">bytes<\/a>, very good at helping us hire \u2013 people underestimate the amount of anxiety before you join a team, you don\u2019t know if it\u2019s a nice place to work, what life is like \u2013 there\u2019s a lot of value in that sort of content. We\u2019ve had people find us through other things as well. We have backend-related content, and that stuff was interesting to them, hacker news. Interesting stuff is everywhere.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">RC did really well at one point because the marketing strategy content was optimised to be linked to \u2013 content that is moderately useful to readers, but very useful to other writers that need to link to content, and that boosts your page rank. But the most important thing is that the reader experience never gets compromise.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">I sell t-shirts \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/statement.sg\">local t-shirts, Singlish stuff<\/a> \u2013 and I wrote a blogpost on my t-shirt company\u2019s blog about the <a href=\"https:\/\/statement.sg\/pages\/singaporean-t-shirts-unite\">best t-shirt companies in Singapore<\/a>, and that is the top ranking post for \u201cSingapore t-shirts\u201d \u2013 while I\u2019m pointing at competitors, I get more traffic. Our enemy is not our competitors but people who don\u2019t care. Indifference is the real problem.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">&gt; my take \u2013 as long as its consistent and manageable for you \u2013 there\u2019s no hard fast rule \u2013 Godin posts every day, 300 words \u2013 works great for him \u2013 Tim urban, waitbutwhy<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Yup that is the holy grail when you can really captivate your audience such that they really want to hang off of every word. So it also depends on your personality \u2013 better that you do what feels right for you \u2013 at the same time working in a company there\u2019s some compromise to meet business goals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following is a transcript from a lunchtime talk I gave at Saleswhale. 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