Posted by Ali Powell on Thu, Aug 12, 2010 @ 08:55 AM
As an early stage startup with a small budget (friends and family) you should be thinking about how to grow your newly formed company organically. There are two ways that you are going to convert visitors on your website into leads which will then hopefully turn into paying customers (if you create great and relevant content). When someone searches keywords to find your company they are going to come to two options: paid search results and organic search results.
75% of the time the searcher/potential customer is going to click on the organic search items. How can you get your company to the top of the organic search results to get more traffic to your website? By understanding how to do this, you will ultimately draw potential customers into your website enabling them to give you more information about themselves with good call to action items to lure them in.
STEP #1
Write.
HOW: Start writing posts on your blog. For people to find you in the search engines, through social media or other outlets you have to start creating content that is relevant to their searches and what they are looking for. Put yourself in the minds of the consumer to figure out what types of keywords they will be searching for. This will help you to create a strategy on what you should be creating content on.
IDEAS: Blog posts on relevant facts in your industry, a you tube video on questions that you keep getting on a daily basis, photos on a Flickr stream showing your company culture or a webinar on a topic that your visitors are currently confused about.
STEP #2
Make sure the content can be found by the search engines.
HOW: What are your potential customers typing into the search field in Bing and Google? Make sure you are keeping those keywords in mind as you create your content. Have a brainstorming session with your team to figure out the keywords that you want to rank for and be found for. Start with those.
IDEAS for On-Page SEO Elements: Your page titles, URLs, H1 tags, body of your post and images should be in line with the keywords that you are trying to rank for on that page. Each page is a chance to be found in the eyes of the search engine. The better you are at aligning these elements the easier it will be to be found when potential customers are searching. Help searchers to end up on your website. You are now that much closer to getting new customers.
STEP #3
Use social media to push your content to your followers, fans and potential customers.
HOW: You are active on social media, you have a LinkedIn profile and a group to promote your business on Facebook. As an entrepreneur you probably already have connected your blog with retweet buttons, Facebook share and like buttons, etc. Once you have created your awesome content you will want to push it out for others to help you do the sharing. The social media world is a great way to share your work and share others work as well. By sharing your content you will create authority to gain respect as a trusted advisor in your industry. Analyze what you are doing to see what is working over time and repeat the steps.
IDEAS: Make sure that your title to your content is one that will gain a quick response with a flash of the eye. Sometimes the page title is more important than the actual content in the article. The name of the article is going to be the first thing that people see in the social mediasphere. Make sure the title is something that people are going to ultimately find catchy and relevant. Will your potential customers and sharers want to click on the link connected to that title in your tweet or in your facebook status update?
As a young startup team you are brimming with ideas. Use those ideas to create great content around the targeted keywords that you want rank for in the eyes of the search engines. Promote the work you have done by sharing it through social media. If you start to create and share your content at least once a week (better would be at least 3 times a week) you will get noticed. Do this for six months religiously.
Over those six months I can bet that you will steadily start to receive more traffic to your website. This traffic will create a constant stream of prospects to turn themselves into leads. Make sure you are giving your visitors good reasons to give you information about themselves. The more content you create the better your chances are at being ranked in the eyes of the search engines. I dare you not to spend any money on marketing. Start by creating content well, promote that content and you will grow organically. Your startup team is smart, use your collective brain power to create inbound marketing programs without spending any money.
Posted by Ali Powell on Tue, Aug 10, 2010 @ 09:31 AM
Twitter has proved as a powerful platform for promoting content. It has also proved as a way to build your following, gain supporters and has created a way to enhance your overall brand. Most businesses have seen or are starting to see the value in promoting work through social media outlets. As you start to become proficient in the Twitter world you will start to gage the players in your industry or in your geographic region that you would like to be connected with.
Most of the women CEO's or players in Boston and Cambridge have Twitter accounts and use them regularly. Twitter is the one step in the inbound marketing equation that will help you to promote your company, yourself, and your overall brand messages to a targeted audience. Whether you would like to promote your blog post, a white paper, a webinar or someone else's content that you are supporting, Twitter is the answer. Twitter is the means to establishing your credibility and reliability in your industry as well as with your potential new followers.
Last week a report was released via Twitter on the Most Powerful Women on Twitter by Dharmesh Shah, Chief Technology Officer and Founder of HubSpot. The report is part of a plethora of free tools underneath the HubSpot umbrella including Twitter Grader, Website Grader, Facebook Grader, LinkedIn Grader and more.
Twitter Grader released the report through a tweet stemming a number of retweets, comments and most likely blog articles from the naming of the 100 Most Powerful Women on Twitter. The report measured areas including power and reach in the Twitter community. A few months ago I put together my own list of the top 12 influential and established WomenPreneurs in the Boston community for my work at BostInnovation. Here is that list, let's see how it stacks up against the Twitter Grader Report in respects to the Boston and Cambridge area.
@Pistachio: Laura Fitton, CEO and Founder of @oneforty.
@CommunispaceCEO: Diane Hessan, President and CEO of @Communispace.
@stealfinder: Melissa Massello, CEO of @ShoeString.
@rmchase: Robin Chase, Founding CEO of @Zipcar, GoLoco and Meadow Networks.
@beccax: Rebecca Xiong, CEO of Yana, Co-Founder of @GetGoing.
@JennyFloren: Jenny Floren, Founder and CEO of Experience.com.
@Pixability: Bettina Hein, CEO of @Pixability.
@Gail_Goodman: Gail Goodman, CEO of @ConstantContact.
@Ellen_Rubin: Ellen Rubin, Founder and VP of Products at Cloud Switch.
@JulesPieri: Jules Pieri, CEO and Founder of @DailyGrommet.
@KDMiller4: Karen Miller, Co-Founder of DK Pictures and Creator of @DoInkTweets.
@EmilyNagleGreen: Emily Nagle Green, CEO and President of @YankeeGroup
Who was missing from the list we published on BostInnovation that was reported on the Twitter Grader Report? We missed three of the top WomenPreneurs in Boston.
@MarketingProfs: Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs
@missusP: Christine Perkett, CEO & Founder @PerkettPR
@rhappe:Rachel Happe, Principal at the Community Roundtable @TheCR.
@Pistachio: Laura Fitton, CEO and Founder of @oneforty was ranked at the #4 spot on the Twitter Grader Report. We had her at the #1 spot on the BostInnovation list.
I wonder who would be listed if Twitter Grader was to run the report for the top 100 list of powerful women in the startup scene in the Boston and Cambridge area? Who is on your radar in the Twitter community that you think should be ranked in the top list for influential WomenPreneurs in Boston and Cambridge? Why?
Boston is quickly becoming the startup Mecca for WomenPreneurs to launch companies. These WomenPreneurs have promoted their presence through twitter and warranted a ranking on The Most Powerful Women on Twitter. What are you doing to enhance your following on Twitter? How has Twitter helped you to grow your business?
Posted by Ali Powell on Sun, Aug 08, 2010 @ 05:16 PM
The best thing that you can do before you start your company is to create content that your potential and future customers will relate to and want to read about. Once you start to create these wonderful pieces and push them out through means of social media you will gain a following of people who will join you once you start your company. Each time I meet a fellow entrepreneur or womenpreneur they ask me what to start blogging about. I start by asking them a few questions:
1. Have you started to blog yet? If the answer is no, then I take it they aren't serious about this company because one of the easiest things you can do is start creating some content for the audience that you are targeting.
2. Who are you writing for? Who are the people that are searching keywords to land on your site? What do you have to offer them in the first five minutes that they land there?
3. What is the gap that you are filling by starting this company and creating content for this group of people?
Once you have covered these few questions, I usually have the person talking about their startup and what problems they are solving. This is just the type of content I am referring to. If you start to think about the idea of creating content in a more simplistic manner the ideas will begin to flow. Take a step back and think about why you are creating this company in the first place. The blog topics will stem from there.
- What problem you are solving and for who?
- What gaps are there in this area or industry now and how are you proposing to fix them?
- What are 10 topics that come to the potential customer or reader's mind when they search for your website?
- What are people talking about in your industry and how can you join in on the conversation?
- Are you reading related blogs and commenting in appropriate and meaningful ways?
Blogging is allowing you to join the conversation and you are letting your target audience know why you are there. Join in on the conversations earlier than later. Once you start your own conversations, people will follow and will be there when you do launch your company. By creating conversations in the early stages you will set yourself away from your competition. You are not interrupting your potential customer's life, you are adding to it.