John Doherty discusses building an effective content marketing machine. He explains that an MVP content strategy should be based on a hypothesis about what types of content will work. A full content machine involves ideation, creation, promotion, and measurement working together consistently. Doherty provides examples from his work growing traffic and links for HotPads through location-specific content, data visualizations, and periodic PR stunts. He stresses testing different content types and optimizing promotion strategies over time based on measurement.
2. Who am I?
Currently: Founder of Credo (GetCredo.com)
Growth/inbound marketing consultant for
hire
Blogger: johnfdoherty.com
Previous:
• Senior Growth Marketing Manager at
Trulia Rentals
• Senior Marketing Manager at HotPads
• Senior Consultant at Distilled NYC
@dohertyjf
4. Some of the results I’ve seen and heard of
Content marketing:
• Changed a site from buying $15k of links a month to earning links
from sites like REI
• Grew an audience by tens of thousands from scratch and contributed
meaningful conversions to a business
• Personally made me over $70k from one product launch and the
marketing around it
• Obtained millions of visits and earning shares from some of the
biggest celebrities (for free!)
@dohertyjf
5. But some of you are probably thinking
“We gave content marketing a shot and it didn’t work.”
@dohertyjf
6. But some of you are probably thinking
We gave content marketing a shot and it didn’t work.
@dohertyjf
7. Let’s think about some types of content
Infographics
Whitepapers
Blog posts
Data visualizations
eBooks
@dohertyjf
Email drip campaigns
15. A machine is a sum of its parts. Every part works together. If one part
isn't working, then you're wasting gas or worse, not even on the road
anymore.
16. Rome wasn’t build in a day. Neither will your machine. So let’s figure
out where to start.
@dohertyjf
17. From Idea to MVP
Let’s build a skateboard.
@dohertyjf
19. An MVP is a working first iteration based off a hypothesis. In content
marketing, your hypothesis can be informed by data and observation.
@dohertyjf
21. Who’s the content competition and what are
they doing?
At HotPads, we looked at our competitors.
They all:
1. Had blogs, but not great content
2. Some were cranking out a lot of
content, others not so much
So we asked:
1. What are they doing well? Not doing
well?
2. Where are the gaps?
3. What kind of content is available to us?
4. What’s our unique spin?
5. What will our users find interesting,
supported by keyword research?
@dohertyjf
22. Do an assets audit
At HotPads we figured out what assets we
were working with. We had:
• A blog on a subdomain
• Consistent content on this blog (but
minimal traffic)
• The ability to publish longer form content
• A budget for content
• A designer eager to help
• Pages onsite that had earned links in the
past
Unlike this house, we had a solid
foundation
@dohertyjf
23. HotPads already
received *some*
natural coverage
• "Sift through rentals...or homes
for sale... You can study photos,
floor plans, price comparisons,
and even information about local
schools. " WIRED
• "HotPads data is up to date and
fresh and the map search is
snappy and well
featured." LifeHacker
…And yes, links too.
@dohertyjf
24. What Can You Do Better Than Anyone?
At HotPads, we did maps better than anyone.
@dohertyjf
25. How Do You Produce Content At Your
Company?
Varies by company but you have a mix of the following:
@dohertyjf
Budget
Time
Expertise
People
26. What can you start today?
Will vary by company, but here are some ideas:
If you’re design-heavy, create fantastic graphics
If you’re writing heavy, create the best damn ebooks possible
If you have a ton of data, take a fresh angle on it
@dohertyjf
27. There’s no promotion without creation, so nail
creation before moving on to promotion.
@dohertyjf
29. Don’t Forget To Measure
• You can’t win and build a cohesive strategy of what is working if
you’re not measuring
• Strategies are not set in stone. They move over time. Start, measure,
refine to your ultimate goals.
Read: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/single-startup-metric/
@dohertyjf
30. From Skateboard (MVP) to
Bicycle
Pedal power! Still manual, but much much easier.
@dohertyjf
31. Figuring out production
Now you’ve started creating content and getting an idea of what’s
working and what’s not.
You’re measuring and getting an idea if your current efforts will fit your
goals for content.
@dohertyjf
32. HotPads Case Study
We had three real KPIs and goals
Audience Links
Build a brand
@dohertyjf
34. No one had really cracked the content code with
renters. We knew what didn’t work, but also
didn’t know from our competitors what did.
@dohertyjf
35. But we knew from our parent company the
kind of content that worked there.
@dohertyjf
36. We had the following ideas for content
Location-specific
content
Interesting maps with
available data
Think pieces Graph data
PR stuntsBest hoods in (city)
@dohertyjf
37. We had the following ideas for content
Couldn’t scale this
within budget
Traffic, links, and
brand!
No interest No interest
Traffic links and brand!Good traffic, no brand
@dohertyjf
38. We went with these after a lot of testing
Location-specific
content
Interesting maps with
available data
Think pieces Graph data
PR stuntsBest hoods in (city)
@dohertyjf
39. We decided on a dual approach
Consistent quality content that
would be useful for our target
audience around topics of:
1. Renting
2. Living in cities
3. Moving
4. Life changes
Higher quality focused content
including but not limited to:
1. Data
2. Maps
3. Graphics
4. Photos
@dohertyjf
40. We decided on a dual approach
Consistent quality content that
would be useful for our target
audience around topics of:
1. Renting
2. Living in cities
3. Moving
4. Life changes
Higher quality focused content
including but not limited to:
1. Data
2. Maps
3. Graphics
4. Photos
Which do you think earned more links, got more coverage, and
ultimately drove more qualified traffic?
@dohertyjf
41. Best Neighborhoods in
(City)
It might not be the sexiest content,
but we had access to a lot of data
around neighborhoods, like
demographics.
We also had a lot of opinions . If a
good way to get people involved is
to create controversy…
Easy to create, easy to scale. Won’t
build a brand.
@dohertyjf
43. Rinse and repeat
We also checked out other types of keywords
like “most expensive neighborhoods in (city)”
and found very little competition. So we created
content there and voila.
@dohertyjf
44. The Future of
Construction Series
We had access to ALN data through
a partnership.
We took that data and displayed it
in a new way, bringing transparency
to an opaque industry in a new way.
Differentiated, process to create got
faster, endless opportunities for
topics to map.
@dohertyjf
46. The Future of SF Construction
This one didn’t get much play, but I got positive responses from the
journalists I reached out to so I decided to do a few more before
declaring failure.
@dohertyjf
49. Future of LA Building Construction
@dohertyjf
Bingo! So we did this for all of our major metros and received links from
all of them, as well as pickup from other related sites.
51. Set up other channels to work
No matter your team size, automation will make your life easier. You
can automate these channels to have built-in promotion on every
piece of content you publish.
@dohertyjf
Email marketing Social media
(Some) PRAdvertising
52. Basic Automation
For every post you publish, you should automagically:
• Email your content subscriber list
• Post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
• If doing advertising, set up ads to promote on your platform of choice
• If doing retargeting, make sure you drop a pixel on all visitors who
meet your specifications (and burn that pixel if they convert)
• Measure your important metrics:
• Views on the platforms
• Traffic from networks and emails
• Revenue
@dohertyjf
53. From Bicycle to Motorcycle
Now we’re playing with engines. Two seats even!
@dohertyjf
54. You’ll Need A Dedicated Content Manager
They need to be all of these. It’s a tough job to fill well.
• Creative
• Data informed
• Organized
• Biasing toward action
• Understand promotion
@dohertyjf
55. Productize Your Automated Promotion
Because you’ve set up some basic automation and are learning what’s
effective, it’s time to not hack it together anymore and actually make it
sustainable.
At a great company, your marketing and growth teams (they’re
different) will also have engineering and design support. Meet with
them to figure out what else you can automate and how to make your
current automation better.
@dohertyjf
56. Put Together A Calendar
Now’s the time to put together a calendar of when content will come
out, so that you can also plan manual promotion. Multiple hands on a
project means structure is needed.
Some of the tools for this:
@dohertyjf
Shared Trello calendar WP plugins
Google calendar Basecamp/Asana
57. Build Out More Promotion Workflows
With production figured out and automation in place/becoming stable,
now you can throw more bodies at promotion.
This flow worked for us:
@dohertyjf
Launch
Prep
Ideation
Brainstorm
Settle on
topic
Begin
producing
Prospect
for
outreach
Finalize
content
Set launch
date
Publish
content
Automatic
marketing
Manual
outreach
to pre-
created
lists
59. Bring In Dedicated Promotion (PR)
A dedicated PR professional won’t be fully leveraged until you have
your creation and publishing process figured out. A good one will help
you optimize that process for optimal outreach, however.
They are responsible for the Tier 1 (NYT, WSJ, etc) publications that
need a relationship and softer pitch touch.
@dohertyjf
60. Layer On Scaleable Manual Outreach
Depending on your company size, this may be a separate role (or 3, as I
had at HotPads) or could be another part of your content
manager/marketer’s job.
Their job is to get the Tier 2-3 links and promotion (guest posts, social
shares from mid-influencers, email list inclusions). Prospecting and pre-
outreach should start about 2 weeks before launch.
@dohertyjf
66. Why it worked
• We enlisted our other outreach employees into securing guest posts
on smaller sites to build more links.
• We offered to write content, which 75% of the people who published
coverage wanted us to do.
• We offered our economist/data scientist as a source. He hopped on
the phone with journalists (with our PR manager there) and explained
the data succinctly. We practiced ahead of time.
@dohertyjf
67. We used this process
Launch
Prep
Ideation
Brainstorm
Settle on
topic
Begin
producing
Prospect
for
outreach
Finalize
content
Set launch
date
Publish
content
Automatic
marketing
Manual
outreach to
pre-
created
lists
@dohertyjf
68. Scale It (With Quality In Mind)
We decided we could do one great research study every 2 months or so
with 1 PR manager, 1 SEO manager, 1 content manager, 1 data
scientist/economist, 1 email manager, and 3 link acquisition experts +
me. That’s 8 people!
Any faster than that and we’d lose quality. To go faster we’d need more
hands on deck.
@dohertyjf
83. Big content >>>> small content
• When HotPads wrote a static piece
that can live on forever, as opposed
to just a blog post, it earned more
links and was arguably more
valuable than a blog post.
• *Big content is also pushed out less
frequently, so promotion makes or
breaks its success.
• However, blog posts got more
social shares.
@dohertyjf
84. Give Embeddable Assets
Every post or article that did well
for HotPads had an embeddable
piece of content, such as images,
graphics, or embeddable maps.
If you offer something of value to
a journalist, they are much more
likely to write about you.
@dohertyjf
85. Content Lives and Dies by Outreach
• When HotPads executed well on
outreach, both to small and
large sites, they got great links
and great coverage.
• When they didn’t execute well
(or simply didn’t do it), they
didn’t. Great content will get
links with outreach, but rarely
without.
@dohertyjf
86. Your Success Depends on Your Team’s
Execution of Ideas
• A small team of the right people
can do mighty things when given
the right processes, but they also
must work at the same pace to get
things done.
• Before hiring someone, ask
yourself how well they will fit into a
culture you are trying to cultivate.
If they’re a strategist and you need
a doer, don’t hire them. And vice
versa.
@dohertyjf
87. Keep Trying New Ideas and Measure
We went through many iterations
of HotPads content:
1. City-specific
2. “Best neighborhoods” and
“reasons to live in”
3. Data graphs
4. PR stunts
5. Maps of data owned by others
6. Maps of our own content
@dohertyjf
88. Launch around new things (rebrand here)
http://www.getcredo.com/should-i-do-seo/@dohertyjf
91. Play the long game
When I hear people debate the ROI of social media? It makes me
remember why so many business fail. Most businesses are not
playing the marathon. They're playing the sprint. They're not
worried about lifetime value and retention. They're worried
about short-term goals.
Gary Vaynerchuk
@dohertyjf