Priceonmonics' bests posts (say, over 30k views) have a strong data-driven component combined with great writing.
One of Priceonomics' tag lines is "DATA. LONGFORM CONTENT. ANALYSIS." They excel at data crawling and visualization. Combine that capability with talented storytellers, give those writers the freedom to explore a variety of topics, and you've got a winning recipe for repeated virality.
A plumbing company is a great example. You can write great plumbing content, (and definitely still accomplish your goal of getting people with plumbing-related pain points into your funnel or driving awareness for your business) but it's tough to make that type of content spread consistently, even when well-crafted.
Combining the data gathering + analysis/visualization + great writing for homerun content that generates leads on a consistent basis is the challenge I'm talking about specifically. Moreover, the plumbing company does not likely have a marketing department with all 3 of those skills sets represented.
Priceonomics just announced their 'Data Studio' offering to help companies in that position (and there are plenty of them!).
btw, not sure if anyone posted the 6-page summary of the Content Marketing Handbook yet: https://s3.amazonaws.com/pix-media/The+Content+Marketing+Han...
Obviously a great guide for duplicating what Priceonomics does at your own company. Interested to see how the Data Studio works as an outsourced content service.