> Step 3: The secret sauce We always end with a section that is called: Final thoughts. This is your moment to shine and drop a punchline that talks about your product/service.
And, there it is.
I've bounced back and forth between engineering and DevRel over the years and whenever I create this kind of content I'm careful to provide the interesting and valuable part up front. And I try to make the pitch at the end gentle and easy to skip or ignore if that's what the reader wants. I never want someone to feel like they were tricked into reading a sales pitch.
I see this as one way of trying to stem the tide of shitty articles and blog posts that have been proliferating for the past couple of decades and are kicking into overdrive now.
Companies should also consider, on the other hand, that writing interesting things and then not making a pitch at the end can be even more valuable. This kind of content is becoming very rare because it takes time to deliver impact, and that impact is hard to measure.
I think that's why creating great content without a concluding product plug is the ultimate mic drop in an era where many marketers are running scared and dropping easy-to-measure milquetoast bunt singles because execs mention 'operational efficiency' twenty-seven times during every all-hands meeting.
To be clear, I'm not advocating inefficiency; I'm just saying thoughtful posts that don't immediately and directly shove a percentage of readers into your funnel might be the current Moneyball of marketing to engineers.