We have some cool stuff to go over. But first, an announcement:
This is the first issue of Overthink Content, our newsletter.
If you’re reading this for the first time, thanks! If this isn’t your first time reading our newsletter … I guess you’re a time traveler. Cool.
All right—announcement over. On to the news.
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Patreon asks for help Patreon launched a survey Friday to find out what their 50,000 creators want to read about on their blog.
Validating content is usually a good idea. Fintech startup Pushpay used this as part of their approach to double their leads last year.
Patreon is a platform that connects creators to patrons. Creators make cool stuff, and patrons can support them by pledging either one-time payments or ongoing monthly contributions. As of now, Patreon seems to be paying out about $10.5MM every month.
As you can imagine, this sounds great for creators. Which is why more than 40,000 of them subscribe to Patreon’s blog.
It’s in Patreon’s best interest to attract and engage creators—even if the creators aren’t hitting it big yet. Surveying their readers will (hopefully) give them some insight into what kind of content best accomplishes
this.
Prediction 1: We’re going to see Patreon’s blog mirror side business communities like Nick Loper’s and Ryan Robinson’s. If Patreon is smart, they’ll leverage their resources to tap the search traffic that these other sites get. (These solopreneur blogs bring in more than triple Patreon’s organic search traffic.)
What you can take away:
It’s fun to come up with your own content ideas. But when was the last time you asked your audience what they wanted to see?
HubSpot’s top 10 Lead Magnets of 2017 Overthink Group tore down HubSpot’s most popular ebooks, webinars, and templates from last year and found 7 smart takeaways that you can implement in your own lead magnets.
Some high-level takeaways:
How HubSpot dispels myths to capitalize on change
How their templates and kits do 80% of the work for leads
How focusing on quality promotions over quantity doubled their results
Facebook’s paying gamers now—should you? Facebook announced a gamer partnership program on the 26th. Facebook’s going to pay gamers to livestream on the social network—and allow viewers to donate to the
gamers.
That means we have Facebook, Amazon (Twitch), and Google (YouTube) in direct competition with each other when it comes to building livestream gaming platforms.
Facebook wants to keep people in Facebook—including the 500 million people worldwide who watch
other people play video games.
What this means for content strategists: The biggest tech companies see livestreamed gaming as an important type of user-generated content. But it’s only a matter of time until B2B brands start streaming content from influencers as a strategic branding move.
For example, imagine:
InVision, a prototyping app, live-streaming design reviews as a way to build a following among product managers
Heather
Morgan, a cold email consultant, doing live critiques of emails in her inbox
CB Insights, a tool for analyzing business and tech trends, regularly broadcasting strategic teardowns of different industries
What are some ways you can leverage your power users and superfans to create live content for the rest of your audience?
I think you’re great. Jeffrey Kranz Co-founder, Overthink Group Jeffrey@OverthinkGroup.com
