Everyone’s doing content wrong
Here’s the standard playbook: startup decides to “do content marketing”, someone opens Semrush, searches for high-volume keywords, and starts producing generic articles.
The result? Content competing with thousands of identical clones.
Written for algorithms. Not humans.
If you’re selling an automation tool, you’ve probably thought about writing “what is automation” or “QA best practices”. These are obvious topics.
And useless.
There are already 50 better articles about that. Written by bigger companies. With more authority. More budget.
You’re too late for the generic game.
What devs and founders actually want
Uncomfortable truth: your audience doesn’t want basic intros.
They want answers to specific problems. Now.
A dev doesn’t wake up thinking “today I’ll learn content marketing”. They wake up thinking “I need to increase my MRR” or “how do I make my API rank?”.
If your content doesn’t connect with these real pains, you’re wasting cycles.
Forget “educating the market” with surface-level content. Start producing material that solves specific problems.
It’s not about ranking keyword volume.
It’s about creating the best possible answer to a question your ideal customer is asking.
Useful content vs performative content
Too much B2B tech content exists just to pretend the company is doing marketing.
It’s that article nobody on the team would read if they didn’t work there.
Performative content. Made for investors to see. To check a box.
Actually useful content is different:
It’s specific to the point of pain. Instead of “How to do SEO for SaaS”, it’s “Why your landing page doesn’t rank even with quality backlinks”.
See the difference?
It assumes the reader is smart. Devs and founders hate being underestimated. They don’t need explanations about what an API is. They need insights they haven’t had yet.
It admits complexity. The real world doesn’t have “5 simple steps”. It has context. Trade-offs. “Depends on your stack”.
Content that oversimplifies loses credibility instantly with technical audiences.
How to start making content that matters
Forget editorial calendars full of “weekly posts”.
That’s boomer agency thinking.
For tech products, 1 killer article per month > 4 mediocre ones.
Start by doing something strange: talk to your users.
Not to sell. To understand where they got stuck before finding you.
What articles did they read that didn’t help? What questions did they Google? What problem kept them up at 3AM?
These conversations reveal topics no SEO tool will suggest.
They show the actual language your audience uses. Not the corporate jargon you think they want.
Then, write for a specific person.
Not for “decision-makers at mid-sized companies”.
Write for Lucas. Fullstack dev. Launching solo SaaS. Tight budget. Trying to decide between ads or organic SEO.
The more specific the avatar, the better the output.
Format is overrated
Everyone gets obsessed with format.
“Should we do video? Podcast? Infographic?”
The answer: do the format you can do well and that your audience consumes.
If you’re good at writing and your audience reads (devs usually prefer reading over watching 20min videos), write.
If you kill it with technical video and your audience is on YouTube, make video.
Don’t force a format just because it’s trending.
What matters is depth and utility.
A 3000-word article that actually teaches something > 10 short videos saying obvious stuff.
Distribution is half the game
You can write the best technical article in the world.
But if nobody knows it exists, it’s like it doesn’t exist.
And no, “publish and drop on LinkedIn” is not a distribution strategy.
For tech content, think where your audience already is. Reddit communities. Discord servers. Specific forums. X threads. GitHub discussions.
These places > any generic social network.
But heads up: don’t be that dev who just drops links.
Contribute genuinely. Answer questions. Be useful.
Eventually, when you share something of yours, people will want to read it. Because you’ve already built credibility.
Metrics that actually matter
Forget “pageviews” and “time on page”.
For B2B tech products, what matters: is this content bringing qualified leads?
Do people who read convert better?
Does your sales team use this content?
1000 visits from people who’ll never buy < 50 visits from your perfect ICP.
Focus on attracting the right people. Not the largest number of people.
The truth about consistency
Every content marketing guide talks about “publishing consistently”.
It’s true. But not the way you think.
Consistency ≠ posting every Tuesday at 10am.
Consistency = not abandoning after 3 articles when you don’t see immediate results.
Content marketing for tech is a long game.
It can take 6 months to see real traction.
This frustrates people expecting quick hacks.
But when it works, when you build real authority, the flywheel spins on its own.
Ship tomorrow
Want to start making content that matters?
Do this: open a conversation with your last 5 customers.
Ask exactly what problem they were trying to solve before finding you.
Write down the exact words they use.
Those are your next topics.
Don’t try to cover everything.
Pick one specific problem. One specific angle.
Be the best answer on the internet for that.
Then repeat the process.
Content marketing isn’t about building an article library.
It’s about becoming the most trusted source for the specific niche you serve.
And that only happens when you stop trying to please everyone and start speaking directly to who matters.
Build. Ship. Repeat.