How We Helped Build a Thriving B2B Design Publication

If your company did not exist, would your blog? 

If the answer is no, I’d argue your blog doesn’t have a unique value to its readers. Only to you. That probably means you must pay people to read it, with ads, which is expensive.

I feel like that’s the default approach in tech. But there is another way—to do what our client Voiceflow did with their publication Pathways, which is to carefully craft its identity first. They’ve soared to ten thousand monthly readers on scant promotion and so strongly impressed their industry that contributors like Peter and Denys are, at this very moment, speaking at conferences.

Donnique recently explained to our writing students how she and Amanda helped Voiceflow invent Pathways. Today, I recount my top takeaways.

The throughline: Put your readers first. Before all internal considerations.

But first, a definition: A blog is a record for your company (short for “business log.”) A publication is a magazine for your readers. Tiny change. Big difference.

First, not every company needs a publication

We only pitched the idea of a publication after really thinking it over. Publishing consistently is expensive time-wise, and not every readership can support it—consider a password wallet company writing about strong passwords. Who cares?

Whereas Voiceflow had thousands of customers, all designers eager to discuss conversation design, a new and growing field without a forum. Creating a publication was actually an act of community service. People actively wanted it. There were also big, unspoken industry secrets about whether chatbots even worked, which meant tension and juicy material.

Craft a problem statement rooted in truth

So then our friend Kristin Hillery, who joined Voiceflow as head of content and brand, gave us the green light. Donnique and Amanda pitched concepts and brought that invaluable outside perspective of thinking first and foremost about the reader.

Most companies ruin it at this stage asking what the publication can do for them. But we all knew this was a magazine measured in what it could do for the design community. With a publication, you aren’t competing with other blogs—you’re up against TechCrunch and Fast Company. The only way to win is to niche down and be uniquely better to your small, specific audience.

Donnique and Amanda developed a problem statement: Conversation designers feel overlooked and disregarded. They want a place to meet, feel good about their work, learn, and grow.

And a purpose statement: Pathways is a publication you’ve been searching for. We’re a community of the best designers, engineers, leaders, dreamers, and tinkerers in conversational AI right now, forging our own paths. It’s not just a publication, it’s a platform for people building the future.

Find a partner who’ll give you a shot 

Kristin, Tara, Sam, Kimberly, Braden, and the team really made this happen because they created an internal safe zone where we could work. This is not easy for marketing teams to do. They need to show a return, and startups are often addicted to the sugar rush of leads. Your patron must take the long view. Lucky for us, Kristin had already built a publication at InVision, so she knew. Her feedback was enriched by years of direct experience.

There was no secret from there—just insatiable curiosity and care for the reader. And, “imbuing that level of care is something anyone can apply,” says Donnique.

Write and design at the same time

There was no distinct writing-to-design handoff in this project: Donnique and Amanda envisioned and executed it together. Donnique explains it best:

“It’s a consistent dialog between writer and designer. As I was planning names, I was asking Amanda what she thought. Just because her background is in design does not mean she doesn’t have strong feelings about the copy, and vice versa, Amanda would share images she was creating, websites that were inspiring her. We were crisscrossing at important points and not veering off the path, so to speak. It’s very in-sync and not a traditional handoff.”

Be intellectually honest—you’ll be rewarded

Radical candor is rare at work, for so many reasons, but usually because it’s inconvenient. People in corporations fear straight talk and so it’s refreshing when they find it. You can be that source of straight talk. Be brave enough to be wrong in public and people will flock to your writing. 

As Donnique explains:

“We set an intention that we wanted to be open to making mistakes. We wanted to be open to the idea that we could be right about this now and be wrong about it later. We have an article about Klarna coming out that we could be wrong about and I’ve left a caveat—‘You might not agree with this’—because that’s conversation. That’s community. If Peter writes an article and he later no longer agrees with it, let’s write an article about that. That’s so human and so interesting.”

People want your hottest takes

You can either jam through a list of SEO articles that underperform and “make it up in volume,” as the old joke goes, or you can be fun and opinionated humans. Pathways is decidedly the latter.

Says Donnique:

“Don’t be afraid to give the hot takes. You learn enough about a space and an industry you can start to see things they are not seeing—say that. I always gut-check those ideas with a trusted partner. If you can get on the calendar of someone in your organization on a regular basis where once a month you have an hour, that’d keep me going for months. One conversation with Peter can become four articles, and me asking better questions of other experts. My favorite topics are the things people are afraid to say.”

In the end, it works because Voiceflow protected it

“One of the greatest things that’s come out of this is Peter has had people reaching out to him for speaking engagements,” says Donnique. “He’s done conferences, he’s done webinars, and he’s had a huge uptick in customers speaking to him to help them through their journey—and then they land those customers. It’s difficult to measure, but just incredible for brand awareness.”

But also the data is there—they went from zero to 10,000 monthly visits in a matter of months, and are watching signups increase accordingly.

 How to apply today’s story

Honestly ask yourself this: If your company (or client) did not exist, would the blog? If it wouldn’t, how could it? Carve out time this week to write down what you think its real purpose is. Verify with customers, then act on it.

In the next issue

How to be highly effective at asynchronous work. Then after that, how to help others around you, including clients, do the same.

Inside Fenwick

The biggest recent news is we launched a campaign for a client called Who Killed ABM. The client had written a rich, 5,000-word white paper, but knew it needed a fun wrapper. Our team, led by Clarissa and Carina, pitched this.

The concept is rooted in a real and present truth: Account-based marketing swept the industry. But ten years on, it’s left little cultural impact. Now it’s fading. Where did it go? 

Listen to Donnique read the first chapter, and call the tipline, 1-833-WHO-KABM.

Learning insights

An interesting topic this past week in our writing Slack Salon: “I’m getting back into freelance writing and worry I’ll now be competing with AI.” 

Here’s my take: You won’t compete with AI if you help clients organize their ideas. That’s the real value. Fenwick’s writing business is booming. We don’t use AI for writing. Clients no longer ask about it. Everyone seems to have figured out that it doesn’t replace a writer-thinker.

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