"Write about information. Make it good. Have a plan for how it will spread."

"Every company should write about its data"

"Companies don’t need content; they need things to happen when they publish content. Good content is just the catalyst for performance."

"we urge you to think of content marketing like a campaign that must be waged with tremendous effort. Nothing good ever happens by accident. You need to start with great ideas, you need to have a plan for how to distribute that content, and then you need to execute that plan."

"if you make a good piece of content, it increasingly doesn’t matter if you publish it on The New York Times website or your company’s blog."

"While getting covered by TechCrunch sent 6,000 visitors to our site, we learned that a popular blog post on our website could send 20,000 visitors in a single day. It was better to write popular things on our website and attract our own crowd than to try to cajole journalists into writing about us. When we published interesting information on Priceonomics, the journalists came to us!"

"If you’re going to spend time and effort blogging, there is no point in writing things that aren’t good. Instead, spend a little more time and write something great."

"the Effort-Performance-Outcome theory: you will only put forth the effort necessary to succeed if you reasonably expect that effort will pay off. This explains why workers slack off once they believe that their output won’t be used for anything important."

"The default state of the internet is that no one cares. So many articles, videos, and blog posts compete for people’s attention that average work often goes unrecognized. It’s pointless to publish anything that isn’t fantastic, because it will certainly be ignored."

"Most commonly, imitators try to be funny, because “funny” is one of the currencies of the web: people share things that are funny on social networks. But funny doesn’t get you attention from The Wall Street Journal, doesn’t inspire confidence in front of potential customers, and doesn’t highlight your company’s expertise."

"your focus should be on making interesting things that also have some benefit for your company."

"You should write about information."

"authentic information that your company has access to is the currency of truly valuable content marketing."

"Make sure this is original information your company has authentic access to, and that the information is novel and interesting. Your company is an expert on its own information — that’s what you should write about."

"If you do it right, it will get you press mentions and customer leads in perpetuity. It will establish your company as a leader in certain areas. And it may even get you invited to speak at conferences in your field."

"The goal is to create something that helps other people (journalists) achieve their goals, while making your company look good."

"Writing about data isn’t easy. The OkCupid team had two people working on its blog full time, which is a huge investment for a startup company. Most people who look at data will find it boring or impenetrable. As we’ll talk about later in the book, it takes a lot of time to pull a story out of a data set and make sure it’s right."

"Beyond journalists, people like to read (and share) stories that are about their industries, hobbies, and home towns."

"Every industry has a history, every set of data has an insight, and every person has a story."

"What if instead of pestering journalists to write about your company, you created content that was so good that they want to write about it? That’s the process we created; if you create great information, you have a chance of developing a similar process at your company."

"At the end of the year, you always see lists like “The Most Popular Google Searches of the Year,” or “The Year’s Most Played Artists on Spotify” because journalists and the general public love getting information. This is precisely why people are always quantitatively ranking things like “The Top Schools in America,” or the “Most Diverse Cities in America.”"

"You have to keep things interesting for yourself, otherwise your enthusiasm will wane, and it will show in your writing."

"Our theory is that your content should be a mixture of things that promote your products and things that don’t."

"information is not limited to data: you can also write about people’s lives."

"One of the core tenets at Priceonomics is that everyone has an interesting story. Every person you come into contact with on a daily basis has a deep-rooted story about heartbreak, triumph, tragedy, or comedy."

"The key to writing about stories, anecdotes, and small pieces of data is this: Stick to what you know. Don’t extrapolate and try to turn an anecdote about someone’s life into something else."

"Just talk about what you know, and stick to the facts."

"Our style is to give you information and let you decide how you feel: Here is information about a book we just wrote, here’s why we wrote it, and here’s the link to buy it."

"what are easy ways you can write about this kind of story-based information on your company’s website? Start by interviewing people at your company and writing about them on your site."

"Information is valuable. It gives reporters something to write about; it brings potential customers to your door; and it establishes you as an expert on your subject."

"as you write about information, it’s important to keep in mind that the upside of doing a good job is enormous, but the upside of doing an average job is absolutely zero."

"If you write something good, it doesn’t matter if it’s published on your obscure company blog or on The New York Times. It can be successful either way. In fact, it’s probably better for your company if you write incredible content on your blog rather than letting other publications publish them as op-eds or guest posts."

"Today, virtually every content website’s largest source of traffic is Facebook. Content has to be so exceptional that people will choose to go through the effort of sharing it with other people: On Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and even email."

"To get this story out, we wrote a tweet about the article, and appended the words “tip@techmeme.” What does this mean? Well, it meant that we were submitting a tip to the tech news aggregation site TechMeme, a website that lots of tech industry reporters read."

"When you write content, you must have a channel in mind for that content to spread. It’s important that you publish incredibly useful information, but unless you think about how that content will be distributed to the audience you have in mind, nothing will happen."

"It isn’t enough to publish great information. You have to wage a campaign to make sure that the right people find out about it. More than 50 journalists rejected us, but finding one person who wanted to write about our study made the post successful."

"When you start writing content based on your company’s information, force yourself to send at least 50 personalized emails to people who you want to cover your report. Your email to them should be short and have one goal: pique their interest enough that they’ll click the link and read your content."

"When it comes to content, the internet is just a network of people looking for stuff to read and videos to watch. Journalists are some of the network’s “supernodes”: they curate information and then relay it to lots of other people. This is why emailing journalists is a good way to get your content to millions of people."

"focus your efforts on convincing a handful of people who are gateways to a larger audience. That’s a much more tractable task."

"The most powerful supernodes on the internet right now are social news sites."

"The beauty of these sites is that they democratize the sharing of content. If your work is good and appeals to enough of their readership, it will get voted up. If it isn’t, it won’t."

"The bullshit detectors of people on Reddit and similar sites keep the flimsy, promotional blog posts that most companies churn out at bay. Information that is a byproduct of your business, on the other hand, is real and actually helps people out."

"If you consistently write great things, other people start doing things that help you out."

"We produced quality information, and things started happening to us. Our fans submitted it to social news sites, journalists found it on their own, and the content started ranking highly in Google Search results."

"you need to participate in the news site as a community member for a while before doing anything with your own content. Understand the content people like and the norms around posting it. If moderators keep deleting your content, figure out why."

"Don’t try to game the system, because you can’t."

"‘The Power Law’: If you invest in early-stage companies, most of your fund’s returns will be dominated by the one or two mega-successful companies you fund."

"In 2014, Priceonomics wrote 319 articles. Of those, 10 of them made up over 50% of our traffic. Those were our hits. And for the hits, the overwhelming source of traffic came from going viral on Facebook."

"“[Facebook is the] demand generation. We’re not really demand fulfillment, when you’ve already figured it out what you’re going to buy–that’s search. We’re demand generation, before you know you want something, before you know you’re interested in something.”"

"In this new world of social content distribution, anyone can be a star. You just need to make content that people want to share. When you post something, ask yourself this question: Is this the kind of content that Facebook will want on its platform in the long term, given its goal to be a hub for quality content that rivals television?"

"What we share on social networks is a form of self expression. What matters when we share something is how it makes us feel."

"We also share media and content that reflects how we want to be perceived. What’s more, we often share things that we have reactions to: I read something online and now I feel disgusted. Or surprised. Or in awe. Or smart."

"More often than not, after you read something, you have nothing to say about it. If that’s the case, you will not share it."

"before we even started gathering the data, we considered: (1) What is a person expressing by sharing this?, and (2) What can they say about it?"

"To drive a lot of traffic, you have to write good things that have a channel through which they can get The Bump, and there has to be a reason for people who read it to share it."

"If your goal is to get the media to write about your data, you’ll find that Twitter is more important than Facebook. For journalists, Twitter is social media."

"Start every essay by punching your reader in the face. Obviously not literally, but you need to grab his or her attention. Assume that a reader has stumbled upon your article by chance, and is seconds away from closing or burying the tab forever."

"The introduction is by far the most important part of the article."

"The conclusion matters because it reminds the reader what she should take away from the piece. It provides, on a silver platter, sharable nuggets of information that would be a hit on Facebook or at a cocktail party."

"If there is an important point you are trying to make, you need to bring it to the front of a paragraph to increase the probability that the reader actually reads the sentence."

"There are only three guidelines for the Priceonomics Blog: 1.) Bring new information to the world 2.) Be interesting, and 3.) Be right."

"There is a secret to minimizing your chances of making a catastrophic mistake: keep the scope of your argument narrow."

"The language you use matters because it circumscribes the scope of what you’re trying to prove. Be careful which words you choose."

"Our goal with a title is twofold: it should honestly convey what the article is about, and it should emphasis the point that we think the reader will share."

"the title is where there is the greatest temptation to compromise yourself."

"when you first start, don’t write every day. Spend 40 hours on your first post, and then make it succeed. Do whatever it takes to find the story that’s in the data to make it genuinely interesting."

"The returns on writing something great are enormous; the returns on writing something average are zero."

"The right information at the right time can be incredibly valuable to someone. Never underestimate that your company has a tremendous knowledge base about its industry that could be helpful to other people."

"The Hero with A Thousand Faces. In it, Campbell details the 17 steps every protagonist goes through in a typical story line. After a while, we realized we were subconsciously applying this cycle to many of the articles on the Priceonomics Blog."

"the essence of the Hero’s Journey: The hero is just a regular person. One day, an incident causes the hero to start a journey. There is a huge problem the hero tries to solve. It looks like the hero is going to solve it, but he fails. After failing time after time, the hero perseveres and triumphs."

"Coming up with good ideas takes some judgement, but you can build your judgement by reading great content. Pick one of the “Supernode” social news sites we listed earlier, hang out there, and get a feel for the types of articles that go viral. Go to a sub-Reddit, pick a subject that matters to you, and view the articles with the highest votes ever. What is it about those ideas that makes them spread?"

"talented people expend effort in a system that rewards that effort."

"in order for your content to succeed, the people who make it have to really care about your business. They need to understand the information your company has and how it can be made interesting."

"If someone doesn’t care deeply about your problems, don’t expect him to solve them. Someone at your company need to start working, invest those 40 hours in making one piece of content, and get good at it. If you’re a small startup, that means a founder of the company; if you’re a large company, that means someone who’s in charge of marketing."

"While only 1% or so of applicants will get one of these interviews, about 50% of them make it to the next stage. This is the most important stage, and we highly recommend you do it."

"We then pay the applicant to do a freelance article for us. Jointly, we pick an idea, tell him or her how much we will pay, and come up with a process for working together. Then, the applicant goes off and writes the article."

"If you’re going to write content that even remotely promotes your business, the quality of it has to be higher than competing information from professional news sites. Your blog needs to be great, and blog posts that promote your business need to be even greater."

"When you start off with content marketing, we suggest you use your company’s data to see if you can create data-driven stories. Why?  If you can pull that off, then you know how to write content that promotes your company and is interesting."

"the less promotional your content feels, the larger audience the you can build up."

"Most content sites bundle their work with advertising. That’s their prerogative. At Priceonomics, we have a different model: we bundle our content with things we sell. Content attracts an audience to our website, and we sell things to a percentage of them."

"you have an advantage, because you have access to information through your company and your industry experience. Great information spreads, but only if you design it to spread. It needs to be packaged into a great story, and you need to anticipate the channels through which it will spread. Being talented and doing a good job isn’t enough; you need to have a plan."

"Does it get media mentions, traffic, social shares, and customer leads?"

"We’d make content for companies based on their data and then just charge them based on the performance."

"Throughout this book, we urge you to think of content marketing like a campaign that must be waged with tremendous effort."

"You need to start with great ideas, you need to have a plan for how to distribute that content, and then you need to execute that plan."

"Content marketing is essentially content that is monetized by selling products."

"To rank well in Google Search results, a website needs two things: content and links to it from other websites."

"What we could control, however, were inbound links. In order to rank highly in Google’s algorithm, not only do you need good content, but you need other people to link to it."

"So we decided to start a blog and write about our pricing data. Around this time, in 2011, the dating site OKCupid had written some very popular articles about dating based on the company’s data, and we figured we’d try the same thing with our used pricing data."

"Earlier in the month, we had run an interesting experiment. We employed our pricing data to find good deals on used Aeron office chairs on Craigslist, and then we resold them to other startups at a substantial mark-up."

"Basically, we were experimenting if we could make a business out of arbitraging used goods. In short, we learned that lugging furniture around the Bay Area didn’t seem to be an especially scalable business model."

"It was better to write popular things on our website and attract our own crowd than to try to cajole journalists into writing about us. When we published interesting information on Priceonomics, the journalists came to us!"

"Sharing information on the Priceonomics Blog struck a nerve. Following the success of our first post, we focused on writing interesting blog posts that shared new information and attracted huge audiences."

"In organizational theory, there is something called the Effort-Performance-Outcome theory: you will only put forth the effort necessary to succeed if you reasonably expect that effort will pay off."

"There is nothing less motivating than writing blog posts on the Internet for most corporate blogs, because no one ever reads those blog posts."

"But funny doesn’t get you attention from The Wall Street Journal, doesn’t inspire confidence in front of potential customers, and doesn’t highlight your company’s expertise."

"Instead, your focus should be on making interesting things that also have some benefit for your company."

"It can be data that your company produces, insights you have because of your industry experience, or stories about the people you have access to."

"To vary our content, we started diligently researching economic questions like “What happens to stolen bikes?” and “Are speed limits are too low?”"

"write about data, industries, or people."

"Later companies showed interest in using our software and expertise so they could make their own data-driven content, and we turned that into revenue as well."

"Suddenly we had a business model in place: we could write to our hearts’ content on the Priceonomics Blog, and occasionally use it to sell very valuable services to businesses."

"Instead of making content with the aim of getting links for Google searches, we decided to make great content simply because we loved to make great content."

"Have you ever tried to get a journalist to write about your company? It’s extremely difficult. You track down someone who writes about your industry, acquire her email address, carefully craft your pitch, and hit send — and then nothing happens."

"Journalists are most likely to write about you if it doesn’t create enormous amounts of work for them, and if the story is likely to get a lot of attention."

"Then there are articles that require a lot of work for a journalist, but come with a high payoff for them."

"Lastly, we come to what this book is about: marketing by sharing information. This involves taking information that your company has access to — or can create — that is genuinely newsworthy, and publishing it. The goal is to create something that helps other people (journalists) achieve their goals, while making your company look good."

"Take a scan through The Wall Street Journal: every article about an economic trend cites data published by a company or third-party organization."

"While OkCupid wasn’t huge compared to Match.com or eHarmony, it did have millions of datapoints about the most appealing topic in the world: sex."

"OKCupid also knew variables like their age, ethnicity, and sexual orientation."

"OkCupid team used this data to tell stories that everyone wanted to talk about."

"No matter how old men get, OkCupid contended, they still prefer women in their twenties. Women, on the other hand, tend to seek out similarly-aged partners as they got older."

"They found that, of all their heterosexual female users, African-Americans sent the most messages, but received the fewest."

"The OkCupid team had two people working on its blog full time, which is a huge investment for a startup company"

"Let’s start with an example of one of our most successful content marketing campaigns: a comparison of the price of staying at hotel versus an Airbnb."

"You can do this too. What if instead of pestering journalists to write about your company, you created content that was so good that they want to write about it? That’s the process we created; if you create great information, you have a chance of developing a similar process at your company."

"The company hit on an incredible idea when it decided to use its credit card statements to calculate how many people were using “ride sharing” services like Uber and Lyft. As it turns out, Uber was dominating the a market. People intuitively knew that Uber was a more successful company than Lyft, but now they had real data that confirmed that hunch."

"Real Estate companies are notoriously excellent at turning their data into media mentions."

"People love this stuff and journalists know it! At the end of the year, you always see lists like “The Most Popular Google Searches of the Year,” or “The Year’s Most Played Artists on Spotify” because journalists and the general public love getting information."

"If you write a story about data and make it accessible enough, you’ll appeal to that little data nerd that resides in everyone."

"Every company has access to information that contributes to a better understanding of the world, or at least of its little niche."

"As we debated what we could write about, we started asking, why do so many bikes get stolen?"

"When we published our blog post “What Happens to Stolen Bicycles?”, it became, by far, the most-viewed piece we had ever written."

"If you’re ready to write a piece outside your data, you should ask yourself which topics your company can write about that take advantage of your industry knowledge or expertise."

"We suggested they write a post about what it’s like to to raise money from Kleiner Perkins."

"One of the core tenets at Priceonomics is that everyone has an interesting story. Every person you come into contact with on a daily basis has a deep-rooted story about heartbreak, triumph, tragedy, or comedy."

"The key to writing about stories, anecdotes, and small pieces of data is this: Stick to what you know."

"It’s an expression called “stay on your side of the net.”"

"After you’re skilled at writing about the people who work at your company, start talking to your customers. In most cases, they’ll be thrilled to have you profile them."

"Ask how they use your product, but don’t make that the centerpiece of their story."

"Things were not going well for Taro Fukuyama and Sunny Tsang and their team during Y Combinator’s Winter 2012 batch."

"But the idea wasn’t getting traction with users, so they decided to pivot ideas just as they arrived in Mountain View for the start of the program."

"The founders hit on their idea on the 7th try, one month into the three month incubator program. They founded AnyPerk, a startup that lets companies offer discounts and perks to their employees."

"Eventually, the company sent Drew out to local auto shops, which were 3M’s most frequent customers at the time, to disseminate the sandpapers for testing."

"He made a vow to the auto workers that he’d soon return with a solution, and darted out of the shop."

"Drew came back with a newly-invented tape that helped auto workers paint cars more efficiently. This product, later named “Scotch Tape” by 3M, had many other applications. The rest is history."

"But as you write about information, it’s important to keep in mind that the upside of doing a good job is enormous, but the upside of doing an average job is absolutely zero."

"But, if you were clever, you had a new way to reach customers: by churning out content and hoping that people found it through search queries."

"In the current era of publishing, social networks are surpassing Google search as the primary way people find content."

"The reality today is that publishers of content don’t have many true “users” — at least, not in the brand-loyalty, check-it-every-day sense that they did decades ago, before the internet, or even at the onset of the internet."

"But this story offers two lessons. First, your content is competing on a level playing field."

"It can go viral and be cited by mainstream media publications even if it’s posted on the blog of an unknown company."

"Facebook is one of many channels on which content can spread. When you start thinking about how your content will spread, don’t start with Facebook."

"While Facebook is the largest source of third party traffic to Priceonomics, traffic from Facebook is a symptom of other content channels working well — not a primary cause of our traffic."

"Most articles we write aren’t popular on Facebook until many other things happen to make them viral."

"The piece was an epic success, but it nearly failed. If we hadn’t emailed dozens of reporters, all our hard work would have been for nothing."

"It isn’t enough to publish great information. You have to wage a campaign to make sure that the right people find out about it. More than 50 journalists rejected us, but finding one person who wanted to write about our study made the post successful."

"When you start writing content based on your company’s information, force yourself to send at least 50 personalized emails to people who you want to cover your report."

"If your content is good enough and journalists see it, they’ll write about it."

"This is what’s called an outbound process. You are “reaching out” to journalists to see if they are interested in your information."

"The secret to getting inbound press is doing a little work that creates it. That means anticipating the channel that your content will spread through, and then making sure it gets there. Emailing journalists is a good way to start, but there are many other ways to spread your content."

"Journalists are some of the network’s “supernodes”: they curate information and then relay it to lots of other people."

"The beauty of these sites is that they democratize the sharing of content. If your work is good and appeals to enough of their readership,"

"If your content is fantastic, it will rise to the top of these news sites. When that happens, you get a torrent of traffic."

"At Priceonomics, we call this “The Bump.” When a critical mass of people see the article, everything good that can happen, will happen."

"Within a small window of time, you need at least a handful of votes in order to make the front page. Once you get these votes, your content will rise and fall on its own merit."

"All these news sites have algorithms that detect when people create new accounts just to upvote stories. They can also tell when the same people tend to vote together, and they ban those accounts for being a voting ring."

"Running the news site is Y Combinator’s own version of content marketing: the content and discussion attracts people interested in starting companies, some of whom Y Combinator hopes will apply to the startup incubation program."

"When we started publishing articles and reports on our blog, we knew we wanted to post them to Hacker News and email tech journalists."

"Hitting the top of these social news sites is a much larger traffic event then being linked in an article by a journalist."

"Then, gradually, other people on the internet, people we did not know, starting doing things for us."

"Our PR process, which had previously been “outbound” and involved reaching out to journalists or posting our articles to news sites, now became “inbound.”"

"We produced quality information, and things started happening to us. Our fans submitted it to social news sites, journalists found it on their own, and the content started ranking highly in Google Search results."

"Even today, when we work on a piece, we ask the question, where will this article be popular?"

"It’s never a good sign if you’re writing something but can’t figure out where it will become popular. Just being “good” isn’t enough."

"Your articles need to be both “good” and tailored to a particular channel."

"When we write something that’s really good without thinking about which channel it will spread on."

"But that position is earned by consistently creating content that people love so much they’ll want to share it with others. Don’t try to game the system, because you can’t."

"In 2014, 1.8 million visitors came to Priceonomics from came from Facebook. Twitter placed a distant second with 10 times less traffic (that’s not to say that Twitter is unimportant, as we’ll discuss later). LinkedIn, Google+, and Tumblr each accounted for less than 1% of Priceonomics’ social traffic."

"The Power Law Applies to Everything, Including Content"

"Just like venture investing, content marketing is a hit-driven business. In 2014, Priceonomics wrote 319 articles. Of those, 10 of them made up over 50% of our traffic. Those were our hits."

"And if you want traffic from Facebook, you have to think of it as a channel into itself. It has its own set of dynamics, built around one particular question: “Why do people share?”"

"At Priceonomics, an overwhelming majority of our traffic comes from people during their working hours. This is especially true of traffic from Facebook, which, it’s worth noting, is mostly mobile traffic."

"In order to earn some of that market share, Facebook has to serve the same kind of function that television does: it has to build a product through which people spend many hours consuming media content (and personal content), and insert rich advertising alongside it."

"If we were to give you two case studies about how to do content marketing in the modern world, the first, which we’ve already mentioned, would be the OkCupid blog. The second would be The Oatmeal."

"Started in 2009 by cartoonist Matthew Inman, The Oatmeal — basically a comics and comedy writing blog — isn’t exactly the paradigm most businesses should follow. But it is a very good example of a site that (a) understands why people share, and (b) seamlessly bundles commercial projects with content."

"But he’s not some naive artist who thinks, “If I make good cartoons, people will come to my website.” He makes good cartoons and he thinks about the distribution mechanisms by which people will share them."

"In addressing why people share things, the first question to consider is: “What does the reader express by sharing this?”"

"The second question is: “Can the reader share this given their own cognitive constraints?”"

"A more practical way of thinking about this second question is by asking whether this piece of content can be summarized in a sentence (e.g. a Tweet)."

"We knew the report had a good chance of going viral because, before we even started gathering the data, we considered: (1) What is a person expressing by sharing this?, and (2) What can they say about it?"

"People shared the article for a variety of reasons. The average person said something like, “Rent prices in San Francisco are ridiculous!” or some other variation of outrage over the high cost of living in the city. There was also some pride hidden in the outrage. Sharing the article was a way of subtly saying, “I’ve found a way to live in the most expensive city in the world.” Other people shared the article to express thanks for the rent-controlled apartment they had, or to launch a diatribe against the pricing inefficiencies of having rent control in the city."

"Whatever people’s motivations, the data, and how we presented it, allowed readers to express their feelings by sharing the article. Moreover, we wrote the article so readers would actually have something to say about it."

"Though it was the product of millions of data points and weeks of analysis, someone could look at it and say, in simple terms, “Whoa, the rent has increased a lot in San Francisco.”"

"More often than not, people need something to sink their teeth into — something that they condense into a short summary to share on social media."

"The repeated heartbreak of having a great post flop has taught us to ask the question “Why will someone share this?” before we start writing. Very often, we can’t come up with an answer, so we’ll refine the idea until we do."

"But what can he say about it besides, “some places are more diverse than other places in America”? That’s not a very interesting point, and it’s unlikely that most people will spend time making that point in a Facebook comment."

"Potentially, anyone living in a city towards the top of this list will share it."

"Lastly, people can share a ranking about diversity without the same risk of looking like a White Supremacist if they shared the “White Cities in America.”"

"If you write great content, make sure it gets The Bump. If you want it to really take off, it needs to spread on social media."

"There’s an important lesson about writing buried in this discussion of distribution. If you write a good article and your audience, after reading through it, can’t come up with a pithy, shareable takeaway, did you actually write something good?"

"An internet audience is a distracted audience. Most of your readers are surfing the web instead of working. So right away, they’re distracted from your content by their job."

"The introduction is your opportunity to pitch them on why they should read it."

"First, it starts with an interesting sentence: “American males enter adulthood through a peculiar rite of passage: they spend most of their savings on a shiny piece of rock.” It’s the proverbial “shot across the bow,” signaling that this is going to be an article that’s critical of the diamond industry."

"Second, it gives the reader some idea of where the article is going. Our introductions always telegraph what the article is about so that readers know that if they invest some time in this article, they’ll learn something interesting."

"Third, the introduction piques their interest. It inspires curiosity. How did this societal brainwashing happen?"

"The conclusion matters because it reminds the reader what she should take away from the piece."

"Diamonds are not actually scarce, make a terrible investment, and are purely valuable as a status symbol."

"This conclusion not only repackages the essay so the reader can remember what it was about, but it primes the reader on what he should share — in this case, some variant on the phrase “Diamonds are bullshit.” It’s not an accident that this article is one of the most shared essays ever written about diamonds in the history of the internet."

"The tone of your writing should be conversational — it should read as if spoken."

"That’s not to say that you shouldn’t sound intelligent; rather, you should sound how an intelligent person talks."

"Another factor to consider is the viewpoint of the piece: who is it written by? At Priceonomics, we banned the word “I” from our blog. We write every article as if Priceonomics, the entity, has written it."

"The “no first person” perspective has its benefits. First, we never give our opinions, because the words “I think” are banished. When you can’t state your opinion, you have have to use facts to prove your ideas."

"Finally, since every article is written from the perspective of Priceonomics, every Priceonomics holds our company’s good name and brand in his or her hands. They take this very seriously. “Priceonomics” would never be irrational, make sloppy mistakes, be mean, or cherry pick something out of context to make a cheap point."

"So it’s very important that we are not wrong. There are only three guidelines for the Priceonomics Blog: 1.) Bring new information to the world 2.) Be interesting, and 3.) Be right. None of these points are negotiable, but it’s okay if we write something that turns out to not be interesting, or if we write about information that a lot of people already knew about."

"keep the scope of your argument narrow. In every post, we try to make just one really good point, and make sure that we are right about that point."

"When you write a blog post, think of it as a war between you and all the people who want to disprove your conclusions."

"There is an important distinction between “data suggests discrimination” and “there is discrimination.”"

"Creating content isn’t exactly a team effort. Long-form, information-driven articles need a spark provided by an individual. You can’t make them in committee meetings. You need to think of ideas, research them, write them, and refactor the product until it’s good. Writing is, most often, a solitary activity."

"But publishing something that puts your company’s reputation on the line is a team activity. Writers need feedback. They need someone to put their assumptions through the ringer."

"The writer is on the hook for publishing one or two short pieces and one ambitious piece every week, and that is his or her full-time job."

"First drafts are never great. The editor needs to help improve the organization of the article, offer suggestions for making the writing clear, and, most importantly, aggressively push back on whether everything in the article is correct."

"The most valuable role of the editor at Priceonomics is to assess every statement in the draft and see that it makes sense. Does it stand to logic? Is it making an assertion that can be proved with data, or by other sources? The editor makes the article more interesting through suggestions about organization and word choice, but his or her most important job is making sure that writers don’t publish something that’s not right."

"The last step before we hit “publish” is to choose a title for each post. Titles are probably the most talked about step of content creation. There are “link bait” titles that over-promise in the title but then under-deliver in the content. There are “curiosity gap” titles, which pique your interest by promising surprising information that is only revealed in the article. And of course there are “listicle” titles that promise to show you “33 insanely cute pictures of puppies that will brighten your day.”"

"First, you’ll be distributing your content largely on social news sites and social networks, and the only aspects of your article that will appear there are the title and maybe a small picture and description."

"Second, titles matter because no one wants to share an article that makes him look lame or boring."

"Having a voice means that you can bring a consistent lens to the topics you write about and share a common style across the writing staff. As we edit, a common critique is, “That doesn’t seem like a very Priceonomics thing to say” — especially if the logic behind a point isn’t airtight, or if the language isn’t precise."

"“Do. Or do not. There is no try.” Commit to writing, and then just do it."

"In our view, a company that wants to master content marketing needs an early taste of success. As you start creating content, focus on making one thing that sets the world on fire."

"If you’re going to work at making content, you may as well become addicted to success. Most journalists, serious writers, and creators feel this way. You should too. The way to get addicted to writing popular content is to make really good stuff. To measure the outcomes, and then push yourself to make even better stuff."

"During our first year of writing blog posts at Priceonomics, each article we published took at least 40 hours to create. We spent most of that time analyzing the data, cutting it up in different ways, and figuring out how to tell an interesting story with it. We only spent the last 10 hours making the charts look pretty and physically typing out and editing the blog post."

"A lot of blood, sweat, and tears goes into making a really good blog post. So, here’s a tip: when you first start, don’t write every day. Spend 40 hours on your first post, and then make it succeed."

"It’s not like building a product; you have to start again from scratch."

"As we’ve mentioned before, there are three nodes of information we like to focus on: data, industries, and people."

"A Ranked order list"

"Examples we’ve used in the past include the most “hipster” cities, where BlackBerry phones are most popular, the most expensive neighborhoods to live in, the most expensive bands to book, and countries that drink the most coffee."

"How much does something cost?"

"Data that proves someone’s strongly held intuition, or that disproves a weakly held one"

"A surprising trend"

"The relationship between two things"

"Do you ever wonder why so many charts are confined to 2×2 matrices? That’s because people love thinking about the relationship between two items."

"Writing About an Industry: What Information Is Valuable to Other People?"

"Writing About People: The Hero’s Journey"

"The theory of the “Hero’s Journey,” or “Monomyth,” was popularized by American mythologist Joseph Campbell in his book, The Hero with A Thousand Faces. In it, Campbell details the 17 steps every protagonist goes through in a typical story line. After a while, we realized we were subconsciously applying this cycle to many of the articles on the Priceonomics Blog."

"When Alex Andon got his first order for a $25,000 jellyfish tank installation, he was excited. He also had a problem. He didn’t know anything about jellyfish or how to make a jellyfish tank. He had a hunch that people wanted to keep jellyfish as pets, so he had created a test website and bought $100 in Google search ads. Lo and behold, his phone started ringing with enquiries and he got his first order for the $25,000 jellyfish tank."

"Perhaps the most important part of writing is starting with a good idea. If you’re going to invest 40+ hours on a research report or blog post, you’re doomed if you put a lot of effort into an idea without legs."

"Coming up with good ideas takes some judgement, but you can build your judgement by reading great content."

"Many companies suggest the way to dominate at making content is to hire freelancers; this is not what you should do in the beginning."

"Trust us: in order for your content to succeed, the people who make it have to really care about your business."

"If someone doesn’t care deeply about your problems, don’t expect him to solve them. Someone at your company need to start working, invest those 40 hours in making one piece of content, and get good at it."

"So either you, or someone who really cares about the success of your company, should be in charge of making the content."

"There are three things we ask for when we look for a writer to join the Priceonomics team: a resume of some sort, a writing sample, and a list topics the applicant would like to write about."

"The writing sample is much more important. Can the applicant send you one thing that is clearly written and interesting? In our experience, maybe 5% of applicants can do this."

"By far the most important part of the application is the ideas section. Most of the ideas people pitch just aren’t that exciting, interesting, or relevant to your company. When the right writer applies, you know it because their list of ideas just works."

"A billionaire showing me his wine cellar once said the increasing value of his aging wine covered the cost of all the wine he drank each year. I want to run the numbers to see if he was drunk, a genius, or both. Is wine way too complicated for a price guide at this point?"

"How much does a food truck save financially versus a restaurant’s costs? Do we or do we not see those savings in the Bay Area food truck scene? Are hipster foodies driving up prices? Am I a hipster foodie?"

"But a bunch of good ideas is not enough evidence for you to hire someone. If a candidate passes the screen of a good application, then we will schedule a 30-minute Skype interview to discuss the applicant’s ideas, background, and any previous writing experience."

"Another third of the applicants produce work that is substantially worse than you were expecting. These are people who looked great on paper, had great writing samples, and aced the interview, but the quality of work they produced simply wasn’t there."

"In our experience, it takes about two months for a new writer to hit his or her stride. We’ve hired some of the most talented, ambitious, and brilliant writers you can imagine, and it still takes time for them to find their voice, acquire a sense of which topics will work, and figure out how to get the information they need."

"According to company filings, RetailMeNot currently gets 63% of its traffic from search engines and 96% of its revenue from affiliate commissions on sales. The key factor in RetailMeNot’s success is reliably topping the Google search results for coupon code related queries, and then turning that traffic into referral fees."

"Given Google’s dominance in search, conquering its results page can be incredibly lucrative."

"Priceonomics Data Services analyzes SEO (search engine optimization) risk of publicly traded companies for our hedge fund customers."

"First, most of our content doesn’t directly promote our services. It’s just great content made for our regular readers. We would have no regular readers if we only wrote about Priceonomics Data Services in every blog post."

"Second, the article was a great source of information. We explained the RetailMeNot business model and provided data illustrating our points better than anyone in the world."

"Third, this article, which was an explicit advertisement for our business, was better than the average article on Priceonomics — and the average article quality is really high."

"When you start off with content marketing, we suggest you use your company’s data to see if you can create data-driven stories"

"At Priceonomics, roughly 10% of our posts are advertisements for our service; the other 90% aren’t."

"Second, you have to figure out how to not be biased. No one’s going to read your company’s blog if it’s about topics that you obviously have a vested interest in."

"At Priceonomics, we believe that content is media that is basically free to consume but that is bundled with something else that costs money."

"Most content sites bundle their work with advertising. That’s their prerogative."

"At Priceonomics, we have a different model: we bundle our content with things we sell. Content attracts an audience to our website, and we sell things to a percentage of them."

"Not only could you argue that the advertising-supported content business model is morally gross, but it’s becoming a commodity."

"Incredible content companies are funded this way. Bloomberg has far-reaching journalism operations, and it’s funded mostly by selling subscriptions to its financial terminals."

"Priceonomics is a blog about information, and most of our revenue is from selling specific kinds of valuable information and services to businesses."

"Great information spreads, but only if you design it to spread."

"It needs to be packaged into a great story, and you need to anticipate the channels through which it will spread. Being talented and doing a good job isn’t enough; you need to have a plan."