The Key To Succesful Startup PR: Build Trust Before You Need It
Brian Solis wrote a profound article on TechCrunch called PR Secrets for Startups. He lists many good tips all startups should know about public relations, including Understand You’re Not the Only Story in Town, Don’t Launch on Mondays and Measure Success, Not Traffic.
Many of his advice are very important for startups, where ever they are coming from. Solis writes about the role of the founder in attending and creating conversations and making contacts all the time.
As Solis points out, blogging is one natural way for a founder to get into the conversation. He should comment on other blogs and write articles that link back to his own or company blog. He should of course make contacts with journalists and bloggers at conferences and other networking events. Most importantly, and I can’t stress this enough, contacts should be made and the reputation built before they are needed.
One good example of Finnish startups that are active commentators on blogs and have a good blog of their own are they guys of Scred. I see their comments often at places like TechCrunch and Arctic Startup. But I believe that they could be even more active in their own blog. Other Finnish startups should definitely do the same.
Making Money Blogging Tips - mostly useless or dishonest
Making money blogging is the modern way to get yourself an easy income by doing basically nothing. At least that’s something I’ve come across lately when I’ve been surfing the blogosphere looking for tips and information on blogging: how to produce good content, traffic and link building, blogging communities and also tips how to make money blogging.
Money making tips usually fall into to different categories
- Useless: “Get your self a blog from Blogger or Wordpress and get Google Adsense running, and your instantly making huge piles of money.”
- Outright dishonest: I’m not talking about linkbaiting or getting as many backlinks as possible here. I’m talking about tips that may not be illegal but at least immoral.
These tips appeal to your laziness or to the fact that most people are not up to producing quality content by giving you a “secret” easy way out. Read more…
Blogging is a Business Model
This piece about TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington made me realize that blogging can really be considered a separate business model aside “traditional” news or content publishing. You have low costs due to the fact that you can use off the shelf freeware in comparison to more robust content management systems that traditional publishers use. It is very easy to setup a blog and the only real cost comes from the time taken to write your content and nurture your audience by replying to their comments.
What really sets blogging apart as a business model is the commenting on posts. This is real, direct, interaction between the publisher and the audience. Also you do you marketing by commenting on other people’s blogs and by entering into conversation between blogs.
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