Just realized my content strategy is totally backwards

Was talking to a data analyst at a conference last month. She said my whole approach to content was like throwing darts blindfolded. I was just posting whatever I thought was interesting. No data behind it. She showed me this one report where a simple blog post about a common customer problem got 10x the traffic of my fancy industry analysis pieces. Hit different because I thought I was being strategic. Turns out I was just guessing. Made me rethink how I pick topics for the next quarter. Anyone else ever get called out like that and change their whole process?

2 comments

2 Comments

taylor.jessica10d ago

That hit hard when you said "I thought I was being strategic. Turns out I was just guessing." Same thing happened to me last year. I was writing these deep thought pieces about industry trends nobody searched for. Then I looked at my analytics and saw a simple post I threw together about a common software bug was getting shared like wildfire. Now I spend an hour every month just reading customer support tickets to see what people actually ask about. That flipped everything for me. My traffic went up like 3x in two months.

grant_palmer10d ago

Had a buddy who spent 6 months writing these long thought leadership articles about artificial intelligence ethics. Nobody cared. Then he wrote a 500 word guide on how to fix a specific Excel error and it got like 40,000 views in a week. He still makes fun of himself for it.