The most underrated type of content

Helloooo content connoisseurs.

It’s your friendly neighborhood content guy (FNCG).

Today we’re going to talk about a very underrated type of content — type of content that can create massive leverage if you use it correctly (more below). And, we’re going to explore how Gong uses its own business data to drive astounding amounts of leads.

• Main course: The #1 most underrated content type

• Snack: How Gong drives crazy lead volume with a gigantic report

• Morsels: Links from CMI, Sprout Social, and more…

Let’s dig in.

P.S. I read and respond to every email, so don’t be afraid to drop me a question, idea, good vibes, or whatever! ✌

Quick note.

I currently don’t run ads in this newsletter. But I sill like to share good resources with y’all.

So before diving into the issue: Dofollow.io is the best link building agency I’ve ever come across in 15 years of SEO and content marketing.

99% of link building agencies are garbage. Dofollow.io is amazing, and I can personally vouch for them. Worked with them for a long time.

Check them out here, or email me if you’d like a 1:1 introduction.

Main Course: The #1 most underrated type of content

When we content marketers put together a content calendar, it’s often filled with blog posts, white papers, maybe some video or a big phat research report.

But there’s one kind of content almost everyone forgets about that I have used not only to drive traffic and build audiences, but also to unlock real business opportunities and create friendships with power players.

I’m talking about interviews.

Like, finding someone in your niche, interviewing them, and then publishing that interview as a piece of content.

Seems boring, right?

Trust me, citizens of the content marketing world: interviews might actually be the single highest-leverage type of content you have at your disposal, and almost no one is doing them.

But here’s the thing…

You can’t just interview anyone. Who you interview is just as important — if not more important — that what topic you’re covering.

And when you do them right, they can be an easy way to create tons of business impact with one piece of content.

Let me tell you 3 ways in which they’re powerful, and then let me tell you how to do it.

1. You can use interviews to generate traffic and exposure by leveraging other people’s audiences.

This is the first and most powerful characteristic of using interviews as a core content format: they can help you leverage other people’s audiences.

I mentioned this before, but one of the best marketers I know has never run a platform ad and has never done outbound sales. He’s built a 7-figure service business entirely on the back of one core principle: leveraging other people’s audiences.

There are lots of ways to do that with content, but interviews are likely the best.

Here’s the idea.

In the typical day-to-day of content marketing, it’s very difficult to get people to share your content without being an absolute mosquito.

Why? Because people don’t want to do your work for you. At best, people put it in the back burner, and and worst, people resent you for asking them to do your job for you.

Just asking for shares does not work.

Instead, if we really want people to share our stuff, we need to give them social capital to spend. In other words, we need to make them look good by sharing our content.

That’s where interviews come in.

No one is going to want to share our blog post on whatever hokey dokey topic we found trending on X (RIP “Twitter”).

But if you interview them because they’re an expert, you frame them as an expert, and you ask them to talk about the thing they’re best at, they will absolutely share it. Who wouldn’t?

This is often true even for people with large audiences.

…and this makes the humble interview one of the single best ways to hack into other people’s audiences.

2. You can use interviews to build relationships with important people.

Interviews aren’t just great for creating exposure and traffic.

They’re also one of the single best networking tools you have at your disposal.

Tell me how many times you’ve heard “no” to something like the following:

“Hey! Really admire your work. I was wondering if I could pick your brain for 15 minutes about this random topic we’re both interested in. Would you be up for that?”

…crickets, right?

That’s because we’re asking for time. People hate giving away their time.

You know what people do respond to?

…no, you don’t get points for guessing. But yes, you’re right: it’s i n t e r v i e w s.

How much more compelling is this?

“Hey! Been following you for a while and love your work. Could I interview you about X? It would only take 15 minutes, and I’d be pushing it out to our 20,000 followers. You could plug whatever you like.”

We’re not taking. We’re giving.

This is SUCH a powerful tactic, you can use it to get in front of basically any kind of person you want to get in front of:

• B2B sales prospects

• Potential affiliate partners

• Influencers in your space

• Contacts at VC firms

And here’s the thing: after interviewing someone, making them look good, and letting them plug something to your followers, that person will always answer your email.

You can build a very, very powerful rolodex of friends, customers, and colleagues this way.

3. You can use interviews to get heavy-hitting press.

Getting press is hard as hell.

Journalists are busy, and it’s extremely difficult to come up with something newsworthy enough for them to take time out of their day to write a story about.

And it for damn sure isn’t going to be our 2023 Quarterly Report on Blue Widget Supply Chain or whatever.

But you know what they will cover?

Interviews with important people.

You definitely do need to find someone important enough to catch a journalist’s attention. And you also need to have some kind of outcome in mind (even if it’s just snagging a few backlinks or expanding your brand reach).

But if do managing to find someone important to interview, an exclusive interview is usually a pretty easy thing for a journalist to pick up.

The hack here is usually to interview the VIP and ask them about something super timely.

Then you pitch it to the journalist with something like this:

This kind of thing can get backlinks, press, etc.

And it can get your interviewee into some major publications, which, as a throwback to above, help you build that relationship in a big way.

Here’s how to do NOW…

• Find someone worth interviewing: an influencer, key prospect, large affiliate, etc.

• Ask them to interview & frame them as an expert

• Conduct the interview with as little friction as possible (even just a few questions over email can work)

• Publish it, and let your interviewee plug whatever they like

• If the goal is traffic and exposure, sure you include some kind of CTA

• Measure and repeat

Snack: How Gong.io uses proprietary data to drive nutso lead flow

Gong.io is one of my favorite content marketing case studies.

They’re in a stupidly competitive space (sales software), and they’ve still managed to build a blog that generates 1,200,000+ visitors per month (screenshot).

Aside from — anecdotally — seeing them pop up everywhere, It’s difficult to tell exactly how many leads they produce.

But they do produce enough leads to yeild $178M in annual revenue (Latka).

Of course, they have CTAs everywhere in some form or another, but in my estimation (because yours truly was captured by this exact net), the thing that drives the most leads for Gong is something called Gong Labs.

Gong Labs is a place where Gong processes data from allllllllllll their customers to synthesize really, really tactical insights.

For example:

• Asking a prospect for their “thoughts” decrease the chance of booking a meeting by 20% (Gong’s chart)

• Responding to a buyer within 24 hours increases win rate by 14% (Gong’s chart)

• Asking about a prospect’s level of interest instead of asking for a meeting increases the chance of booking a meeting by xx% (Gong’s chart)

• And so on

The data is really great.

It’s their own data, and they use it to produce stuff any salesperson can put into play as soon as they read it.

And they also promote it everywhere. In fact, if you clicked any of those links above, just loosely be aware of how many times you see ads for their reports in the next week or so.

In addition to publishing the basic insights on their blog, they also package them as larger reports you can download in exchange for an email.

It usually looks like this (Gong’s sales page).

It’s amazing, and they’ve been a 9-figure lead gen engine around data-driven content.

Here’s how to do this for yourself, like, TODAY.

• If you have customers, take a peek around your back end and find some useful data

• Use it to create something not just interesting — but something that can help your customers DO something as soon as they read it

• Add it as a lead magnet on your website

• Create a landing page & put it in your ad rotation

• Measure and repeat

Morsels: Content marketing links

• This is what your social team will look like in 2028

  (link)

• Revolutionize Content Creation by Overcoming These Antiquated Beliefs (link)

• The Top Types of AI-Generated Content in Marketing (link)

• How to Quickly Create Quality YouTube Shorts (link)

• Site Architecture for Resource & Content Libraries (link)

• 5 Best Google Ads Alternatives To Diversify & Grow (link)

• You Can Get a Brand Authority Score Now, But What Does It Really Tell You? (link)

That’s the issue.

In case you missed it, here’s last week’s issue: My $1M Content Marketing Framework.

Go forth & conquer.

—F