How Autodesk’s New Redshift Blog is Designed for Long-term Content Marketing Success

That was the question Dusty DiMercurio, Head of Content Marketing and Strategy for the software company Autodesk, recently faced. Autodesk Takeaway: Your content marketing strategy always needs to be evolving – even if it requires drastic changes to set yourself up for long-term success. “We wanted to enable people to make this publication personalized for themselves,” says DiMercurio. This “infinite scroll” feature is just one example of how Redshift is hoping to redefine a personalized content experience. Autodesk Takeaway: Consider the user experience of your site. The result of that collaboration is that industry teams routinely share articles with their prospects. Autodesk Takeaway: Build relationships with other divisions in your company that can influence, utilize, and distribute your content. Autodesk Takeaway: Building a coalition of content marketing champions takes time. “We actually have some pilots in house now that make our content more of a video game experience,” says DiMercurio. “We definitely see the future of storytelling changing.” In the meantime, Redshift will keep publishing its world-class editorial features, and work to solidify its connection with users through an increasingly customized content experience.

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What happens when your content marketing strategy outgrows
itself?

That was the question Dusty DiMercurio, Head of Content
Marketing and Strategy for the software company Autodesk, recently faced.

Line//Shape//Space, the standalone blog DiMercurio launched as a
pilot project in 2013, had become a victim of its own success.

It won numerous awards and was widely seen as a best-in-class,
content marketing industry leader. But it had also grown too big
and was struggling to serve many more functions and a much larger
target audience than it originally set out to reach.

Growing with Its Audience

When DiMercurio first launched Line//Shape//Space, the blog
targeted very small businesses – or as DiMercurio says, “VSBs.”

Autodesk had recently moved from a perpetual software licensing
model to a subscription model, thus making its suite of products
more accessible to smaller business owners. DiMercurio saw an
opportunity to reach this new niche by offering valuable content
aimed at addressing VSBs’ pain points.

Within a few months, Line//Shape//Space gained a loyal following
that included VSBs, but larger businesses and clients began to take
notice, as well. In addition, AutoDesk’s internal industry teams
(architecture, engineering, and construction; manufacturing; and
media and entertainment) began leveraging the blog’s content, and
DiMercurio’s team saw value in trying to engage with businesses of
all sizes.

“We starting expanding to address larger trends in each of
Autodesk’s industries and our expanded persona sets,” says
DiMercurio. Instead of just targeting a VSB owner with general
service articles, they began creating content aimed at personas
like mechanical engineers, architects, indie game makers, and other
people who could potentially benefit from Autodesk’s products.

“Over time, the site evolved from a small business advice site
into one that celebrated the successes and articulated the vision
of its customers,” says DiMercurio.

Eventually, the team decided Line//Shape//Space needed more room
to flourish. DiMercurio saw that in order to ensure the blog’s
ongoing success, it was necessary to regroup, rebrand, and
relaunch.

This September, Line//Shape//Space officially evolved into
Redshift, a new blog
that now lives on Autodesk’s domain. Redshift is designed to scale
with Autodesk’s content marketing strategy and help bring the
company’s mission to life: Exploring the future of making
things.

Autodesk Takeaway: Your content marketing strategy
always needs to be evolving – even if it requires drastic changes
to set yourself up for long-term success.

Autodesk_Redshift.png

As explained on the site, the term “redshift” refers to how
astronauts measure how far away an object is traveling: “When an
object moves away from the Earth, it appears redshifted; the
wavelength of its light is stretched into lower frequencies, which
makes it look red.”

“We wanted to rebrand with a name that we felt better fit with
our expanded and shifted editorial charter,” says DiMercurio.

Although Line//Shape//Space had gone through a couple of
redesigns over the years, this was by far the most drastic.

“What led up to it was looking at the way our readers were
interacting with the site, and looking at the problems we had,” he
says.

For instance, a major wishlist item for Redshift was to offer a
more customized experience, especially since its content
encompasses many personas.

“We wanted to enable people to make this publication
personalized for themselves,” says DiMercurio. “It was important
for us because of the breadth of industries we serve – what we
wanted to do was move in the direction of turning the site into
more of a platform that will personalize over time.”

Now, visitors who sign into the site can choose to follow
particular authors and content categories, save articles to read
later, and leave in-line comments. New technology also serves up
customized content selections based on a visitor’s actions.

Try this: Click into an article, and when you get to the bottom
of it, you’ll notice that there’s a brief pause. That’s because the
site is selecting what it thinks…

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