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independence2 unconnected · 1 more author in those circles
applies to

b2b, no audience needed

confidence

high

evidence

9 claims · 6 articles · 4 receipts

window

2014-08-28 → 2024-08-29

2 builders who never spoke to each other

Put a named practitioner's byline on the page

Choose the writer by who is credible to the buyer: engineers, the founder, a happy customer. Founder and engineer written posts became a top acquisition channel at several companies, and among the strongest independent sites studied, most publish under multiple named bylines rather than one. Basic credibility furniture matters too: a logo, working about page links, real authors, no clickbait.

The method

  1. 01

    Have founders and engineers write the posts, aiming to teach the audience rather than promote, because that is what turns a blog into a top acquisition channel.

  2. 02

    Choose the writer by who is credible to the audience you are targeting - engineers, a happy customer, the founder, or a marketer only if marketers are your buyers.

  3. 03

    Plan each post around three answers - who it is for, what you want them to understand about the product, and what they should do next - instead of publishing release notes and company diary entries.

  4. 04

    Write for the referred prospect who is checking you out, answering two questions - can this person solve my problem, and will I enjoy working with them - by using examples from projects like theirs and letting the site reflect how you work.

  5. 05

    Write up every finished project as a case study covering the problem brought to you, your approach, the obstacles, how you got past them and the result, which turns your blog into a source of inbound work.

What it returned

  • Netlify's blog, written almost entirely by its engineering and founding team, became one of their biggest sources of new users; posts by Domino's CEO brought in large enterprise leads; Scalyr's handful of founder-written articles each drew tens of thousands of readers.

  • He points to Slack, Stripe, Segment and GitHub committing real resources to substantive evergreen posts on engineering problems, business-value use cases and things prospective users care about.

  • Dunn recommends this as the remote-friendly substitute for a launch party, and says these write-ups become the case studies that win later projects.

  • Digital Trends does this at category level, and Glen Allsopp asks how many other sites anyone could name that go that far.

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.

More in seo

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the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.