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Love Priceonomics blog posts. Always high-quality. Always interesting. I've also been using Tracker since the soft launch. It's a nice clean snapshot of day to

by wwickey 11y ago

Love Priceonomics blog posts. Always high-quality. Always interesting. I've also been using Tracker since the soft launch. It's a nice clean snapshot of day to day blog performance. I'm interested to see how the Priceonomics Data Studio concept mentioned in the handbook intro works. It sounds like a good idea, but I do think there will be challenges with outsourcing the Priceonomics content marketing strategy to other businesses. Someone from Priceonomics can chime in here, but it seems like they have the luxury of identifying diverse topics that are likely to go viral, then go out and acquire data specifically for that topic, tell a story, then move on to the next topic (and perhaps even a different audience). Other businesses are less flexible. They have to start with a limited amount of data, then use it to tell many stories, week after week. Not saying it won't work. I'm sure it will. Just interested to see how the data gathering, analysis, and storytelling sides of things all come together in the Priceonomics Data Studio offering.

puranjay 11y ago
It's not that hard to stretch this strategy to other businesses. If you're running, say, a plumbing business, you could teach your blog readers so much about plumbing. Answer their questions and teach them real, useful stuff - everything from fixing a leaky faucet to setting up plumbing for a new house. Unfortunately, most businesses think that writing a blog post means writing 100 posts on "10 reasons why you need to hire a plumber". That's useless to readers. Help readers learn something actually useful about your business and they'll reward you with their loyalty.
- wwickey 11y ago
  Yes. Good point. I don't mean to suggest the content marketing won't work. Priceonmonics' bests posts (say, over 30k views) have a strong data-driven component combined with great writing. One of Priceonomics' tag lines is "DATA. LONGFORM CONTENT. ANALYSIS." They excel at data crawling and visualization. Combine that capability with talented storytellers, give those writers the freedom to explore a variety of topics, and you've got a winning recipe for repeated virality. A plumbing company is a great example. You can write great plumbing content, (and definitely still accomplish your goal of getting people with plumbing-related pain points into your funnel or driving awareness for your business) but it's tough to make that type of content spread consistently, even when well-crafted. Combining the data gathering + analysis/visualization + great writing for homerun content that generates leads on a consistent basis is the challenge I'm talking about specifically. Moreover, the plumbing company does not likely have a marketing department with all 3 of those skills sets represented. Priceonomics just announced their 'Data Studio' offering to help companies in that position (and there are plenty of them!). btw, not sure if anyone posted the 6-page summary of the Content Marketing Handbook yet: https://s3.amazonaws.com/pix-media/The+Content+Marketing+Handbook+Summary+Version.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/pix-media/The+Content+Marketing+Han... Obviously a great guide for duplicating what Priceonomics does at your own company. Interested to see how the Data Studio works as an outsourced content service.

by wwickey 11y ago

puranjay 11y ago

It's not that hard to stretch this strategy to other businesses. If you're running, say, a plumbing business, you could teach your blog readers so much about plumbing. Answer their questions and teach them real, useful stuff - everything from fixing a leaky faucet to setting up plumbing for a new house. Unfortunately, most businesses think that writing a blog post means writing 100 posts on "10 reasons why you need to hire a plumber". That's useless to readers. Help readers learn something actually useful about your business and they'll reward you with their loyalty.

wwickey 11y ago
Yes. Good point. I don't mean to suggest the content marketing won't work. Priceonmonics' bests posts (say, over 30k views) have a strong data-driven component combined with great writing. One of Priceonomics' tag lines is "DATA. LONGFORM CONTENT. ANALYSIS." They excel at data crawling and visualization. Combine that capability with talented storytellers, give those writers the freedom to explore a variety of topics, and you've got a winning recipe for repeated virality. A plumbing company is a great example. You can write great plumbing content, (and definitely still accomplish your goal of getting people with plumbing-related pain points into your funnel or driving awareness for your business) but it's tough to make that type of content spread consistently, even when well-crafted. Combining the data gathering + analysis/visualization + great writing for homerun content that generates leads on a consistent basis is the challenge I'm talking about specifically. Moreover, the plumbing company does not likely have a marketing department with all 3 of those skills sets represented. Priceonomics just announced their 'Data Studio' offering to help companies in that position (and there are plenty of them!). btw, not sure if anyone posted the 6-page summary of the Content Marketing Handbook yet: https://s3.amazonaws.com/pix-media/The+Content+Marketing+Handbook+Summary+Version.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/pix-media/The+Content+Marketing+Han... Obviously a great guide for duplicating what Priceonomics does at your own company. Interested to see how the Data Studio works as an outsourced content service.