Hi Reader,

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Amidst all the marketers vs founders arguments on Twitter (yes, I’m never going to call it X), one of them was particularly interesting to me. I witnessed a full-blown debate about what everyone thinks community marketing is, and how it can benefit tech companies. So even if I’m a few weeks late, I just have to weigh in with my thoughts on the matter.

I’ve been in my groove lately with these power-packed editions and I hope you’re loving them as much as I am. Today’s edition is even more insightful than the last. Ready? Let’s go.

In today’s edition:

• What building a community actually is.
• What is ranch-style SEO?
• Last chance for Touchpoints by T E M S I

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

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What building a community actually means 🫂

Let’s start with what a community actually is. In my own words, a community is a virtual or physical gathering of people connecting with each other. One distinction I want to make here is the difference between a community tactic and a community.

By this, I mean that your Discord or Whatsapp group alone isn’t really a community. What makes these tactics succeed is when your members begin to post on their own and engage with one another. When it comes to tech companies, there are two major types of communities I’ve seen:

• Communities of practice: When people come together to learn more about or discuss a common skill, topic or interest. A great example of this is the Rise Telegram community.
• Communities of product: When people come together to discuss a product— to learn more about it or discuss how to improve it. An example of this is the Figma community.

Now that we’ve gotten the meaning of a community out of the way, here’s my hot take on the matter. The initial tweet that caused this squabble suggested that everyone needs to pivot to community building, as it's the future of marketing. While I agree that community building is a great way for companies to foster community engagement and build brand trust, I think the tweet may have been a bit misleading to marketers.

Why do I think this? That’s because I don’t think the major goal of any community building strategy should be company growth— increased users, revenue, etc. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t use this strategy at all or have goals. Your initial goals for community building should be increased brand engagement, thought leadership, brand trust and referrals.

Now don’t get me wrong. Community building can definitely directly result in growth for a company. All I’m saying is that having strict ROI goals isn’t the right reason to create a community. It will also make your community less authentic, which then defeats the whole purpose of organic people-to-people interaction.

For the final part of my mini-rant, here are some signs that community building is for you:

• Your company isn’t currently focused on rapid growth.
• You understand your audience, their needs and pain points.
• You have the resources (time, money and personnel) to fully dedicate to building a community.
• You’re willing to be patient to achieve your goals.

If none of the signs above sound like you, you may want to skip the community building train for the foreseeable future. It’s important to remember that not every marketing strategy is for you, and that’s okay.

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Ranch-style SEO: What is it? 💻

The SEO world is ever-changing. And evidence of this is that ‘ranch-style SEO’ is a major topic of discussion amongst many professionals and industry blogs. Before I describe ranch-style SEO, I need to first define skyscraper SEO.

Skyscraper SEO has been an SEO best practice for years now, and it’s simply described as creating long-form, comprehensive and all-encompassing content. On the other hand, ranch-style SEO is all about creating shorter and more targeted pieces of content that closely relate to each stage of your buyer’s journey.

This means that instead of creating one long article that covers a topic and various sub-topics, you’re writing several different shorter articles that address each of these perspectives at a time.

A great example of skyscraper SEO is this HubSpot article—The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing in 2024. The article covers a number of sub-topics like:

• What is content marketing?
• Content marketing statistics
• Types of content marketing
• How does content marketing work?
• How to get started with content marketing
• Content marketing examples
• What effective content marketing looks like
• Best content marketers to follow on LinkedIn

If HubSpot decided to switch to a ranch-style SEO strategy, each of the sub-topics above would be different shorter articles that will target more specific user search intents.

Lots of brands are switching to ranch-style SEO, especially because ranking on the SERPs now requires more of a topic-based approach than a keyword-based approach. If you ask me, I’m all for it. So I can’t wait to see more brands succeeding with this strategy!

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Last chance for Touchpoints by T E M S I ⌚

As I mentioned last week, T E M S I’s email automation workshop is a great way for any marketer to upskill in the email marketing field. The reasons why you need to attend this workshop are pretty much covered in the image above, but I’d like to add one more thing. Marketers who have coding skills—even if they’re just basic—will always have a lot more bargaining power than marketers who don’t code.

I mean, there’s just something about not having to wait for an engineer to help you create a custom HTML template.

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Don’t forget you can still use my discount code TP20RE to pay ₦12,000 instead of ₦15,000. I hear there are only 6 spots left, so you should secure your spot now.

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If you loved this newsletter or any of my other editions, do me a favor and share The Marketing Roundup!

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