CircleCI   

  CI/CD Platform

CircleCI bridges the gap between developers and decision-makers

— and hits the top of SERP while they’re at it.

The company.

CircleCI is a continuous integration and delivery platform that helps development teams test and deploy code rapidly using intelligent automation. Development teams can use CircleCI to find and solve problems quickly, enabling higher-quality and more stable releases.

Running 70+ million jobs per month in support of 1+ million developers across 200,000 teams, CircleCI found themselves needing help to scale their content program—and quickly.

“When we found ContentLab, we had a hole in our content program. We had difficulty in trying to get technical content written that is a mix between technical leadership content and actual tactical developer-related content.” 

Ron Powell, Manager, Marketing Insights and Strategy, CircleCI

The
  • Challenge
  • Opportunity

Scaling content production quickly

difficulty finding expert writers

Gaining share of voice

As CircleCI experienced rapid growth, Ron Powell, Manager of Marketing Insights and Strategy realized they could no longer just rely on their internal subject matter experts. If they wanted to continue to scale their content program, they needed dedicated content creators. But it was a struggle to find reliable external authors. They needed more than just writers. They needed experts who could write intelligently and thoughtfully in their space.

One thing was clear: a solution was needed.

A large portion of CircleCI’s customer base is in leadership roles that don’t necessarily use the CI/CD tools but are tasked with making decisions for their engineering teams. These decision-makers often feel like they don’t have enough technical understanding of CircleCI’s value proposition, use cases, and problem sets that their tech teams are looking to solve.

CircleCI needed to get their solution in front of this audience to arm them with the tools to strengthen communication between teams.

The Solution.

CircleCI worked with ContentLab to pinpoint holes and identify the opportunities in their content pipeline. Recognizing the opportunity to tap into underserved audience segments, ContentLab produced several series aimed at decision-makers. The result was content that hit the sweet spot between tactical developer-related content and thought leadership pieces—comprehensive yet consumable.

To position CircleCI’s solution in front of a wider audience, ContentLab also worked with CircleCI to go beyond their official blog to create articles tailored for external industry sites.

“I love the collaborative nature of our brainstorming sessions. No matter what shape my ideas are in, from a few scattered keywords to fully fledged outlines, ContentLab consistently offers valuable insights and perspectives that demonstrate a deep understanding of the developer experience and the technologies shaping the future of DevOps.”

The results.

01.

Connecting with the right audience

Hit the balance between high-level and hands-on content.

02.

A reliable content cadence

Provided high-value content at scale thanks to hand-picked writers who are experts in their fields and a rigorous editorial process.

03.

Gaining share of voice

Outranked other industry leaders on SERP.

With the right authors and a sharp editorial team, CircleCI was able to create multiple series of high-value thought leadership content that didn’t water down the tech.

This strategic balance was able to bridge the gap between technical teams and decision-makers. Tech teams could talk to decision-makers in a language they now can understand, resulting in a more informed and productive decision.

“ContentLab manages our content pipeline with professional and polite attention. The depth of knowledge of the editorial team combined with the talent across so many areas of application development in the author pool makes working with ContentLab efficient and productive.”

– Ron Powell, Manager, Marketing Insights and Strategy, CircleCI

CircleCI even made it to the first page of Google for highly competitive keywords in their space—beating out the biggest players in their industry.

Bonus win: ContentLab generated content submitted to the popular industry blog, The New Stack, was so effective at driving traffic back to CircleCI’s website, that The New Stack wrote a case study about it.

“There is no spot higher than number one—it is the most successful piece of content on that keyword that we were able to create.”

“It’s been a real delight to work with ContentLab and we’re super happy to have the opportunity. I love the team at ContentLabI can’t express that enough. We’ve had just countless wins together. Can’t wait for all the future wins.”

Ready to ramp up your content program?