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Article's Content
Attentive doubled the organic traffic to their site in one year.
But there isn’t any “one weird trick” here. If they used AI, they hid it well. They didn’t even get lucky with one good article suddenly shooting to the top of the SERPs after a Google Search update.
Instead, this is the story of an extended, concerted effort to create and distribute the most valuable and relevant content they could. With carefully planned content and social media strategies, Attentive rapidly saw the fruits of that labor.
So, let’s start with the story of who Attentive is and how they got here.
$80 Million to $2 Billion in Two Years
Attentive develops tools to let other companies text their customers easily. That pitch might be worth the $80 million of their Series A valuation. But over the next few years, hard work and strategic thinking grew the company to be worth $2 billion in 2020.
This remarkable increase is largely attributed to Attentive’s effective platform that leverages consumer behavior data to drive engagement and sales for clients ranging from small businesses to large corporates like Coach and Urban Outfitters.
On average, Attentive’s platform contributes to 18.5% of total online revenue for its clients, underscoring its significant impact on their digital marketing strategies.
The company’s rapid valuation growth was also fueled by strategic investments and a focus on expanding their technological capabilities and market reach. Attentive’s funding rounds have attracted a diverse array of investors, underscoring the market’s confidence in their business model and future prospects.
As they continue to innovate and expand internationally, Attentive looks primed to keep growing even faster than before.
Attentive’s High-Growth Content Strategy
Attentive carved a niche in digital communication, and they followed it up with equally innovative content creation. The company used a high volume of content production to fuel a spike in organic traffic. Let’s look at how.
High Organic Traffic Growth
Over the past year, Attentive’s blog traffic exploded. Overall, their site’s organic traffic doubled, which is great. But their blog traffic tripled in the same period, showing where a good chunk of that growth came from.
They achieved this without an especially active paid traffic strategy. And their distribution strategy — although effective — creates referral traffic, not organic traffic.
So, how can we explain such consistent and high growth?
It turns out that it took a lot of intelligent, hard work.
High-Volume Content Production
In pursuit of growth, Attentive adopted a high-volume content production strategy. From June 2022 to June 2023, they published more than 200 pieces of content, and they’ve added 50 more since then.
This approach allowed them to cover a broad spectrum of topics, thereby attracting a diverse audience. This rapid production also meant that their website was consistently refreshed with new information, keeping it relevant and engaging for return visitors and new users alike.
There are plenty of benefits to such a prolific content strategy. First, it helped Attentive build a profile of subject matter expertise by publishing many articles about highly specific topics within their industry. That gives the site experience, something Google added to its site quality rater guidelines in 2022. Overall, it gave Attentive a level of depth on relevant topics that would be very difficult to recreate.
In addition to that depth, Attentive’s high volume of content let them build articles covering a wide selection of topics, which in turn let them target a wide range of keywords, including both high-volume and long-tail phrases.
This diversity in keyword targeting helps the website attract different segments of traffic, from those looking for general digital marketing advice to those needing specific solutions for mobile messaging strategies.
The sheer volume of content also lets Attentive build a robust internal backlink structure.
Each new article provides opportunities to link back to previous content. This helps search engines understand the relationships between pages and their subject matter, improving the site’s SEO profile. It also improves user experience by making it easier for visitors to find related information.
Internal linking is crucial for SEO as it helps search engines understand the structure of a website and the relevance of pages to one another, which can boost the rankings of all linked pages. But just publishing high volumes of content isn’t enough.
How Attentive Built Growth with Keyword Ramping
Attentive used an interesting strategy for content planning, which we call “keyword ramping.” This strategy begins with targeting long-tail keywords, which typically have lower competition and search volumes, and gradually moves toward targeting more competitive high-volume keywords.
This method allows a site to build authority in niche areas before tackling broader and more difficult topics, and that’s exactly what it did for Attentive.
Initial Strategy With Long-Tail Keywords
Attentive’s initial content strategy focused on long-tail keywords, which helped them establish a foothold in specific niches within the broader digital marketing landscape.
For instance, their early articles on topics like “A/B Testing Examples” and “What is SMS Marketing? Definition, Benefits, and How to Get Started” targeted very specific topics. These articles address narrow queries that their target audience might search for, leading to quick wins in SERP rankings due to the low competition associated with long-tail keywords like those.
As their site began to gain authority and visibility from these targeted articles, Attentive strategically moved to include higher-difficulty keywords. Articles like “11 Creative Email Marketing Examples to Inspire Your Own Program” illustrate this shift.
Here, they targeted a more competitive keyword within the broader digital marketing industry. One reason they were able to rank so well for such an in-demand keyword was the profile of subject matter expertise they’d already published — they were leveraging the domain authority built from their earlier, more focused content.
Expanding Beyond Core Expertise
The next part of keyword ramping is not just increasing the difficulty of the keywords but also broadening the scope of topics. For example, Attentive began publishing content like “The Ultimate 2024 Food Holidays Calendar“, which ventured beyond their direct domain of digital marketing into more general content that could appeal to a wider audience.
If you look at the content they’re publishing right now, you’ll see a mix of articles directly about SMS marketing and others that might be a little more of a reach.
This type of content diversification can be risky as it strays from a site’s established areas of expertise — areas that Google typically favors.
However, if executed well, it allows a site to capture a broader audience, potentially increasing traffic and engagement even further. This kind of ramping lets sites like Attentive test the waters and work their way up to broader topics.
Attentive’s Five-Platform Distribution Strategy
Attentive’s approach to expanding their digital footprint goes beyond just creating valuable content. They’ve also mastered the art of distribution across multiple platforms, tailoring their strategies to harness the unique strengths of each channel.
A cornerstone of this distribution strategy is their use of LinkedIn, which has become a pivotal platform for reaching their professional audience.
On LinkedIn, Attentive boasts an impressive following of 66,000 professionals, a testament to their strong presence and active engagement within their industry.
They make sure to share multimedia posts that include links to articles, images, videos, and infographics. This multimedia approach helps capture the attention of their audience (and the algorithm!) more effectively than text-only posts.
Attentive employs a balanced mix of distribution and native content on LinkedIn, ensuring that their feed remains dynamic and engaging.
Distribution content typically includes shares of their latest blog posts or articles aimed at driving traffic back to their website. While native content is designed to engage directly on the platform, including thought leadership pieces and industry insights that resonate with their professional audience.
Notably, some of their content distribution efforts include reposting employees’ content distribution posts. This lets the brand access a different audience, help out an employee’s personal brand, and speak with a different and more personal voice at the same time.
To maintain a strong and constant presence, Attentive posts on LinkedIn approximately nine times a week. This frequency ensures that they remain top of mind for their followers while also maximizing the potential reach of each piece of content through LinkedIn’s algorithm, which favors regular activity.
Through this strategic approach on LinkedIn, Attentive is building a community of followers and driving more attention to the articles they work so hard to create.
On Instagram, Attentive has successfully grown a following of 13,100 users, which is pretty impressive given how the platform is less associated with B2B tools like theirs.
Like their approach on LinkedIn, Attentive makes strategic use of multimedia content, but they adapt these materials to fit Instagram’s unique format and audience preferences. This includes optimizing images and videos for mobile viewing, using vibrant visuals, and incorporating Instagram-specific features like Stories and Reels to engage their audience.
Attentive cleverly recycles multimedia content across both Instagram and LinkedIn. This not only ensures brand consistency but also maximizes the return on investment in content creation. By adapting the content slightly to suit the norms and expectations of each platform’s audience, they maintain relevance and engagement.
Here’s the LinkedIn version of some slides:
And look how they adapted the same materials for Instagram:
View this post on Instagram
For distribution via Instagram, they often use tactics like “link in bio” to drive traffic to their latest blog posts or major announcements. Native content, on the other hand, is designed to engage directly on the platform. This might include behind-the-scenes stories, highlights from corporate events, or user-generated content that showcases their community engagement.
They also make sure to use platform-specific features like Reels and Stories. And they have archived Stories of helpful examples of ways to use their platform, like this one:
Attentive posts on Instagram three times a week and consistently uses Stories to promote these posts, ensuring they stay top of mind for their followers.
This regular posting schedule, combined with the strategic use of Stories, helps maintain a dynamic presence on the platform, encourages regular interaction, and enhances visibility through Instagram’s algorithms, which favor active accounts.
X
On X, Attentive has built a following of 10,074 followers. Here, their content strategy includes a blend of multimedia posts that mirror their LinkedIn strategy but are tailored for the more dynamic and conversational nature of X.
This includes a mix of distribution content, like links to their latest blog posts and announcements, alongside native content, such as industry news, quick tips, and engaging visuals.
One key element of Attentive’s strategy on X is active engagement with their community by reposting and interacting with fans. This practice helps to build a more personal connection with their audience, increases brand loyalty, and enhances social proof since followers often feel valued when a brand acknowledges and shares their content.
It also plays into the X algorithm perfectly since it rewards replies with greater visibility.
Attentive posts about six times a week on X, often reusing and repurposing content that has performed well on LinkedIn to ensure consistency across platforms while optimizing resource use. Like with the other platforms, the frequent posting and engagement strategies they embrace here help maintain high visibility and foster an active community dialogue.
Attentive’s presence on Facebook is more subdued, with about 1,200 followers. Their strategy here leans heavily on multimedia posts but mostly serves as a distribution channel for content originally created for LinkedIn. This approach includes sharing blog posts, videos, and major announcements. Because they mostly use content they post on LinkedIn and other platforms, it certainly doesn’t cost very much to maintain this presence.
Despite the smaller follower count, Facebook serves as a part of Attentive’s strategy to reach audiences who may prefer this platform over others. The posting frequency on Facebook is less regular compared to other platforms. This likely reflects the shifting dynamics of the platform’s usage and engagement levels.
YouTube
YouTube offers a different kind of opportunity for Attentive, allowing them to delve deeper into topics through video content, which can provide a richer, more engaging user experience.
Attentive’s YouTube channel features various videos that complement their blog topics, with some of their most-viewed videos covering similar subjects, effectively extending the life and reach of their written content.
For example, their most-viewed video is “What is SMS Marketing—Overview and Tips”, the same subject as the blog article we talked about earlier. That shows how they’re going after a similar strategy with their YouTube content.
I’d also bet that the team making those videos uses their blog posts as resources since they cover very similar advice. That’s a smart way to make the most of your content internally.
Overall, Attentive’s multi-platform strategy is a fine example of how brands can effectively use social media to amplify their reach and engagement, adapt to different audience preferences, and repurpose the same materials to make the most of them.
Learn Attentive’s Strategy One Piece at a Time
As you can see, there isn’t any one trick to Attentive’s growth. Instead, they did a lot of work to carefully plan their content calendar and ramp up from long-tail keywords to capturing high-volume searches. Then, they created an equally successful social media strategy that lets them distribute their content widely and gain followers organically.
If you’re interested in seeing how other companies manage to create high volumes of content on similar subjects, you can take a look at how Dialpad did just that. Or, if you’re interested in a better social media strategy, check out how these five brands are doing social media right.
