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Make Your Employees Rockstars

John Doherty — August 7, 2012 — 3 Comments

I live in New York City, the greatest city in the world. And because it’s the greatest city in the world, it’s the place that people of all types flock to. And many of these people are absolutely amazing at what they do, and get snapped up quickly. But guess what? Not only do they get snapped up quickly, but they get recruited heavily as well. And New York recruiters are fierce and devious. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve been duped by a recruiter who has posed as someone in my industry and added me on LinkedIn, only to message me right after I accept and try to get me to talk about a job! I’ve also had them call me at work (AT WORK) numerous times and try to have a chat with me. Really? You think I’m going to chat with you while I’m at MY JOB??

You might not be able to pay what the big agencies can pay, and you’re most likely not Apple or Google that pay an INSANE amount of money to their employees (and especially developers). So, you have to beat this big guys at their own game.

How? By making your employees rockstars, whatever that means to them. Continue Reading…

In Miscellany

Diagnosing SERP Volatility

John Doherty — August 3, 2012 — 11 Comments

One of the perks of working agency side is access to a plethora of tools and a plethora of Analytics accounts across verticals. I also watch the Google SERPs religiously and use a few tools (SERPmetrics and Mozcast) to keep an eye on the algorithm and flux. It’s always good as an SEO/online marketer to keep an eye on the search results and see the changes broader.

Today I looked at the SERPmetrics flux capacitor and saw this: Continue Reading…

In Search Engine Optimization

Do Real Industry Stuff

John Doherty — July 31, 2012 — 12 Comments

Just last week I was sitting in the audience in the Westin in Seattle where I heard Wil Reynolds give a talk that was basically titled “Do Real Company Stuff“. Intriguingly, a few days before I had a brief exchange on Twitter with Branko, who I greatly respect and greatly enjoy his insights. He had just published this post on SEObook about small businesses and Google’s recent algorithm updates.

I wrote another post as a response to what he and others have said about outing, but I’m publishing this one instead after hearing Wil’s talk. Continue Reading…

In Marketing, Search Engine Optimization

Dealing Responsibly with Unnatural Links Messages

John Doherty — July 23, 2012 — 8 Comments

Google recently sent out a new batch of the unnatural links notices. The blogosphere went nuts as usual with very little information. On Friday, Matt Cutts posted on Google+ to try to satiate some of the madness. Here is what he said:

Of course this did not satisfy most SEOs.
Continue Reading…

In Search Engine Optimization, Uncategorized

Interview with Jonathon Colman of REI

John Doherty — July 17, 2012 — 18 Comments

I have never interviewed someone on this blog before. Every now and then, though, I come across someone who I think deserves to have more exposure in the industry because they add a lot of value and in genuinely an awesome person. One of those people to me is Jonathon Colman. He’ll introduce himself here in a minute, but he and I got connected online earlier this year, and since then I think we’ve both taught each other a lot. I’m looking forward to properly meeting him in person this next week as I’m in Seattle for Mozcon, and it is a pleasure to have the first interview published on this blog to be with him!

Find him here on Twitter and here on Google+. And he shares some awesome photos on Google+ too.

In Uncategorized

The Anatomy of A Viral Marketing Product Launch

John Doherty — July 12, 2012 — 23 Comments

“Virality” has been the talk of the Internet, and especially blogging and marketing, worlds for a bit of time now. In my day-to-day I work with and have a lot of conversations with startups whose investors are constantly pushing them to “make the product more viral”. I’m not convinced that “virality” within a product is necessarily a positive, as a lot of people have been frustrated by the forced sharing that is now occurring throughout Facebook and the social web.

Where virality is useful, though, is when launching a new product. Everyone has a book or product idea, but relatively few know how to market their product well, especially pre-launch, to have the maximum number of people possible ready and willing to buy, share, and promote the product for you once it launches.

So how do you build virality into a product launch? How do you build this set of people? This is the question I am going to tackle today.

In Marketing

New Tool – Quora RSS Importer

John Doherty — July 10, 2012 — 9 Comments

Back in April at Linklove, I presented on Tools of the SEO Trade. In that talk, I talked about somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 different tools available for use. I built out a couple for people to use as well (for free), and today I want to talk about one of them.

Introducing the Quora RSS Scraper Importer

One of the tools I built out, which is actually a tool that I built back in January or February for a client, is a Google Spreadsheet that imports the most recent Quora posts based on a Quora category. I’ll explain this further down, but if you’re impatient you can:

Download and Copy the Spreadsheet

Continue Reading…

In Excel for SEO, Technical SEO

4 Ways to Build An Online Audience

John Doherty — July 5, 2012 — 8 Comments

What if I told you that you don’t need a ton of followers to be successful online? And what if I told you that you should not even think about having an audience? What if I told you that thinking you need a lot of followers is the wrong way to go to actually gain a lot of followers?

You Don’t Need 10,000 Followers

If you get nothing else from this post, you don’t need 10,000 followers. What you need is 10 engaged followers who will share you stuff to their engaged followers. We talked about reach a few weeks ago in my personal branding post. This is how you gain a larger audience that keeps giving back to you – finding people who have reach that you can make friends with.

In Marketing

Content Marketing for Startups

John Doherty — July 2, 2012 — 2 Comments

On Wednesday June 27th, Distilled NYC held a meetup entitled “Marketing Your Startup”. We had around 100 people in attendance, some regulars and many first-time attendees, at Zocdoc headquarters in Soho.

I spoke alongside Tom Critchlow and Dan Shure, both of whom gave great talks on “A Startup Content Marketing Plan” and “Thought Leadership Marketing for Startups“.

In my presentation, I attempted to show WHY startups should care about content marketing by speaking a language they understand (users, money) and tying it back to what many SEOs understand (rankings, traffic, links). I showed some examples (DollarShaveClub’s link velocity) and then examples of startups who could do more with content (Instagram, Mint), as well as startups who have done it pretty well (Oyster, BufferApp, WePay).

Finally, I gave the following six steps to moving forward with content as a startup (including a pro-tip that you need to look through the presentation for):

Step 1: Don’t Talk About Yourself – http://www.johnfdoherty.com/ brand-voice-marketing/
Step 2: Audience – http://www.seomoz.org/blog/keyword-level-demographics
Step 3: Competitor Research – [keyword phrase] + guide How to [keyword phrase] https://seogadget.co.uk/content- strategy-generator-tool-v2-update/
Step 4: Prioritize, Resourcize,Calendarize – Start small. Get a dedicated resource (pro tip next slide) to produce one piece of difficult-to-replicate content. Create a calendar of consistent material. Your first won’t get many links. Your second will get more. Your third will do better.
Step 5: Do The Hard Work Do The Big Work (Seth Godin)
Step 6: Outreach – Remember these guys? Now it’s time for outreach. Email Social media PR http://www.seomoz.org/blog/outreach-for-linkbuilding-whiteboard- friday

Here’s the whole presentation. I hope you enjoy it.

Startup Content Marketing – Distilled Meetup

View more presentations from John Doherty

In Uncategorized

Announcing My New Project

John Doherty — June 27, 2012 — 16 Comments

I’ve been a writer all my life (I wrote my first short novel when I was eleven years old) and a blogger since 2001. I had the most awesome neon green and royal blue Xanga site you have ever seen!

My love affair with the blogosphere has waned in recent years though. Since I started in marketing professionally a few years ago, either the amount of crap writing and production has increased, or I have become pickier and pickier with less patience for content that adds to the noise instead of the signal.

I have also noticed that it is easier to complain about things that annoy you than to change them.

Today I put that to an end. Continue Reading…

In Marketing