How to Create Winning Content for Senior Software Practitioners
B2B marketers often ask us what kind of content and topics resonate best with our readers.
Looking back at many of the successful advertising campaigns that have run on InfoQ, we have found that the most popular eBooks, white papers, blogs, and videos are those that address a key pain point or get readers up-to-speed on an important new trend or technology. Typically, these are white papers and eBooks that focus on the same topics that align with our editorial model.
A Brief Look at InfoQ’s Editorial Model
InfoQ’s editorial model is focused on producing content about technologies that are in the innovator, early adopter, and early majority stages of the technology adoption curve.
In essence what we try to do is identify ideas that fit into what Geoffrey Moore referred to as the early market – where “the customer base is made up of technology enthusiasts and visionaries who are looking to get ahead of either an opportunity or a looming problem” and that we think are likely to “cross the chasm” to broader adoption.
Below is a snapshot of the topics that our editorial team is currently focused on, along with their relative position on the technology adoption curve.
How InfoQ Covers Topics Along the Adoption Curve
InfoQ’s coverage of innovator stage technologies might have our editors tracking key open source projects, frameworks, and companies that are driving forth a compelling new idea, approach, or solution to a specific software engineering or architectural problem.
As a technology moves into the early adopter stage, our editors connect with CTOs, Chief Architects, Team Leads, and Project Founders from leading companies such as Google, Netflix, LinkedIn or Facebook to generate articles, eBooks, and interviews demonstrating early success stories and challenges. Our news coverage might begin tracking early activity in an emerging vendor and project ecosystem.
By the time a technology has ‘crossed the chasm’ as it were, we find that InfoQ’s earlier coverage of the technology continues to have a ‘long tail’ effect on the site in terms of readership and SEO. At this stage we continue to publish an increasing volume of case studies, articles, and interviews showcasing adoption success stories and emerging best practices across a wider range of industries. Our news coverage at this point drills deeper into a maturing commercial and open source landscape.
How Does this Apply to Your Ad Campaign on InfoQ?
Running top-of-funnel assets that squarely focus on one of our editorial topics is a surefire way to garner the most attention from our readers. This translates into relatively greater reach on InfoQ, more traffic back to your site, and potentially more leads.
It’s perfectly fine to run product-specific assets on InfoQ; however, to ensure that your offer is resonating with our readers, we generally advise that you position the topic of your asset around an innovator, early adopter or early majority topic. This approach will not only help you establish thought leadership on InfoQ, but will yield content with greater longevity and marketing impact.
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