Content Marketing Playbooks
How founders use content to grow — the formats that drove signups, the distribution that gave each piece a second life, and the cadence that kept it sustainable for a tiny team.
193 tactics · page 6 of 7
“my podcast is my what I call Grail content and what I mean by that is that's where I want the final destination for for my audience to go for someone that's discovering my work for the first time for me to ask them hey can you sit down and listen to 30 minutes of an episode like that is a big ask and that is not something that people will will do”
Pick one piece as grail content and funnel everything toward it
Asking a stranger to listen to 30 minutes cold is too big a request. The newsletter functions as middleware between social posts and the podcast (grail), warming readers up and clicking them through. Pick the single deepest piece of content as the destination, then design every shorter touchpoint as a step toward it.
“I want them to click uh because that helps with clickr raids and then possibly sponsorships and all that so I have a lot of links in my newsletter where they can click if I'm WR if I'm talking about an episode I will say oh like I did this episode with arvit yeah interesting I'll highlight that this episode as clickable but then I'll I'll highlight it again later being like Oh we talked about this and then I'll highlight that”
Train newsletter readers to click by seeding multiple link anchors
Opens are a noisy metric — someone can open and close without engaging. Clicks are the real signal. Seed two or three clickable anchors to the same destination inside every newsletter to lift CTR, create measurable engagement, and make the asset sellable to sponsors. The clicks are the proof real reading happened.
“instead of using terms like Indie hacker just use software entrepreneur when writing for people outside of the software entrepreneurship business I just don't use abbreviations like mrr without explaining them and Define them first”
Drop the jargon to widen your reach
Jargon signals in-group status but actively repels the newcomers who would have grown your audience. Swap insider terms ("indie hacker" → "software entrepreneur") and define every acronym on first use. As you outgrow your initial niche, clarity is what lets people from different backgrounds and languages cross the bridge into your content.
“The easiest way to do this is by Leading with the conclusion and presenting your arguments afterwards... just say what you end up with and then explain it along the way to the end where you repeat it because repetition is also great”
Lead with the conclusion, then explain
Attention is the scarcest resource — open every piece with your takeaway, then unpack the reasoning, then restate it at the end. Distracted readers still get the value if they bounce after the lede, and engaged readers get reinforcement through repetition. This single structural change improves every essay, tweet, and YouTube intro you write.
“I have a thousand books around my house you open up the it's all just a different flavor of the same meal and figuring out what your flavoring is and saying I don't I can serve the same meal it's just going to have a different flavor”
Season the same meal your own way
Stop hunting for a topic nobody covers. The 'meal' is allowed to be the same as a thousand other creators — productivity, marketing, fitness — and your seasoning is the overlap of identities you already carry (single mom, two exits, anti-burnout, etc.). The Venn diagram of who you are is the moat, not the topic.
“am I using social media as a diary or to help teach a lesson or share a lesson and that the the latter requires thought and introspection and articulation in a way that you're delivering a certain message... can I sit with this for five minutes and still want it great idea”
Filter posts: diary or lesson?
Before posting, label the draft: diary (venting, seeking validation, insecurity) or lesson (you've metabolized it enough to teach). Only ship the lessons — and sit with each one for five minutes first. The gap between thought and click is what separates authority-building content from regret-posts you'll delete next week.
“zero click content is Standalone unique content or Standalone native to platform content for which the reader or the consumer doesn't need to click to get the full context that they can understand it in of itself but if they do click then it's even better”
Ship zero-click content as your default
Stop treating social posts as teasers that beg for a click. Make each post deliver a complete idea standalone — the click becomes a bonus, not the price of entry. Algorithms now punish off-platform links, so leading with stand-alone value is the only way to keep distribution while still routing real intent to your owned channel.
“there's kind of content that makes people discover you and then there's a kind of content that makes people stay with you they're not the same right like the discovery content is the stuff that Twitter really likes and the retention content well that's just what you need to do cater to your existing audience”
Split content into discovery and retention buckets
Run two parallel content tracks: short platform-native zero-click posts on 1-2 social networks for discovery, and an owned channel (email, podcast) for retention. Don't expect a podcast to grow you, and don't expect viral tweets to build deep affinity. Map each piece you make to one bucket and let it do its specific job.
“I think it makes it harder for me mediocre content to stand out right like it makes it just it raises the bar essentially... you just have to out qualitatively”
Raise the bar — AI is flooding the middle
AI-generated content competes with infinite free supply at the average-quality level. The only durable move is qualitative: sharper opinions, lived experience, unique synthesis. You don't have to be the best at something — you just have to be somebody's favorite, and that takes the kind of personal-experience content AI literally cannot produce.
“so first obviously copy marketing what what is you know uh brand identity was a big thing for me in the beginning um Association who we were trying to associate with uh those kind of things”
Lead with brand identity in emotional verticals
When customers are shipping their $10K horse or family dog, the cheapest provider doesn't win — the most trustworthy-looking one does. Invest heavily in copy, brand association, and visual identity before conversion optimization. Pick who you want to be associated with in the niche and let that shape every page, post, and review reply.
“the three T's that are the most important to think about are topic title and thumbnail I start with topic because it doesn't really matter how good of a video you make or how beautiful your title and thumbnail are if it's a topic that no one's interested in no one's going to click on it”
Lead with Topic-Title-Thumbnail before scripting
Flip the default order: nail Topic, Title, and Thumbnail before you script, film, or edit. The audience never sees your beautiful video unless the packaging earns the click, so packaging is the FIRST creative decision, not the last. If the topic has no demand, no production polish can save it — this is the YouTube equivalent of writing the press release before the product.
“if you like if if you have a problem with packaging your your video in a way that is intriguing or interesting enough to be clicked on what it really is most likely is you not being confident enough with the quality of your own video because if your video is good enough it won't really matter why they clicked on it in the first place”
Clickbait is just confidence in your video
If a "clickbaity" title feels icky, the real problem is usually doubt about whether the video pays off. Make the video genuinely good, then let the packaging be as intriguing as it needs to be — viewers won't remember the hook, they'll remember the value. Stop punishing your reach to protect your ego.
“I've come to try to like separate the result of a video into like three categories in my head one category is the views right... bucket B is how much did my audience or like any people enjoy this content what are my comments like... and then the third bucket is what did I learn from this process”
Judge each video by three buckets, not views
Stop letting view count be the only verdict. Score every release on three buckets: reach (views), resonance (comment depth and quality), and creator-side learning (new b-roll angle, new edit trick, new hook formula). A flop on bucket one can still be a clear win on bucket three — and skills compound across every future ship.
“more than anything fresh Founders mess up their positioning by not even knowing what positioning is and April is the expert in this field she'll make sure that you start your marketing efforts right from the right perspective from the right position”
Nail positioning before any marketing tactic
Most early founders skip positioning and jump straight to tactics, which is why their content lands flat. Before writing a landing page or launch post, define who the product is for, who it is explicitly NOT for, and what category it competes in. This is the foundation every other piece of marketing gets built on top of. (April Dunford, Obviously Awesome.)
“you have to write for attention first then you add whatever message you might have whatever you might want lead with value lead with Insight start with the outcome and that's how writing for social media works right now”
Write for attention first, message second
Stop burying your insight behind setup. Open every post with the outcome, the value, or the hook — the message only lands once attention is captured. The first line is the gate; if it doesn't earn the scroll-stop, the most authentic content underneath might as well not exist.
“people often become caricatures of themselves to fit into these personas and this is the new challenge of authenticity at scale”
Simplify yourself into a legible caricature on purpose
At scale, your audience will compress you into one or two traits whether you like it or not — choose those traits before the algorithm does. Pick the dimension you want to be known for and amplify it; nuance dies in the feed, so trade depth for legibility on public channels and save complexity for your inner circle.
“what if we could then dynamically Niche so instead it's like they are getting a email that I send about the course and then if they're a Creator maybe I put the quote from Dickey push of ship 30 because he's a Creator and if they are a consultant maybe I put the quote from... they've used their clients to like make to basically they've taken what I've taught them and built a really good little personal freelancing or agency business”
Dynamically niche by swapping testimonials, not pages
Niching always wins, but running "Mastering ConvertKit for SaaS" AND "...for Book Authors" AND "...for Consultants" is insane. Keep one product page/email and conditionally swap the testimonial, case study, or single benefit paragraph based on what the visitor told you. Cheapest form of dynamic niching, and it's why generic "works for everyone" copy converts worse than either targeted version.
“it's not about being Coy it's not about being it's just about like again like showing that you're listening and saying I'm listening and here's a different set of bullet points for you that I think are going to really resonate with you”
Open personalized copy with "you shared with me"
Open every personalized block with explicit attribution — "you shared with me that you work with a team, so here's why this gets you to the next level" — instead of silently injecting inferred facts. Pat Flynn's Black Friday A/B test using exactly this "you fit this profile, here's why" framing was 2.38x more performant than the generic everything-on-offer control.
“almost the shape of a lot of people who were only say on Twitter to gain more Twitter followers to get more engagements on Twitter they start to sound a lot like each other and they don't produce new things or new Styles and it almost like the collective shape of their content on the Internet is like a drain it's like a whirl Poole and it goes into itself”
Make Ripple content, never Whirlpool content
Most Twitter content is Whirlpool: creators chase followers, mimic each other, and the discourse spirals down the same drain. Ripple content does the opposite — leave the body of water, go get scar tissue in the real world, then come back and drop new wisdom into the pool so it ripples outward. Before you hit publish, ask whether the post is recycling the discourse or introducing something earned.
“you have to keep in mind that you can either stand out or you can fit in and all of us want to do both of those things... if there's an interesting unique thing that's a little bit edgy like you know your post is going into a feed filled with other interesting things like don't be afraid to stand out”
Stand out — don't neuter your edge to fit in
Writers reflexively neuter their best lines to feel safe, then drop a sanitized post into a feed already crammed with interesting things, where it dies. When you have a weird, authentic, slightly edgy angle that's genuinely you, ship it without softening. Safety inside a noisy feed is the riskiest play.
“there's two types of content there's reach content and resonance content reach content is the nine books that will blow your mind about X thing where those go viral and it actually doesn't matter who writes it because you act you don't even look at who wrote it you just look at the content and so there's no resonance with the writer”
Separate reach content from resonance content
Reach content (listicles, hacks) spreads but builds no affinity because nobody cares who wrote it. Resonance content (stories, building in public, personal lessons) makes readers feel something for YOU specifically. Publish both intentionally: reach pulls strangers in, resonance turns them into fans. Picking only one is a common mistake.
“I want to create content that only I can create that I also would enjoy to consume”
Apply the content razor before publishing
Before hitting publish, run every piece through two filters: (1) could only I have created this, and (2) would I enjoy consuming it. This blocks generic listicles ("7 Chrome extensions") while still allowing high-reach topics if you bring a personal lens. It's the cleanest test for resonance over reach-bait.
“size of the question dictates the size of the audience so something like how to be happier how to make more money is going to be a lot bigger than how to grow your Niche podcast from 2K to 10K downloads”
Size the question to size the audience
Want wider reach? Widen the question you're answering. Use top-of-funnel pieces with broad questions (happiness, money) to pull strangers in, then keep resonance content tightly niched for the existing audience. Mix both altitudes deliberately rather than picking a single one.
“proof of work the concept is kind of taken from the crypto world and here in our context it means consistently and reliably creating things that other people find useful and then offering those things to these people for free sharing your work is the distribution of your thoughts and ideas”
Use "proof of work" as your distribution: ship useful free things on repeat
Reframe "build in public" as proof of work: a public, verifiable, repeated record of you producing things the target audience finds useful — for free. Templates, teardowns, replies, threads, mini-tools. Each artifact is a small block in a chain that proves you can do the thing, before anyone has to pay to find out.
“I set out to create one product each week that's all one essay or article doesn't have to be much more than that but it's just one a week that is my schedule and this then serves as the foundation for all my other content I turn that essay into a newsletter a podcast a video and whatever other format I want to see it in”
Pick one weekly deliverable as your source of truth and remix everything else from it
Solopreneurs drown when they try to ideate independently for every channel — essay, newsletter, podcast, YouTube. Pick one canonical weekly output (Arvid: a single essay) and treat every other channel as a derivative format of that core. One idea per week, four outputs per week. Cuts ideation cost by 75% and keeps the throughline consistent across formats.
“your followers want you to write about topics that they care about and you can rephrase this your followers want you to write about topics they care about right it's not about the topics really they're not just there for the content they're there for you for the person”
"It's already been said" is the wrong frame — followers come for the person, not the topic
The imposter-syndrome refrain "this has already been written" misunderstands what your audience signed up for. They subscribed to you, not to a topic. Your specific angle, voice, and lived path through the topic is the differentiation — even if the headline is identical to ten other essays. Ship anyway. The DMs and replies after publishing always disprove the fear.
“you have to understand the principles behind what makes good writing so when I explain what makes a good hook for example very simple principles you have to tap into people's emotions right you have to Intrigue them you have to you know pay attention to small things like getting specific um you know and uh you have to make sure that you're leaving some sort of a cliffhanger”
Master writing principles — emotion, intrigue, specificity — not grammar
The fear that you can't write because you don't know grammar is the wrong fear. Online writing competes for attention, not literary awards. Master five principles: tap into emotion, intrigue the reader, get specific (numbers, names, scenes), leave a cliffhanger that makes them want the next sentence, and use active voice + power verbs. Grammar is what you polish at the end if at all; principles are what get read.
“if you're brand new uh usually you think that you need to tell people I am this person with all this experience I've got you know 20 years of success in this and that so therefore pay attention to me and that's not how any of online writing Works how online writing works is you have to make it you content not eye content... I know I have spent 20 years doing this thing um here is my process to help you achieve very specific thing”
Write "you content" not "I content" — credibility framed for the reader
"I have 20 years of experience, so listen to me" is the lazy form of credibility — it benefits you, not the reader. Reframe: "In 20 years doing this, here's the specific 3-step process that helps you avoid X." Same credibility, but the second sentence centers the reader's outcome. Audit your bio, hooks, and threads for I-first language and rewrite them you-first.
“you're not going to build a true like platform um a true kind of brand that people know like know as you and associate with you and you you don't build Authority by using social media as like your own personal Journal it's not it is not like live journal from what is that the late 90s”
Tie every personal share to a lesson — don't use social as a journal
Personal context belongs in your posts — but tied to a takeaway. Kasey overshares deliberately (medical condition, dog attack, divorce) but every personal share connects to a craft lesson or business angle. The rule of thumb: if you can't finish the sentence "…and here's what this taught me about [your topic]," save the post for your private journal. Wedding photos and crying nights belong in personal channels, not your professional platform.
“I don't create content where I'm just like let me tell you dog about my failure like because that's kind of depressing... I will always get to the okay here's what I've learned from this and here's why this has made me a better person or or or a smarter entrepreneur... being able to say here's a bad thing that happened or a failure that I created and here's how I turned it into something that made me better because of it that is gritty as hell”
Lead with the lesson, not the failure — that's how vulnerability builds authority
Sharing failure without the takeaway just reads as depressing oversharing. The structure that builds authority: "Here's the bad thing that happened. Here's how horrible it felt. Here's the stupid stuff I did. And here is the specific lesson that made me a smarter operator because of it." That last beat is what distinguishes vulnerability-as-content from venting — and it's also what protects your ego on the way out.