1 00:00:02,159 --> 00:00:04,499 Robert Plank: Welcome back to the marketer of the day podcast 2 00:00:04,499 --> 00:00:08,069 and I have an important question for you Do you have a software 3 00:00:08,069 --> 00:00:11,759 product or a software service aiming to get more of a word out 4 00:00:11,759 --> 00:00:14,609 there, you need to get a jump on your competitors, you would love 5 00:00:14,609 --> 00:00:17,789 it. If someone came to your site and browse your blog and found 6 00:00:17,789 --> 00:00:20,279 out all kinds of features and new things you're adding to your 7 00:00:20,279 --> 00:00:22,769 software. Would you love if someone could jump on YouTube 8 00:00:22,769 --> 00:00:25,439 and search the name of your software product and see just 9 00:00:25,439 --> 00:00:27,989 all the features and all the things that they can do? Well, 10 00:00:27,989 --> 00:00:30,719 if so, or if you would like that, in the future, you're in 11 00:00:30,719 --> 00:00:33,839 exactly the right place. We're here with Carl Hughes. He is a 12 00:00:33,839 --> 00:00:38,699 former software engineer. He is a CTO. Hoover now runs draft dot 13 00:00:38,699 --> 00:00:42,569 Dev, which is a specialized content marketing agency that 14 00:00:42,569 --> 00:00:46,019 helps companies reach software developers. Exciting stuff, 15 00:00:46,019 --> 00:00:48,209 Carl, glad to be talking to you. Yeah. Good to talk to you, 16 00:00:48,209 --> 00:00:51,959 Robert. And so so yeah, what do we need to know about this whole 17 00:00:51,959 --> 00:00:55,109 service you provide and about creating content for software 18 00:00:55,109 --> 00:00:55,829 products? 19 00:00:56,369 --> 00:00:58,169 Unknown: Yeah, so I was a software developer, as you 20 00:00:58,169 --> 00:01:01,259 mentioned, for a number of years. And one thing I noticed 21 00:01:01,259 --> 00:01:04,469 was that a lot of companies are just kind of bad at getting in 22 00:01:04,469 --> 00:01:08,159 front of software engineering to sell products. So there's an 23 00:01:08,159 --> 00:01:10,919 increasing number of tools being marketed at developers these 24 00:01:10,919 --> 00:01:14,009 days. And the challenge that every company has is how do we 25 00:01:14,009 --> 00:01:16,589 market developers in a way that's genuinely helpful and 26 00:01:16,589 --> 00:01:19,619 educational without being overly pushy and salesy because 27 00:01:19,619 --> 00:01:23,219 developers hate things, and cold emails, and really spammy pop 28 00:01:23,219 --> 00:01:26,189 ups and stuff like that, that maybe some industries and 29 00:01:26,189 --> 00:01:29,399 marketing or some parts of marketing get into. So what we 30 00:01:29,399 --> 00:01:33,539 do at draft dev is is just educational content focused for 31 00:01:33,539 --> 00:01:36,509 software engineers, by software engineers. So to give you a 32 00:01:36,509 --> 00:01:39,659 really tangible example, let's say that you are a web hosting 33 00:01:39,659 --> 00:01:42,989 company, and you want software developers to deploy their 34 00:01:42,989 --> 00:01:45,569 products, their webs, their web applications, or mobile 35 00:01:45,569 --> 00:01:47,999 applications out to your service, how are you going to 36 00:01:47,999 --> 00:01:50,129 reach these software engineers, and one of the ways you can do 37 00:01:50,129 --> 00:01:52,289 it, it's content. And that's what we write. So we'll write 38 00:01:52,289 --> 00:01:56,909 detailed tutorials with code samples, lots of use cases, 39 00:01:56,999 --> 00:02:00,389 different ways that software developers can integrate tools 40 00:02:00,389 --> 00:02:03,869 together to help them build things faster and better. And so 41 00:02:03,869 --> 00:02:06,509 it's just really helpful content written by developers who are 42 00:02:06,509 --> 00:02:09,239 out there using products for companies that want to reach 43 00:02:09,239 --> 00:02:09,509 them. 44 00:02:10,140 --> 00:02:12,840 Robert Plank: Well, it sounds like software companies all over 45 00:02:12,840 --> 00:02:16,110 need this kind of thing. But what would you say? If someone 46 00:02:16,110 --> 00:02:20,700 said, Well, our team, they're the coders that they make it, 47 00:02:20,700 --> 00:02:23,880 they support it, they maintain it? And no one else knows us 48 00:02:23,910 --> 00:02:26,610 knows enough to make these tutorials or to make everybody 49 00:02:26,610 --> 00:02:30,330 write these code samples. So how dare you even suggest that some 50 00:02:30,360 --> 00:02:32,790 outside party write this content? What would you say to 51 00:02:32,790 --> 00:02:33,510 someone like that? 52 00:02:33,959 --> 00:02:36,719 Unknown: I would say if your developers who have a full time 53 00:02:36,719 --> 00:02:40,709 job building the product, also want to have a, you know, many 54 00:02:40,709 --> 00:02:43,319 hours a week writing blog posts, and they don't mind thing, go 55 00:02:43,319 --> 00:02:47,339 for it by all, by all means, I think it's a great way to go. 56 00:02:47,429 --> 00:02:50,219 What happens though, is as you scale content production, you're 57 00:02:50,219 --> 00:02:52,769 going to run into this practical limit, so like how much your 58 00:02:52,769 --> 00:02:55,619 software developers can write. And then the question becomes, 59 00:02:55,799 --> 00:02:58,769 do we want only to live? Do we want to limit ourselves to the 60 00:02:58,769 --> 00:03:01,379 content we can produce in house? Or do we need to start looking 61 00:03:01,379 --> 00:03:04,049 outside. So what we do is actually modeled after what a 62 00:03:04,049 --> 00:03:09,389 lot of really big companies like digitalocean, Okta and Venmo, 63 00:03:09,659 --> 00:03:12,389 places like that, that have developer community writing 64 00:03:12,389 --> 00:03:15,779 programs. So they've already got these programs, basically, like 65 00:03:15,779 --> 00:03:18,629 what we do at draft dot Dev, but they're at this big scale. So we 66 00:03:18,629 --> 00:03:21,119 take those programs, and we sort of slice them up in a way that 67 00:03:21,119 --> 00:03:24,869 smaller midsize companies can afford, and can bolt this on as 68 00:03:24,869 --> 00:03:27,329 community driven engineering content for their blog. 69 00:03:28,349 --> 00:03:30,299 Robert Plank: And so you're mentioning about these things 70 00:03:30,299 --> 00:03:34,079 like, you know, scaling up ramping up, is there a, like an 71 00:03:34,079 --> 00:03:37,949 approximate, like ballpark of how much content a company 72 00:03:37,949 --> 00:03:40,859 should be busting out? And I know, that's kind of like, a 73 00:03:40,859 --> 00:03:43,109 weird question. And it might be like on a case by case basis, 74 00:03:43,109 --> 00:03:45,569 but sometimes I wonder like, should there be something every 75 00:03:45,569 --> 00:03:49,799 day every week, like how much is enough or too much as far as 76 00:03:49,799 --> 00:03:51,689 putting out this content? So 77 00:03:51,750 --> 00:03:53,790 Unknown: I'll give you a personal opinion, I think every 78 00:03:53,790 --> 00:03:57,540 week is kind of a baseline for good content marketing, I can 79 00:03:57,540 --> 00:03:59,970 think I think some smaller companies can get away with less 80 00:03:59,970 --> 00:04:01,860 because they don't have the budget, or they're not really 81 00:04:01,860 --> 00:04:04,410 sure how they're going to promote content. But to be 82 00:04:04,410 --> 00:04:06,960 honest, at least once a week, we have clients doing anywhere from 83 00:04:06,960 --> 00:04:11,400 one piece a week to 20 pieces a month. And so the it kind of 84 00:04:11,400 --> 00:04:14,280 depends how competitive the other people, you know, 85 00:04:14,310 --> 00:04:17,850 targeting the same areas of content are and how much content 86 00:04:17,850 --> 00:04:21,360 you can produce at a high quality within your budget. So I 87 00:04:21,360 --> 00:04:23,340 don't think there's like a one answer to that question. It's 88 00:04:23,340 --> 00:04:27,150 probably it depends, like any good question. But at the same 89 00:04:27,150 --> 00:04:29,640 time, I do think there's kind of a good baseline of probably 90 00:04:29,640 --> 00:04:31,980 getting a piece of content every week is going to make a lot of 91 00:04:31,980 --> 00:04:34,680 difference in search engines, and with just staying consistent 92 00:04:34,680 --> 00:04:35,580 for your audits. 93 00:04:36,150 --> 00:04:38,790 Robert Plank: Fair enough. And I think that having an article 94 00:04:38,790 --> 00:04:42,060 about once a week sort of rhythm, it helps just get your 95 00:04:42,060 --> 00:04:44,490 mind wrapped around it because I don't know about your car. But 96 00:04:44,520 --> 00:04:48,750 if I'm even thinking about a piece of content every day, and 97 00:04:48,750 --> 00:04:51,660 like 30 days of content, or 90 is a content I'm thinking like, 98 00:04:51,960 --> 00:04:56,040 I'm so overwhelmed, I think to myself like well, if I have if 99 00:04:56,040 --> 00:05:00,000 we have a bunch of ideas, like half of them will suck or we 100 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:02,640 don't even have enough like meat on the bone to create that. And 101 00:05:02,640 --> 00:05:05,580 we'll be putting out like little little bits of things. And that 102 00:05:05,580 --> 00:05:08,130 won't be very good. But if you when you're saying one piece of 103 00:05:08,130 --> 00:05:10,980 content per week, it seems like you can kind of wrap your head 104 00:05:10,980 --> 00:05:13,500 around, okay, that's sort of like a mini launch kind of 105 00:05:13,500 --> 00:05:16,620 thing. They're like, you can look at some ideas on this day 106 00:05:16,680 --> 00:05:19,470 and come up with a rough draft on that day and put her on that 107 00:05:19,470 --> 00:05:22,710 team work on the marketing and the traffic, it seems like a 108 00:05:22,710 --> 00:05:25,200 little more logical, easier to get our head wrapped around when 109 00:05:25,200 --> 00:05:29,520 we think about these weekly blocks. And then so then then to 110 00:05:29,520 --> 00:05:33,060 the kind of another loaded question is when you say a piece 111 00:05:33,060 --> 00:05:35,820 of content, I know it can mean a lot of different things. But 112 00:05:35,970 --> 00:05:39,330 like, Is it is it typically like these super long blog posts with 113 00:05:39,330 --> 00:05:41,880 like, it's so long and eat the Table of Contents? Are we 114 00:05:41,880 --> 00:05:45,210 talking about like videos in between? When you say a piece of 115 00:05:45,210 --> 00:05:47,490 content? What are we talking about? Yeah, 116 00:05:47,519 --> 00:05:49,859 Unknown: again, the answer is it depends, of course, but I do 117 00:05:49,859 --> 00:05:53,639 think the Internet has standardized at least around 118 00:05:53,669 --> 00:05:56,969 most content being a roughly like 1500 word piece of, you 119 00:05:56,969 --> 00:06:00,149 know, written content with probably a mix of three to five 120 00:06:00,179 --> 00:06:03,779 images, videos, and other graphics to support it. That's 121 00:06:03,779 --> 00:06:06,899 kind of how we standardize. Now at the same time, there are 122 00:06:06,899 --> 00:06:09,899 certain topics that require a lot more than 1500 words. And 123 00:06:09,899 --> 00:06:13,529 some topics may not require quite that same amount. So I 124 00:06:13,529 --> 00:06:16,679 don't think it's necessarily like, I actually think word 125 00:06:16,679 --> 00:06:19,829 count is less important. It's more about covering the topic in 126 00:06:19,829 --> 00:06:22,679 a way that is helpful to the end reader reader who's trying to 127 00:06:22,679 --> 00:06:25,409 get something out of this. So if they're looking up, what's the 128 00:06:25,409 --> 00:06:28,829 definition of a term, you don't need to give them 3000 words to 129 00:06:28,829 --> 00:06:32,669 define the term, but at the same time, like if there's more that 130 00:06:32,669 --> 00:06:34,709 they're looking to learn, like, they're trying to get an in 131 00:06:34,709 --> 00:06:39,269 depth tutorial for how to scale up their Python applications, 132 00:06:39,389 --> 00:06:41,639 you do need to cover that with enough detail. So there might be 133 00:06:41,639 --> 00:06:45,629 a 3000 word piece there. So yeah, it does depend we we end 134 00:06:45,629 --> 00:06:48,149 up kind of having some standard lengths. And then clients come 135 00:06:48,149 --> 00:06:50,309 in with their own thoughts. And we sort of worked with them to 136 00:06:50,309 --> 00:06:52,529 figure out what what makes sense for each piece. 137 00:06:53,040 --> 00:06:55,110 Robert Plank: Oh, fair enough. So you're saying that to 200 138 00:06:55,110 --> 00:06:58,110 words, even though that's not the that's not the box we're 139 00:06:58,110 --> 00:07:01,140 trapping ourselves in. That's a good starting point. That's kind 140 00:07:01,140 --> 00:07:03,780 of the baseline of what people think about when they think 141 00:07:03,780 --> 00:07:07,020 about content, but then again, start from there. And then case 142 00:07:07,020 --> 00:07:10,500 by case basis, as far as what needs to be done. But we're also 143 00:07:10,500 --> 00:07:14,130 saying, it's not just about the word length, because who needs 144 00:07:14,130 --> 00:07:17,580 someone pontificating for 1500 words, just to explain one term, 145 00:07:17,670 --> 00:07:21,000 when you can say it in just a couple of sentences. And so the 146 00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:23,310 next thing that makes me think of it based on your answer there 147 00:07:23,310 --> 00:07:26,700 is, is, you know, I'm thinking about, okay, what's the, what's 148 00:07:26,700 --> 00:07:29,670 the importance of like having this whole dedicated team such 149 00:07:29,670 --> 00:07:32,730 as yours to do things instead of doing things in house, and 150 00:07:32,790 --> 00:07:35,280 there's always that that problem, especially with 151 00:07:35,280 --> 00:07:38,730 software of things going out of date, right? Like, even when we 152 00:07:38,730 --> 00:07:41,970 look on YouTube for like a tutorial on how to do this, I'm 153 00:07:41,970 --> 00:07:46,770 like, Okay, if this one says, like, this year, versus when 154 00:07:46,770 --> 00:07:49,740 they put the year in the title, I'm like, if it says, blah, 155 00:07:49,740 --> 00:07:53,760 blah, blah, you know, Wordpress tutorial 2025. I'm going to 156 00:07:53,760 --> 00:07:58,530 click on that versus like, 2015. Right? So is there any of that 157 00:07:58,530 --> 00:08:02,340 in the strategy, like updating things for like, new versions of 158 00:08:02,340 --> 00:08:04,740 the software or like new technology and going back and 159 00:08:04,740 --> 00:08:07,410 like making the old content fresh again? 160 00:08:07,890 --> 00:08:10,590 Unknown: Yeah, absolutely. There's a few different kind of 161 00:08:10,590 --> 00:08:14,460 points to mention here. So one is, a lot of times in any sort 162 00:08:14,460 --> 00:08:18,120 of technical content, you are competing with existing pieces 163 00:08:18,120 --> 00:08:20,220 of content out there on the internet, you know, whether it's 164 00:08:20,220 --> 00:08:23,340 for things to be shared on social or it's through Google 165 00:08:23,340 --> 00:08:25,920 and search results. So what you want to look at is like if your 166 00:08:25,920 --> 00:08:28,230 competitors wrote a big guide to something, but it's four years 167 00:08:28,230 --> 00:08:30,540 old, now, that's a great opportunity for you to come into 168 00:08:30,540 --> 00:08:33,180 something much more current, because in four years, the tools 169 00:08:33,180 --> 00:08:36,450 and software developers use change pretty pretty, in pretty 170 00:08:36,450 --> 00:08:39,930 big ways. The other thing, so yeah, that's just keeping an eye 171 00:08:39,930 --> 00:08:41,970 on like, what's out there and how your content can be better. 172 00:08:41,970 --> 00:08:44,880 But then your internal content also does need to be updated. 173 00:08:44,880 --> 00:08:47,580 This is something we do with a lot of clients is they may have 174 00:08:47,580 --> 00:08:50,220 written an article several years ago that they're like starting 175 00:08:50,220 --> 00:08:52,710 to see that drop off in traffic on and they're saying, could we 176 00:08:52,710 --> 00:08:56,700 update this latest version of Java or PHP or whatever, because 177 00:08:56,700 --> 00:08:59,670 it's kind of fallen out of favor with the internet now. So 178 00:08:59,670 --> 00:09:03,420 absolutely important to keep that stuff up to date. Another 179 00:09:03,420 --> 00:09:06,360 reason that you look at outside writers for content, whether 180 00:09:06,360 --> 00:09:08,580 it's with us, or you build a community Writing Program, or 181 00:09:08,580 --> 00:09:11,850 you hire freelancers, or whatever, is that a lot of times 182 00:09:11,850 --> 00:09:14,640 companies will have an internal developer team that knows let's 183 00:09:14,640 --> 00:09:16,950 say, your internal developers know JavaScript and Python 184 00:09:16,950 --> 00:09:19,500 really well, but they don't know go they don't know rust, they 185 00:09:19,500 --> 00:09:23,730 don't know, Swift. And there's like dozens of other programming 186 00:09:23,730 --> 00:09:26,190 languages they may not have any knowledge about, but you want to 187 00:09:26,190 --> 00:09:28,920 write on those topics. What do you do, you can either hire a 188 00:09:28,920 --> 00:09:31,230 million engineers to cover all that those topics, which is 189 00:09:31,230 --> 00:09:33,540 really expensive, or you can start to work with freelancers, 190 00:09:33,540 --> 00:09:36,180 outsiders to do that stuff. So a lot of times that's a really 191 00:09:36,180 --> 00:09:39,210 helpful use case for bringing in outside help for technical 192 00:09:39,210 --> 00:09:39,720 content like 193 00:09:39,720 --> 00:09:43,020 Robert Plank: we do. And you know, you mentioned this whole 194 00:09:43,020 --> 00:09:47,160 idea of bringing outside writers to kind of like cover more bases 195 00:09:47,160 --> 00:09:50,220 versus what your internal team does. And you mentioned here 196 00:09:50,220 --> 00:09:54,600 about this idea of what even if your competitor has this really 197 00:09:54,600 --> 00:09:57,570 popular blog post, it's really popular topic. Don't despair, 198 00:09:57,570 --> 00:10:00,240 because maybe their content is five years at a date. You can Do 199 00:10:00,240 --> 00:10:03,690 a a better version that that's in the current date. And he even 200 00:10:03,690 --> 00:10:07,020 mentioned near the beginning there of talking about how your 201 00:10:07,020 --> 00:10:09,780 software integrates with other systems because that's such a 202 00:10:09,780 --> 00:10:11,880 thing now these days, but like, you know, things in the cloud 203 00:10:11,880 --> 00:10:15,900 and things like that, so. So like, what sort of like 204 00:10:15,900 --> 00:10:19,770 marketing or like promotional strategies such as these present 205 00:10:19,770 --> 00:10:22,770 themselves with software writing that we don't normally see 206 00:10:22,830 --> 00:10:25,650 anywhere else, because like, I mean, my brains are already on 207 00:10:25,650 --> 00:10:27,660 fire with all these kind of ideas that you've just 208 00:10:27,660 --> 00:10:30,360 offhandedly skated past. So I'm already excited. 209 00:10:30,840 --> 00:10:33,180 Unknown: Yeah, so let's take something really tangible. And 210 00:10:33,180 --> 00:10:35,190 again, if you're not a software developer, I'm going to try to 211 00:10:35,190 --> 00:10:37,500 keep this high level enough that you can follow along, I don't 212 00:10:37,500 --> 00:10:40,260 want to get too in the weeds here. But when you're a software 213 00:10:40,260 --> 00:10:42,840 developer, and you want to push code to a server to a web host, 214 00:10:42,840 --> 00:10:45,270 that's going to hold that code for you and run it on the 215 00:10:45,270 --> 00:10:48,750 internet. There's a lot of steps that go into it. There's these 216 00:10:48,750 --> 00:10:52,590 tools called ci CD platform. So it's continuous integration, 217 00:10:52,590 --> 00:10:55,710 continuous deployment platforms, there's testing platforms, there 218 00:10:55,710 --> 00:10:57,840 are linting platforms, I know none of these words mean 219 00:10:57,840 --> 00:11:00,360 anything, but it doesn't matter. The point is, there's several 220 00:11:00,360 --> 00:11:03,060 different services that usually touch code before it goes out to 221 00:11:03,060 --> 00:11:05,550 a server live. And what's interesting, if you're a web 222 00:11:05,550 --> 00:11:07,950 host, and you're trying to write it, like write good content 223 00:11:07,950 --> 00:11:10,890 around how developers can use your web hosting service, you 224 00:11:10,890 --> 00:11:13,380 kind of need to write all these different integrations and best 225 00:11:13,380 --> 00:11:16,290 practices for using these other tangentially related tools. 226 00:11:16,440 --> 00:11:18,540 Because that's going to help developers and customers, when 227 00:11:18,540 --> 00:11:21,000 they come to you and say, Look, we want to use your host, but 228 00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:22,980 we're not sure if it integrates with JIRA and the way that we 229 00:11:22,980 --> 00:11:25,530 want it to. So those kinds of questions that come up natural 230 00:11:25,530 --> 00:11:28,710 content can really help you sort of like, push past those 231 00:11:28,710 --> 00:11:31,950 objections. So that's kind of more, you know, this is kind of 232 00:11:31,980 --> 00:11:34,800 touching into bottom and middle of funnel content, which is, you 233 00:11:34,800 --> 00:11:37,200 know, one great use case. But it could also be that these 234 00:11:37,200 --> 00:11:39,930 integration guys helped with some top of funnel reach if 235 00:11:39,930 --> 00:11:45,180 software developers are searching for how to integrate 236 00:11:45,240 --> 00:11:46,200 JIRA with my web 237 00:11:46,200 --> 00:11:48,960 Robert Plank: hosting platform or something similar. And so 238 00:11:48,960 --> 00:11:52,050 that's just a seems like a good starting point in general, of if 239 00:11:52,050 --> 00:11:55,980 you're saying, well, what's what kind of content do we want? And 240 00:11:55,980 --> 00:11:58,680 what lecture that library read and like thinking of ideas, it's 241 00:11:58,680 --> 00:12:02,640 just like, Okay, if somebody wanted to use my web host for 242 00:12:02,670 --> 00:12:07,260 with this tool, like, there we go, like just that combine these 243 00:12:07,260 --> 00:12:09,750 two things, and there's a tutorial there's a piece of 244 00:12:09,750 --> 00:12:13,260 content. And so what is quarter of the, like the research 245 00:12:13,260 --> 00:12:16,710 process like this, is it a matter of like, you ask your 246 00:12:16,710 --> 00:12:20,580 client, what, what they want written about? Is it a matter of 247 00:12:20,580 --> 00:12:24,300 like going deep on the Help Desk, going on the internet, 248 00:12:24,300 --> 00:12:27,000 looking at competitors all the above? Like, what's sort of the 249 00:12:27,060 --> 00:12:29,910 the method to the madness front? As far as coming up with all 250 00:12:29,910 --> 00:12:32,220 these ideas? Because with content, it's like, you always 251 00:12:32,220 --> 00:12:33,840 need to be churning them out, right? 252 00:12:33,869 --> 00:12:36,509 Unknown: Yeah, totally. I mean, like we've said, if you're gonna 253 00:12:36,509 --> 00:12:39,329 write a pizza every week, then that means every year, you got 254 00:12:39,329 --> 00:12:43,109 to come up with 52 new topics, right? And that is a pretty high 255 00:12:43,109 --> 00:12:46,349 load. Especially you're talking about technical content in a 256 00:12:46,349 --> 00:12:50,249 specific vertical or niche or little small area. There's a few 257 00:12:50,249 --> 00:12:53,429 things that we see clients doing that we do with clients. One is 258 00:12:53,429 --> 00:12:56,189 you can take the keyword research based approach where 259 00:12:56,189 --> 00:12:58,259 you say like, what would developers in our space be 260 00:12:58,259 --> 00:13:00,869 searching for you try to look for lots of different keywords, 261 00:13:00,899 --> 00:13:03,809 and then come up with some that have some high search volume and 262 00:13:03,809 --> 00:13:06,629 low Keyword Difficulty. I personally use h refs. But 263 00:13:06,629 --> 00:13:09,029 there's other tools that are great out there to do this. So 264 00:13:09,059 --> 00:13:12,209 whatever you want, that's one approach. Another one is to go 265 00:13:12,209 --> 00:13:15,389 to developer communities, say Reddit subreddits that are 266 00:13:15,419 --> 00:13:19,559 focused on software engineering, or Stack Overflow, different 267 00:13:19,559 --> 00:13:22,019 slack groups focused on different kinds of engineering 268 00:13:22,049 --> 00:13:24,989 Hacker News is a big one with developers, you go to those 269 00:13:24,989 --> 00:13:27,389 communities and you see what people are talking about within 270 00:13:27,389 --> 00:13:30,659 your area of your vertical that's a really helpful way to 271 00:13:30,719 --> 00:13:33,779 figure out what the community has lots of discussions around 272 00:13:33,779 --> 00:13:37,079 and what kind of things fire up engineers. And then another 273 00:13:37,079 --> 00:13:39,389 thing to do is exactly what you mentioned with talking to your 274 00:13:39,389 --> 00:13:42,239 support and sales teams and seeing what questions come up 275 00:13:42,239 --> 00:13:44,939 from customers all the time that we could we address with content 276 00:13:45,179 --> 00:13:47,279 and this is usually good for bottom of funnel kind of 277 00:13:47,309 --> 00:13:49,649 crossing people over conversions. A lot of times I 278 00:13:49,649 --> 00:13:52,589 encourage really early stage companies that aren't sure about 279 00:13:52,679 --> 00:13:56,369 SEO or top of funnel yet like maybe just start by talking to 280 00:13:56,369 --> 00:13:58,409 your customers to seeing if you can build some content that 281 00:13:58,409 --> 00:14:01,799 pushes them over the edge into a sale because that will show some 282 00:14:01,799 --> 00:14:04,199 early wins with your content that are directly related to 283 00:14:04,199 --> 00:14:06,929 revenue where maybe you upsell clients based on the content or 284 00:14:06,929 --> 00:14:09,329 something like that. And a lot of times if you're a content 285 00:14:09,329 --> 00:14:11,639 marketer that can be helpful to kind of get more buy in from 286 00:14:11,639 --> 00:14:14,699 upper management about how we do content more and get more budget 287 00:14:14,700 --> 00:14:18,150 Robert Plank: for it so so many ideas and what I'm hearing is 288 00:14:18,150 --> 00:14:21,000 that there's like there's like the data side of it and there's 289 00:14:21,000 --> 00:14:23,610 the judgment side of it right there's the judgment is going 290 00:14:23,610 --> 00:14:26,280 out and seeing what there is but you also mentioned like keyword 291 00:14:26,280 --> 00:14:29,490 tools and you also mentioned a little bit earlier about that 292 00:14:29,490 --> 00:14:32,340 like monitoring the traffic and and if something is really 293 00:14:32,340 --> 00:14:35,940 popular create more of that if something was popular and it has 294 00:14:35,940 --> 00:14:40,020 gone down in the clicks then you say well maybe we need to figure 295 00:14:40,020 --> 00:14:43,350 out why that is or is this going out of favor is this this need 296 00:14:43,350 --> 00:14:46,710 to be like updated, refined something like that. And so is 297 00:14:46,710 --> 00:14:50,130 this is that like part of like an ongoing process as far as 298 00:14:50,130 --> 00:14:52,770 what your team provides, because when you imagine content 299 00:14:52,770 --> 00:14:55,650 creation, it's easy to just be short sighted and say alright, 300 00:14:55,650 --> 00:14:58,140 just write a bunch of stuff and publish it but is there like a 301 00:14:58,170 --> 00:15:02,790 like an ongoing Kind of monitoring that happens after 302 00:15:02,790 --> 00:15:03,360 all this? 303 00:15:03,510 --> 00:15:05,520 Unknown: That's a great question. We don't provide that 304 00:15:05,520 --> 00:15:09,330 right now today, we say pretty execution focused. And so 305 00:15:09,330 --> 00:15:11,970 typically clients have their own internal marketing teams that 306 00:15:11,970 --> 00:15:15,030 are setting strategy keeping track of analytics. And they're 307 00:15:15,060 --> 00:15:17,640 relying on us as essentially their content engine, just 308 00:15:17,640 --> 00:15:20,430 producing the content they need, or updates they need and things 309 00:15:20,430 --> 00:15:24,060 like that. So that's our current model today. But I do know that 310 00:15:24,060 --> 00:15:27,930 a lot of SEO agencies or just content agencies generally will 311 00:15:27,930 --> 00:15:30,750 focus on like, keeping up with each piece of content and 312 00:15:30,780 --> 00:15:33,840 tracking it over time. We do this internally for our own 313 00:15:33,840 --> 00:15:37,260 content for draft dev on our blog. So like, we have a big 314 00:15:37,260 --> 00:15:40,200 list of that we audit every three to six months of each 315 00:15:40,200 --> 00:15:42,840 piece of content, make sure we haven't seen traffic depth, 316 00:15:42,930 --> 00:15:45,780 we'll add internal backlinks to it, we'll look for opportunities 317 00:15:45,780 --> 00:15:50,940 to ask for backlinks, other places, will also get into like 318 00:15:50,940 --> 00:15:53,790 re promoting content every few months. So this is another great 319 00:15:53,790 --> 00:15:56,760 thing. Like we talked a bit about how like, it's nice to 320 00:15:56,760 --> 00:15:59,070 think of your content and here's a piece of content one week, and 321 00:15:59,070 --> 00:16:01,410 then we're gonna spend a couple days promoting it. Yeah, I think 322 00:16:01,410 --> 00:16:04,740 that's, that's absolutely key to making a piece of content stand 323 00:16:04,740 --> 00:16:08,850 out is investing a day or two or some time in making sure people 324 00:16:08,850 --> 00:16:10,800 know about it, putting it out into the right places, and 325 00:16:10,800 --> 00:16:13,980 social media, and reaching out to newsletters and asking them 326 00:16:13,980 --> 00:16:16,620 to promote it for you if it's really good, things like that. 327 00:16:16,620 --> 00:16:18,900 But you can do that every two or three months, you don't have to 328 00:16:18,900 --> 00:16:21,840 do it just once to a piece of content and be done with it. I 329 00:16:21,840 --> 00:16:24,660 think that's a huge oversight for a lot of content teams are 330 00:16:24,660 --> 00:16:26,850 out there trying to promote stuff, it's just doing it once 331 00:16:26,850 --> 00:16:29,460 instead of continuing to hit it every few months. 332 00:16:30,090 --> 00:16:31,860 Robert Plank: Well, this is great. I mean, I'm getting like 333 00:16:31,860 --> 00:16:36,120 you said there's there's the the focus on exactly your business, 334 00:16:36,120 --> 00:16:38,430 Carl and your type of client. But there's also kind of more of 335 00:16:38,430 --> 00:16:41,760 a high level, kind of, in general, like content marketing 336 00:16:41,760 --> 00:16:44,490 things to think of, even if someone's not a direct, exact 337 00:16:44,490 --> 00:16:47,640 fit for you and your team, it's still good to get educated, 338 00:16:47,640 --> 00:16:49,770 right? And it's and it's kind of like practicing what you preach, 339 00:16:49,770 --> 00:16:53,130 you're all about the tutorial videos and saying we want to 340 00:16:53,130 --> 00:16:55,680 educate you about how to use this and that feature. So that 341 00:16:55,680 --> 00:16:59,190 way, if you're almost using it, almost using the software, this 342 00:16:59,190 --> 00:17:03,360 pushes you over the edge. If you are frustrated with our 343 00:17:03,360 --> 00:17:05,760 software, guess what there's this feature that you might not 344 00:17:05,760 --> 00:17:09,690 have known about, or maybe this gets you to use it more or 345 00:17:09,750 --> 00:17:12,570 upgrade to a bigger plan or use it with more users in your 346 00:17:12,570 --> 00:17:15,210 organization. There's so many cool things to think about. And 347 00:17:15,210 --> 00:17:19,020 I mean that that right there that little tip about go back a 348 00:17:19,020 --> 00:17:22,200 few months later and consider re promoting something old. I mean, 349 00:17:22,260 --> 00:17:25,410 such a simple idea. But it's so easy to forget, because with all 350 00:17:25,410 --> 00:17:28,230 this content marketing stuff, there's like 35, things always 351 00:17:28,230 --> 00:17:31,140 happening. And it's easy to just like remember, like four or five 352 00:17:31,140 --> 00:17:34,140 things, but there's like so many little little plates to be 353 00:17:34,140 --> 00:17:36,690 spinning, I guess I feel like I've thrown out like 27 354 00:17:36,690 --> 00:17:39,780 different metaphors in our conversation is kind of makes it 355 00:17:39,780 --> 00:17:43,320 fun to think of it that way. And so so I want to make sure that 356 00:17:43,320 --> 00:17:47,580 we plug you and your company and that way we talk to exactly the 357 00:17:47,580 --> 00:17:50,550 right people who want to talk to so it's good to be educated 358 00:17:50,550 --> 00:17:52,260 about you know, content marketing, and that, you know, 359 00:17:52,260 --> 00:17:55,710 teams can look at your product or your software and you know, 360 00:17:55,710 --> 00:17:58,200 could do all these amazing things for you. But as far as 361 00:17:58,230 --> 00:18:02,070 draft dot Dev, who should be listening to your message, 362 00:18:02,070 --> 00:18:06,060 exactly what type of company and what should they be doing as far 363 00:18:06,060 --> 00:18:08,070 as contacting you and taking the next step 364 00:18:08,069 --> 00:18:11,939 Unknown: here? Yeah, sure. So we work almost exclusively with 365 00:18:11,939 --> 00:18:15,929 Developer Tools companies, or API driven companies that have a 366 00:18:15,989 --> 00:18:19,679 an API they want developers to integrate with, usually our main 367 00:18:19,679 --> 00:18:23,399 contact is a head of content or head of developer marketing or 368 00:18:23,399 --> 00:18:26,849 developer relations. Depending on how big the company is, we 369 00:18:26,849 --> 00:18:30,659 work with mostly startups and series A and Series B range. So 370 00:18:31,079 --> 00:18:32,789 you know, a lot of companies that are out there in the 371 00:18:32,789 --> 00:18:35,969 Kubernetes space this these days, data engineering is really 372 00:18:35,969 --> 00:18:39,269 big these days. There's a lot of low code tools we're also 373 00:18:39,269 --> 00:18:42,029 starting to work with. So anything in that sphere we can 374 00:18:42,029 --> 00:18:44,009 probably help with. And if you're not sure, I'm always 375 00:18:44,009 --> 00:18:47,429 happy to hop on a call and maybe refer you off to somebody else 376 00:18:47,429 --> 00:18:49,589 because I ended up getting to know a lot of people in the b2b 377 00:18:49,589 --> 00:18:52,769 marketing space just through through running this agency. So 378 00:18:52,919 --> 00:18:58,829 you can find out more at draft dot Dev and my emails Carl k RL 379 00:18:58,829 --> 00:19:01,829 at draft dot Dev, feel free to shoot me a mail or book a call 380 00:19:01,829 --> 00:19:04,799 with me there on the website. And either way looking forward 381 00:19:04,799 --> 00:19:06,239 to hearing feedback from people. 382 00:19:06,960 --> 00:19:09,540 Robert Plank: Well, I'm looking forward for you if that is the 383 00:19:09,540 --> 00:19:14,220 thing, Carl with a K. At draft dot dev The website is draft dot 384 00:19:14,220 --> 00:19:17,430 Dev and as we completely wrap up our conversation here, Carl, do 385 00:19:17,430 --> 00:19:20,490 you have any final parting words of advice or any little nuggets 386 00:19:20,490 --> 00:19:21,840 you felt like we left out? 387 00:19:22,560 --> 00:19:25,530 Unknown: No content I just say to people just get started and 388 00:19:25,530 --> 00:19:28,050 if you're a founder of a small company, you're just trying to 389 00:19:28,050 --> 00:19:31,050 get something going I mean try to get yourself on a cadence of 390 00:19:31,050 --> 00:19:34,350 writing one blog post a month just to kind of expose your 391 00:19:34,350 --> 00:19:37,740 worldview talk about what your business does little and then 392 00:19:37,740 --> 00:19:40,080 get into the optimization later. You know, it's just just 393 00:19:40,110 --> 00:19:44,610 important to get started so have fun with it and get get into 394 00:19:44,610 --> 00:19:46,380 trying it you'll you'll learn as you go.