John Doherty outlines a process for creating effective content marketing in 5 steps: research, ideate, create, promote, and measure. The process is meant to be iterative, with the lessons from each cycle informing improvements to future content. Research involves understanding audience needs and pain points. Ideation focuses on identifying popular or unique topic ideas. Creation can be outsourced but must solve problems. Promotion leverages existing audiences and seeks new ones. Measurement informs what's working and what needs adjustment for the next cycle. The goal is to continually refine the system to create high-quality, shared content.

1. No Nonsense Content
Marketing
John Doherty
Founder, GetCredo.com
SEO consultant
@dohertyjf

2. https://vimeo.com/109703217
@dohertyjf

3. Most of us don’t have the money, time, need, training, or foresight to
create something like that.
And that’s ok.
@dohertyjf

4. What did public companies look like at first?
Expedia started in 1996. It was called
“Microsoft Expedia” and was started
inside Microsoft.
It later IPO’d and is currently has a $22B
market cap.
@dohertyjf

5. What did public companies look like at first?
Zillow started in 2006 (started by
Expedia’s founder). They had 1M visitors
in their first three days.
It later IPO’d and is currently has a $5.6B
market cap.
@dohertyjf

6. Be ashamed of where you started
@dohertyjf

7. New rules for content marketing
It can be simple and
imperfect (and ugly)
It doesn’t have to scale
(at first)
Simplicity in marketing
content is 🔑
Source
@dohertyjf

8. Anything can be a system, even content
“[T]his the narrative of every movie you’ve ever seen. A main
character starts in an ordinary world. They leave their ordinary
world. They cross the threshold to new, magical world where all
these obstacles happen and they overcome something. They call it
the hero's journey.
We applied this to trips, built a small team and we spent the
last couple of years figuring out how to scale this, and this has led
to what we have today which we call “Airbnb Trips.”” (source)
- Brian Chesky, Cofounder AirBNB
@dohertyjf

9. How do you replicate success?
“I’d argue that painstaking, handcrafted labor is actually the
foundation of [Brian’s] success.
In order to scale, you have to do things that don’t scale.”
-Reid Hoffman, cofounder LinkedIn
@dohertyjf

10. Content marketing success is for
everyone
• If you’re a big company
• If you’re a small scrappy company
• If you’re a solo entrepreneur or marketing team
• You can have content marketing success
• Pro tip – you can often do the most when you have a small and
scrappy team of high performers. If you have a bit of budget,
outsource for as long as you can as long as you can set the vision.
@dohertyjf

11. Get out of this trap
¯_(ツ)_/¯
Whitepapers
eBooks
Infographics
Blog posts Surveys
PR stunts
Videos
Conferences/events
Speaking
@dohertyjf

12. Today we’re going to make content a system
Research
Ideate
Create
Promote
Measure
Repeat
@dohertyjf

13. Why are you creating content?
• What are your needs?
• What are your goals with this content?
• How will you measure success?
Answer these first. Why do something if you don’t know why you’re
doing it?
• “It’ll get us more social followers.” Ok but why do you need those?
• “It’ll get us more website visitors.” Ok but what does that mean for your
business?
@dohertyjf

14. Research
Ideate
Create
Promote
Measure
Repeat
@dohertyjf

15. Research
Baseline - What questions is your audience asking?
• You can research these on Quora, via keyword research, etc
• Think of these as places you can promote your content once it’s created.
• Your existing customer base is the best place to start. Marketers often forget
this!
@dohertyjf

16. Research
Advanced – What is their pain point that you can solve through
content?
• You’ll have to get on the phone and ask questions
• Take notes of unprompted revelations – “It would be great if I knew how to X.”
• Surveys can work as well, though followup will be needed to get specific
• Start with your existing customer base!
@dohertyjf

17. One example
I created
HowToHireAnSEO.com
after seeing multiple
pieces about it,
seeing it in my
keyword research,
and ranking for it on
GetCredo.com.
Three months on it
has 806 links and 4k
pageviews. It’s a link
magnet.
@dohertyjf

18. Research
Ideate
Create
Promote
Measure
Repeat
@dohertyjf

19. Ideate
• What’s gone hot recently?
• Use Buzzsumo
• What themes are getting
more popular?
• Use Google Trends
• What isn’t easy to create?
• If it’s easy, it will have been done
before.
• If it’s hard, it’ll set you apart if you
can pull it off.
@dohertyjf

20. Ideate
Where is there no data
available that you can create
yourself?
Or data that you can mash
into something new?
@dohertyjf

21. Before you commit, ask yourself
• Why should anyone care about it?
• Why would they share it?
• Would you share it anywhere you are able? Are you proud of it?
What sets this idea apart from everything else out there and
have you communicated that to your audience?
@dohertyjf

22. Research
Ideate
Create
Promote
Measure
Repeat
@dohertyjf

23. Create
What are the emotional
triggers that you can leverage?
• Basic – X things that Y people
want to know about Z
• Pro - These 179
(entrepreneur/agencies) tell
you what drives their
success/what they charge
• Niche – How (famous person)
did in (races/saving/etc) in
YEAR Source: http://tany.kim/swimmers-history/
@dohertyjf

24. How do you create it?
• You can create industry-defining content pieces with a small team.
That’s exactly what 95% of verticals are lacking.
• You don’t have to do crazy big scalable content if you have a small business!
• Why listen to huge brands who do it? It’s inspirational, but is it achievable for
you? Will it fit your audience’s needs if you do it that way?
• There are so many ways to create content even if you do not have all
of the capabilities inhouse!
@dohertyjf

25. What do you need to create digital content?
I’m amazed people don’t talk about digital content. Most people are
still trying to create content for the internet like they created it for
print!
What do you need to create amazing content online?
• Someone to research
• Someone to write
• Someone to design
• Someone to code
@dohertyjf

26. What do you need to create digital content?
I’m amazed people don’t talk about digital content. Most people are
still trying to create content for the internet like they created it for
print!
What do you need to create amazing content online?
• Someone to research
• Someone to write
• Someone to design
• Someone to code
You can outsource any/all of this, but not everything
@dohertyjf

27. @dohertyjf
20+ links
Got us further
coverage
Drove links to
deep
important
pages

28. Research
Ideate
Create
Promote
Measure
Repeat
@dohertyjf

29. Promote
SEO is not a promotion strategy. People expect me to talk about SEO,
but that’s basic. And often the best/most successful content creates its
own search volume.
This is the step most people either completely miss or fail to capitalize
on completely.
• Miss it – because of wrong expectations
• Fail – because there is no strategy
@dohertyjf

30. Two groups to promote to
• Your existing audience
• Website visitors
• Email list
• Social followers
• A new audience
• Your friend’s email lists
• Those who look like your email list/site visitors
• The site visitors/social followers of sites related to yours
@dohertyjf

31. Your audience wants to hear from you
@dohertyjf

32. It’s more expensive to get a new customer
than retain a current one.
Source
@dohertyjf

33. Tools
You probably want to ask about tools right now. There are a million blog
posts out there for every vertical of marketing tools you can imagine.
• Email
• Marketing automation
• Social media management/automation
• Content optimization
Let me put this clearly
• The right tool for you to use is the one that is:
• Affordable for your business
• That you know how to use
• That integrates with the other tools you use
@dohertyjf

34. Promotion can be a system too
Prospect Publish Outreach
Generate
Traffic
Pixel w/ FB
or Google
Drive to
download
(email)
Retarget
with future
content
Buzzsumo,
Followerwonk,
Citation Labs
Gmail,
Quickmail
Facebook,
Google Tag
Manager
Google
Facebook,
MailChimp
Facebook,
MailChimp/
Quickmail
@dohertyjf

35. Research
Ideate
Create
Promote
Measure
Repeat
@dohertyjf

36. Measure
Of course you have analytics on your website
And you’re measuring social traction, right?
• Some tools will do this for you automatically
• Sumo for blogging/SMBs
• Or you can build a dashboard
• Or you can hack together your own tools
I don’t care how you do it.
I care that you do it
@dohertyjf

37. Measure
I am not being prescriptive about it because every business’s needs and
goals are different.
What are your business’s goals?
@dohertyjf

38. How To Hire An SEO
Goals:
• Links
• Branding
• Projects on Credo
Results:
• 18 LRDS/806 links ✅
• ~1,400 sessions ✅
• ~4,000 pageviews ✅
• 2.8 pages/session ✅
• 24 shares 👎
• 2 projects created on Credo (~$600 of value) ✅
@dohertyjf

39. Research
Ideate
Create
Promote
Measure
Repeat
@dohertyjf

40. Repeat
There’s always something broken. I heard once that as an entrepreneur,
you put out one fire only to discover another.
This applies to every position. There is always something suboptimal.
This is why we don’t just give up. Marketing is iterative.
• I could rant here about hiring an agency/consultant to do something your
company has never done before and then stopping it after the first try
because it “didn’t work”. You’ve never done it before!
@dohertyjf

41. Look for the bright spots and push on those.
“In times of change, you need what my brother and I call a bright-spots
focus. That is, you need to look for the early glimmers that something is
going right. And when you find a bright spot, your mission is to study it and
clone it.”
-Dan Heath, FastCompany
@dohertyjf

42. Repeat
It takes time to build a system that works. Your first one might fail, and so
might your second.
Or your first will show initial signs of working but you haven’t yet nailed
one of the areas.
• Maybe you promoted to the wrong audience.
• Maybe the content medium was wrong (text instead of video,
whatever)
• Maybe your design was a bit off.
Triage why people didn’t share
@dohertyjf

43. This is my process
• Identify the needs
• Identify the content and the medium
• Build an initial list to promote to
• Email and social
• Can you take social accounts and find their emails?
• Then you can build a larger group to promote to
• And you can do it cheap!
• Create it, however you can
• If you’re not proud of it, keep going (big lesson learned here)
@dohertyjf

44. Process continued
• When you promote, be everywhere.
• Your existing audience
• Email list (main one) and others you may have access to
• Maybe your user/customer list isn’t part of your marketing list. That’s ok!
• Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn/display network ads for the win!
• You are cookie’ing people who come to your site, right?
• New audiences
• Reddit subreddits, HackerNews
• Some promotion will be manual
• Emailing influencers, or getting introductions to them
• I used to smirk at “influencer marketing”. Now I think it’s one of the most powerful
promotion strategies.
• But only when that “influencer” is an influencer in your vertical.
@dohertyjf

45. Research
Ideate
Create
Promote
Measure
Repeat
@dohertyjf

46. Thank you.
Find Credo online:
 GetCredo.com
 Twitter.com/getcredo
 Facebook.com/getcredo
Find me online:
 Johnfdoherty.com
 Twitter.com/dohertyjf
 Facebook.com/mrjohnfdo
herty
My weekly newsletter:
 johnfdoherty.com/email-
newsletter/
About me:
Founder of digital marketing
marketplace/platform
GetCredo.com
Seen ~1,000 businesses
looking to hire an agency or
consultant and sent over $4M
worth of work to marketers
Former Growth Lead and
Marketing Lead at Trulia
Rentals and HotPads.com,
part of the Zillow Group
family
Former consultant at Distilled
in New York City
Based in Denver, Colorado
@dohertyjf