Hey Everyone,
Hope you're having a great week. Here are a few things I've been reading, writing and pondering lately. Enjoy!
1. Why You Shouldn’t Try to Be the First Round Review: 3 Content Lessons from Camille Ricketts
We often hear content marketers say, “We’d like our blog to be the First Round Review for [X].” Yes, we’d all like our blogs to break new ground, earn massive traffic and set a new bar for quality. But Camille’s strategy may not be the right one for your company. In this post, I explain why.
2. Canny.io’s Year in Review
Canny is a SaaS tool to help collect customer feedback. They have never raised money, recently hit a $400k run rate and the founders travel the world while growing their company. This is a really refreshing read—it’s just so unlike most of what we see the SaaS world. Kudos to Andrew and Sarah for what they’ve accomplished so far.
3. More Book Recommendations
Last week I shared some book recommendations. A few readers responded with more great suggestions:
- How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know
- Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
- Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
- Don't Shoot the Dog: The New Art of Teaching and Training
- The Response Leadership Sequence™: Empowering and Improving Your Leadership Before, During, and After a Crisis
- The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America
4. Tweet of the Week
You need to watch the video.
My husband told me I write in “long gazes and furious bursts.”
— Melissa Bowers (@MelissaBowers_) March 25, 2019
When I asked what that meant, he did...this.
Also, please note the backspacing segment in which I apparently delete most of what I’ve just drafted.#amwriting #amediting #writingcommunity pic.twitter.com/WcyIVAXfGA
5. Random Links
- This is a very interesting read: The Economics of Running a Curated Newsletter
- Eat these 50 foods to save the world (PDF)
- Here’s a really, really bad cold email.
- This is such a cool idea: This city bans cars every Sunday—and people love it
Have a great weekend!
Jimmy
PS - I finally relaunched my content marketing course, 5 Days to Better Content Marketing. Join 300+ people that taken and enjoyed it.
PPS - I’m looking to partner with a few great businesses to sponsor this newsletter. It reaches a bunch of smart folks from places like Google, Apple, Spotify, New York Times, Marriott and Harvard. Shoot me an email if you're interested in working together.
PPPS - I'm now an official Ghost partner. I've been using Ghost to run my blog for years and I absolutely love it. If you signup for Ghost with my link I do get a commission, but you get an incredibly powerful and simple way to manage your website. Markdown ftw!