I run a digital marketing agency, and we are HubSpot Gold partners. In fact, we are partners with a lot of digital marketing platforms, but HubSpot is the one that best defines the approach we use for marketing. That is: HubSpot is an inbound marketing platform, and we are an (mostly) inbound marketing agency.
Content marketing is something we eat, sleep, breathe. We blog. We create. We amplify.
I’m over it.
We take over accounts from other agencies all the time. Accounts where the previous agency is creating content just to create content, all in the name of SEO. Blog post after blog post, just adding to the noise.
It’s what HubSpot seems to be promoting too, with their very persuasive statistics about how many more leads a business gets if they blog.
So they blog. They write article after article, often written by non-native English speakers, focused on optimization for keywords and not on actually solving problems or converting leads.
It’s noise.
We don’t need more noise in our lives, do we?
It’s a tough spot to be in: we have to write to get rankings, it’s true. Our clients want traffic, and traffic generation is a big part of the funnel.
So we write, but we take our time, do our research and write well.
Ethically, we have taken a stand not to publish any posts for clients that we wouldn’t be proud to share on our own personal social accounts. It’s a pretty damn high standard, but it’s also pretty great when I see our content strategist sharing a post she wrote for a orthopaedic surgeon client, or our marketing coordinator sharing a post we published for a law school admissions blog.
We’ve taken a stand to contribute only content of value to the world, to our clients and to their clients and customers. We have always held up strong belief that quality > quantity, and Google has rewarded that approach and followed suit with contextual relevance and anti-spam measures.
It’s a good mantra to remember: don’t publish unless you’re providing value to the people you serve.