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.

1. Building A Content
Marketing Machine
John Doherty
Founder, GetCredo.com
@dohertyjf

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

3. Let’s talk content marketing
@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

8. @dohertyjf

9. @dohertyjf

10. Content Marketing Has Exploded In Popularity
@dohertyjf

11. Much of it is meh
@dohertyjf

12. What is a content machine?
@dohertyjf

13. If you’ve ever said “we tried content marketing and it didn’t work for
us”, you didn’t have a machine.
@dohertyjf

14. Content Machine Formula
((Ideation+creation)*promotion) + measurement
@dohertyjf

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

18. First, “What is an MVP?”
@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

20. @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

28. @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

33. What we knew
Use what you already have
@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

42. Rinse and repeat
Like taking candy from a baby. Traffic++
@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

45. The Future of SF Construction
@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

47. Rinse and repeat?
@dohertyjf

48. Future of LA Building Construction
@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.

50. Now you can think about promotion
@dohertyjf

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

58. From Motorcycle to Car
@dohertyjf

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

61. Content we did after hiring PR
@dohertyjf

62. Meth and Died In Houses
@dohertyjf

63. Meth and Died In Houses
@dohertyjf

64. Best Cities for Graduates
@dohertyjf

65. Best Cities for Graduates
@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

69. Measure and Optimize Over Time
@dohertyjf

70. Lift Off
@dohertyjf

71. Have Some Fun
@dohertyjf

72. House of Cards
#stateofsearch@dohertyjf

73. House of Cards
#stateofsearch@dohertyjf

74. House of Cards
#stateofsearch@dohertyjf

75. House of Cards
#stateofsearch@dohertyjf

76. House of Cards
#stateofsearch@dohertyjf

77. April Fools Alcatraz
#stateofsearch@dohertyjf

78. April Fools Alcatraz
#stateofsearch@dohertyjf
Link from the parent company’s biggest
rival.

79. April Fools Alcatraz
#stateofsearch@dohertyjf

80. Timely Content
#stateofsearch@dohertyjf

81. Timely Content
Shared by an LA Times journalist and established a
good media contact
#stateofsearch@dohertyjf

82. Rapid Fire Lessons Learned
@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

89. Cheat with promo
@dohertyjf

90. Get that bump
@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

92. Questions?