Stop writing blogs. Start solving Tuesday mornings.

_{Day 273/100}

Hey—It's Tim. 

You spent 3 years finding product-market fit.

You know your ICP inside out:

• Their job title

• What they eat for breakfast

• Their go-to workout song

• Which of their kids is secretly their favourite.

You can recite your positioning in your sleep.
You've interviewed 47 customers.
You've iterated your landing page 23 times.
You know the exact moment they realize they need your product.

Then you sit down to write a blog post.
And you write the most boring, generic, could-be-anyone shit imaginable.

"10 Best Practices for [Your Category]"

"The Ultimate Guide to [Thing You Sell]"

"Why [Your Product] is the Future of [Industry]"

Nobody reads it.
Not because your product sucks.
Because your content has no market fit.

Here's What Happened

You spent 2-3 years learning:

• What problem your product solves

• Who has that problem

• How much they'll pay to make it go away

But you spent zero minutes learning:

• What content your audience actually wants to read

• Where they're hanging out when they're procrastinating

• What voice makes them trust you instead of bounce in 8 seconds

• What format keeps them engaged past the first paragraph

You have product-market fit.

You don't have content-market fit.

And honestly? It's painful to watch.
Even more honestly. I’m figuring this one out myself too.
So here’s what I have so far.

What Content-Market Fit Actually Means

Product-market fit: Your product solves a real problem for a real person who will pay real money.

Content-market fit: Your content solves a real problem for a real person who will actually read it.

Shockingly different things.

Example:

Your product helps RevOps teams automate data syncing.

Product-market fit: ✅ Yes. They have the problem. They'll pay $500/month. They'll kiss you at the contract signing.

Content you write: "5 Benefits of Automated Data Syncing"

Content they actually want: "Why does my Zapier chain keep failing at 2am on Saturdays and ruining my entire weekend?"

See the difference?
One is about your product.
One is about their recurring nightmare.

Content-market fit = nightmare content.

Not in a horror movie way.

In a "this keeps me up at night and I desperately need someone to solve it" way.

The 3-Step Process to Find Content-Market Fit

Step 1: Find Where They Actually Hang Out (Not Where You Wish They Did)

Not where you think they hang out.
Not where your marketing manager assumes they hang out.
Where they actually, literally, measurably hang out.

Your assumption: "Our ICP reads LinkedIn religiously."

Reality check:

• Pull your top 10 customers

• Ask: "Where do you go when you have a work problem at 3pm on a Wednesday?"

• Track the actual answers

• Try not to cry when you realize how wrong you were

Real answers I've gotten:
"I ask in the RevOps Slack. The one with 4,000 people I've never met."
"I search Reddit because at least those people are honest."
"I watch YouTube tutorials while pretending to be in a meeting."
"I ask my coworker Sarah. She's been here 8 years and knows everything."
"I don't. I just deal with it and complain to my spouse at dinner."

Notice what's missing?
"I read vendor blog posts."
"I subscribe to company newsletters."
"I follow brands on LinkedIn."

Nobody says that.
Nobody has ever said that.
Nobody will ever say that.

Your homework:

Ask 5 customers this week:

"Where do you go when you need to solve [problem your product solves]? And please don't say 'Google' because that's not helpful. I need the actual place. The forum. The Slack. The person's name."

Write down their actual words.
Not what you want them to say.
Not what sounds good in a board meeting.
What they actually, literally say.

That's where you need to show up.

Not on your blog with 47 monthly visitors.
There.
In that Slack channel.
In that subreddit.
In Sarah's DMs if necessary.

Step 2: Learn What Problems They're Actually Searching For (In Their Messy, Frustrated Words)

Your product solves "automated data syncing."

Cool.

Nobody wakes up at 6am thinking "Man, I really need automated data syncing today."

That's not how humans work.
They wake up thinking:

"Why the fuck is this report wrong AGAIN?"
"Why do I spend every Friday afternoon building this goddamn spreadsheet?"
"Why does this Zapier thing I set up in 2022 keep shitting the bed?"
"Who do I need to bribe to make this go away?"

That's what they're searching for.
Not your polished solution.
Their messy, profanity-laced, very specific problem.
In their words.
Which often include words you'd never put in a marketing email.

Your homework:
Go to the place you found in Step 1 (that RevOps Slack, that subreddit, YouTube comments under that tutorial).
Search for your product category.
Don't look at the results yet.

Look at the questions people are asking.

Write down the exact phrases. Copy-paste them. Typos and all.

❌ "I need automated data syncing"
✅ "My Zapier keeps failing and idk why anymore"

❌ "Looking for integration solutions"
✅ "How tf do you merge HubSpot and Salesforce without wanting to quit your job?"

❌ "Best practices for data management"
✅ "Does anyone have a template for this stupid report or do I have to build it from scratch like an animal?"

Those phrases—those exact, messy, frustrated phrases—are your content ideas.

Word for word.
Profanity optional but encouraged.

Step 3: Match Your Voice to Their Context (Stop Sounding Like a Press Release)

Here's where most companies absolutely shit the bed.

They find the right place. ✅
They find the right problem. ✅
Then they write in the wrong voice. ❌❌❌

And wonder why nobody engages.

Example:
Where they hang out: RevOps Reddit
What they're asking: "Why does my Zapier chain keep failing at 2am?"
Your blog title: "5 Common Zapier Integration Challenges and How to Solve Them"

Wrong.

So wrong.

What you should write: "Your Zapier keeps failing because you're using the wrong trigger and I spent 6 hours figuring that out so you don't have to"

Or even better:

"I got woken up at 2am by Slack alerts three Saturdays in a row and here's how I finally fixed it"

See the difference?
One sounds like a vendor trying to sell you something.
One sounds like a person who's been exactly where you are and survived to tell the tale.

People trust people.

They tolerate vendors.

They actively avoid content that sounds like it was written by a committee of lawyers and a VP who "has some thoughts."

Your homework:
Read 10 posts/comments/threads in the place you found in Step 1.
Don't skim. Actually read them.

Notice:

• How casual or formal are they? (Spoiler: casual)

• Do they use jargon or plain language? (Spoiler: plain language with occasional jargon when actually necessary)

• Do they tell stories or just list facts? (Stories. Always stories.)

• Do they swear? Use emojis? Write in sentence fragments? Start sentences with "And" or "But"? (Yes to all of the above)

Then write like that.
Not like a brand.
Not like your company's tone-of-voice guidelines from 2019.
Like a real person in that community who has opinions and emotions and occasionally gets frustrated.

The Pattern (In Case You Skimmed)

Step 1: Find where they actually hang out (not where your content strategy deck says they should)

Step 2: Learn what they're actually asking (in their messy, frustrated, real-human words)

Step 3: Write in their voice (not your brand guidelines voice)

Then:

• Post your content there first (not just on your blog that nobody visits)

• Answer their actual question (not "here's why our product is great")

• Sound like a person who had this problem (not a company that sells solutions)

• Use their language (even if it makes your marketing VP uncomfortable)

• Tell a story (everyone remembers stories, nobody remembers lists)

Results:

People actually read it.
People actually share it.
People actually remember your name.
People actually buy from you.

Because your content finally fits the market you're trying to reach.

Wild concept, I know.

The Thing Nobody Tells You (But I Will)

Content-market fit is actually harder than product-market fit.
There. I said it.

Because with product-market fit, you can just ask:

"Would you pay $500/month for this?"

And they either say yes (PMF) or no (not yet). With content-market fit, you have to watch what people actually do:

"Did they actually read it all the way through?"
"Did they share it with their team?"
"Did they come back for more?"

People will lie about paying. They won't lie about reading.

Well, they'll lie ("yeah I'll read that later") but the analytics won't.

47 views, 0:32 average time on page = they opened it, said 'nope,' and left.

847 views, 4:18 average time on page = they read every single word and probably bookmarked it.

That's your signal.
Not your vanity metrics.
Not your "we published 47 blogs this quarter" report.

Did anyone actually read the damn thing?
If no, you don't have content-market fit yet.

Keep trying.

P.S.

See you tomorrow.

✌️ Tim "The blog post is dead, long live the blog post" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. Here's how I found content-market fit for this newsletter:

Step 1: Asked 20 content marketers where they actually learn stuff

Answers: Twitter, newsletters from people who swear occasionally, definitely not vendor blogs that sound like they were written by ChatGPT's boring cousin

Step 2: Searched Twitter for "content marketing" + "struggling" + "help"

Found: "I have ideas but can't write them fast enough and AI makes everything sound like a robot"

Step 3: Noticed the voice: Casual, frustrated, honest, occasionally profane, lots of sentence fragments, real examples not theory

So I wrote like that.

Daily. In your inbox. No corporate bs. No "best practices" that don't actually work. Just what I'm actually doing.

And here you are. Day 272.

That's content-market fit, at least for me.

Penfriend.ai
Made by content marketers. Used by better ones.