How Startups Can Build A Content Marketing Machine

How To Build A Content Machine From ScratchTHE STORY OF HOW ONE STARTUP STARTED SMALL, BUILT A TEAM, AND EARNED LINKS FROM SOME OF THE BIGGEST SITES ONLINE

@dohertyjf

Who am ICurrently: Founder of HireGun.co

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

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Who am ICurrently: Founder of HireGun.co

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

Yes, I am wearing a very similar shirt today.

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The Challenge

@dohertyjf#stateofsearch

Take a company that has had no marketing or SEO for over two years, and reinvent it.


Our Goals

Build a brand

Build an engaged audience that shares content

Earn links for SEO

Build referral traffic

Identify scaleable growth channels

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We had 2 KPIs

Audience Links

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How To Earn AudienceIT ’S HARDER THAN WE ALL MAKE IT SOUND


The Rise of Content MarketingContent marketing, on the other hand, has exploded in popularity and surpassed link building.

Check out that hockeystick! This is a graph any VC-backed startup would die to have against an incumbent.

However, link building is emphatically not dead. I’ll show you some examples in this presentation.


True growth comes when you:a) Have a great product.

b) You get that great product in front of relevant users through marketing (organic, paid, brand).

c) You hit their pain points and guide them through their journey.

d) You execute and test, execute and test, execute and test.

Image via @epicgraphic#stateofsearch

This talk will cover

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A case study of research and having the right resources in place

The multiple iterations of content that HotPads went through and the importance of new ideas, testing, and measuring.

How we eventually built a content machine that got us links from some of the biggest sites online.

Where To Start A Content Machine


Who’s the content competition and what are they doing?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?


Did an assetsauditFirst, 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


We 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.

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So what did we need to do?


Create a Priorities ListWe needed to balance the long term and the short term, but both needed to happen.


Bring The Brand Up To DateThe blog had some challenges for publishing, design, promotion, SEO-friendliness, and marketing integrations.

The blog:

• Was on a legacy TypePadinstallation

• Had the legacy site design

• Had a consistent publishing schedule, but the content was not promoted or shared

• Had no marketing email list @dohertyjf

Redo the Blog

In order to get modern eyes on our content, things had to change. We:

• Replatformed the blog to WordPress

• Moved the blog to hotpads.com/blog/ (and saw a traffic increase)

• Completely overhauled the design

• Hired a content agency and freelancers to produce consistent content for our readers


In Short Order, Hire A Content ManagerA content manager is a key hire when investing in content marketing as they should:

• Own your brand voice

• Own editorial calendar

• Learn how to do outreach and start building relationships with other blogs

Of course, content isn’t all their responsibility. The rest of the team helps too.

Image via HubSpot

Find a content agencyWe had budget, but we didn’t have headcount internally.

I learned the hard way that you need both.

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What we knewUSE WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE


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.


But we knew from our parent company the kind of content that worked there.


What did we have again?Challenges and assets:

1. No data scientist support yet

2. We had a good looking blog and a big, if a bit stale, email list

3. Lots of access to data thanks to our parent company

4. Support from the parent company around strategy, introductions to editors of other sites, and budget.

5. A designer keen to update the brand

@dohertyjf

Money

PeopleTime

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@dohertyjf

Money

PeopleTime

I had some of this one.

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@dohertyjf

Money

PeopleTime

I had some of this one.

This one came on 4 months in.

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We could work with that

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Where do we start?START SMALL AND SHIP IT


At the beginning you are learning

At the beginning of any content marketing engine, you are learning what works. Therefore one must prioritize shipping over perfection. Once you discover your

channels then you double down and perfect your craft.

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We decided on a dual approachConsistent 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


We decided on a dual approachConsistent 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

Which do you think earned more links, got more coverage, and ultimately drove more qualified traffic?

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Idea 1What if we created content for our major metros to see what traction it got?

We could hire local experts, email segmented email lists, and promote it to local sites.

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What if we created content for a few specific cities?We were focused on the 23-35 urban renter audience so we first focused on content for a few specific cities to see if it was:

1. Easy to scale by city

2. Easy to hire writers in those areas who were experts

We could:

1. Email locals because we had location information on tens of thousands of renters in these cities with their permission to email them.

2. Try to use this content to make connections with publications in those cities that would then be open to further content partnerships.


Our ProcessTo get the first three cities off the ground, we had to:

1. Hire 2-4 writers in each city

2. Come up with 4-6 ideas minimum per city just to get started◦ We asked the writers to pitch, which did make it easier though they were not taking SEO and share-

ability into account.

3. Set up custom email lists for every city


For every piece of contentEach piece required that we:

1. Find a writer to write the post

2. Edit the piece inhouse

3. Schedule the post to go live

4. Manually set up the email to go out the email list◦ Eventually this was automated with custom RSS feeds by WordPress tag, but then we emailed those

lists too often.

5. Find outreach targets

6. Do outreach once the post went live.


What happened?Ultimately, city-specific content was:

1. Hard to scale quality content because of writers

2. Hard to scale the number of cities because of budget

3. Hard to scale quality outreach because of lack of team resources

There were 3 of us. This strategy wasn’t working. I still think it could with enough staff, but a small startup needs to think more scaleable with content.


Back to the drawing boardTIME TO RE-EVALUATE OUR APPROACH


We weren’t happy with the contentWe weren’t happy with our content because it:

1. Lacked a cohesive focus and voice

2. Was very expensive and not scalable

3. The writers didn’t have a passion for the subject. They were simply paid to write.-Attempts at incentivizing them to do their own outreach failed

-Since we were not creating it inhouse, we didn’t have much investment in promotion and were

not starting with the end in mind.

4. Point blank, it wasn’t getting us the returns we needed.


HotPads was the first map-based housing search engine online.


We could work with that

Let’s create more content inhouseFor every piece of content created inhouse, I challenged the team to:

1. Find the unique hook

2. Come up with at least 5 websites that they knew would be interested in it before we even created it

3. Create content using at least one media type other than text (images, maps, graphics, etc)

4. Once the content was created, spend as much time promoting it as you did creating it.

5. Always get a link.


Idea 2: Think Pieces

Maybe we could establish HotPads as an authority putting out thinkpieces about urban issues.

We tried content like:

1. Traffic light changes

2. Rental laws

3. Areas in cities for types of peopleEveryone loves a good longformthinkpiece right?


How’d they do?


Think pieces took a lot of time and effort, and unless we invested in journalists to create

content inhouse, we weren’t going to be able to scale it or do it better than others.

So we cut this strategy.


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…

Team size: 2-4


Rinse and repeatLike taking candy from a baby. Traffic++


Rinse and repeatWe 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.


Reasons to move to (city)We created content around reasons to move to specific cities, which rank very well still.


So we found our first scaleable content type –blog posts. They still drive consistent traffic

because they rank well.


But this wasn’t going to build a brand.


Idea 3: Use available data to create interesting mapsWe had data that was hard to access and would take a lot of time, but we also had access to other data sources that weren’t public.

If we were allowed to legally, why not make that data public, give credit, and put it on our own site?

Team size: 2-5


The Future of Construction SeriesWe 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.


The Future of SF Construction


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.


Future of LA Building Construction





BINGO


Future of Boston Construction

@dohertyjf

BINGO

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Future of Manhattan Construction

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BINGO

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Future of Seattle Construction

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BINGO

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Future of Brooklyn Construction

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BINGO

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Find A Success, Double DownThese maps worked for a few reasons:

1. It was a content form no one else in our industry was using.

2. We were taking data that was previously locked up and making it publicly available.

3. It was timely, in that a lot of people were talking about the increase in rents and need to build

4. We were consistent, putting out a new piece each week. The journalists knew when to expect it.

5. We did outreach consistently and ahead of time.


New idea: Graph DataI wondered if data visualized in graph format would be interesting. I find it interesting, so maybe our audience would as well if it was interesting enough and made them think.

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New idea : Graph DataI wondered if data visualized in graph format would be interesting. I find it interesting, so maybe our audience would as well if it was interesting enough and made them think.

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Thanks @mattmcgee

Graphs weren’t working and data was hard to come up with consistently, so we scrapped

them.


Back to maps!We went back to maps and were able to get more links, coverage, and social shares because they were:

1. Unique

2. Timely

3. Visual

Remember scaleable? These were easy to produce. One person could do a post like this in a morning by the end.


We hired an inhouse writer

Money

PeopleTime

:-D


Visualizing Strava Cycling Data


Visualizing Strava Cycling Data


Meth and Died In Houses


Meth and Died In Houses


Idea 4: PR StuntsIf you can’t have fun with your content and your vertical, what’s the point? Here are some fun PR stunts that we did that earned us coverage.

Team size: 3-6


House of Cards


House of Cards


House of Cards


House of Cards


House of Cards


House of Cards


April Fools Alcatraz






Timely Content


Timely Content

Shared by an LA Times journalist and established a good media contact


Idea 5: Data Driven Content + PRBy October 2014 we had a PR professional and a full time data scientist on board sitting in San Francisco.

It was time to create some interesting content.

Team size: 8


We hired a data scientistContent was working and we were ready to double down on it. So we hired an economist/data scientist to put together data stories that we could pitch to the press.

Money

People++Time

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Our Process1. Ideate many ideas, scrub for feasibility

◦ Keep in mind the timing (holidays, etc)

2. Do pre-outreach once the content is close to ready

3. Once content is published, use all your channels (email, social, etc)

4. Reach out to high value journalists under embargo with something of value (embeds, etc)

5. Email everyone you reached out to before with the live link◦ If you have the resources, offer to write the post for them

6. Measure

7. Repeat

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Pet Friendly Metros


What worked and didn’tBad

1. We were late on delivering the content, so some journalists had to move on

2. We didn’t plan outreach far enough out

Good

1. They loved the maps and wanted them easily embeddable, so we created a way for them to do that.

2. We established some connections with journalists about the next piece.

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How Much Commutes Cost



1. The data was messy, so we had to bring in our data scientist to help explain it.

2. We weren’t able to break it down by type of commute, which is what journalists wanted.

Good

1. Pitching city by city with dedicated maps allowed us to get wider coverage.

2. We pitched way ahead of time, which allowed journalists to get their stories ready to go when we published. Even if we missed our deadline, the story was ready to go whenever.

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Most Expensive Hoods for Singles



1. We were unclear about the story (what about 2brs? What about moving in more cities?)

2. It wasn’t timely, so it didn’t get much play.

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Best Cities for Graduates


Best Cities for Graduates


What worked and didn’tGood

1. We enlisted our other outreach employees into securing guest posts on smaller sites to build more links.

2. We offered to write content, which 75% of the people who published coverage wanted us to do.

3. 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.

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Lessons Learned


Big content >>>> small content

When we 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.


Give Embeddable Assets

Every post or article that did well for us 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.


Content Lives and Dies by Outreach

When we executed well on outreach, both to small and large sites, we got great links and great coverage.

When we didn’t execute well (or simply didn’t do it), we didn’t. Great content will get links with outreach, but rarely without.


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.


Keep Trying New Ideas and MeasureWe went through many iterations of HotPadscontent:

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


Thank you!Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @dohertyjf

Site: hiregun.co

Twitter: @hiregun

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