Key Info
- Client: Wundergraph
- Industry: Developer tools, BFF framework, API composition
- Services we provided: Technical Content, Content Strategy, Content Distribution, SEO
- Duration: August 2022 - Present
"Circuit completely surpassed our expectations. Each blog post or content piece they have created for us has been of exceptional quality. The pieces are interesting, detailed, dramatically correct, and everything else needed in a great blog post!" - Stefan Avram (Co-Founder, WunderGraph)
1. Pain Points
Content Quality and Scaling
WunderGraph initially relied heavily on their highly detailed and technical blog posts, which played a crucial role in their marketing success. However, after securing a seed round of funding, they needed to scale up their content production to attract more potential customers and drive traffic to their website.
"We hold ourselves to a high standard for the quality and details that go into our blog posts. We tried working with many providers but could not find one to produce the quality we were looking for, until we found Circuit."
Product Understanding
According to Stefan, creating content for WunderGraph posed a challenge due to the technical nature of their product. They required engaging content that developers would like reading and find useful, while also effectively demonstrating how their product addressed specific developer pain points.
This required content creators who had a thorough understanding of the product, its niche, and the pain points it addressed. Furthermore, a developer's perspective was essential to properly engage with other developers.
"Before Circuit, we found it hard to find somebody that understood our product well and the pain points to be solved. It required a mid-senior engineer level of understanding."
Other challenges included improving search engine optimization (SEO), increasing the rate of content production, and finding a platform that could effectively reach their target developer audience, generate awareness, and drive conversions.
Stefan had been following Circuit's In Plain English publications and had previously read several articles. Circuit's article for another client caught his attention, piquing his curiosity about working with them. Stefan reached out to the Circuit team through Twitter, and a meeting was arranged. This eventually led to WunderGraph partnering with Circuit.
2. Solution
Developer-Centric Content Strategy
Upon partnering with WunderGraph, the Circuit team first embarked on getting a thorough understanding of the product, and then devised a comprehensive funnel-based content strategy that would appeal to a wide range of developers. They aimed to create awareness about WunderGraph, drive traffic to their website, and address specific pain points to drive adoption. Circuit committed to producing one article per week.
During the research process, Circuit's team recognized that creating content about WunderGraph required deep familiarity with its technical niche to effectively resonate with developers' pain points. The content had to strike a balance between accessibility and elaboration on the technical benefits of WunderGraph, showcasing the product's strengths.
An awareness of developer experience was critical for a product like WunderGraph - producing fluff content was not a viable option here. Circuit's team of content writers, who are experienced developers themselves, played a crucial role in achieving this balance. Their goal was to produce developer-focused content that would yield long-term benefits.
Ability to Leverage Platform with 3M Monthly Readers and Extensive Distribution Network
In terms of SEO and content reach, Circuit's team had extensive experience working with well-known tech publications worldwide under the banner of "In Plain English," which have a collective readership of over 3 million people globally. Leveraging this editorial expertise, they conducted thorough keyword research and optimized titles and subtitles for maximum SEO benefits.
The established readership of the platform ensured that WunderGraph's articles would reach and resonate with the right developers.
Additionally, Circuit's team implemented extensive content distribution efforts across social media, the In Plain English newsletter (with over 9,000 subscribers at the time of writing), and other tech-oriented platforms to maximize content outreach.
"One of the biggest issues we faced was finding a platform with an existing audience which Circuit solved. The second issue was SEO, which we were already doing ourselves but then Circuit helped out. With the experience they had and their huge publication platform, making it an easy plug-in."
After an initial discussion with Stefan and the WunderGraph team, Circuit determined the topics for the initial set of articles. Their team of expert writers then began crafting the initial drafts, which were subsequently reviewed by Circuit's editorial team to add the final touches and ensure SEO-friendliness.
The completed articles were delivered to WunderGraph for publication. Once approved, the articles were shared on various social media platforms and featured in the In Plain English newsletter.
Once each piece gained sufficient views and achieved rankings on Google, the canonical URL would be redirected to the corresponding post on WunderGraph's own blog to drive traffic there.
Subject Matter Experts
"Circuit's team really understood the product which was amazing. One article per week, especially for the price, is great, and the pieces are all fantastic and do not compromise on quality."
Alongside that, having developed a thorough understanding of the product, Circuit's team also joined WunderGraph's Discord server, engaging with and answering developer questions to drive further engagement and droption. Stefan remarks that Prithwish, one of the senior members of the Circuit team has become a champion on Wundergraph's community Discord server.
3. Outcome
1,000 Daily Average Visitors and Sustained Growth from Organic Traffic
✍🏿 Content Stats
- Which Database Should You Use for Your Next.js App?
- First article produced for WunderGraph
- Over 1000 views in first week
- Currently ranked #2 result on the first page of Google
✍🏽 Content Stats
- Data Fetching with Next.js 13's Bleeding-Edge Features
- Over 4500 views on Wundergraph's website
- Average read time of 10mins
- Bounce rate of 40% (ie 60% of readers stayed on the site after reading)
- Additional 5000 views on In Plain English's platform
"The first few pieces of content that Circuit wrote for us keep bringing in more and more views, around 1000 per day, while the newer articles keep bringing in about 200-300 more each."
✍🏼 Content Stats
- Dodging the Vercel Tax: How to use an open-source alternative for Serverless Postgres, Redis, and Blob Storage
- Over 12,000 views on In Plain English's platform
- 143 Upvotes on Reddit
"What I like the most about the articles is how they talk about WunderGraph without having to sell it. It's great because you're learning about TypeScript and JavaScript and then it's like, by the way, there's this framework that you can use for this purpose. The Circuit team goes ahead and explains it in a way that holds genuine value for developers."
✍🏼 Content Stats
- How to Compose and Integrate APIs Together as if You Were Using NPM for APIs
- Over 5000 unique visitors to Wundergraph's website
Increased Developer Engagement
Stefan also feels that Circuit's approach does not produce overtly sales-oriented content, but instead delivers content "written by developers for developers", and effectively resonates with their specific pain points.
"The Circuit team excels in this aspect because they actually have real developers writing and producing content, as opposed to 'copy experts'".
After a year of working with the Circuit team, Stefan is extremely satisfied with the quality of the content and the rate of delivery.
"The entire team is also very responsive and helpful. No matter the issue, the team is available to jump on a call and help you solve it. We plan on continuing our partnership with IPE for as long as we can and cannot wait to see our latest content piece from them."
TL;DR: WunderGraph partnered with Circuit to overcome content quality, scaling, and product understanding challenges. Circuit's developer-centric content strategy resulted in 1,000 daily visitors, increased organic traffic, and continued growth in views. Articles achieved first page rankings on Google. Circuit's expertise in SEO and distribution efforts contributed to the success, providing genuine value to developers without overt sales tactics.