Lately I’ve been creating new content over at the Aprigo blog. We were a very stealth mode startup, but since we’re getting ready to release a private beta soon, we’ve started to lift the veil of secrecy. I was talking with a co-worker a few moments ago and was asked the following question:

"So the people that are coming to our blog and reading our posts….are they a missed opportunity? Shouldn’t we wait until we have a product?"

Now that was an interesting question. I’d never really thought about it that way. My immediate, knee-jerk reaction was "we shouldn’t wait." Here’s why:

1. Blogging early and creating content builds trust- When you’re a startup without any exposure, people are skeptical of your claims. So many startups make bold, aggressive claims like "our search engine makes google look like a dinosaur." It’s easy to make claims like that when you have no proof. But when you start off by addressing the problems you’re trying to solve and give examples of how you’re going to solve them, people respond to that. My favorite example of this was the blog from Powerset, a search engine startup focused on natural language search. (They were later acquired by Microsoft)

   Rather than making claims that their search approach was the best, they gave examples of problems that exist in search as we know it. A favorite post is called "The Tyranny of the Common Name", in which the author addresses the problem of having a common name when it comes to search. These kinds of posts go a long way in demonstrating expertise and a fundamental understanding of the problems facing the market, thus establishing trust.

2. Blogging early and creating content builds incoming links- If you wait until the day you have a product to sell to create content, who would know how to find it? Let’s play make-believe for a second….Let’s say I’ve been secretly working on an online store for dart players. The store has darts, accessories, and anything a serious dart player would be looking for. Today I’m ready to launch, and I haven’t done any kind of promotion until today.

   I could go to twitter, but since I have no following and haven’t approached dart players on twitter, no one would see my tweets.
   I could go to facebook, but since I haven’t friended anyone or joined any groups for dart players, no one would notice.
   I could start posting blog posts every hour, but no one would know about them.

   What’s worse is that since I didn’t lay the groundwork earlier, even if people did notice the content, they’d probably label me as a spammer, carpet-bombing the internet with shameless plugs rather than taking the time to organically build interest.

3. Blogging early gives your company exposure- Early on, when you don’t have a product to sell, you’re in an ideal position to create content. In this phase of your company’s existance, you are doing something awesome: you’re creating content purely because it is interesting and useful to the people you’ll eventually want as customers. You don’t have to worry about plugging your product. You don’t have to craft your posts around a product offer, and you don’t have to constantly focus on the ROI of each post. This is the fun part where you are really just trying to figure out how you can be a resource to the population you wish to later serve.
4. Blogging early makes your company real- When you don’t have proof, people don’t think you’re real. A "stealth mode startup building x" doesn’t really exist in the eyes of the public. And since you can’t yet clearly demonstrate your product, blogging is a great way to share your philosophy and focus on solving a problem. Blogging gives you a chance to relate to your market, and a chance to interact with readers.
5. Blogging early gives your company a chance to receive feedback- We repeat this over and over here at Aprigo, but we mean it when we say we’re a market-driven company. Why bother building a product with features people won’t use? Conversely, we don’t want to leave out functionality that people would really value. Blogging gives us the opportunity to give our opinions, but also to hear what others have to say, and that is incredibly valuable when looking at our roadmap.
6. Blogging early builds anticipation- Combining all of the above points, when you’re able to share your philosophy, build trust and interact with people interested in what you have to say, it builds anticipation for what you have to offer. It makes people want to know when your product is ready for them to check out. It’s happened to me time and time again….I’ll hear about a product that isn’t publicly available yet, and I’ll follow their blog to hear updates and to see what will be coming soon.

In the end, I think the point is that you need to constantly produce interesting, relevant content that addresses issues facing those you wish to eventually have as customers. Customer acquisition online isn’t about a transaction, it’s about a relationship, and blogging is a great way to start your company’s relationship to the outside world.

I’m really excited about this one, as I love Christopher S. Penn’s presentation style. He always gives usuable, actionable tactics that can be used immediately. That’s a rarity in a lot of conferences I go to. There’s a lot of high-level social media kumbaya, “join the conversation” talk, and things like that, but Christopher does an awesome job of giving real-world takeaways.

From the slides:

The Great Content Shift

• Content-oriented marketing is undergoing a radical transformation.
• Broadly speaking, this transformation has content moving from:
  – Promotional to non-partisan
  – Highly controlled to less controlled
  – Occasional to ongoing
  – Corporate voice to authentic, personal voice
  – One-way to conversational

The Golden Road to Great Content:

1. Start with a Marketing Strategy.
2. Make Content Useful.
3. Consistent Message/Diverse Voices.
4. Content Depends on Platforms and People.
5. Dont Be Afraid to Lose Control.

Start with a Marketing Strategy

Aside from providing you with a framework for content development, starting with a marketing strategy gives you a way of measuring the success or failure of your content efforts.

• Ask yourself:
  – Who are you producing content for?
  – What sort of content does this audience want?
  – How do they prefer to consume it?
• Consumption habits are changing quickly with social media and community content increasingly in?uential, as this PJA/Toolbox survey shows http://tinyurl.com/5h86sy.
  – What do you hope to accomplish with your content?

Make Content Useful

• Create content with your audience in mind by asking yourself,
  “Even if someone never works with us, would they still fnd this content valuable.”
• Focusing on “use value” should also get you out of the “content = copy” mindset. Tools and apps are content, too. (HubSpot’s Website Grader – http://website.grader.com/ – is a good example of tool as content.)
• Finally, if content is valuable in itself, there is a higher probability that people will share it with others. And sharing is GOOD!

Okay, enough slides. This is really an interesting topic for me, as I’m both the SEO guy and the Content Creation guy at my gig. Right now we’re planning out our site for our public release, and the next step is for me to sit in an isolated room with copious amounts of red bull to bang out the content. And since I won’t just be blogging, I’m looking for ways to make product pages have some real personality.

We’re also going to be incorporating things like video and audio, so I’m interested in hearing what’s up.

Well, presenter wants us to shut our laptops, so that’s all for this session.

I’m writing anyway.

The panelists:

Philip Juliano VP, Global Brand Management & Corporate Communications, Novell
Valeria Maltoni Director, Marketing Communications, SunGard Availability Services
Chris Penn CTO, Student Loan Network
Mike O’Toole President and Partner, PJA Advertising and Marketing
Matthew T. Grant Moderator, Doctor of Philosophy, Thought Ronin
Matthew Grant is talking now, and apparently he’s a stickler for not having people tweet, blog, etc. Never seen that one before, but hey, I understand. He’d be an excellent prison guard.

Content strategy starts with marketing strategy, so how does content fit into your marketing strategy?

The main point from the panelists is the idea that all content needs to support the master marketing plan. One gave the analogy that you wouldn’t just start building a house without a blueprint, so you don’t just start creating content without mapping it to a strategy. I’m definitely guilty of that a lot of times. At the new gig, I’ve been just going nuts because I’m not blogging there much yet, but it’s all part of a launch strategy. You really do need to create useful content that supports the master plan.

MG: How do you walk the line between being keyword-rich and spamming
CP: People are asking in his industry: “How do I pay for college?” and that’s the question he’s trying to answer on his site, and repetition is fine in that sense.

MG: What do you use for measurement to see if you’re hitting your marketing goals? What types of goals have you put around your content?

PJ: We start at the macro level and measure our brand, core messaging, solutions (awareness, purchase consideration) a couple of times per year. There are other ways we measure things on a  much more granular basis: CT rates, for example. They have a corporate magazine that they measure in terms of opens, views, etc. They’ve found a good correlation between purchase consideration and the overall direction of the company. Whether the macro or the micro, the measurements are absolutely critical.

CP: We look to see how many loans people have taken. One of the easiest ROI measurements is to ask “How did you hear about us?” You should collect as much data as possible, but you need to understand the “why” instead of just the what. For instance, you know that your home page bounce rate is high, but is it because your content is terrible, or was it because they found exactly what they wanted and left? The big question: are you making money? That’s really the big question when looking at how any campaign is working. If you’re selling a gulfstream jet that costs $94 million and you have a podcast with 100,000 listeners, but no one is buying, you’re wasting your time. If you have a podcast with 3 listeners and 2 buy the planes, you’re going to Maui for the next 2 years.

PO: It’s not about the activities, it’s about the outcomes.

MG: How do you manage the conversation so the message stays consistent on different platforms?

PO: At some level you can’t, when people are creating their own content about you, that’s somewhat out of your control. It’s important to be consistent, but not lock-step. You have to let people say their own things and let the personality come through. I’ve always been impressed with AutoDesk which has over 100 employee blogs. They do it well.

CP: Take a list of the top 100 customers you have, and go to twitter, facebook, blogger, etc and find out how many of them are there. If it’s a high percentage, you want to spend some time there. If they’re not, you’re probably going to waste your time. Another example: go to those same 100 customers and ask them where they spend time online. Great example: I was sitting next to an 80-year old grandmother on a plane, and she was stereotypical to a T except she had a kindle. I asked why, and she said that everyone at the senior center has one and loves it because you can change the text size to make it as big as they way. I asked “do you read blogs on that?” she said “what’s that?” I then took a look and she’d subscribed to a dozen blogs. I asked “what’s that?” and she said “oh, that’s the news.” The takeaway: People are talking about you and your industry/products, but they may be doing it in different places using different language.

Overall, this was a really good presentation, with the overall theme being:

• Have a marketing strategy
• Create content that maps to that strategy
• Find out where your customers are
• Talk to them there

Though the presentation wasn’t focused on giving any new information, it was an excellent way to reinforce the ideas that I think most of us are familiar with, but don’t always do. It’s difficult to have a strict process to come up with relevant keywords, create content to go after those keywords, measure how the content is doing, etc. It’s a hell of a lot easier to blog your ass off and hope good things are going to happen (ahem, what I’ve been guilty of a LOT), but I think the results prove otherwise.

On the Nathan Burke arbitrary rating scale, I’ll give this one 3 and 5/8 elephant eyes on a scale of multi-colored rugs to tin cans. (what?)

Happy Monday.

The good people over at MarketingProfs were kind enough to give yours truly a press pass for the 2009 Marketing Profs Business-to-Business Forum here in Boston. So I’ll be checking out all the sessions today and will be covering them on a few of my blogs: Blogstring.com, MarketingStartups.com, and BtoBSaaS.com.

The sessions I think I’ll be checking out:

9:00 am- 10:15 am- Bringing SEO In-House Without Missing a Beat

10:15- I’ll be running out to my car to feed the meter so I don’t get a ticket (fingers crossed)

10:45- 12:00- Developing Robust Online Content To Keep Prospects and Customers Engaged

1:45- 3:00- Make Every Investment Count: The Measure of Marketing

3:30-4:45- Putting Measurements into Action to Improve Leads, Conversions and ROI

After that, looks like there’s a cocktail thing and a dinner, which should be excellent.

I’ve decided to shy away from the Social Media types of sessions, as I’ve been to LOTS of them lately.  So, if you’re here, be sure to say hello.

Let’s play a little make believe. Let’s say you just started a job at a startup company that is in stealth mode. Your job is to promote the company and get it noticed online, and today is the day to get started. But where do you start?

I’ve been in that situation before, and had to fumble around in the dark to figure out the answer. Though I definitely do not claim to be the world’s foremost expert on startup marketing, I think that I can share some tips that should be useful to a lot of tech startups out there. With that said, I’ve compiled a quick and dirty set of steps to get your startup noticed.

Step One: Submit To Directories

Since inbound links increase google rankings, and since it can often take a while for directories to index your site, do this NOW. Here’s how you get started:

1. Google- Yep, good ole’ google. To add your site to google go to: http://www.google.com/addurl/
2. Yahoo- Go here: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit and add your site and feeds.
3. Go2Web20.net- A flash-based directory of Web 2.0 Companies
4. CrunchBase- TechCrunch-owned wiki of startup info
5. KillerStartups.com- A startup directory that is updated daily
6. Vator.tv- A site dedicated to videos of startups
7. SimpleSpark- Another directory focused on web apps
8. TradeVibes- A directory focused on the business side of startups

Step Two: Land Grab

Now that you’ve done the submission thing, time to go out and get some accounts for your startup. Here’s what you should get:

1. Twitter- Head over to twitter and register an account for your startup’s name. You’ll be using this later.
2. Flickr- Get a flickr account with your company’s name. You’ll first have to get a Yahoo! ID, which is another good thing to have. You’ll use this account to store all your photos.
3. StumbleUpon- Might as well grab it, right?
4. Mixx- A personalized news service…you might use this, but it doesn’t hurt to grab the name
5. Vimeo- An excellent video-hosting service. You’ll create a channel here.
6. YouTube- Another video hosting service you might have heard about…..another channel
7. FriendFeed- A lot like twitter, but this is more of an aggregator than a communication service.
8. Delicious- A social bookmarking service
9. Diigo- Another social bookmarking service
10. Ustream.tv- A video streaming site
11. Facebook- Create a page for your company

And on and on. There are tons of these. Get an account, and on each one, fill out your profile and add a link to your site. Boom. Instantly you have 10 links to your site.

Step Three: Find Your Audience

All right, now you’ve got some accounts. Good. Now let’s find where your target audience is.

1. LinkedIn- Find out if there are groups that contain your target market, and find out what they’re talking about. Don’t immediately bust in and start shilling for your product/service. Instead, see what the issues are, and if you’re able to pitch in, that’s great. If not, just start learning what these people are talking about and that will help you: a) figure out new product features b) find things to write about c) understand whether your offering makes sense.
2. Facebook- Again, look to see what people are talking about, and try to help out.
3. Reddit- Search through the subreddits to find one that speaks to those that your product will serve

Just like the directories abd services above, there are many, many places to find your audience. Get out there and learn what they’re talking about.

Step Four: Create Some Content

Armed with the knowledge of what your target users are after, start writing some blog posts. Create some videos. Fire up a podcast. Talk to their problems, interests, pain points, etc. It’s okay to mention your product, but no one wants to listen to an infomercial. Just remember to behave like a human being, not just a pitchman. Make it relevant and useful. My favorite way to think of this is to imagine your content being sponsored by your company rather than all about it. Write content your company would want to sponsor.

Step Five: Promote Said Content

Again, this has to be relevant to your audience and not just a thinly-veiled commercial, as BS just won’t fly when you’re trying to promote your content. In fact, it’s better to not promote your content if it is just product spam, as it is better for your content to be ignored than to have it ripped apart as spam. With all that said, if you have something worthy, promote it.

1. Get a bit.ly account- Bit.ly will shorten your URL into something more digestable by twitter and the like, and it will give you stats.
2. Add analytics to your site- I like google analytics as it is free and very full-featured. Sign up for an account, add the site, grab the javascript code and verify that you’ve installed the code properly. Then you’ll be able to start tracking.
3. With analytics installed and a small URL, go to your twitter account and mention your new post, along with the bit.ly URL.
4. Bookmark and categorize the post in Delicious
5. Bookmark and categorize the post in Diigo
6. Add your post to Digg and Reddit in the appropriate category
7. Add your post to StumbleUpon

If you have created video content, make sure you add it to:

• Your facebook page
• Your YouTube account
• Your vimeo account
• Your blog

Step Six: Reach Out To Bloggers

I wait until step six for this because you want to have some real content out there before you start pitching your startup to bloggers. Take it from me, I want to see that a company has its stuff together, has blog posts, some real content, etc. before I cover them. It makes them more real. That said (and assuming you’re a tech startup), start reaching out to:

• TechCrunch
• Mashable
• VentureBeat
• XConomy
• CenterNetworks
• ReadWriteWeb
• HackerNews
• Blog.guykawasaki.com
• OnStartups
• Blogstring
• MarketingStartups
• StartupMeme

If you’re not a tech startup, replace the above list with the influential blogs in your space. Go to AllTop, Blogged, and a multitude of other blog discovery sites and find the blogs that cover what you’ll be offering. Start following their blogs and commenting on their stories. That way, when you’re ready to launch or have news, you’ll have already built something of a relationship with them. The bigger the blog and more influential, the lesser the chance that the author will take the time to get to know you, but it shows them that you’re not just someone carpet bombing bloggers in order to get coverage. And again, be human. Write a quick email letting them know that you follow their blog, and that you’re launching a startup that would likely be of interest to their readers. Give them the quick intro and a link to what you’ve got. And DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT come off sounding like a press release.

I’d suggest only reaching out to the biggies when you’ve got real, substantial news. Don’t reach out to TechCrunch when you’ve added a blog post, since your blog post just isn’t important enough to warrant coverage there. Do reach out when you release your product.

Summary

As you can tell, there are no magic bullets here. You really have to do the work, create content, and form relationships with people if you want to get noticed online. But this should give you a pretty good start.

Again, I need to stress this: None of this will work if you don’t have good content that is interesting, new, and appealing.

Okay, so I think this is a question of philosophy. It’s really a question of “does it hurt to have it?” Let me back up and actually tell you what I’m talking about.

The “Share this with others” buttons that have become so ubiquitous are actually starting to bother me in certain circumstances. For instance, I just got an email from a company asking me to fill out their survey. In the bottom of the email message I see this:

Why would I share that with others? To me, this would be the equivalent of taking a credit card offer out of my mailbox, driving it down to the local TV news station, and persuading the anchor to read the offer on the evening newscast. To me, that’s a little bit past absurd.

Well, why not?

I get it. The small chance that someone actually goes through the trouble of digging, stumbling, redditing, bookmarking, etc. your article justifies having the option. But do people really do that? It seems to me that people will come to a blog post after reading a headline on a social news site, but they wouldn’t submit a blog post to a social news site. Other than contributing content that others will like, what’s the motivation for doing so? If you’re just a casual blog reader, are you sufficiently motivated to submit an article to social sites?

But there’s something desperate about adding a “share this” to EVERYTHING online. Here’s a good example. Widemile is an SEO firm, and they have a “share this” widget on their privacy policy. Seriously.

Netconcepts is another SEO firm that actually has a share this widget on their customer inquiry form. Yep, I’m sure people would get a lot of value from that page on digg, reddit, stumbleupon, etc.

So, am I just being an angry old man, or do you feel the same? Doesn’t it just feel lazy? It reminds me of something Mitch Hedberg said: “When someone hands you a flyer, it’s like he’s saying, ‘Here, you throw this away.”

When I see a “Share This” in a ridiculous page, it’s like the folks behind the site are saying “Here, you promote this for us even if there’s no value here.”

Note: I realize that many sites are built on a template-based framework, and adding a share this embed code makes it show up on all pages. So yeah, I guess if your enitre site is built that way I can understand. But that seems cop-out-ish.

Ted Dziuba, the blogger most well known for the awesome Uncov blog has a great post about corporate blogging on his personal blog called "It’s All About The Page Rank Stupid." As always, Ted leads off with a strongly worded opening:

If you’re running an online business and have hired a consultant who tells you that you should have a corporate blog to "better connect with the community", fire that consultant.

If you have a corporate blog that is only marginally more interesting than a press release wire, you’re wasting your time.

Ted goes on to say that a corporate blog serves one purpose: distribution. Again, from Ted:

Anyway, how does a blog get you distribution if you’re not concentrating on branding? PageRank. You can and should use your blog for link-building and search engine optimization.

He goes on to use Mint.com as an example of a company that is using their corporate blog to build inbound links to up their google juice. They offer a blog on personal finance that has inbound links to the mint.com service on each post. Since the blog is popular and has thousands of readers, the value of those links to google is relatively high.

This shouldn’t be terribly shocking to anyone, but I think it’s valuable for two reasons. First, it reinforces the fact that blogs can be incredibly useful and in a quantifiable way. Second, if you’re not actually writing useful content on your corporate blog that people see value in, you’re wasting your time.

I have a confession to make: I’m a blogtalkradio fanboy. Yep. It’s true. Since I started using it, I haven’t shut up about it. When I did a presentation at podcamp Boston last year, blogtalkradio was one of my tips on building an audience for the content you create.

With that confession out of the way, let me tell you what blogtalk radio is, and why it rules.

What Is BlogTalkRadio?

Well, here’s what they say about themselves:

BlogTalkRadio is the social radio network that allows users to connect quickly and directly with their audience. Using an ordinary telephone and computer hosts can create free, live, call-in talk shows with unlimited participants that are automatically archived and made available as podcasts. No software download is required. Listeners can subscribe to shows via RSS into iTunes and other feed readers. Our network has produced tens of thousands of episodes since it launched in August of 2006.

Here’s how I describe it: You can have your own live podcast where listeners can call in and ask questions. And when you’re done with it, you automatically get an mp3 of the recording, as well as embed code that you can add to your web site. And it’s all free.

It works like this:

1. You sign up for an account (for free), and they give you a phone number to call. That’s your host number. Whenever you schedule a show, that’s the number you call to start the show.
2. When you’re ready to start a show, you call the number and log in at the site. You have a dashboard that shows any callers. Over at blogstring, Sarah and I used to do a show on BlogTalkRadio. I’d give her the number and she’d call in. Her number would appear on the dashboard and I’d just click on it to enable her “mic”. When the show started, it sounded like we were in the same room even though we were in different states.
3. You also get a listener call in number. Throughout the show and on our blog, we’d give out the number and would encourage people to call in. Again, as soon as someone called I could see it on the dashboard.
4. You get embed code- As soon as you schedule your show, blogtalkradio gives you an embed code to add to your blog/site. That way, your blog readers can listen to you live right on your blog while you broadcast, or they can replay a show after it is over.
5. You’re listed in the blogtalkradio directory- BlogTalkRadio is not only a production and distribution service, they’re also a podcast discovery destination. While most members are there to have their own show, there are also users just looking to find something to listen to. Blogtalkradio has a categorized directory of shows as well as a “What’s On Now” section where listeners can browse through shows that are happening that moment.

The Benefits

1. Content for your site- This is a no-brainer. Having more content for your site is always a good thing, and having embedded audio is always a good thing.
2. Two-way Live Communication- Of course I’m a huge fan of blogging, but it’s really a method of staggered one-way communication. You write a blog post. Someone reads it and leaves a comment. You think about it and comment back. Though it’s definitely a conversation, it’s pretty impersonal and measured. It’s completely different when you’re talking to someone live. There’s something real about that.
3. Networking- When you’re talking about a subject you’re excited about and get to talk with people that share the same passion, it’s a great networking opportunity. And I’m not talking about a “let’s exchange business cards and pretend we care about each other” kind of networking. I’m talking about a “wow, this person really knows what they’re talking about and I’d love to talk with them more” kind of networking.
4. Multi-Channel Promotion- Rather than just having a post on your blog, when you use blogtalkradio, you have content on their site, on your blog, on iTunes, etc. Instead of trying to lure people to your site to hear what you have to say, the content is in multiple places. It’s putting content where people are instead of trying to bring people to your content. That’s a hell of a lot easier, isn’t it?
5. Thought Leadership- I know, I know. “Thought Leadership” is the buzziest of buzz words. But I think it’s obvious to say that if you are consistently and knowledgeably speaking about a topic, there’s a much better chance of being perceived as an expert.

The Risk

Okay, so if you’ve read this far, there’s a pretty good chance that you now understand the upside of using blogtalkradio. So now let me tell you about the risk.

If you use blogtalkradio just to talk about your business, you’ll be ignored. Now, if you’re a company like Microsoft or Sun, you can get away with it. But if you’re a startup without a huge fan base, you’ll probably be seen as a shill. Think about a corollary in real life: think of the last commercial you heard on the radio and imagine that instead of the show you were listening to, the show was instead just an hour long commercial. Would you listen? I’m guessing you would not.

Here’s what I’ve done with some success (at least in my mind): when I worked at matchmine, I had the pleasure of hosting a semi-weekly show called “Talking On The Internet” with Trent Adams. Trent was the founder of matchmine, an officer in the Data Portability Work Group, and pretty much the smartest guy I’ve ever known. He also has a top-notch bullshit detector, so when I convinced him to do a show with me, it was an unspoken law that we wouldn’t just be matchmine cheerleaders. Instead, we talked about broader topics that touched on some of the work we were doing at matchmine, and at the end of the show we plugged the company site and blog. You can hear the shows we did here.

The Effort

The hardest part of having a show on blogtalkradio is the planning. The best way to do it is to have a prep sheet that chunks out the segments you want to cover in 5 minute intervals. It’s amazing how quickly 30 minutes can zoom by…especially if people call in. If anyone wants an example of a prep sheet, shoot me an email and I’ll dig one up for you.

Also, after all prep is done, and before you’re about to go live with the show, it’s time to promote. We’d always do a blog post giving the time, subject, notes, phone number, etc. beforehand, and right before the show was to go live we’d post the URL and phone number on twitter. That seemed to work really well.

Despite the lengthy post here, I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of blogtalkradio. Please let me know if you have any questions and I’ll be happy to help out.

Getting your startup noticed is one of the most essential steps in building a successful online brand. You can have the coolest app/site in the world, but if no one knows about it, well, you’re out of luck. Luckily, promoting your startup isn’t the mysterious and magical process some marketers will have you think. When it comes to online promotion, there are several easy, yet time-consuming steps you can take to get noticed online.

1. Submit Your Site To Relevant Resources- This is a no-brainer, but it is absolutely essential. Find sites that cover what you do, and submit your site there. Some easy ones:
   • KillerStartups.com- Use their online form (http://www.killerstartups.com/submitted)
   • Launchfeed.com- Use this site to announce the launch of your service. Not as important on the site itself, but other sites subscribe to launchfeed and use the info on their blogs.
   • Simplespark- Another source of what’s new online
   • MOMB- (Museum of Modern Betas)- A site listing new apps
   • Go2Web20.net- A flash directory of startups that actually delivers some fairly decent traffic.
   • TechCrunch- The grandaddy of internet startup blogs. You can enter your information here: http://www.crunchbase.com/companies/new
   • CenterNetworks- Another great web 2.0 blog
   • mashable!- Awesome blog covering all that’s new on the web. Read this post before submitting your site: http://mashable.com/2008/04/10/get-your-startup-on-mashable/
   • ReadWriteWeb- http://www.readwriteweb.com/contact.php
   • Blogstring.com and MarketingStartups.com- Hey, it’s easy. Just contact me (nathan.burke@gmail.com), let me know what you do, and if your site or service is relevant, I’ll review it here.

 

2. Blog- This one is easy in theory, not so easy in practice. It should be a no-brainer by now, but so many people think of this as the last step. Rather than using a blog as an ongoing chronicle of the evolution of a startup, they think of a blog as a nice-to-have. 5 years ago that was true. Not now.I won’t get into the specific advantages of blogging, but let’s list a few: a) starting a conversation about your offering, b) adding search engine content c) creating a place for customer feedback

 

3. Comment On Other Blogs- This is one of the most crucial yet most ignored steps. It’s one thing to write your own blog. It’s another to go out and give your thoughts and appreciation to other bloggers. It builds relationships. It adds link love. It ups your google juice. It makes people think you’re an actual human being with opinions. Spend an hour a day doing this and you won’t believe the return you’ll get. I promise.

 

4. Your Logo- I cannot stress the importance of having your logo available in an easy-to-embed format. If I’m checking out a startup, I always want to include their logo in the post. If I can simply right click on your logo and paste it into my post as an image reference, I will do it in a heartbeat. And as a startup, isn’t that what you want?

 

5. Your Text- Have text available. I know how simple this sounds, but it’s not. There are so many new sites out there that are completely flash-based, and it is impossible to copy and paste text embedded in flash. I like being able to go to a site’s “About” section and paste that text into a post. But even the most eloquently worded about text is worthless if it’s all in flash. If it can’t be copied, it won’t be pasted.

 

6. Twitter- Get a twitter account for your startup immediately. Use it to create a human voice behind your brand, and use it to monitor what people are saying about your startup. If you hear positive comments, be thankful. If you hear something negative, respond and try to fix the problem.

 

7. GetSatisfaction- GetSatisfaction is basically a central place for customer service feedback for startups. It’s a great resource. Sign up for an account there and people will find you.

 

8. Go To Events- Another easy one. Go to tweetups, conferences, podcamps, etc. You’ll meet people, you’ll get to talk about your startup, and you’ll get the chance to hone your message each time you meet someone new. This one should be a post in-itself (and will be soon), so I’ll keep it short.

 

9. Create offsite resources- Create a lens at Squidoo about your startup category (not your specific startup, but the category it belongs to) and list your site as one of the players in that category. This way your lens will be seen as a resource rather than a piece of marketing collateral, yet your site will still be listed. Note: don’t be fake here. Definitely make a note of who you are, the fact that you work for a startup being listed there, etc. Be completely transparent and you’ll benefit.Additionally, you might want to have your own blog apart from your startup. Sure, you can and should talk about your startup there, but having yet another domain referencing the startup can only help your inbound links. There are so many opportunities to create offsite resources that reference your startup that I can’t list them here. This also warrants a full post.

 

10. Videos- Make videos. Make a 2 minute video that talks about what you do and put it on your site. Additionally, you should have it on vimeo, blip.tv, youtube, metacafe, and any other video sharing site you can think of.

 

Obviously there are hundreds of techniques to promote your startup online and get noticed, but if you start with these ten, you’ll be off to a great start. And of course, if you are looking for help in promoting your startup, let me know. I know a guy. He’s me.

I just read a great article on kottke.org entitled “Does the broken windows theory hold online?” In the post, Jason Kottke examines the theory of broken windows and how it applies to online interactions:

Here’s the 1982 Atlantic article in which the theory was first discussed in a popular forum. (Great article, BTW.)

“At the community level, disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence. Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.”

Reading these articles, I wondered: how does the broken windows theory apply to online spaces? Perhaps like so:

Much of the tone of discourse online is governed by the level of moderation and to what extent people are encouraged to “own” their words. When forums, message boards, and blog comment threads with more than a handful of participants are unmoderated, bad behavior follows. The appearance of one troll encourages others. Undeleted hateful or ad hominem comments are an indication that that sort of thing is allowable behavior and encourages more of the same. Those commenters who are normally respectable participants are emboldened by the uptick in bad behavior and misbehave themselves. More likely, they’re discouraged from helping with the community moderation process of keeping their peers in line with social pressure. Or they stop visiting the site altogether.

In addition to the presence of malicious users (spammers, etc.), there’s a flipside of the broken windows theory of websites that also comes to mind: the absence of loyal and active users. Think of how many times you’ve been to a forum and had to register to ask a question. If the forum is filled with spam and off-topic posts, how likely is it that you’ll come back? And as a user, what is the chance that you’ll try to outweigh the negative effects of the bad guys?

Since there are so many options available to users, it’s simply easier for a participant to go somewhere else to find what they’re looking for.

It’s a terrible day here in Boston, and I’ve run out of shows on my DVR. So, I thought I’d actually get back to the keyboard and do something productive. As you probably already know, the mashable Open Web Awards nominees have been named, and voting goes until Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008.

Here are the nominees for the category: Mainstream & Large Scale Social Networks

dotblu- I’d never heard of dotblu, and when I checked out the site, it was like being blindfolded and dropped off at a carnival midway. There’s just so much going on everywhere that I have no idea what’s going on. But here’s what the about page says:

dotblu is a community dedicated to friendly competitive online gaming.

Our members compete in a variety of different online games, like prediction questions, quizzes and online flash games. They compete against friends in a fun and friendly atmosphere for BluBucks, our virtual currency, and use their profile to keep up with their friends and show off the wealth of BluBucks they’ve accumulated.

Odds of winning: 37-1

Facebook- Yes, I’ve heard of facebook. It won last year’s Judges Choice award in this category, and I don’t see why it won’t win this year. But the people’s choice last year went to Netlog (a European social network with over 30 million users), so who knows.

Odds of winning: 3-1

Fast Pitch! – Fast Pitch is a little bit like LinkedIn, as the goal of the network is to help professionals enhance their online presence.

Odds of winning: 70-1

FriendFeed – friendfeed isn’t really a social network in my mind. Rather, it’s more of a social aggregator that bridges connections between other social networks.

Odds of winning: 10-1

koornk – koornk is a “personal shouting place” that seems to be exactly like twitter, but in another language.

Odds of winning: 7-1

Multiply – Multiply is a social network for families, with the tagline “Multiply makes it easy to create, share and discuss your blog, photos, and videos with more of the people you know, and fewer of the people you don’t.”

Odds of winning: 13-1

MyHeritage – A family network that combines your family tree with social components. I’d never used MyHeritage before, and I love it. Most genealogy sites make sharing very clumsy and often associate a cost with even basic functionality. Not this one.

Odds of winning: 15-1

MySpace – We all know about myspace, but I think that its popularity is in decline with the mashable-aged audience.

Odds of winning- 8-1

Netlog – This was last year’s People’s Choice winner, and I’m not sure why. So hey, it must be a top contender again this year.

Odds of winning- 2-1

Platinum Lounge Just don’t. Don’t click that link. Don’t go to the Platinum Lounge. Unless this site is a brilliant parody, I’d suggest you just move along.

Odds of winning- 9999-1

ShareNow Another social network focused on sharing photos, videos, etc. They seem to focus more on meeting new friends based on shared interests.

Odds of winning- 5-1

sMeet – A social network where you create an avatar, and communicate with friends in a secondlife-like 3D environment.

Odds of winning- 23-1

Squidoo – Basically a modern-day geocities. You build a page called a “lens”, slap some ads on it, etc.

Odds of winning- 14-1

Twitter – See, this is a weird one. Twitter won the Judges Choice Award for best mobile app last year, and this year it’s up for an award in the mainstream & large scale social network category. And since people that use twitter LOVE twitter, I have a feeling it will win.

Odds of winning- 2-1

So, there we have it. I’m calling this one for twitter. You can vote for your favorite using the widget embedded below: