Why Content Marketing

As a former code school educator, I created Android and iOS courses, built mobile applications, mentored students, and got along happily unaware of content marketing. On an odd day in 2015, courses were done, apps written, and students mentored; my teammates and I had a large pile of nothing on our plates. Our leaders aimed our idle hands at growth: have them answer questions on Quora, they strongly suggested.

Quora was and is a social media platform that surfaces the best answers to any question one so bravely poses of its users. Chance brought thousands of code school prospects to this platform in search of reviews, opinions, and dirty gossip behind popular code school options. Our higher-ups tasked us to seek out relevant questions and provide thoughtful answers (alongside links to our marketing materials, of course).

As I drafted answers to questions about Java, Android, iOS, and learning, I compared my works-in-progress to responses submitted by our competitors: I spotted a sour trend in their writing. Our competitors used these questions as opportunities to boast and advocate exclusively their services; the stink of self-promotion wafted like noxious gas. Instead of answering the questions to the best of their knowledge, they offered their products as solutions to the questions—they advertised.

As I read these attempts to pass advertising off as content, I became spiritually in-tune with my personal aversion to bull… ahem, shenanigans. False answers inspired my distrust and tarnished the reputation of both the brand that produced them and its online representative. If these answers inspired those feelings within me, so would they in Quora’s readers. To prevent our brand from suffering the same fate, I vowed to write earnestly and with minimal self-promotion. That vow changed my career.

My answers shot above the egotism and chest-beating with honesty, vulnerability, and an equal assessment of options. I treated our competitors with respect and showed our potential students alternatives that could save them money. I advised students to consider our competitors or worse, teach themselves. Doing so enabled students to skip the code school process entirely; a choice that inevitably led to lost sales.

You may be wondering, what kind of backwards marketing team would green-light this content? Not ours. As part of curriculum development, I had full creative control over my writing, and my creativity called for candor. I was certain my brazen honesty would win the company a total of zero prospects, but I was proud to satisfy the marketing team’s requests while maintaining integrity as a writer. To the surprise of my team, my manager, and especially myself, Operation Earnest paid off. Big time.

At our team’s peak, 1 of every 10 new students found us through Quora. What? But the growing number of prospects was only one side-effect of our approach. The conquering of Quora convinced the marketing team that curriculum authors should write blog posts as well; these posts would speak to similar concerns voiced by Quora users. One blog in particular compared four code schools in Los Angeles, my then-current residence. I was a perfect match for the post and we published my piece unceremoniously.

One month later, a startling email arrived in my company inbox: a praise-filled letter from the competition. The email’s author had just enrolled a student at his Los Angeles code school. This student discovered the author’s school after reading a blog post, my blog post. The author expressed his gratitude for my even-handed comparison and before signing off, he invited me to a coding meet-up hosted by his company.

Dozens of prospective students attended his meet-up each week and he wanted me to join and promote my organization. He planned not to mock me, humiliate me, or pummel me with tomatoes vaudeville-style. Instead, he wanted to publicize my company (his direct competitor) to the prospective leads he worked tirelessly to attract. That exchange taught me the power of honest, helpful, and respectful content. Good content.

Good content inspires trust in your organization and the consideration of your services by people who respect you before they meet you. And respect is a difficult thing to earn in an online world teeming with false news sources and advertising that poses as truth. And you can learn to create exceptional content that preserves your integrity, generates revenue, and delights your target audience by reading this book.

Do better books on content marketing exist? Yes. Have authors with more clout covered these topics? Of course. But will any be as honest, open, and direct with you as this one? Hell, no. Let’s cut the shenanigans and get to marketing.¹