Category: Business

Content marketing wisdom from Jason Lemkin at SaaStr

This Jason Lemkin post is loaded with advice on how to create a successful content brand. I’ll probably add these notes to my personal bible.

NOTES

Quora is great but takes a lot of content (more than 2K answers for 1M monthly views)
The key to Quora is I did what was easy. I used Quora questions as a vehicle to stimulate a memory of some mistake I’d made, some learning I’d had. And I made a rule if I couldn’t get the answer done immediately, I’d move on.

Blog traffic is consistent and reliable but has stopped growing (3% MoM)

What didn’t work: engagement on LinkedIn and Facebook Page, YouTube audience growth despite posting high quality videos, traffic levels on Medium

Podcasting is a lot of work:
Post-production takes a lot of time, and it’s very hard to build an audience. There are so many podcasts now, and little organic way to discover new ones. So unless you can crush it with a podcast, you may find the ROI very low

In-person events conferences have dis-economies of scale, especially in an expensive and event-heavy region like the Bay
So my suggestion is don’t try to put on an industry event in the Bay Area unless you are sure you somehow can be #1 or #2. Do a customer event instead. Higher ROI, much easier to put on.

Twitter is good once you have critical mass (~40K quality followers)

Mediocre content does not perform. Contributed articles and boring sponsor posts…are read by very, very few folks.

Always experiment with new channels
I think if you want your content marketing to keep growing, you have to add new layers that perform. Our goal is one new material initiative / channel a year.

Find a publishing cadence and stick to it

Like a startup, give your strategy time (his magic number is 24 months) to develop a sustainable and growing audience

Resources, thoughts from The Religion of Business

I created a website/project/newest-shiny-thing called The Religion of Business, where I’m building a library of advice and insights on how businesses can learn from organized religions (the focus is on the “organized” half of the phrase). I’ve written briefly about it here.

I’ll periodically share useful resources and links here. Here are a few recent ones:

  • A 1-Page Summary of Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer [link] – one of the best psychology books I’ve read, perhaps ever
  • How businesses use religious principles, techniques, ideas [link] – continuing the case for why this intersection is important and undervalued
  • Notes from The Economist’s in-depth report on the Catholic Church’s finances [link] – did you know that Catholic priests make, on average, $25K in salary?

I thought this was an interesting concept: the “cut flower culture” from Jewish theologian Will Herberg:

The attempt made in recent decades by secularist thinkers to disengage the moral principles of western civilization from their scripturally based religious context, in the assurance that they could live a life of their own as “humanistic” ethics, has resulted in our “cut flower culture.” Cut flowers retain their original beauty and fragrance, but only so long as they retain the vitality that they have drawn from their now-severed roots; after that is exhausted, they wither and die. So with freedom, brotherhood, justice, and personal dignity — the values that form the moral foundation of our civilization. Without the life-giving power of the faith out of which they have sprung, they possess neither meaning nor vitality.

I also thought this was a great article, “The Market as God” by Harvey Cox [link]. A memorable quote:

I am beginning to think that for all the religions of the world, however they may differ from one another, the religion of The Market has become the most formidable rival, the more so because it is rarely recognized as a religion

Jack Ma blasts minds at the Stanford GSB; here are my notes!

This Jack Ma talk at Stanford’s GSB, given in Mandarin (with great English subtitles!), is minute-for-minute the best tech entrepreneurship lecture I’ve heard this year, maybe last year too.

Here were my notes. They are more copious than usual because there’s so much good stuff here: wisdom, humor, anecdotes, rah-rah. Enjoy!

  • in relating a story about how he tried to stop a group of men who were stealing a manhole cover: if you don’t take action, no one will, and if you take action, you may be the beneficiary
  • his whole life, no one told him he was smart, no one believed he would succeed
  • he was first person in China to conduct business on the Internet
  • he thought, Internet will be something, as long as I’m the last person to survive, I will succeed (wow!)
  • Silicon Valley gave him a lot of inspiration
    • when he started working on the Internet in China, everyone thought he was a trickster, but when he went to SV, all the parking lots were full, rush hour traffic, people were working on the weekends
  • believes he and Alibaba succeeded in Chinese internet for 3 reasons:
    1. no money
      • “when you have too much money, that’s when your real problems start”
      • Alibaba has one of China’s largest cash reserves and that’s part of their culture
      • money is like the armed forces, try not to use it, but if you do, you must win
    2. didn’t understand technology
      • still doesn’t understand what coding is all about, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t respect it!
      • it’s both a tragedy and a fortune that he’s not a CEO who understands internet; he isn’t looking over his engineers’ shoulders, and has great respect for his technical team
      • “I don’t understand technology, I’m afraid of it, as long as it works I’m happy”, in that way he’s similar to 80% of Alibaba’s users
      • was the company’s #1 tester but part of why he’s stepping down as CEO is because he doesn’t even use his company’s products anymore, he’s too old for the internet, young people are even better testers than he is
      • “without belief, technology is a tool”
      • mentions the need for reverence and respect of technology multiple times
    3. never planned
      • wrote one business plan, VC rejected him and gave detailed feedback, never wrote another one
      • it was 96, 97, if you wrote a plan you were either lying to yourself or to other people
      • could get an MBA to write a detailed, beautiful plan, but would it be useful? no
      • “life is a plan that is slowly unfolding…embrace change”
      • “change is the best plan if you don’t want to lose your sense of direction”
      • “I never plan, that doesn’t mean WE never plan”
  • world’s never been in better place, yet never have people had more complaints; “best of times, worst of times”
  • 30 years ago China was not much better than N Korea
  • “change is what will give young people opportunities”
  • it took him 7 years to finish elementary school
  • he took the college admissions exam (the gaokao) 3 times before he passed!
  • attributes it all to hard work, good friends, and a lot of LUCK
    • luck is like seeds to be sown, it won’t come to you on its own
    • when you have a lot of good luck, it won’t continue forever, your job is to sow other peoples’ seeds, spread it around, and it may even extend your own run
  • some of you believe in God, some in Buddha, I’m still shopping around
  • Alibaba is not a business for consumers, it’s for small businesses
    • things change too fast, too hard to understand consumer tastes, not in our DNA, but small businesses know their customers, so we help them
    • if run out of small business customers, we’ll break up the large ones!
  • we’re not competing with eBay, Google, Yahoo…we’re competing with the previous generation, and with the future