Last week, on the very kind invitation of Dmitri Grabov, I gave a presentation in London to the Hacker News monthly meetup group. The event was sponsored and hosted by some friends at Forward, and attended by startup folks from all around the greater London area. Like my presentation in Silicon Valley, the focus was on marketing for startups.
Dmitri & Forward worked together to get the event filmed and posted the video online and thus, I felt it would be great to share here. A couple caveats before watching:
- There's not a lot of advanced, tactically focused content. This talk is geared to startup marketers and founders and probably better for mid-level managers and consulting clients than for "in-the-trenches" SEOs and marketers (who already know all this stuff).
- If you've already seen my presentation from the Silicon Valley HN meetup, this has quite a bit of overlap (go to ~30minutes in to see the unique material).
- I'm sharing this version, despite the crossover with some previous work (something I usually don't do) because I think this may be the best iteration of this particular subject I've done to date, and one of the more efficient (the formal presentation is just under 45 minutes).
- Warning - I do use a bit of bad language. Sorry about that! Sometimes I get excited on stage. :-)
My goal is to help more folks in the startup world become familiar with the practices of inbound marketing - content, SEO, social media, blogs, etc. These are powerful channels, but they often don't get the respect they deserve in these spheres (which both frustrates and surprises me).
Rand Fishkin - Inbound Marketing for Startups: How to Earn Customers Without Paying from HN London on Vimeo.
Hopefully, if you find the video enjoyable and useful, you can spread it to those who need a push to invest in or believe in the great practices inbound marketers undertake.
p.s. I've been on the road for the last two weeks, speaking at events in Madrid, Munich, London, Boston and now San Francisco, but return to Seattle Friday and will hopefully be better about consistent posting and whiteboard Friday appearances thereafter.
This video is hilarious.. hahaha.. On the down side everyone in the office had to shut me up.
I love the transformation of your blog turning into a very succesful software company.
This is a great video to show any potential clients. Thank You!
From this post I learned:
Oh and now that I have learned how to use content curation I will share this :)
Rand's White Board Fridays, general videos and even his written posts are much entertaining, no doubt in it, but the takeaways that we have from his posts and videos, that are worth every moment we spend read or watching it.
Loved the post Rand, keep it up!
Execellant Video my man!
Can I have permission to play this for any potentail customers who say:
"Why would I need SEO?"
Why? Well just watch this video, Rand will explain it all..........
It sure would make life easier.
Absolutely! That's why it exists! :-)
Thanks!
Great video!
And I speak as a former TV producer and news director who coached people on presentation skills in my previous life.
Bottom line: humour and passion can be powerful tools in making the SEO case.
Inspired by the instant classic SEOMoz April's Fools video...here is the opening to a webinar I will be presenting to a new client and its content partners tonight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD_8u15HRPE&feature=autoplay&list=HL1333646210&lf=mh_lolz&playnext=1
It cracks me up.
Rand: It was awesome, awesome, awesome to see you get all fired up. I've heard you speak many, many times, and I was still rivited. Highly entertaining -- and, of course, useful.
Great post.. Thanks..
Realy enjoyed watching it..
17:20 thats Ephesus in Turkey :) Where I live..
Ahh, the page title that matches the URL. Dollar Shave Club is a great, great example of YES!! and NO!!.
my subscription is actually worth it this month with this video. thanks.
Lol is it not during the other months?
"There's not a lot of advanced, tactically focused content." - That's probably the best thing about this video.
You have passion about the things that actually matter, which usually aren't that advanced to start with! It's a fantastic video to get people on board with inbound marketing, and SEOmoz is proof it works.
I do believe SEO is very important and it is the most fun and exciting for me to do. It is the most rewarding too, when the website you are working on is starting to appear on the top of the search results with the most competitive keywords.
However I do not agree with you Rand about "nobody is clicking on ads". When I talk to our dealers or people who are not tech savvy they don't even know that the top three results are ads. They don't even know what PPC is. I believe people might not click on PPC when they are in the research phase. They rather read reviews and try to find information on the product they are looking for. BUT when they finally decide and they for example have a model number they will put it in Google and will click on an ad, especially if the ad is coming up with the same model number. They will click on "shopping results" or "Amazon" results that could be all paid.
Don't forget Rand, we are tech savvy and we do know which is the ad, we do look at things differently. I try to avoid thinking what I would do online... I try to put myself into the shoes of the not-tech-savvy people.
SEO many times is not reliable since the algorithm can change any time. For example in the past 4-5 months we were number one with the keyword "pool gate" nationally. Yesterday I noticed we fell on the third page of Google for some reason. I’m not yet sure why but it is annoying. In the mean time we still are coming up on the first page with PPC.
I don't think any part of the internet marketing work alone well. I think PPC can work together with SEO, along with Social Media, Blogging and content marketing. To make a website successful everything has to be balanced right and work together. After all, it's not the search engine’s interest for you to do great with just simply SEO, they make money on advertisers.
Thank you for this video! I'll definitely share it.
Alex
Looks promising, you are getting good on stage Rand! I like how you simplyfing things which is always good. A couple of red bulls and you might just be the next Avinash ;)
Rand,
Thanks so much for this presentation!
I really learned a lot from it.
I found it interesting how Dollar Shave Club could do such a good job with a viral video... but not even think about SEO. Their title tag is sad...
Great presentation, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
+1 to the video and for free advices
Good stuff! Thanks!
Fantastic!!! I (and Google Insights - https://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=inbound%20marketing&cmpt=q) do believe this concept of Inbound Marketing is catchy, and it really explains it better than optimizing for search engines!
Awesome Video. Really appreciate the information here. Thanks Rand!
Great presentation - really opened my eyes or should I say reinforced them :) Was difficult to see some of the slides on the video - do you have a copy of the actual slides?
Cheers,
Andy
Great post, really entertaining and informative presentation. Thanks Rand!
This is valuable and inspirational just want to thank for that : )
Great presentation and tips, thanks Rand :)
Thanks for sharing the presentation. Great to be reminded of these things, especially to be reminded about Google +
Great video, thanks for sharing.
Lovely to see, the HN guys are ace. Sorry I missed it! Last month's talk by Joel On Software was also amazing. If they can share the recording I highly recommend it
Wow this is an awesome post. Please do more like this.
Great presentation Rand. Inspiring stuff.
We could really use you at WebStock in New Zealand. This year we had the founder of Slashdot and Zappos as well as speakers from Google and Pixar among others. I think any web audience would benefit greatly from hearing your story.
I loved your energy, your presentation is awesome. Thanks for sharing it free!
Where do you find the time Rand? Blog posts, tweets, google +, speaking events...... I'm tired just thinking about it. Thanks though - all is appreciated.
Hey, I would like know, what is the URL of the Social Connections page Rand shows around 50:00 in the video?
Never mind, I found it, anyone else who is looking for this page :
https://www.google.com/s2/search/social
This is a really insighting page!
https://www.google.com/s2/search/social
Informational, inspiring, whole-heartedly entertaining....
Thank you, Rand! An hour of my day put to good use...(not sarcasm)
I just recently became a member and with posts like these I know why. Thank You
Great information with the exception of *##*% stuff. That was a revelation that G+ indexes so quickly the shares. I will focus on that more, and thanks again for all the insights.
Great!!!, thank mod!
Awesome!
Do you have a link to the pew internet graph about search vs social media?
Anyone?
https://pewinternet.org/Presentations/2012/Feb/NFAIS--New-Normal.aspx - sorry, on the road and crazy overwhelmed.
Thanks!
Hi Rand,
This is a little off topic, but I just wondered why SEOmoz ranks for the search term "snuggie dog bed"? Pretty random, I know!
I think that was based on the efforts of some link spammers from the WickedFire forums. Definitely not intentional on our part (and probably mostly a joke on theirs). More at https://plus.google.com/u/1/111294201325870406922/posts/UCUNUNMtFWk
you mean we can't get a free dog snuggie with our SEOmoz subscription? Rats....
Great post - really liked the point about knowing how the buying cycle works generally at the moment. Very true. I also think it's worth saying some things that work for one business won't work for every business and most startups find the best channel for them - and that means they have to get through that pain period. Dollar Shave Club is a great ad - I love the whole tongue in cheek Cheese Sells concept!
First of all, I want to say thanks to Rand for this great contribution with his knowledge. You shared a lot of informative points that i like very much.
As always Rand great stuff.
I do enjoy watching videos of you and hearing how to get things across and how you bring new ideas to the table.
Fantastic!!!
Thank you Rand for the phenomenal share, I mean perfect presentation to listen with a morning coffee in your hand. Regardless of the fact that I have gone through the presentation already but the way you explain things are simply amazing.
Some really valid points to choose Inbound over Paid marketing.
vote up for Inbound :)
That Rand guy is pretty likeable.
Oh and the talk is good too.
This is an awsome post Rand. I learned a lot from this.
honestly telling u that being in SEO market since last 3.5 years i felt like there still to learn more and there are plenty of things which i really don't know as per my working years experience..
SEOMOZ tought me lot and still m on the same boat..
Thankx SEOMOZ and specially RAND.. ur superb man..
Where are the office headphones when I need them!?