Why you should be publishing more content online

Three companies have made a big impact online recently by publishing content that was not initially created with a marketing focus. As Jason Fried mentioned in a recent article, most marketing content is so generic it loses all meaning. Netflix, Dropbox and Xobni have all recently posted unique content, content which does a better job of marketing their companies than any copywriter could hope to achieve.

Netflix posted an HR focused slide deck describing their corporate culture on SlideShare (the corporate shill in me wants to point out this could have been more effectively delivered using Brainshark, but that's not the point). By posting this they are essentially letting the world know what type of employees they are looking for, and letting potential employees understand exactly what to expect at Netflix. It essentially became a very targeted recruiting tool:

Culture

View more presentations from Reed Hastings.

Dropbox got great press putting up slides and a video of a presentation one of their founders gave describing their unusual strategy for growth. It mentions Dropbox as being a great application, but that is not the focus. That said, viewers are left with a great impression of Dropbox as a company, and it has much more impact than a traditional marketing piece describing feature sets. Again, I want to point out this is simply a video of a talk the founder was already scheduled to deliver at a conference:

Watch live video from Startup Lessons Learned on Justin.tv

Xobni also has a great presentation talking about their growth. Again, this is different than a traditional marketing pitch, but more effective because it is different:

5 stages of xobni's growth and 5 pivots along the way

View more presentations from Matt Brezina.

The overriding theme is that most companies have these type of presentations posted on some type of internal portal, or available when execs need to speak at conferences. They should be publishing everything, and letting their customers get a better feel for who the company is, what their journey has been, and where they are looking to go. David Meerman Scott talks a lot about this, but publishing quality content is a tremendous way to drive revenue and stand out from the rest of the online noise.