Beyond metrics: How Notion measures the value of its ‘helpful’ content
You all put some really great—and great-looking—stuff out on the Notion blog. What’s the makeup of the team that puts it together?
My colleague Michael and I produce most of the content. But we partner with so many people internally to make sure the pieces are impactful. A huge reason why we’re able to create stuff that stands out is because we work with the creative team. They do all of the amazing illustrations and animations that we use across our website and a lot of our content.
What is the elevator pitch for your blog strategy?
The goal of Notion’s blog is to be a resource for genuinely helpful content. It’s a chance to share our points of view on a lot of topics: how we build with AI, the history (and future) of work and productivity, and deep dives on craft. Of course, we want to drive interest in Notion and get more people to sign up and try it out, but our central goal is to provide inspiration and tips to help our readers be more productive.
“Of course, we want to drive interest in Notion and get more people to sign up and try it out, but our central goal is to provide inspiration and tips to help our readers be more productive.”
What value does Notion hope to get out of a successful post?
There are a few different ways we measure value from blog posts. We do measure traffic on the website. But there’s more to it than that because a blog post can live on other channels too.
For example, when we see one of our branded pieces really take off on social, that's usually a good sign that it’s a topic people care about. Or if someone reads something on our blog that helps them significantly improve their workflows—they might not sign up right away, but they might browse, tell a friend, and/or come back later. And the more they come back, the more they're going to see our product and learn about it. There’s value for us in that.
There are so many channels and so many places where people live online and consume content. So, yes, content does touch pipeline and revenue, but it can also be immensely valuable to how people perceive your brand, point of view, and values.
What is and isn’t measurable for this goal of making helpful content?
We’re definitely measuring conversions from the blog when we’re writing about new features or how to do things in Notion. When we write blog posts that include templates, we can go a step further and even track how many people are actually duplicating the templates that are embedded in those blog posts. Templates are really powerful for us—they’re a great way for anyone to find a framework and immediately use it in Notion.
I think of traffic as a directional metric. It’s helpful, and it can indicate interest in certain topics, but it shouldn't be the deciding factor that dictates our strategy overall.
At the end of the day, content can just be hard to measure. People often try to attribute a single metric to a single type of content, but that’s not always possible and there are nuances you have to consider.
“How do you measure the value of nurturing love for your product? You can’t. But sometimes, that’s okay.”
For example, with webinars, we can track attendance and registration and see who's engaging in the chat—if people are leaving comments and asking questions. After the webinar, we can continue that journey by sharing a template or a piece of content. So it’s really a full content experience and there are different things we can measure along the way.
When you’re creating content with the goal of being helpful, you have to be okay with that being enough of a business case. In many ways, content is a brand game, and the metrics you’re measuring don’t have to just be direct conversions for it to be valuable.
I’ve heard so many readers tell me, “This is a great template. I didn’t sign up for Notion today, but I did copy the template layout and use it. And it’s been so helpful—I love it.”
How do you measure the value of nurturing love for your product? You can’t. But sometimes, that’s okay.
So even though you don’t have an ultimate North Star metric—or metrics—do you have a dashboard of data you monitor?
Yeah, in addition to keeping an eye on blog traffic, we do monitor other things. We keep an eye on where people are coming to our website from, how frequently they come back, and their journey on the site.
We have a separate dashboard for the in-product actions we influence, like the template duplications I mentioned or the new workspace signups and active users from things like email sends.
With your Pioneers and First Block podcasts and blogs, you’ve been able to create a space to tell interesting stories about anyone designing or building things in tech—not just people using Notion. How do you decide what makes a good story?
Most of the time, it comes down to one simple question: Who has an interesting story to tell?
I think everybody does—and often, those conversations don’t have anything to do with Notion. We invite guests on the show to tell us about their founder stories, how they built their team, and how they got to where they are now. There are people behind all of these companies, and sometimes that’s forgotten.
It all comes back to our goal of being genuinely helpful. Sure, we’d love for everyone to use Notion, but we think part of winning that opportunity comes from delivering valuable content, building that trust, and letting them know we’re supporting them along the way.
That support includes sharing tips and insights into how other companies became successful. We did a blog post with Jeff Weiner, the former CEO of LinkedIn, about how he stays organized and his approach to ideation. We ended up turning his process into a Notion template, which readers can download and use right in Notion.
How do you all source interviews and stories for your content?
We tap our personal networks. Sometimes they’re Notion customers, but again, that’s not necessary. Often it’s just good, old-fashioned hitting the (digital) pavement, pitching potential interviewees on the idea, and seeing who’s game to talk to us.
Most people are happy to share how they work and their personal habits and processes, which is great.
“We have ideas and phrases that are more value-forward, but they may not be actual [SEO] terms. So we’re constantly thinking about how to show up in search while delivering content in our tone of voice. Most of the time, we find ways to avoid typical keyword stuffing.”
How do you think about SEO and discoverability with your content?
We do think about SEO, but we try to balance that with a certain level of quality we want to maintain in our blog posts. We have ideas and phrases that are more value-forward, but they may not be actual search terms. So we’re constantly thinking about how to show up in search while delivering content in our tone of voice. Most of the time, we find ways to avoid typical keyword stuffing. For example, we just launched Notion Calendar, but “calendar” is an extremely competitive keyword. So, to break through the noise, we needed to get a bit creative (see what we did here with “timeline,” “workflow,” “schedule,” “meetings”). Without giving too much away, we have a few great levers we can pull to mix value and substance in our content with discoverability.