Becoming a Content Brand, Part 2: Conviction
“Over my dead body.”
It was my first day as head of growth at Litmus. My literal first day. (July-ish, 2015.)
I was meeting with Justine Jordan, head of marketing at the time, and I made a suggestion that we should be sending auto-responders to alert all blog subscribers when new content was published.
We were working on a huge website update in preparation for a big product launch. So, this seemed like an easy win for getting people back to the website more regularly.
Justine looked at me, smiled, and said, “over my dead body.”
Litmus wanted to grow. But not like that.
They’d bootstrapped to ~15M ARR up to that point. No advertising. No salespeople. No sales motion whatsoever. Just really good product market fit, a great support team, and the best, most helpful content written about email on the web.
So, Justine had a reason for her conviction.
I called her a couple of weeks ago to catch up and we laughed about this exchange.
“That is something I would say,” she chuckled.
But why? (That’s what I’m most interested in.)
“People have always been savvy enough to read and understand if something was written for their benefit or the person who wrote it,” she said. “So, ‘Over my dead body’ would I put something out that wouldn’t meet the bar of the audience and the expectation of what they were looking for.”
No, but really, why…?
“Just because these best practices exist and that they’re the only way for you to make money doesn’t mean you have to follow them,” she continued. “If you’re following the same playbook as everyone else and expecting a differentiated result, that seems silly.”
Principles like these permeate many of the Content Brands you and I both admire. But, I needed to go deeper.
For this issue, in addition to Justine, I also reached out to 2 friends from another Content Brand I admire –– Rand Fishkin (founder/CEO) and Amanda Natividad (VP of Marketing) of SparkToro.
Here’s what I learned…
***
In the last issue of Good Content!, I introduced Content Brands and started exploring the things that make them so effective.
To recap, Content Brands are brands that create content so good that they inspire brand loyalty even from those who may never buy from them.
Brands like Wistia, SparkToro, Buffer, Ahrefs, InVision, Litmus, Gong… (insert your own here)
Last time, we talked about Craft and how Content Brands over-index on the details of creating content rather than the tactics that surround promotion.
This week, in part 2, we’re talking about Conviction and why it’s such a critical component of building a legendary Content Brand.
Conviction
Content Brands hold (sometimes extremely) strong views in the way in which they/their team creates and publishes content.
They want to grow, but not like that.
Like Justine, they believe strongly in their approach to content, even if they can't quite articulate it or recognize it as unique.
This was Rand Fishkin in an email to me last week describing their approach to content...
“I’ve never tried to fully explain (even to myself) the equation that results in us producing one piece of content over another.”
It’s not a “strategy” so much as it’s just so innately them. This, in part, is why the approach becomes woven into the fabric of the brand itself.
But it all comes from a place of strong conviction.
Based on my conversations and observations, this is typically how brands like this behave…
They play to their strengths, not to what’s popular
It’s easy to feel pressure to be present across different content channels without first considering if there’s alignment between those channels and the interests and talents of your team.
Blogging. Podcasting. Video. TikTok. Most brands view them as another channel to unlock growth.
But those channels aren’t what unlocks growth. It’s how you show up in them.
Content Brands play to their strengths by prioritizing channels and mediums they know they’re great at.
Listen to what Amanda Natividad, VP of Marketing at SparkToro, had to say when I asked her about this.
“We do only what we enjoy doing, and we tend to stay in our lanes of what we feel we have solid expertise and competence in. For instance, Rand records lots of video tutorials and demos, and that’s a key differentiator for him. He is unfairly good at video! What takes him literally 15 minutes to record would take me over one hour to record. What’s unique about our approach here versus in previous places I’ve worked is that everything we do is both led by what our customers and audience need, and what we enjoy. We’re unlikely to stick to something simply to maintain the status quo.”
Playing to your strengths isn’t just about the type of content you create, but your relationship to publishing in general.
“We don’t have set schedules or a content calendar,” said Fishkin on SparkToro. “We produce things that:
1. fit our schedule and our strengths
2. we believe will resonate with our audience
3. are fun, interesting, and possible for us to produce
4. are being ignored by others and we’re frustrated they don’t exist
Those are the most salient criteria!”
At a practical level, we should let our team’s interests, talents, and passion dictate the channels we invest in.
Have someone who prefers long-form writing over podcasting? Great. Make that channel work for you. You’re far more likely to be successful than trying to force yourself or those around you into content channels they don’t enjoy.
They strive to enjoy the work, not just the result
In the last edition of this newsletter, Chris Savage told us, “We figured that if you had two options for content––a fun way and a boring way––the fun one would always win.”
But here’s the trick—you first need to enjoy the content you’re creating in order for that to rub off on your audience.
People can tell when you’re having fun. Wistia’s content has always been a great example. (Remember when they planned and filmed a literal parade for a product launch?)
Another good example of this in practice is SparkToro. I spoke with its founder, Rand Fishkin, a couple of weeks ago and asked him about this.
“We believe that work can be fun, that we should enjoy it, that we shouldn’t do many things we don’t derive joy from just to make more money,” said Fishkin. “We also believe that we’ll make more money if we do things we’re good at and enjoy doing versus things we dislike but can attribute signups to. We’re weird like that, and I think weirdness often attracts like-minded people.”
Natividad echoed this sentiment when I talked with her and asked about the impact that working under this philosophy has on her own work.
“I find myself chasing the ideas that bring me joy, challenge me, and that I think will engage our audience,” said Natividad. “When I go after the projects I’m really excited about, it shows. I’m more engaged with the work, I find little ways to delight people (like
This presents itself in all of the content SparkToro creates. They’re clearly enjoying themselves and the work that they’re doing, and as a result, more of them shines through in the content. It’s human. Their (very human) fingerprints are all over it. It doesn’t feel like content written for their own benefit or for the purposes of an algorithm.
It’s for us. This is how content can turn an audience into a community, something Jordan knew was important from her first days at Litmus.
“I came to Litmus because I felt acute pain as an email designer and developer. I thought I was the only person on the planet searching for answers, but my rational brain knew that there were others out there who were asking those same questions. At Litmus, I wanted to create a brand and community that made people like me feel less alone. That created a sense of belonging and inclusion, and said, “yeah, you’re not alone.” The only way that you can do that is be a human. In order for people to trust what Litmus was saying, they had to feel like we were one of them. Because I was.”
They trust in their creative intuition
Based on my conversations over these last few weeks, Content Brands are more comfortable taking swings without knowing if something has worked or will work.
Some might read that and think, “well, that comes from a place of privilege. Not everyone can operate this way.”
This misses the point.
This approach frees them as they’re not adherent to any “rules” or best practices. It enables them to follow their creative intuition, do things that feel right to them and their audience, and refocus their attention on the craft rather than all the details around attribution.
They’re successful because of this, not in spite of this.
Here’s how Rand Fishkin puts it.
“We care almost not at all for Google’s algorithms or doing things for SEO reasons. We care a bit more about social media algorithms because that’s where we earn a lot of our visibility and value. I’d say measurement plays a small role in our marketing, and gut feel a big one, whereas “attribution” (being able to prove a source sent a converting visit) is almost nonexistent.
This lack of attribution-obsession means we can do a lot of things that feel good to us and our community versus things that can be proven to convert.”
Litmus provides an extreme example of this. During Justine’s tenure, they’d spend ~$1M every summer to host The Email Design Conference (later renamed to Litmus Live). The focus was 100% on the content –– there were no Litmus promotions, no sponsored booths, and besides Justine (who hosted), there were no speakers from Litmus.
Justine recalled one attendee who came up to her at an event and said, ‘This event is great. What does Litmus do anyways?’
“Most companies would be horrified at that, but I was so proud of that. You paid thousands to be here and we earned your trust. You came for help and belonging and community that you couldn’t get from anywhere else.”
“Was this deliberate? Hell yes it was. This is how we differentiated ourselves from competitors. Did our competitors spend $1M to put on an event to help educate email marketers and help them do their job better? No. But Litmus felt if they made that investment, and didn’t put pressure to show attributable ROI, it would work. And it did. At a high level, traffic grew. Signups grew. Revenue grew.”
“Too many companies want to have that sure bet that’s attributable and predictable. And when you spend your time on that kind of marketing and wonder why you don’t have a strong brand, that’s why.”
***
Phew 😅
That's all for this week. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed exploring it.
Next time, I'll be covering the third (and final, well, for now) characteristic of Content Brands –– Continuity.
I hope you have a great day and an even better rest of your week.
- John
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