HACKER Q&A
📣 swores

Is there a marketing-related topic you'd like an article written about?


I've been wanting to get back to blogging about marketing strategy, ideas, etc., for a little while now. Although I write quite a bit and I've worked in marketing for major tech and gaming brands for a couple of decades, I rarely make time to write on that subject for an audience looking for marketing guidance.

So, tomorrow (Sunday) I plan on working on one, maybe two depending on how it goes, articles or blog posts!

I've got a few ideas already of possible subjects, but I thought what could be more interesting is to see if there are any suggestions from HN readers of what you would specifically like to read or learn about. Both to find any subject ideas that might be better than the ones already in my head, and to know that if I can write the article, I've already found my first reader!

Obviously, I can't make any promises, and there'll be any number of areas in which I'm not qualified to write about, but my experience spans everything from multi-million dollar media buys through platforms like Google and Facebook, as well as single-site campaigns, print and TV, etc., to PR and consumer events, to business rebranding, community management, influencer marketing, etc.

So, if there's something you've been wanting to understand, or learn about, and it's not something you can already get the perfect write-up from 30 seconds with a search engine, please let me know!

You can either just give me the article headline you want to see and let me go from there, or an in-depth question, or list of points to consider, or... whatever you like.

And hopefully, if anyone's interested enough to leave a comment here, I'll be back at my desk in the morning (EU time) to start planning & hammering away at my keyboard!

(I'll also put more effort into it than I did with the writing of this post, which was a 3 minute draft followed by a quick proof-read!)

edit: On the off chance this thread picks up and gets more than a couple of comments (or even for the one comment already posted) - if anyone reading this thinks they could write a great article about one of the requests, feel free to jump in and offer, I won't be territorial :)


  👤 jschveibinz Accepted Answer ✓
I work with university professors that develop high-tech solutions (all types) and one of the biggest problems they have is in market research. I think this is similarly true of many software startups. They can’t afford to pay a market research company thousands of dollars to write or provide a vague, useless report. They can’t afford to pay Google thousands of dollars for fake “impressions” that might suggest market interest.

So, what should these folks do? What is a no-BS process for doing decent market research that doesn’t cost thousands of dollars?

Thanks.