Online Marketing Articles by John Doherty

09 Oct

John Doherty Posted in Marketing 7 comments

The Myth of Overnight Success

America seems to be enamored with the idea of “overnight success”. We see people who become seemingly overnight sensations, often through discovery on Youtube, and are catapulted into the limelight. We see people on TV who become hyper-successful because they were on a reality show or something of the like. These people seem like “overnight successes”. I don’t think there’s any such thing, though.

Examples

Let’s look at a few of my favorite examples. Read more about The Myth of Overnight Success …

31 Aug

John Doherty Posted in Marketing 16 comments

Building Landing Pages That Rank for SEO

I’ve seen an alarming trend recently in startup websites. Most want to follow this model:

It’s not uncommon to see this sort of page on a startup’s website:

It’s super simple, just a few points, and a form (and this even asks for your phone number. Talk about asking for too much on the first date). And the reality is that it’s not going to rank for anything substantial because there is simply nothing useful on the page for the search engines to index and rank.

Today let’s talk about the difference between squeeze pages (directed towards conversion) and ranking pages (that can also convert, but will do so at a lower conversion rate). Read more about Building Landing Pages That Rank for SEO …

31 Jul

John Doherty Posted in Marketing 12 comments

Do Real Industry Stuff

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. Read more about Do Real Industry Stuff …

05 Jul

John Doherty Posted in Marketing 8 comments

4 Ways to Build An Online Audience

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.

27 Jun

John Doherty Posted in Marketing 17 comments

Announcing My New Project

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. Read more about Announcing My New Project …

05 Jun

John Doherty Posted in Marketing 24 comments

11 Ways to Drive Gobs of Traffic to Your Website

This is mostly a search marketing blog, but I’ve written before about how SEO is not a complete marketing strategy. In fact, it should be a piece of a larger marketing strategy that includes email, possibly paid search, social, content, and even display and print. Here’s Rand’s inbound marketing model that many of you are familiar with:

I’ll be the first to admit that search might not be the best way for your site to get traffic. Search takes a while to take effect (often you won’t see returns for 3-6 months, and it grows slowly oftentimes even then). Read more about 11 Ways to Drive Gobs of Traffic to Your Website …

10 May

John Doherty Posted in Marketing 31 comments

Shut Up About Yourself

Have you ever noticed how a lot of companies pay lip service to wanting to become a “thought leader” in their industry, and lead through great content, yet when they start writing all that comes out is self-promotional drivel that, let’s be honest, no one wants to read? I have.

Most businesses, in my opinion, don’t understand the difference between old-school “marketing material” and the new school of online marketing – thought leadership materials and other remarkable pieces. This has led me to one conclusion:

Everyone wants a brand experience. No one wants a marketing experience.

24 Feb

John Doherty Posted in Marketing 13 comments

Three Tenets of Content Marketing

This post is about content marketing, which is a hot topic these days and one that I fear is a bit nebulous to people. Tom Critchlow recently wrote The Time for Content Marketing is Now on the Distilled blog, where he gave some very inspirational and actionable insights into content marketing. I read this post by Michael Hyatt recently as well, and while it does not go nearly as in-depth as I would have liked, he’s on the right path. Great content before traffic and rankings.

I’ve also recently been disheartened by the amount of low-quality content that many people online seem intent on creating. Whether it’s bad infographics, recycled blog posts, or content for the sake of content because someone’s been told to “have a blog” and “update it frequently”, we are inundated with an overload of content that adds nothing to the global conversation.

I also saw this tweet from Russ (who I GREATLY respect as an SEO and a friend):

What is the difference between “content marketing” and a “video”. Seems like most examples are glorified commercials online.

— rjonesx (@rjonesx) February 24, 2012

That’s what this post is about. Showing what great content is outside of video (but including it as well). Adding to the content marketing conversation. Read more about Three Tenets of Content Marketing …

06 Feb

John Doherty Posted in Marketing 2 comments

Why You Are Your Company’s Best Marketer

“You can hire an outside firm, but you’re always your best marketer.” – Abraham Lincoln

I’m an online marketer working for a marketing agency, working with big brands and small scrappy startups to drive more traffic to their sites via online means, usually through great content. But when a company brings us in to be their marketing, I want to scream and then point them to my post SEO is NOT Your Whole Marketing Strategy.