5 ms·

Kill your blog: Why side projects are the future of marketing

30 points by sdsantos 11y ago

shockzzz 11y ago
> You need marketing that isn’t perceived as marketing.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I.e. you need to lie to people harder.
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    https://cdnjs.com/ https://cdnjs.com/ How is this lying to people?
kelukelugames 11y ago
Hey dang, can we please kill the first part of the title?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
obilgic 11y ago
And thats still a blog post.
- goodJobWalrus 11y ago
  Yeah, quite funny that I learned of this company thru blog post.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
plehoux 11y ago
We launched our product (https://missiveapp.com https://missiveapp.com) in closed beta last Autumn, and I can assess from our experiments that the only thing we did that gather a lot of attention was our "A Brief History of Email Apps" (http://email-apps-timeline.missiveapp.com/ http://email-apps-timeline.missiveapp.com/), a timeline of all the email clients released since the '90, a side project. All our blog posts failed to gather eyeballs. We tried on our blog (https://missiveapp.com/blog https://missiveapp.com/blog) and on Medium (https://medium.com/@plehoux https://medium.com/@plehoux). We are probably not good at writing compelling and viral content. It's hard. It's a unique and rare talent. You need to write about subjects that matter to people, subjects of our time. To me, 37 signals (https://m.signalvnoise.com https://m.signalvnoise.com) are the master of this game. I don't think blog post are dead; it's just harder to get noticed. But isn't it the same for everything else. I enjoyed the blog post and did, in fact, learned about the crew product. :)
bchjam 11y ago
marketing's incessant notion that lying to people is like a science of making money just makes me sad. make a good product, be honest about it, change plans if noone cares, what's so bad about that?
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Competition. If you don't do it, you'll get outcompeted by those who do. It's not true in many areas (where the market isn't oversaturated), but that's the perception - so people go and blatantly lie even if they don't have to. It's a kind of problem that should be solved by social norms and regulations. They are way too lenient right now, and the continued acceptance of advertising as a respectable occupation perplexes me.
- goodJobWalrus 11y ago
  But how are people going to learn of your product (to either care or not care), if you don't reach out / market to them?
  - gkya 11y ago
    The only ads that I've ever clicked are those of the Deck Network. Every business needs to reach out to people to find customers, but lieing is not necessary by any means. Tell us what you really do, and we'll buy if we are interested. If a company tricks me into buying their product when it is not the most adapted one, it's worse because I will switch away as soon as possible. If there is no lies and the service is good, I'll renew or suggest.
    - goodJobWalrus 11y ago
      Do you consider OP as lying in some way?
      - gkya 11y ago
        Their homepage header: "Work with the best designers and developers". This is at least exaggeration. It's the first time that I see the OP, so don't know a lot. In marketing there are these all the time. A company I worked for had this "style test" which new customers completed, and we suggested them a "personalised, designer-curated" items list via mail. It was not even ML, we splat them into three profiles based on the test, and made three different mails, sent each of them to the members respective profile. Each mail started with a title like "Your personalised style guide, tailored for you by our designers"... It's not a big blatant lie like saying "USA is a democracy", but still, it's a lie.
userium 11y ago
I agree that side projects are the future of marketing, and many companies are already doing this. A while ago I made a list of companies that have created inspiring side projects for marketing purposes: https://www.stayintech.com/info/sideprojects https://www.stayintech.com/info/sideprojects
lifeisstillgood 11y ago
I suspect this has some truth to it. I think we are seeing huge backlash against "ads" as in dumb content constantly pushed out. In this searchable world, ads don't need to be pushed continuously because if the ad suits me, I will find it. As such less effort needs to go into the "ad delivery network" and more into the quality and specificity of the ad itself Which used to be a blog post, but now seems to be a useful online tool or project. The ads get more expensive and more targeted, the distribution channel slims down to search. This comment seems at home on the Brendan Eich thread next door too.
6stringmerc 11y ago
>Articles that provided practical utility—actionable advice and tips—were shared far more than those that were merely interesting or even surprising. Reading this gave me a bit of a chuckle, because this is exactly how bad advice spreads too. Like bonsai kitten. At the end of the article, all I could think about was how the post was basically talking about "diversification" without ever using the term outright, even though it's a more suitable concept to employ than "side projects" IMO.
perlgeek 11y ago
The key is to provide value to the reader or consumer. Blog posts can be valuable (by educating or entertaining, for example), but writing valuable blog posts is a lot of effort. Side projects can be valuable, but creating valuable side projects is effort. So I guess it depends on what you're good at. A side project is usually something you're passionate about, so it's a good starting point. But if you like writing, blogging is still the way to go.
yaworsk 11y ago
After reading this, seems like this should titled "how to veil your advertising in blog posts..." Not to sound overly cynical but this seems to be again about pushing the new products created through content advertising. That said, I did click on one and while howmuchtomakeanapp seemed cool, the site was so slow that i closed it after two questions.
Sir_Substance 11y ago
Heh, marketing has gone so far around the curve of wasting peoples time they're approaching actually doing useful things for society from the other side.
waylandsmithers 11y ago
Well, I guess this is a counterpoint to both: I've now read this blog, and I've used unsplash for free photos, but I have no idea what crew is or does.
overcast 11y ago
Side projects are always a good thing. Whatever your idea is, with time permitting, get it out there. Regardless of how silly it may be seen from others, it gets exposure, and gets you experience. Every side project I work on, builds on some core technology I learned from the last project. I've got a million ideas, and when I'm done with one, I move onto the next. Keep your mind busy!

30 points by sdsantos 11y ago

shockzzz 11y ago

> You need marketing that isn’t perceived as marketing.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
I.e. you need to lie to people harder.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  https://cdnjs.com/ https://cdnjs.com/ How is this lying to people?

kelukelugames 11y ago

Hey dang, can we please kill the first part of the title?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

obilgic 11y ago

And thats still a blog post.

goodJobWalrus 11y ago
Yeah, quite funny that I learned of this company thru blog post.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

plehoux 11y ago

We launched our product (https://missiveapp.com https://missiveapp.com) in closed beta last Autumn, and I can assess from our experiments that the only thing we did that gather a lot of attention was our "A Brief History of Email Apps" (http://email-apps-timeline.missiveapp.com/ http://email-apps-timeline.missiveapp.com/), a timeline of all the email clients released since the '90, a side project. All our blog posts failed to gather eyeballs. We tried on our blog (https://missiveapp.com/blog https://missiveapp.com/blog) and on Medium (https://medium.com/@plehoux https://medium.com/@plehoux). We are probably not good at writing compelling and viral content. It's hard. It's a unique and rare talent. You need to write about subjects that matter to people, subjects of our time. To me, 37 signals (https://m.signalvnoise.com https://m.signalvnoise.com) are the master of this game. I don't think blog post are dead; it's just harder to get noticed. But isn't it the same for everything else. I enjoyed the blog post and did, in fact, learned about the crew product. :)

bchjam 11y ago

marketing's incessant notion that lying to people is like a science of making money just makes me sad. make a good product, be honest about it, change plans if noone cares, what's so bad about that?

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Competition. If you don't do it, you'll get outcompeted by those who do. It's not true in many areas (where the market isn't oversaturated), but that's the perception - so people go and blatantly lie even if they don't have to. It's a kind of problem that should be solved by social norms and regulations. They are way too lenient right now, and the continued acceptance of advertising as a respectable occupation perplexes me.
goodJobWalrus 11y ago
But how are people going to learn of your product (to either care or not care), if you don't reach out / market to them?
- gkya 11y ago
  The only ads that I've ever clicked are those of the Deck Network. Every business needs to reach out to people to find customers, but lieing is not necessary by any means. Tell us what you really do, and we'll buy if we are interested. If a company tricks me into buying their product when it is not the most adapted one, it's worse because I will switch away as soon as possible. If there is no lies and the service is good, I'll renew or suggest.
  - goodJobWalrus 11y ago
    Do you consider OP as lying in some way?
    - gkya 11y ago
      Their homepage header: "Work with the best designers and developers". This is at least exaggeration. It's the first time that I see the OP, so don't know a lot. In marketing there are these all the time. A company I worked for had this "style test" which new customers completed, and we suggested them a "personalised, designer-curated" items list via mail. It was not even ML, we splat them into three profiles based on the test, and made three different mails, sent each of them to the members respective profile. Each mail started with a title like "Your personalised style guide, tailored for you by our designers"... It's not a big blatant lie like saying "USA is a democracy", but still, it's a lie.

userium 11y ago

I agree that side projects are the future of marketing, and many companies are already doing this. A while ago I made a list of companies that have created inspiring side projects for marketing purposes: https://www.stayintech.com/info/sideprojects https://www.stayintech.com/info/sideprojects

lifeisstillgood 11y ago

I suspect this has some truth to it. I think we are seeing huge backlash against "ads" as in dumb content constantly pushed out. In this searchable world, ads don't need to be pushed continuously because if the ad suits me, I will find it. As such less effort needs to go into the "ad delivery network" and more into the quality and specificity of the ad itself Which used to be a blog post, but now seems to be a useful online tool or project. The ads get more expensive and more targeted, the distribution channel slims down to search. This comment seems at home on the Brendan Eich thread next door too.

6stringmerc 11y ago

>Articles that provided practical utility—actionable advice and tips—were shared far more than those that were merely interesting or even surprising. Reading this gave me a bit of a chuckle, because this is exactly how bad advice spreads too. Like bonsai kitten. At the end of the article, all I could think about was how the post was basically talking about "diversification" without ever using the term outright, even though it's a more suitable concept to employ than "side projects" IMO.

perlgeek 11y ago

The key is to provide value to the reader or consumer. Blog posts can be valuable (by educating or entertaining, for example), but writing valuable blog posts is a lot of effort. Side projects can be valuable, but creating valuable side projects is effort. So I guess it depends on what you're good at. A side project is usually something you're passionate about, so it's a good starting point. But if you like writing, blogging is still the way to go.

yaworsk 11y ago

After reading this, seems like this should titled "how to veil your advertising in blog posts..." Not to sound overly cynical but this seems to be again about pushing the new products created through content advertising. That said, I did click on one and while howmuchtomakeanapp seemed cool, the site was so slow that i closed it after two questions.

Sir_Substance 11y ago

Heh, marketing has gone so far around the curve of wasting peoples time they're approaching actually doing useful things for society from the other side.

waylandsmithers 11y ago

Well, I guess this is a counterpoint to both: I've now read this blog, and I've used unsplash for free photos, but I have no idea what crew is or does.

overcast 11y ago

Side projects are always a good thing. Whatever your idea is, with time permitting, get it out there. Regardless of how silly it may be seen from others, it gets exposure, and gets you experience. Every side project I work on, builds on some core technology I learned from the last project. I've got a million ideas, and when I'm done with one, I move onto the next. Keep your mind busy!