How Startups Can Build A Content Marketing Machine

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

Who am I
Currently: 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
#stateofsearch

Who am I
Currently: 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.
#stateofsearch

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
#stateofsearch

We had 2 KPIs
Audience Links
#stateofsearch

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

The Rise of
Content
Marketing
Content 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
#stateofsearch
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 assets
audit
First, 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.
#stateofsearch

So what did we need to do?

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

Bring The Brand
Up To Date
The blog had some
challenges for publishing,
design, promotion, SEO-
friendliness, and marketing
integrations.
The blog:
• Was on a legacy TypePad
installation
• 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
Manager
A 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
agency
We had budget, but we
didn’t have headcount
internally.
I learned the hard way that
you need both.
#stateofsearch

What we knew
USE 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
#stateofsearch

company
sites, and budget.
@dohertyjf
Money
PeopleTime
I had some of this
one.
#stateofsearch

company
sites, and budget.
@dohertyjf
Money
PeopleTime
I had some of this
one.
This one came on
4 months in.
#stateofsearch

We could work with that
#stateofsearch

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.
#stateofsearch

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

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

Idea 1
What 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.
#stateofsearch

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 Process
To 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 content
Each 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
board
TIME TO RE-EVALUATE OUR APPROACH

We weren’t happy with the content
We 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.

Let’s create more content inhouse
For 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 longform
thinkpiece 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 repeat
Like taking candy from a baby. Traffic++

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.

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 maps
We 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
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.

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

Future of LA Building Construction
BINGO

Future of Boston Construction
@dohertyjf
BINGO
#stateofsearch

Future of Manhattan Construction
@dohertyjf
BINGO
#stateofsearch

Future of Seattle Construction
@dohertyjf
BINGO
#stateofsearch

Future of Brooklyn Construction
@dohertyjf
BINGO
#stateofsearch

Find A Success, Double Down
These 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 Data
I 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.
#stateofsearch

New idea :
Graph Data
made them think.
#stateofsearch

New idea :
Graph Data
made them think.
#stateofsearch
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

Meth and Died In Houses

Idea 4: PR Stunts
If 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

April Fools Alcatraz

Timely Content

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

Idea 5: Data
Driven Content +
PR
By 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
scientist
Content 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
#stateofsearch

Our Process
1. 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
#stateofsearch

Pet Friendly Metros

What worked and didn’t
Bad
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.
#stateofsearch

How Much Commutes Cost

Bad
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.
#stateofsearch

Most Expensive Hoods for Singles

Bad
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.
#stateofsearch

Best Cities for Graduates

Good
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.
#stateofsearch

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 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

Thank you!
Email: john@hiregun.co
Twitter: @dohertyjf
Site: hiregun.co
Twitter: @hiregun
#stateofsearch

How Startups Can Build A Content Marketing Machine

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