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.

Last night we held the first Boston-Area Startup Marketing Meetup here at Aprigo’s world headquarters in Waltham. I gave a presentation entitled “Getting Your Startup Noticed Online”. It was mostly tactical and focused on execution and content promotion, with a little bit of strategy sprinkled in.

About one minute in, I noticed a few attendees feverishly taking notes. That’s when I realized I didn’t mention that I’d make the slides from the presentation available. Here they are (PDF Format).

This was the opening night of Aprigo’s worldwide multimedia production division (as in, we had a camcorder and a laptop with a webcam), so we tried something a little new. First, we were broadcasting the session live via stickam. Additionally, we took some digitial video footage and they’re available below.

It was a great event, and we really look forward to future Boston-Area Startup Marketing Meetups in the future. If you’re interested in checking them out, please join us on our Meetup Group page where you’ll meet over 100 other area startup marketers.

Boston Area Startup Marketing Meetup June 2009- The Intros from aprigo on Vimeo.

The June 2009 Boston Area Startup Marketing Presentation- Nathan Burke from aprigo on Vimeo.

I just missed the keynote address from Steven Johnson on “The New Models of Innovation”, and it sounds like I really missed a good one. I had to run to the car and feed the meter, and decided to just put it in the garage. Dumb move. I should have stuck around, as Johnson is the guy that wrote the cover story on Twitter for Time magazine, and his talk addressed the new models of innovation and idea sharing that are starting to appear on Facebook and Twitter. Looking at the twitter stream during his talk, he drew analogies from 18th century ale houses and the like, and I’m a sucker for putting modern technologies in a historical context. Wish I saw that.

Anyway, I just changed my mind and decided to check out the panel entitled “Website Development & Analytics: Building the Optimal Website That Delivers Business Results”. Here’s what the description says:

B2B Companies need their websites to be their first sales call and their lead nurturing system. In part one of this two-part session, we will show you how to get your brand positioning front and center on your site, while also creating a navigation and content structure that moves buyers and influencers through their decision process and become qualified leads. We’ll show you examples of several website renovation projects with different challenges where all necessary components of a new web site were built in from the beginning- SEO, analytics, and set up to guide continuous improvement of customer experience and engagement.

You will learn:

• About templates for defining your visitors needs and motivations more clearly
• Techniques to architect navigation structures, content, interactive tools and conversion offers to support the buying cycle
• Considerations for choosing CMS, search platforms, and social media tools

Speakers:
Karen Breen Vogel, CEO/President, ClearGauge
Mike Tittel, Director of Interactive, Gyro:HSR

At my current job, we’ve just planned out our next 4-5 months, and moving out of stealth mode to a new CMS, a lead scoring and nurturing system, and signing up users are going to be the focus (at least on my end). Since we’re still in the process of deploying our new CMS and integrating with things like Salesforce.com, Hubspot, and Google Analytics, I’m hoping this presentation will give me some new ideas and questions to ask about our decisions moving forward.

A good b-to-b web site should be just like a consultative sales call.

One of the biggest problems of b-to-b sites is that the home page does not provide evidence that user goals can be completed.

A b2b site must

• Satisfy Users and their goals
• Support Business Objectives
• Deliver Brand Experience

To satisfy these requirements, sites must:

• Be usable
• Be Relevant
• Map Engagement to the Purchase Decision Lifecycle
• Be Constantly Measured and Improved
• Clearly Differentiate Your Brand
• Be Trustworthy

Looks like my battery is going to die. I’ll try to update this later.

All right, here we go. The wireless is working, I’ve got a power strip right next to me, and I’ve consumed about a half gallon of apple juice. Life is most certainly good.

The first session I’m checking out is all about SEO, a topic that has always fascinated me. Here’s the description:

Bringing SEO In-house Without Missing A Beat

Many companies are considering bringing SEO in-house to save money, but doing so is challenging. It’s usually done with a lot of trial and error and often has a detrimental impact on the program. In this session, we’ll show you how companies are bringing their SEO programs in-house wihtout missing a beat. You’ll discover real-life examples about how companies are implementing SEO in-house across the globe.

You’ll learn:

• How to mitigate the obstacles
• What works, what doesn’t work
• When it still makes sense to use an outside agency, and how to make the most of your spend

Speakers:

Jessica Bowman- In-house SEO Advocate, founder of SEOinhouse.com
Bill Scully, Director E-Marketing, Siemens Water TEchnologies

Jessic Bowman isn’t here, so Bill Scully is jumping in to run the show. Rather than making the presentation about moving from an agency to in-house, he’s going to focus on what to do to optimize SEO in house.

In house SEO requires dedication and continuous learning, and takes up a huge percentage of a person’s time. He’s showing his Daily, Weekly and Yearly tasks:

Daily SEM tasks:

Listen to SEO and Online Marketing Podcasts- Downloading and listening to them going to and from work.
Reading SEO/SEM Newsletters and Blogs
Check Twitter Account for breaking news
Keep  a journal- Keeping a log of tests and changes
Check Analytics

Weekly SEM tasks:

Analyze web logs and reports for:

• Key campaign traffic changes
• Goal changes
• Overall Traffic Changes
• 404 errors
• Linking Generation Reports

SEO maintenance:

• Page sculpting
• Copy optimization
• Work with IT
• Link building

Monthly SEM tasks:

• Attend WebEx
• Audit site/templates
• Check all no-follows are still in place
• Make sure robots.txt file is still correct
• Check custom 404 Page is still working
• Check redirects are 301 and go to the proper pages
• Update XML site map

Yearly:

• Put together a 1 and 3 year SEO strategic Plan
• Budget
• Review staffing, service, training needs

Overall Strategy to get More Buy-in

Identify what you need to do

• Do an SEO audit
• Get a WordTracker Account
• Start a program under the radar

Roll Out Small Pilot

• Work with early adopters and meet monthly

Expand Pilot

• Success breeds success
• Go after easy wins
• Ask for bigger commitment ($)

Make Business Case

• Share Stats
• Share competitive research

Ask for buy-in

• Market your Keyword Tools
• Meet with Product/Market Mgrs
• Go after next year plans

That’s it for Bill, and now that Jessica is here, we’re going to go back to the other side of the presentation. The slides are available here.

Session Review Before It Is Over- Yup, I’m going to review this one right in the middle, as the presenter is taking time out to monkey around with the powerpoint file.

This one was okay. I think the reason I didn’t learn anything here is that:

• I’m not from a huge company looking to bring SEO in-house
• Because of that, I don’t need to learn the process of getting buy-in from different departments

So, if I were from a large company looking for advice into how to get more $$ for an in-house PPC campaign, this might be a really informative session for me. I’m definitely not knocking it; I’m just not the right audience.

The key takeaway from the session is this: SEO takes a lot of time, and you’re probably doing it wrong. That’s the message that I’m hearing here.

One bullet that makes sense: In-house resources often do not have the respect of a consultant. I completely agree with this. In my experience, an in-house person that is absolutely kicking maximum ass at driving traffic to the site is seen as an amateur doing the bare minimum. The company brings in a consultant that puts together a 15 slide PowerPoint that regurgitates Matt Cutts quotes, talks about Meta Tags and charges $5K, and they’re hailed as a genius without actually doing anything.

I’ve been there before, folks (three or 4 jobs ago), and I’m not bitter at all.

Piece of advice: Everyone that wants to get started with Keyword Suggestions, Difficulty of keywords, SEO score and grading, etc. that is in a b-to-b company that is currently using an agency should sign up for Hubspot. I strongly recommend it.

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.

On March 24-26 here in Boston, there will be a conference entitled “The Business of Community Networking“. The overview:

We have designed the one marketing event that you can’t afford to miss – a best practice conference to create social networks and measure ROI of online marketing. Help your business interact, network and exchange knowledge using social media, reach new customers and make your performance soar. After three days of premier content delivered by over 25 talented speakers and panelists, you leave with a plan to take your company’s marketing to a whole new level.

I’ll be there covering the event, and the agenda is available here. Some of the sessions planned include:

• Identifying How Personality Drives Word of Mouth Marketing for Your Online Community – How To Develop a Successful Online Community
• Developing a Community Networking Strategy – Steps to Take
• Best Practices in Social Media Strategies
• The Chicken or The Egg: The Real Deal About “Viral” Marketing
• Understanding the Conversation Online Between Consumers – Focusing on Blogging
• Understanding the ROI with Community Marketing

Though I like going to the conferences that focus mainly on tactics and execution, one that is all about measuring ROI is really exciting.

My article titled Plinky Launches As A Blogger’s Friend, A Marketer’s Dream is now available on Media Bullseye.

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.

Marta Kagan is a bonafide marketing genius. At least that’s what she calls herself. She’s right.

Marta works for Viximo, the Boston-area virtual goods startup, and the company just released an iPhone app called TrueFlirt. Since Marta is tasked with getting folks to buy the app, she came up with what I think is a pretty awesome strategy. I’ve always been a huge fan of Marta’s work, as she is truly creative and original. You’ll see in the voice she uses. Here’s the message I received on facebook:

** 48-HOUR FRIENDS-ONLY OFFER: FREE $10 ITUNES CARD **

Just when you thought friending me on Facebook couldn’t be any more thrilling, I figured out how to make it just so! Some people might call it "bribery," I like to call it "marketing". Basically, it involves me giving you a $10 iTunes gift card — and no, you don’t have to do something crazy like eat bugs to get it.

Here’s the dealio:

1. Go to the iTunes App Store now and download TrueFlirt, the sexy little iPhone app (built by my posse here at Viximo) that lets you flirt—with style. TrueFlirt is just $3.99 through Valentine’s Day—and much less filling than those sugary Necco hearts. Here’s the link: http://tinyurl.com/TrueFlirt

2. FLIRT WITH ME! No, really. TrueFlirt lets you send virtual "flirts" to other iPhone users. To get your $10 iTunes gift card, you’ll have to send that first flirt to me.

Personally, I’d love for you to send the Love Potion flirt (I’m kinda thirsty), but I’ll let you take your pick—there are 10 gorgeous "flirts" to choose from.

Here’s the number to send your flirt to: 617-417-7444

(No, I wont tell your girlfriend—or boyfriend or husband or wife—that you sent me a flirt. It’s all good, clean fun in the name of "marketing," remember?)

**IMPORTANT: Be sure to add a message with your email address so I can get you your iTunes gift card lickety split.**

3. Rate & review TrueFlirt at the iTunes App Store. (Here’s the link again http://tinyurl.com/TrueFlirt)

4. Join the TrueFlirt Facebook ‘Fan Club’ here: http://tinyurl.com/TrueFlirtFans

5. (Optional) Tell your friends! Know someone who has an iPhone? Think they might like a free $10 iTunes gift card? Forward this message to them.

So let’s review—
How to Get Your Free $10 iTunes Gift Card—without even leaving your chair:
Buy the app, send a flirt, write a review, join the club, pass it on…!
Easy peasy rice & cheesy.

Isn’t Facebook friendship a beautiful thing?

Flirt on,
Marta

**Note to friends who don’t have an iPhone:
WHAT?! YOU DON’T HAVE AN iPHONE YET?! Honestly, I’m not even sure why we’re friends. (Just kidding.) Seriously – I’d love to share the wealth with you despite your poor choice of technology, but unfortunately TrueFlirt was made only for the iPhone. Get back to me when you’ve realized the error of your ways.

Marta also duplicated the message on her blog in a post called "Flirt with me. I dare you. (I’ll also give you $10)"

Personally, I think this is awesome. If I had an iPhone, I’d do it in a second. Why? Well, first of all, people with iPhones buy songs on iTunes. So it would just make sense economically to spend $4 to get a $10 iTunes card. Second, I’d tell people I know about the deal since it’s basically a free $5 for doing something insanely simple.

And since her free $10 iTunes promotion is only good for 48 hours, it’s not like Viximo is going to continue to lose money acquiring each user. Instead, they’re basically paying a small amount of money to build buzz, thus moving TrueFlirt up in the iTunes App Gallery. Right now it has 22 Reviews (not bad for one day), a few of them are 5 stars.

I think this is excellent. Thoughts?