The Hedge Fund Approach To Blogging About Marketing

Several of our colleagues at Goldman Sachs helped us come to a realization: Woodridge Growth functions more like a hedge fund than a marketing agency. It is from this perspective that we developed the foundation for what-will-be the Woodridge Growth blog.

Blogging has not been part of our business strategy. For the last four and a half years, Woodridge Growth has built a world-class marketing service company by focusing on one thing and one thing only: doing phenomenal work for our clients.

With this in mind, why start blogging now?

Rather than make a list of reasons to publish content, I made a list of reasons NOT to do it. My belief is that if we avoid these things, we will add value and enjoy the process.

To create content that adds no value, we should do the following:

1. Create content we wouldn’t read, but that we think other people will.
2. Create content that is ephemeral in nature, e.g. about marketing trends, news, etc.
3. Create content that we do not enjoy creating.

Therefore, to the winning approach to building a blog looks like this:

• We will create content that we would want to read.
• We will aim to create content that still is worth reading five years from now.
• We will only create content that we enjoy creating. If we cannot find any pleasure creating the content, we do not believe the end result will be very good.

Key Question: What can we share here that will add real value to the conversations surrounding marketing, without compromising the proprietary strategies we develop for our clients?

We are following the lead of legendary hedge fund manager Howard Marks, who has published enduring investing wisdom to the Oaktree Capital website since 1990.

Marks’ memos contain enduring wisdom about investing. While any investor can benefit from reading Howard Marks’ online content, they are not going to benefit in the same way as Oaktree Capital’s clients.

Marks is able to add value to the larger investing community without diluting the advantage Oaktree Capital provides its clients.

It’s a win-win.

That is what we hope to achieve here with the Woodridge Growth marketing blog.