The most common blogging mistake made by startups: wasting too much valuable time and runway worrying about blogging. For every hour spent working on your blog, you should spend about a week trying to understand your customers needs and figuring out how to better serve them.
I disagree, Phil. Blogging should be part of your marketing efforts. And your team does need marketing, regardless of how good your product is and how well you understand your customer's needs. Definitely spend time understanding your customers, but don't ignore promoting and marketing your product. It's a common mistake among programmers who tend to believe in an absolutely utopic meritocracy where "if you build it, they will come".
I think another way of looking at this is to realize that if you are going to blog you must be intentional about it; you need to understand:
1) This is why we are blogging - including understanding the intended audience
2) This is who will be responsible for blogging - how much time and energy will be put into it by which team members
3) This is how we will measure the effectiveness of our blog
And then be prepared to iterate on those points. I've seen too many startup blogs with a few[1] posts from the early days, clearly with the best intentions, but then a silence that makes you wonder whether they still exist - better they never blogged.
Blogs are mostly one-way marketing, they take what's already inside your company/brain/startup and push it out towards the world. That's the exact opposite of the direction that matters most.
OK, a blog is often useful since your customers will want you to communicate with them in some way. But worry about doing that effectively before you worry about incrementing some integer on a social networking site.
Well yeah, link-building and tweeting are also low-priority tasks compared to better understanding your customers and building something they want to pay for.
"they take what's already inside your company/brain/startup"
I agree.
There are actually valid reasons why companies want to keep information on themselves non-public to not give tips to the competition. Much of this has disappeared on the internet with the general openness. But only some of the rules of business have been re-written, not all of them. Of course if you want to release disinformation that the competition reads that has value, but obviously takes a bit of effort to be done correctly.
Walt Disney assembled Walt Disney World in Florida by setting up all sorts of intermediaries and even flying through various small airports so as not to tip off competition. He went to a great deal of trouble to keep his plans private (and of course there is Apple secrecy as well).
For us blogging has been core to helping build a relationship with our customers, as well as brand awareness and recognition. It's not just something we do when we're bored.
For every hour spent working on your blog, you should spend about a week trying to understand your customers needs and figuring out how to better serve them.
But your blog is (or should be) one way to have a conversation with customer (or potential customers, at least). Blogs aren't just for pushing stuff out, there should be a measure of interaction as well. Ideally, a blog post should spark a discussion...
I disagree as well. I agree with what you say in the last sentence, but I do not think too much time spent on blogs is anywhere near the most common blogging mistake made by startups.
"spend about a week trying to understand your customers needs and figuring out how to better serve them"
Effective blogging is one of the ways to do this. The point is not about blogging just for the sake of bloggin. Point is about spreading word about your startup, sharing your experiences, how you do things etc. These things will always intrigue a potential customer or well wishers of your startup.
Comments
The most common blogging mistake made by startups: wasting too much valuable time and runway worrying about blogging. For every hour spent working on your blog, you should spend about a week trying to understand your customers needs and figuring out how to better serve them.
I disagree, Phil. Blogging should be part of your marketing efforts. And your team does need marketing, regardless of how good your product is and how well you understand your customer's needs. Definitely spend time understanding your customers, but don't ignore promoting and marketing your product. It's a common mistake among programmers who tend to believe in an absolutely utopic meritocracy where "if you build it, they will come".
I think another way of looking at this is to realize that if you are going to blog you must be intentional about it; you need to understand:
1) This is why we are blogging - including understanding the intended audience
2) This is who will be responsible for blogging - how much time and energy will be put into it by which team members
3) This is how we will measure the effectiveness of our blog
And then be prepared to iterate on those points. I've seen too many startup blogs with a few[1] posts from the early days, clearly with the best intentions, but then a silence that makes you wonder whether they still exist - better they never blogged.
[1] http://xkcd.org/1070/
Blogs are mostly one-way marketing, they take what's already inside your company/brain/startup and push it out towards the world. That's the exact opposite of the direction that matters most.
OK, a blog is often useful since your customers will want you to communicate with them in some way. But worry about doing that effectively before you worry about incrementing some integer on a social networking site.
I disagree. Blog is great marketing tool. "Inbound Marketing" is the word.
All your other efforts have an expiry date, like link building is not permanent. Tweets expiry and vanish.
Blog and its content stays just like your website.
With Blogs you are announcing, educating and engaging all-in-one.
Well yeah, link-building and tweeting are also low-priority tasks compared to better understanding your customers and building something they want to pay for.
"they take what's already inside your company/brain/startup"
I agree.
There are actually valid reasons why companies want to keep information on themselves non-public to not give tips to the competition. Much of this has disappeared on the internet with the general openness. But only some of the rules of business have been re-written, not all of them. Of course if you want to release disinformation that the competition reads that has value, but obviously takes a bit of effort to be done correctly.
Walt Disney assembled Walt Disney World in Florida by setting up all sorts of intermediaries and even flying through various small airports so as not to tip off competition. He went to a great deal of trouble to keep his plans private (and of course there is Apple secrecy as well).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_World_Resort
For us blogging has been core to helping build a relationship with our customers, as well as brand awareness and recognition. It's not just something we do when we're bored.
For every hour spent working on your blog, you should spend about a week trying to understand your customers needs and figuring out how to better serve them.
But your blog is (or should be) one way to have a conversation with customer (or potential customers, at least). Blogs aren't just for pushing stuff out, there should be a measure of interaction as well. Ideally, a blog post should spark a discussion...
I disagree as well. I agree with what you say in the last sentence, but I do not think too much time spent on blogs is anywhere near the most common blogging mistake made by startups.
"spend about a week trying to understand your customers needs and figuring out how to better serve them"
Effective blogging is one of the ways to do this. The point is not about blogging just for the sake of bloggin. Point is about spreading word about your startup, sharing your experiences, how you do things etc. These things will always intrigue a potential customer or well wishers of your startup.