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Did you think this article was scummy? Probably not, it provided some real value and insight. And guess what, it was a piece of content marketing for his new bo

by ryanio 13y ago

Did you think this article was scummy? Probably not, it provided some real value and insight. And guess what, it was a piece of content marketing for his new book. I was pleasantly surprised at the end with his CTA (call-to-action). Marketing is just finding a way to communicate your value proposition to your target market. Yes, there are plenty of scummy ways out there -- but some awesome real-world examples come from our favorite tech startups like 37signals (e.g. their books) and Atlassian (e.g. their git tutorials). That's the great thing about the inbound/content marketing movement these days -- you are typically not paying people to read it, so you first and have to step back and think, "what can I write about that would grab the genuine interest of people I want to reach?" Just some thoughts from a product marketing manager at a startup in NYC.

janj 13y ago
Maybe I'm just too cynical a person but I thought his CTA was awkward and couldn't help thinking about how giving his readers 'homework' was a great marketing technique to automatically place him in a mentor position in the minds of his readers, helping his readers justify buying his book. But I get your point. This wasn't a scummy piece of marketing and I found it through a very neutral channel.
- mijustin 13y ago
  Hey, original author here. I appreciate your perspective. Which CTA, specifically did you find awkward? (As a side-note: I've had other posts with similar traffic and same landing URL. This one outperformed them by quite a bit. The launch list itself grew 2x)
  - janj 13y ago
    It was the homework assignment. You might not have intended it this way but I saw it as you asserting yourself as a credible teacher before earning it. I did enjoy your article and have given you my email in hopes that I gain some valuable insight. I have always been very skeptical about sales and marketing but have tried to be open to its value. My wife has a more neutral view and can sometimes soften my stance on it.
    - mijustin 13y ago
      Cool, thanks. I appreciate your honesty.
tbirdz 13y ago
In all honesty, I starting reading the article because I was lured in by the title (even though it's a bit link baity). Why are these people not normal, and why am I one of them? Then I started reading, realized it was about developers marketing. I have never really considered marketing my strong suit so I continued reading. When he started talking about his book, I felt as though I had been tricked, and I got a little mad. To me, it cheapened the article, and made me feel as if the author didn't really care about informing people, but rather was just looking to promote his book. At that instant I knew he had posted this link on Hacker News not to be informative, but to prey on developers with weak marketing skills, and get them to pay for his book. I normally wouldn't comment on something like this, but since you said so anyway, I would say this is an unethical advertisement because it pretends to be an article, but it actually was an advertisement. If he had said right out, "I have written a book on marketing for developers, here is a sample, and if you are interested you can purchase it here", then I might have been more inclined to purchase it (of course the book isn't even finished yet, so there would be no way to buy it anyway even if I was interested, but that's a separate issue I won't get into here.) Rather, instead the article left a bad taste in my mouth and reinforced my opinion of marketing as something scummy I wouldn't want to get involved with.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  At that instant I knew he had posted this link on Hacker News not to be informative, but to prey on developers with weak marketing skills, and get them to pay for his book. OK, the fact that you would use a term like "prey on" in this context tells me that we probably have radically different worldviews, so there may be no point to this exchange, but... I would say this is an unethical advertisement because it pretends to be an article, but it actually was an advertisement There's no particular reason a piece of content can't be intended to be both legitimately informative, AND serve to drive awareness of something your selling. In this case, ask yourself this: If you took away the last paragraph or two of the article, would the rest of it still have been informative? Would you have gotten value from it? If so, how is it not an informative article, just because of the blurb tacked onto the end, sharing information about the author's book? Especially when the book is relevant to the audience who would likely discover that article? OK, I get that a lot of developers just have a sort of general aversion to "all things commercial". Hell, I used to be that way to some extent, but yet I always found marketing fascinating, and now that I run a startup, I find marketing essential, so maybe my views have shifted a bit. Anyway, I understand - to a point - that a lot of us find that commercial interests take away from some notion of essential "purity" or whatever when it comes to technical content. But to call this kind of content marketing "unethical" is a bit extreme, IMO.

by ryanio 13y ago

janj 13y ago

Maybe I'm just too cynical a person but I thought his CTA was awkward and couldn't help thinking about how giving his readers 'homework' was a great marketing technique to automatically place him in a mentor position in the minds of his readers, helping his readers justify buying his book. But I get your point. This wasn't a scummy piece of marketing and I found it through a very neutral channel.

mijustin 13y ago
Hey, original author here. I appreciate your perspective. Which CTA, specifically did you find awkward? (As a side-note: I've had other posts with similar traffic and same landing URL. This one outperformed them by quite a bit. The launch list itself grew 2x)
- janj 13y ago
  It was the homework assignment. You might not have intended it this way but I saw it as you asserting yourself as a credible teacher before earning it. I did enjoy your article and have given you my email in hopes that I gain some valuable insight. I have always been very skeptical about sales and marketing but have tried to be open to its value. My wife has a more neutral view and can sometimes soften my stance on it.
  - mijustin 13y ago
    Cool, thanks. I appreciate your honesty.

tbirdz 13y ago

In all honesty, I starting reading the article because I was lured in by the title (even though it's a bit link baity). Why are these people not normal, and why am I one of them? Then I started reading, realized it was about developers marketing. I have never really considered marketing my strong suit so I continued reading. When he started talking about his book, I felt as though I had been tricked, and I got a little mad. To me, it cheapened the article, and made me feel as if the author didn't really care about informing people, but rather was just looking to promote his book. At that instant I knew he had posted this link on Hacker News not to be informative, but to prey on developers with weak marketing skills, and get them to pay for his book. I normally wouldn't comment on something like this, but since you said so anyway, I would say this is an unethical advertisement because it pretends to be an article, but it actually was an advertisement. If he had said right out, "I have written a book on marketing for developers, here is a sample, and if you are interested you can purchase it here", then I might have been more inclined to purchase it (of course the book isn't even finished yet, so there would be no way to buy it anyway even if I was interested, but that's a separate issue I won't get into here.) Rather, instead the article left a bad taste in my mouth and reinforced my opinion of marketing as something scummy I wouldn't want to get involved with.

mindcrime 13y ago
At that instant I knew he had posted this link on Hacker News not to be informative, but to prey on developers with weak marketing skills, and get them to pay for his book. OK, the fact that you would use a term like "prey on" in this context tells me that we probably have radically different worldviews, so there may be no point to this exchange, but... I would say this is an unethical advertisement because it pretends to be an article, but it actually was an advertisement There's no particular reason a piece of content can't be intended to be both legitimately informative, AND serve to drive awareness of something your selling. In this case, ask yourself this: If you took away the last paragraph or two of the article, would the rest of it still have been informative? Would you have gotten value from it? If so, how is it not an informative article, just because of the blurb tacked onto the end, sharing information about the author's book? Especially when the book is relevant to the audience who would likely discover that article? OK, I get that a lot of developers just have a sort of general aversion to "all things commercial". Hell, I used to be that way to some extent, but yet I always found marketing fascinating, and now that I run a startup, I find marketing essential, so maybe my views have shifted a bit. Anyway, I understand - to a point - that a lot of us find that commercial interests take away from some notion of essential "purity" or whatever when it comes to technical content. But to call this kind of content marketing "unethical" is a bit extreme, IMO.