Between the Lines

The ‘Marker’ Guide to Content Marketing for Non-Hucksters

If the term content marketing upsets you, feel free to replace it with a synonym like 🤮

Byrne Hobart
Marker
Published in
13 min readOct 29, 2019

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Credit: Yuri_Arcurs/Getty

II hate the term “content marketing.” I’m 100% opposed to calling anything I write “content,” and 100% opposed to thinking of anything I do as “marketing,” so I’m already 200% against content marketing. Sadly, that’s the word for something I do, and something I think more people ought to try.

If the term “content marketing” upsets you, feel free to replace it with a synonym like 🤮.

The basic idea is: there is a lot of money in being an expert, relative to being merely 90th percentile. If you don’t have the right combination of natural talent and a superhuman work ethic, you probably won’t be #1 at any job the average person has heard of. But if you define yourself more narrowly, particularly at the intersection of a couple things you do well, you can be #1. And thanks to the power law distribution of search clicks and salaries, it is vastly better to be #1 in a category that matters to a few people than to be even very good at something with broader appeal.

Take Scott Adams. He’s tricky to use as an example, because most people don’t have a ton of respect for his comics…

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Byrne Hobart
Marker
Writer for

I write about technology (more logos than techne) and economics. Newsletter: https://diff.substack.com/