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There is a common belief in the startup ecosystem stating that the founder is the best salesman.Who else would be more passionate and truly devoted to the startup’s purpose than the founder who’s been working day and night for months in a row, if not years?1. Ensure that your content is worth sharingIf you truly strive for the best value possible, building viral content is simply a matter of time. You won’t generate hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors with 20 or 30 posts but traffic would grow steadily along with your brand awareness as long as you produce incredible content.In terms of conducting a reality check, focus on two separate activities:Product-market fitCompetitor analysisThe first portion revolves around finding your voice and establishing your niche:What does your buyer persona look like?Who is your ideal customer?What are their most pressing problems?What are the key challenges that you can help them with?Defining your ideal client and figuring out their business needs is the first point. If you are intimately familiar with their main problems and can help them out, there’s no reason people won’t visit your website, share your content and continue following you.2. Find out what topics are of use for your prospectsIn terms of competitor research, figure out what topics are your competitors writing about and what is the type of content that gets viral. You can use BuzzSumo in order to establish that.For instance, if you specialize in giving recruitment advice to startups, you can search for “startups recruitment”, “hiring advice” or “best recruitment tips” and list some of the most viral stories across the web. As a popular business topic, you can certainly find LinkedIn, Forbes, Inc, HuffPost.Since there’s a limited list of records, you may want to narrow these down to a specific competitor of yours - like recruiter.com, startupdaily.net, recruitingtimes.org:Browse your competitors’ stories and note the type of content that gets viral. Some of the other sources focus on more buzz and pranks through work memes, recruitment fails, or other link-bait techniques that bring traffic and exposure.Depending on your target market and the type of brand you want to build, make sure that your content is in line with your prospects’ needs.While brand awareness is really important - you don’t want to associate yourself with the type of persona that doesn’t reflect your personality, attitude, and business values.3. Select your best distribution networkThe sample research case below has an interesting breakdown of predominant shares of different stories across various social networks. The first topic is an infographic and has generated over 2K shares on Pinterest. The second one has generated the most shares on LinkedIn. The third one is a winner on Facebook.In addition to studying your audience and their needs, you need to select the right type of distribution network depending on the medium and where your ideal customers hang out.Create a content distribution matrix that resembles the one designed by Smart Insights:List all distribution opportunities that you can come up with and prioritize them by investment and effectiveness. The sweet spot are the ones that require low investment and can become viral - although that’s hard to achieve and may still not be applicable in each and every use case.4. Outreach and repetitionGiven that your content is spectacular and outcompetes everything else there, start sharing it across your channels.Consider republishing some valuable nuggets or recaps here on Quora, on LinkedIn Pulse, Medium, Reddit or other group platforms. Think about social directories like StumbleUpon as well.Reach out to your network and ask them to share as well. Post as relevant business groups that you have been active in. Mention influencers and other industry leaders who would actually benefit from your copy.The most important thing to avoid here is: Don’t be spammy. You may build your personal brands for years and ruin it overnight if you’re too aggressive with your campaigns. Protect your reputation at all cost. Only participate and distribute to channels where you’ve been active in before and have provided some value already.There are different guides when joining new groups or networks online but a rough ratio would be 4–5 valuable articles from 3rd party reputable sources mixed with one of your own. You want to provide value. And let’s be real - you don’t own the entire valuable content in your industry.Building connections with group members, influencers, partners, bloggers, journalists takes time. That’s a whole new topic by itself and the more well known and respectable you are in your field, the lesser the chance people would find your content to be intrusive. I’ve written a 3K+ words guide on becoming an influencer through content marketing and connections which may help out with this one - 8 Actionable Steps to Get Featured by Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc. and More - Triberr5. Acquiring regular readersUnless you’re selling $10 ebooks, you’ll likely have to nurture your customers and go through a long process of building trust.According to some branding and marketing experts, prospects need to connect with your brand through various digital channels at least 6–7 times in order to get used to perceiving you as an industry leader.As a result, you need to produce more valuable content that would be of use to them - and keep them around for when you publish this content.The easiest and most common approach is email marketing. Add some non-intrusive and helpful email forms across your website that would sign people to your email list.What works best is adding an extra bonus to your offer - a short guide, a checklist, an ebook or something else that you can send to your subscribers. Emails are valuable and you need to deliver even more value to your readers.Twitter followers or Facebook likes also help. The distribution volume isn’t as high for sure but it may help out with sharing across these networks, too.There are other techniques for growing your exposure and traffic through SEO, PPC, guest posting, smart link building and so on. What matters the most is building really valuable content that’s worth sharing and retaining your visitors so that they could continuously receive your business advice tailored to their field.Additional advice on content marketing strategy and content distribution here on Quora:Mario Peshev's answer to Why is content marketing important?Mario Peshev's answer to Why do some websites rank on the first page even without long content?

This approach will help you think of a solid startup idea.It is broken into 5 steps to facilitate progress through a system that in total should take about 30-40 hours to complete over a week or two, if you do it all.Add rigor and discipline to your brainstorming and idea evaluation process:Build lists of potential customer types and business or pricing models.Evaluate the opportunities where these lists overlap.Then, exit your ivory tower and evaluate the top ideas with real potential users, customers, or suppliers.This will improve your likelihood of success and waste less time down the road, even if you pivot from your original idea.Preface: There certainly are simpler answers like, “pick an area that is trending”, “look for a large market that hasn’t changed in 10 years”, or “convert your hobby into a business”. Unfortunately those aren’t particularly helpful, and since this question comes up often in discussions, I wanted to get my thoughts down in a more comprehensive way. I’m sure Quora will have some good feedback for me :)Also, while this answer covers the ideation part of the journey, keep in mind that implementing the idea is the hard part.Three primary paths to a new business idea1. The spontaneous idea: It hits you when you’re in the shower, driving in your car, talking with friends, or doodling during a meeting. The dots suddenly connect in a new way and you have an epiphany...your sudden insight is surprising and exciting, and the value of this new idea seems obvious. You can’t believe nobody else has thought of it before!So you go online and poke around...and...most of the time it turns out that someone has thought of it before. But, you still might be able to do it better...so you keep thinking about it and a day passes, and you start to realize some problems. You share it with a few trusted friends and get feedback about a lot of things you hadn’t thought of yet (e.g., nobody pays for it, it’s a tiny market, etc.). It could turn out to be a great idea, but you don’t know, you have a good job, and it is uncharted territory...so you let the dream slowly die away. Cheer up, that was probably the right decision.2. The insider idea: Maybe you’ve spent the last 7 years building enterprise software for airlines and you’ve noticed some voids in the product stack or issues with how your company brings it to market. You point these deficiencies out to your bosses, but there are other company priorities and nothing changes. Or, say your company pays vendors a lot of money to do some work, but nobody ever seems happy with the results....and you see a way to do it better for less. Or, maybe you witnessed your company kill an amazing new product or feature not because testing didn’t show user interest, but for political or organizational reasons.You see an opportunity to do it on your own, so you start moonlighting on a solution. You gather more specific information, talk to trusted co-workers and industry contacts, and determine the viability of solving the problem. The good thing is, you’re already knowledgeable and well positioned/networked in the business space...so good luck to you!3. The deliberate idea: In this case, you aren’t starting with a business idea. Instead, you’re starting with a desire to create a new business and become an entrepreneur. You may be ready to quit your job and go for it whole-hog, or just start it on the side of your desk...but you’re looking for the right business idea to pursue (which could be a business related to your work environment or industry, as in #2).While the first two paths may happen unintentionally, the third is for people who know they want to start a company, but don't yet have their idea. If you fall into the third group, then this answer is for you.#3 The Deliberate IdeaIdeation is fun and freeing, but it is the easy part of the process. Execution of your idea separates the wheat from the chaff and is where most people fail. That said, coming up with the right idea will improve your odds of successful execution. This system will help you do that well.Step 1 - Decide what is your primary motivation or personal goal for starting this (1 hour)For example, do you want a:Fun or hobby based business (e.g., making bracelets to sell on Etsy (product))Part-time lifestyle business that could become full time (e.g., running a wine-investment club)Full-time startup hoping for acquisition exit in 3-5 years (e.g., It’s like Airbnb (product) for fish, get it?)Large, cash-flow positive business (e.g., B2B furniture import and delivery business)Path to industry credibility and networking over financial gain (e.g., scriptwriting peer-training exchange for aspiring comedy writers)Create a new spreadsheet and write down your goal in the first tab. It may seem like overkill now, but if you take a break from this project you’ll want to be able to have it as a frame of reference when picking it back up.Step 2 - Frame the problem (2 hours)If you try to just write down a list of ideas from scratch, you’ll probably be underwhelmed with the results. You’ll likely hit a block after a handful of ideas, and what you come up with will be based on your predispositions...i.e., if you are a gamer, you’ll have ideas for games. If you work in cloud computing, you’ll have ideas for new approaches, etc. This isn’t a bad thing, but it is limiting.Instead, make a deliberate effort to facilitate your own brainstorming.In the spreadsheet you created in step 1, create a new sheet and type out a list of 15-20 different categories of customer/audience types in the first column. Don’t start with the usual demographic descriptions like, “18-35 year olds in urban environments making over $100k per year”. Instead, use descriptive phrases that represent specific groups of consumers and/or businesses with unique challenges and needs. These tend to be easier to conceptualize so they are more useful and helpful for generating ideas.Start with some that relate to your personal interests, hobbies, experience or professional network, but don't limit yourself to them. Some examples include retail insurance agents, cyclical dieters, ex-pats in Asia, news junkies, people that eat out 3+ times per week, new college grads, stay-at-home mothers, winemakers, startup founders raising money, youth sports teams, companies at trade shows, wedding planners, gamers, health nuts, software development agencies, etc. If you’re having trouble coming up with enough, broaden to specific industries, e.g., public transportation, dating, real estate, etc. If you’re going after a specific geography, call it out (e.g., ex-pats in Asia).Next, along the first row of your spreadsheet, type the business or pricing models (i.e., the type of business) that you could apply to these customers/audiences. There’s no exact right or wrong approach, and I’m using the term “business model” very liberally here. Not all models will apply to each group and some overlap is okay. Remember, you’re doing this to help you brainstorm and compare new business ideas, not to become an expert on business models.For example, subscriptions, product bundling, risk management/insurance, auctions, resale/classifieds, peer-to-peer exchanges, outsourcing non-core functions, freemium, advertising-supported content, new product development, after-sale care, daily deals (discounted pre-sale), collaborative consumption (think AirBnB), rapid evaluation/matching (e.g., Tinder), sales channel innovation, lead generation and referrals, marketplace, brokerage, BI/CI solutions, community, etc. (more here: TechCrunch business models)Step 3 - Generate ideas (4-6 hours)Your spreadsheet is now a grid with customer/audience types down the side and business/pricing models across the top. Each box where the two lists overlap is a place to brainstorm ideas. Go through each square in this grid. You can dismiss many of the boxes in a few seconds (e.g., Business Intelligence for stay-at-home moms?), but it is worth giving each consideration as you’ll inevitably come up with ideas you didn’t expect.The easiest way to do this is go column by column. Pick a business or pricing model, think of a few existing businesses that use it, and spend 5 minutes reading about them to get your head into that space. Then, apply it to each potential customer or audience group: how could it fit? What are their priorities, what gets in their way, where are they wasting time or money, what do they depend upon? Browse discussion forums where they participate or are discussed. See what they care about, what people complain about. Search online for other companies that already compete to offer them products and services. What are they?Your pass through the first column will take the most time, because you're learning about each of the 15-20 customer types as you go. It speeds up after that.Each time you come up with a keeper, type it into the corresponding box. For example, providing after-sale customer management for retail insurance agents? Or, a debt auction business for startups looking to raise seed funding? Type it in.Note: You may have 2+ ideas in a box. To add a new line inside of a cell type Alt-Enter for Excel on PC, Option-Command-Enter for Excel on Mac, Ctrl-Enter for Google Docs on MacTry to come up with at least 6 solid ideas. Then, create another tab in your spreadsheet and list all of your ideas there. In addition to writing down the ideas themselves, you should state the goal, audience(s), and model(s) for each one. These will change over time, but it is good to start grounded with something you can work-back towards.Step 4 - Evaluate ideas and narrow it down (3 hours)The next step is to evaluate your list of 6+ ideas against a set of criteria that will help you narrow down to the most promising three. For example:Heat in this space: E.g., Some answers on QuoraYour experience and connections: Do you have experience in this industry or with similar businesses? Are you well connected with friends or family that operate in this space? Any advantages, or disadvantages?Alignment with goals: How well does this align to your original goal? Are the upfront capital costs compatible with the level of investment you want to make in this business?Market opportunity: How big is this market and how unique or differentiated is your approach? Consider competition here, but don’t be discouraged by the presence of competition. It is validation that the space is interesting. Also, there are plenty of companies have come along and disrupted markets that others had written off as already solved, like:Google ... after Altavista, Metacrawler, Lycos, etc.Facebook ... after Friendster, MySpaceUber ... after Yellow cab, black car services, etc.Gmail ... after AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail, etc.iPhone ... after Blackberry, Palm, Windows MobileFlipboard, Wavii, Zite, Pulse, Prismatic, etc. ... after Yahoo!, AOL, MSN, CNNYou probably don’t have time to really deep-dive on 10 ideas, so getting this narrowed down is both science and art. What does your gut tell you, what would be fun, where are you most comfortable and confident?OPTIONAL STEP: To add more science try quantifying some of these criteria.To do this, add a column to the Ideas tab, one for each criterion. Then, for each new column score your ideas from 1-5, with 5 being the best. So, for “Alignment with my goal”, a 5 means it aligns perfectly, and a 1 means it doesn’t align at all (e.g., your goal is to create a fun hobby business, but the idea is to sell offshore development services to technology companies in the US).Don’t worry if you aren’t sure whether something is a 3 or a 4, just go with your gut or do 5 minutes of online research. Keep moving forward, don't get stuck here bogged down in the weeds.When you’re finished, add up the scores and sort your list by the sum of these scores. In theory, the higher the score, the more interesting the idea should be to you.When you’re done evaluating your ideas run them by a couple of trusted friends, and narrow it down to the three that seem most promising. If you do the optional scoring step, don’t feel like you must pick the three that scored highest.Note - we could have used these criteria earlier in step 2 to narrow down the list of audiences and business/pricing models, but that would have limited the creative process too far upstream (i.e., before the brainstorming process), so I suggest waiting.Step 5 - Deep dive on those 3 ideas (20-30 hours over a week or two)Congratulations, you have come up with 3 solid ideas! Now it’s time to step out of your ivory tower and start getting street-level information and feedback. There are three basic steps for doing this (i.e., 5_a, _b, and _c) that are general enough to apply to most types of ideas.A quick aside: at this point people ask, "If I share my idea with a lot of people, won't someone steal it?" The answer is possibly, but unlikely. As previously mentioned, there are a lot of startup ideas but few people with the time, energy, or know-how to implement them. The benefits of getting good feedback early on outweigh the risk that someone will steal it. So, don't tell people that won't benefit you, and avoid telling direct competitors that are in a position to do it themselves, or to block you from doing it, but generally don't worry. Related questions / blog posts:Will a VC or Angel steal my idea?How can I be sure people won't steal my idea during a pitch?Will anyone steal my startup idea?Why you shouldn’t keep your startup idea secret5_a. Get smart(er) (6-8 hours)You will be able to evaluate and refine your ideas 10x faster by engaging in discussions with real potential customers, users, and partners. But, if you go into these unprepared you’ll wind up asking the wrong questions, sounding out of place, and wasting your opportunity and their time.So, before you invest in surveys, coffee shop chats, or informational meetings, you need to get up to speed on the basics of the industry you are targeting. If you gave yourself a 5 in the “Experience and connections” category in Step 4, you can skip this. If not, invest 2-3 hours per idea.Note - throughout this process you should take detailed notes. Create a new tab for each of your ideas, or an entirely new document; doesn’t really matter as long as you can write stuff down. Track who you've spoken with, emailed, feedback, etc. Trust me, you will be glad that you wrote this all down.This will probably take a couple of days. At minimum I would:Call up or email savvy friends and family to get their thoughts (LinkedIn is a great tool for this).Give them the 10,000 foot view of your idea and ask for their opinion. (Take good notes on or right after the call; do not trust your memory for this.)Ask them what they think is the biggest problem with it, otherwise they might just say nice things.If they’re in your industry then ask if they know of other companies in your space, what they think is broken, etc.Ask them who they would speak with if they had your idea. Ask if you can get informational interviews with those people.Talk to potential investors if possibleThey don’t have to be the people that will actually invest in your business, but at this step ideally you have a personal relationship with them. Position your conversation as looking for advice to make a decision, not their money.Anyone you know that does angel investing, VC, M&A, etc., will have a trained perspective.Do lots of online research. For example:Find out who competes in this space, and add them to your spreadsheet.Read their websites, watch their videos, and search for them together, e.g., “Windows AND Android AND iPhone”. These search queries surface articles and blog posts that analyze the broader industry, offering helpful perspective and discovery of competitors you missed. E.g., “Windows, Android and iPhone versus Blackberry”.Browse on Wikipedia to learn industry vocabulary and organization.Search Quora for questions about the industry or these competitors.Determine external dependenciesYou may need data. Is it available free or paid, or will you have to mine it yourself, etc.?Do you need any particular physical materials, machinery, etc. that are hard to come by?Will you require any permits or government approvals?Will you need to hire any specialists people that are particularly difficult to find and recruit?Expensive equipment?Will you need to raise a significant amount of outside funding just to get started b/c there are high capital costs?Etc.Now you are smart enough to have the intelligent conversations with people in your prospective industries, and you probably have also improved and refined your ideas. Woohoo, you’re getting closer to “the one”.At this point a lot of people would pick something and invest time in “creating” their business. I.e., set up a corporation, pick a name, secure a domain, design a logo, print business cards, figure out their title, etc. While these things feel like progress towards a “real company”, they are an unnecessary distraction at this point. It is much wiser to spend that energy on validation of your idea, like testing with real customers, meeting competitors, mocking up prototypes, etc.5_b. Talk to potential customers, competitors, and industry partners you don’t know personally (5-10 hours)Before you pour your heart and soul into a new venture, you should validate it outside of your friends and family circle. Is this solving a real issue for potential users or customers? Would they be willing to pay for it...or do businesses even have budget for what you’re offering? Again, the mechanics of this depend on the type of business idea that you have (e.g., starting a sandwich shop vs. office supply delivery vs. peer-to-peer insurance), but here are some general approaches that I would recommend.Run an online surveyQuick way to get a relatively large sample of answers from your target customers or audience.There are probably others, but Google Surveys is drop-dead simple to use and it allows you to easily limit responses to your target (e.g., people that buy life insurance).It’ll cost you a couple hundred bucks per survey. A cheap alternative is to post the concept on a discussion forum or Quora to get feedback.Talk with your potential customers/audienceIf you’re targeting consumers, figure out where they spend time and go there to ask them questions (e.g., certain neighborhoods or coffee shops, concerts, sporting events, conventions, etc.). If you end up in a coffee shop, print a sign for the back of your laptop that says “Your feedback on my idea for a free latte”!If you’re targeting B2C businesses, approach them as a customer, and ask them some questions. Buy something if they sell retail.If you’re targeting B2B businesses, email them or go to conferences that they attend, etc. Try to get an informational interview based on the premise that you’re working to improve the industry and do something valuable for them, so you need their expertise and advice. People like it when others ask for their ‘expertise’.Talk with suppliersThis is relatively easy, since you are a potential buyer and they will want your business.In a previous step you identified the external dependencies you’ll want to take, i.e., what you should buy vs. build, and some possible vendors. Get meetings with them.You need to verify your assumptions, and while a lot of the details will be available on their website, information about pricing, access restrictions, etc., is often not, so you’ll want to email or call them to get details.Try to speak to more than 1 provider for each item so you can compare prices and look for differences or similarities, which will tell you a lot about the industry.OPTIONAL - Start selling before you have anything to sellSome people call this doing a “smokescreen test”, and the mechanics of it really depend on the business idea. In many cases, it actually won’t be practical to do this until you are working on your final idea.B2C: If you’re targeting consumers you can do this via the Google or Facebook ad platforms.B2B: If businesses, then send a bunch of emails to potential customers (you can find them online) with a proposed offer and price...vary the price and offer details and keep track of how people respond (hopefully some do). see if you can get on the phone with one or two of them. Learn what questions they ask, what they push back on, if the price seems reasonable. If someone wants what you’re selling, then you may have your first customer if you can deliver something quickly (you won’t be the first to sell something before you own it...remember Bill Gates and IBM (company))5_c. Write abbreviated business plans (7-10 hours)We’ve spent a lot of time working on the individual components of each idea, and now it is time to step back and see the big picture. Bring your thinking and research together into a brief business plan for each idea that still appears to be worth pursuing. If it is obvious from the previous steps that that an idea isn’t going to work, drop it.Here’s a suggested outline. Try to limit it to be 2-3 pages, and no more than 3 hours per idea:Page 1One-line description of your idea:[Company] will <do, make, or provide> for <target audience or customer> so that <the value/outcome you bring>.Example: Lewis Industries will develop customer management software for automotive dealerships so that they can increase loyalty post-sale and sell more services and upgrades to consumers that buy vehicles.Description of your products and services: 150 word description of the problems you are addressing and the scenarios you will focus on first.Page 2How and when you monetize: Will you start as a free service for everyone, and hope to monetize later through premium offerings (freemium) or advertising (ad-supported)? Or, will you start charging immediately, or never? You won’t know for sure, but give your best guess.Distribution model: How will potential customers or users discover you? What marketing and/or partner channels do you plan to use?External dependencies: For what core things will you rely on others to provide, e.g., A database of all vehicle makes and models, and option packages since 1970? You should have this list from previous steps, and don’t worry about generic things (e.g., office space).Page 3Estimated cost to reach your Minimum Viable Product (MVP): Just try to get in the ballpark here. The main reason to figure this out during the ideation stage is that it will impact how you approach starting the business, which may or may not align with your goals. I.e., if you’re planning to build a Zipcar for trucks and need to raise $2 million for the vehicles, then you probably can’t do it as a lifestyle business off the side of your desk.What are the major external dependencies and how much will they cost (e.g., $20,000 for the automotive database)How much development and design do you need to do for this idea, any large capital costs (e.g., a fleet of trucks)?Here are some places to learn how to estimate these costs: Estimating startup costs for a new businesses (StartupNation), How to estimate the cost of starting a business from scratch (United States SBA), Estimate startup costs (Entrepreneur)Summary of idea’s strengths and weaknesses (1-2 sentences for each)Research: What did you learn from your survey, calls, emails and online research that supports or challenges this idea? E.g., Positive if 67% of people surveyed say they will pay $10 for this, less so if 4 of the 5 companies you spoke with have no interest in what you’re proposing.Industry/macro trends: Will you have a tailwind or a headwind doing this? List out the specifics (e.g., My largest customer, retirees, is estimate to grow at 10% per year for the next 20 years.)Your knowledge and connections: You'll have a good sense for this, but write it down anyways. E.g., I have spent 4 years working on software for this industry, and x, y, and z from college are potential buyers.Risks: Are you taking dependencies where the solution isn’t yet clear? How competitive is the market, and what advantages do competitors have...or, is competition not a deterrent for x reason?You could easily increase the scope of this business plan by an order of magnitude, and there are a dozen templates for this (Writing a Business Plan) or approaches to analyzing your ideas (e.g., SWOT analysis). The important thing is that you’re being honest and self-critical, because ultimately you are the one taking the risk.Step 6 - Pick the best idea and get startedIf after all of this digging you are still feeling really good about one of these ideas, then go for it...this is where the real work begins. You’re going to need to think about financing, hiring, networking, and business operations in addition to the fun part of actually building your product or service.That is for another post! In the meantime, here are some resources to help you on your way:First I'd sit back and read...Startups are roller-coasters that often end in failure...make sure that you know what you're getting yourself into! Check out Mashable’s post on Why 90% of Startups Fail, David Lee's on Why I Never Started My Own Company, and Dave McClure's slides and video about “Why not to do a startup”.Now, if you still want to do this, read Paul Graham 's essay on How to start a startup (he also has an interesting view on startup ideas)Next, grab a drink and read Quora's take on what first timers often miss - What first time entrepreneurs are blind toThen, Jimmy Wales' answer to how to contact him about a startup idea...it applies broadly to how you should contact a potential advisor or investor about their startup.Lastly, go up-vote something Ashton Kutcher wrote on Quora and ask Mark Zuckerberg a question that he won't answer...Congrats! You're half-way to a great startup (scene story for your friends). :-)Startup advice and storiesQuora questions - What is the hardest part about staring a company, Common mistakes made when starting a tech company, Top five things to remember whens starting a companyJames Altucher, TechCrunch - Should you start a company?Jason Goldberg, Betashop - 13 things you must do every week as a startup CEOSeth Sternberg, Meebo co-founder (acquired by Google since this article) - From nothing to something. How to get there.Ben Horowitz vs Fred Wilson - Ben posts (case for fat startup), Fred rebuts (fat not healthy), Ben rebuts (revenge of fat guy)Neil Patel, Geekwire - Wish I would have known before starting my own businessDane Carlson - 20 things not to do before starting a business (I agree with most of this, but not #1 if you can afford it)Scott Weiss, TechCrunch - The path to starting a startupJames Altucher, TechCrunch - What you can learn from Woody AllenErick Schonfeld (2006), 5 ways to start a company (without quitting your day job)ChecklistsRyan Roberts, Startup Lawyer - If I launched a startup (great cheat sheet)Quora - How do you start a companyForbes - 38 things to do when starting a business (non-tech)Fiverr (marketplace) - Startup checklist (non-tech, and website is a little kitschy with all the dashes, stars, and arrows in the text)Finance and LegalQuora - What questions do entrepreneurs want to ask venture investors most but are afraid to askUser-10887637379381104900 - So you want to raise seed capitalFred Wilson, AVC - Financing options for startups, Financing options: convertible debt (likely way you will raise your first round of angel/seed money)Ryan Roberts, Startup Lawyer - How convertile debt works, What type of entity should I form, What does a series A term sheet look likeMartin Kleppmann - Valuation caps on convertible notes explained with graphsOrrick - Startup toolkitBrad Feld, Foundry Group (venture capital firm) - Term sheet series wrap upHiringBabak Nivi, Venture Hacks - What does an employee offer letter look like, Questions recruits might ask Part I, Part IIRobert Scoble, Quora - How to avoid hiring the wrong people for your startupElad Gil, Elad blog - Hiring for cultural fitBlogs by entrepreneurs:Jason Goldberg - BetashopDanielle Morrill - Danielle Morrill’s blogMarco Arment - Marco.orgBen Milne - Ben Milne’s blogKate Kendall - Kate Kendall’s blogGuy Kawasaki - How to change the worldSeth Godin - Seth Godin’s blogSriram Krishnan - Sriram Krishnan’s blogPenelope Trunk - Penelope Trunk’s blogScott Adams - Dilbert blogNeil Patel - Quick SproutEric Ries - Startup Lessons LearnedSteve Blank - Steve Blank’s blogDharmesh Shah - OnStartupsQuora - Other startup founder blogsBlogs by VCs:Brad Feld (Foundry Group) - FeldThoughtsFred Wilson (Union Square Ventures) - AVCDave McClure (500 Startups) - Master of 500 hatsPaul Graham (Y Combinator +) - Paul Graham EssaysDavid Lee (SV Angel) - dasleeUser-10887637379381104900 (Andreessen Horowitz) - Chris Dixon’s blogJeff Bussgang (Flybridge Capital Partners) - Seeing Both SidesBen Horowitz (Andreessen Horowitz) - Ben’s blogJosh Kopelman (First Round Capital) - Redeye VCMike Hirshland (Resolute.VC, formerly Polaris Ventures) - VCMike’s BlogDavid Cowan (Bessemer Venture Partners) - Who has time for thisJalak Jobanputra (FuturePerfect Ventures) - The barefoot VCHoward Morgan (First Round Capital) - Way too ealryGreg Gottesman (Madrona Venture Partners) - Stark Raving VCDavid Skok (Matrix Partners) - For entrepreneursMark Suster (GRP Partners) - Both Sides of the TableOther blogsJared O'Toole and Matt Wilson - Under 30 CEOAnita Campbell - Small Business TrendsAndrew Chen - Andrew Chen’s blogCarson McComas, Work Happy blog for entrepreneursYoung Entrepreneur BlogHarvard Business Review Blog NetworkBusiness PunditQuora entrepreneurs to follow (there are a lot of ‘must follow’ lists of entrepreneurs on Quora, of which many aren’t very active. These people are)Wikipedia, Jimmy WalesCraigslist, Craig NewmarkBlippy and Adbrite, Philip KaplanVontu & Pipewise, Michael WolfeQuora & Facebook, Adam D'AngeloFriendster, Jonathan AbramsInstagram, Kevin SystromFoursquare, Dennis CrowleyPath, Dave Morin500 Startups, Dave McClureFacebook, Dustin MoskovitzMahalo, LAUNCH, & Weblogs, Jason CalacanisPayPal, David SacksEchoSign, Jason M. LemkinWavii, Adrian AounOther people’s listsRyan Spoon, Polaris Ventures - list of Quora threads for startupsOther resources:SBA (U.S. Small Business Administration)StartupNation (Source for Small Business Advice)Notes: I tried to use mostly plain-speak when writing this. There are a lot of opinions on vocabulary and the definition of business models, business plans, etc., so if you’re hung up on those details write your thoughts in the comments, but keep in mind that the nuances are less important than the spirit of applying some rigor to picking an idea.

Original post: https://www.plainflow.com/blog/saas-customer-acquisition-strategy/This experimentation process helped up attract 1,000 users pre-launch and also helped us develop a scalable marketing strategy. And while we tested dozens of tactics that didn’t work, we also discovered some clear winners. From our marketing-experiment methodology, to the effective tactics we (eventually) figured out, to best practices for implementing these tactics, I’ll be covering all that and more in this post.Mini Marketing Experiments (The Methodology)Early on we decided the best strategy would be to test as many marketing strategies as possible in the time we had before launch. We devised a strategy of two-week marketing experiments. Each Monday I’d meet with our CEO to discuss a new tactic we’d like to start testing. We’d also report on the progress of our on-going experiments. This strategy allowed us to stay agile and avoid wasting too much time on ineffective tactics. The process works like this:Prior to each new experiment, we would determine:Expected difficulty/time-intensiveness of the new tacticTasks that need to be completed to implement new tacticMetric we’ll track to determine the effectiveness of the tacticDesired long-term result of the tacticFor the testing period, we usually spent two to five days implementing a tactic and then allowed an additional work week to observe its effects. After an experiment period we’d evaluate:What was the actual time-intensiveness/difficulty of the tactic versus what was expected?Did the tactic have a positive effect on our metrics?Can we see this tactic scaling long-term as we launch and grow?Can we see this tactic helping use achieve the desired long-term result?Should we kill this tactic or continue it?This methodology helped us discover our key marketing opportunities in our first three months of operation. The most effective tactics we discovered were building relationships with key influencers, creating a newsletter, leveraging Quora, creating and promoting original blog content, and guest blogging.I’ve dedicated the rest of this post to discuss the ins-and-outs of the tactics we discovered during our marketing experiments.Building Relationships With Industry InfluencersIdentifying, targeting, and engaging industry influencers was one of the strategies we tested early on at RepIQ. We had a hunch that without strong connections to the industry tactics like blog posts, newsletters, and social media campaigns would only get us so far. By understanding and connecting to influencers we were able to quickly expand our audience even in the early stages. Throughout experimenting, I learned that for influencer engagement to be effective, it should be done strategically. Here’s the system I developed to do it:Identify InfluencersThe first step in building relationships with influencers is to pinpoint the thought leaders in your industry. In RepIQ’s case, our target niche included sales leaders, B2B sales specialists, and SaaS sales leaders. We discovered a great place to start is with a simple Google search.We used Google to develop a solid list of sales leaders. We then went to Twitter to discover additional big-names in the sales space.I learned a great way to find additional influencers is to see what content industry leaders are sharing. Here you can see an example where inside sales leader Trish Bertuzzi shares sales leader Jim Keenan’s content. Another great way to discover influencers is the “who to follow” panel.Create a spreadsheetOnce I had a solid list of influencers I turned to organizing this information and doing further research. I used an influencer engagement spreadsheet created by Alex Turnbull of Groove, with a few minor changes. For each influencer, I recorded their name, Twitter handle, email, blog, and newsletter (if they had one). I used RepIQ’s email-discovery Chrome extension to lookup each influencer’s email address.I also added sections to my spreadsheet to track my target engagement with each influencer.My engagement strategy was:Followed on Twitter They followed meSubscribed to their newsletterTwitter engagementBlog commentEstablish a goalOnce you’ve done the research and have a system in place to track engagement the next step is to determine the goal of your outreach. Some example goals might include:Try our product/provide feedbackPromote our product on social media/email newsletterRead/share our blog contentFeature our blog content in their newsletterAllow us to guest post on their blogGuest post/provide commentary for our blogTrack engagementOnce this system is in place you can get started engaging with influencers and tracking your progress. In my experience, the best way to get impact from your engagement efforts is to be truly genuine with it. For example, I came across a post sales leader Lori Richardson recently published titled “Sales Leaders Heads Hurt When Thinking about Tech Tools”. Being interested in sales technology, I figured it was right up my alley. After reading the post I provided the comment below. In my comment I focus on (1). acknowledging the value of her content and (2). providing my own personal perspective/thought leadership. As you can see, the comment warranted a response from Lori herself! This is exactly the type of two-way engagement that builds a strong foundation for influencer outreach.No matter your personal approach to engagement, it’s important to develop genuine two-sided engagement with an influencer before making that big “ask” you determined in step #3.Resources we found most useful:How We Got 1,000+ Subscribers from a Single Blog Post in 24 HoursUseful tools:Influencer Spreadsheet (free)RepIQ Chrome Extension- Finding Emails (free)Integrating Quora in our SaaS Customer Acquisition StrategyQuora was a goldmine for us pre-launch. For those who don’t know, Quora is an online question/answer platform that currently reaches over 21 million U.S. people monthly. It has quickly become a hub for thought leaders in almost every industry imaginable. During our time experimenting with Quora we discovered three main use-cases:Promoting your contentPromoting your newsletterPromoting your product/raising brand awarenessUsing Quora to Promote Your ContentBecause Quora is organized by topically-based feeds, it’s a great way to get your blog content in front of a targeted audience.I followed about a dozen or so feeds related to sales, SaaS, and startups. I soon realized Quora is a hub for those looking to hone their sales skills, especially in the SaaS space.Quora’s search box can help you discover questions related to your content. I tried about a dozen variations of “how to sell SaaS to enterprise” and discovered quite a few relevant questions.Another great way to discover questions related to your content is to use the “related questions” panel on a question page.In this answer I provided a list of techniques for selling enterprise to SaaS and then included a CTA for my complete blog post at the end.One thing to keep in mind is that Quora moderators highly frown upon self-promotional content. You can see in the above example that I thoroughly answered the asker’s question with unique information, and then added that they can checkout my post if they’d like information on pricing enterprise SaaS. In this way, I’m adding additional value rather than being strictly self-promotional. Always promote your content in a way that’s genuine and helpful to the asker.Using Quora to Promote Your NewsletterQuora can also be a great place to promote your email newsletter. But because Quora’s rules forbid overly promotional posts, the best way to do it is to answer questions that specifically ask for newsletter recommendations.Usually when answering these types of questions I like to provide 3-5 recommendations (including RepIQ Insider), to provide the most value possible to the asker.Using Quora to Promote Your ProductI also found that Quora is place where many professionals come to discover and discuss technology tools they use. We leveraged this to promote RepIQ and increase awareness around our brand.I used Quora’s search box to discover questions related to RepIQ’s functionality. Similar to promoting content, Quora makes it easy to find other relevant questions with the “related questions” panel.Another great feature to leverage is Quora’s “answer wiki.” Although you won’t find it on every question, when you spot one you can hit “edit” and add your product (but only if it’s relevant to the question).In my answer to this question, I was able to rank first (in Quora answers aren’t sort chronologically, they’re sorted by value determined by Quora’s algorithms). Here are some key things I’ve figured out about getting answers to rank higher in Quora:Be unique—don’t say what’s already been said. In the answer above I focused on only free tools to differentiate my answer.Write a lot—provide a thorough answer. In my example, I provided six different tools, rather than just promoting one tool like many of the other answers.Include images—make your answers visually oriented. In my example, I provide screenshots from each tool. Don’t be overlyDon’t be overly self-promotional. Of course, the point is to promote your product, but you should do it in a way that’s most valuable to the asker.Resources we found useful:Beginner’s Guide to Quora: The Most Helpful Uses for Marketers10 Tips on Using Quora for BusinessesTools we found useful:Quora (free)Creating a NewsletterWe knew from the beginning that we wanted to create an email newsletter to drive interest and grow our sales pipeline. After testing, here’s the method we came up with:Clearly, define your niche & value propositionOne of the major obstacles with creating a newsletter is making something people actually want to read. There are millions of newsletters out there, so we knew we had to do something to differentiate ourselves. While researching we noticed many influencers and sales leaders focused their newsletters on promoting their own content. There weren’t many well-curated sales newsletters out there. Even worse, there were few B2B sales newsletters and nearly no SaaS-sales focused newsletters to be found. We realized this aligned perfectly with our niche and decided to move forward with the concept of a B2B SaaS sales focused newsletter.Create a master content curation spreadsheetWe knew that rather than using our newsletter to promote our own content and product we wanted it to be a valuable information source for readers. We decided the best approach to achieve this was to curate high-quality content from around the web.to implement this process we created a “master content curation spreadsheet.” It’s essentially a spreadsheet with links to hundreds of blogs I use to discover content for our newsletter. Although it may seem a bit archaic, it’s actually been an effective (and 100% free) way to curate a huge amount of sources for our newsletter. I currently have roughly 150 blog links on my spreadsheet.Creating this spreadsheet took time, and I still add to it regularly when I discover a new blog with great content in our niche. Initially, I started by leveraging the blogs of the key influencers we’d already identified. Google came in handy here too.We also looked for other companies in the SaaS/sales technology space that produce high-quality content on their blog.Add opt-in form to websiteAfter we had a system in place for curating our newsletter, we used MailChimp to create a basic template and add an opt-in form to our website.Cross-post on Medium (including a clear CTA)During this test period, we also discovered the power of Medium. Medium is an online blogging platform powered by niche topics like productivity, entrepreneurship, and business.We quickly identified and honed in on the content topics related to our niche and started cross-posting our newsletter on Medium. The great thing about Medium is that people don’t have to follow you to see your content. Popular content will automatically pop up in people’s Dominio in vendita - Domain for sale takes about two minutes to throw a post into Medium and we’ve found it can be a valuable way to increase our readership. Just don’t forget to include a CTA at the end!Resources we found useful:How to Create an Email Newsletter [Checklist]How to Create an Email Newsletter People Actually ReadTools we found useful:MailChimp (free)Medium (free)Content Creation & PromotionWe knew creating original blog content was key for our long-term SEO strategy, so we got started on it right away. First, we tested somewhat generic sales-oriented content, and then we tested data-driven list-type posts using data from our company database. Finally, we implemented the skyscraper technique. Created by SEO-genius Brian Dean, the “skyscraper technique” is creating content that’s exponentially better than anything else out there. This can mean it’s more well-researched, longer, more in-depth, or better organized. Brian covers a step-by-step process to creating skyscraper content in this post.During my research phase, I noticed there was a lot of content out there about sales tools, and free sales tools in particular. Upon further investigation, I realized a lot of the “free” tools these posts were promoting weren’t free at all. Many of them only had a free trial or had other limitations. I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to test the skyscraper technique.I set out to write the all-inclusive list of (actually) free sales tools. The finished result (40 Free Tools for Sales Prospecting) performed better than a majority of other posts. As an added bonus it has continued to drive traffic to our blog since publishing months ago.While the skyscraper technique may have solved our experiment of what type of content to create, it still didn’t solve our struggle to promote our content. Since we were just getting started we didn’t have much of an audience beyond a few hundred Twitter followers. We knew we had to get creative about promoting content.Through testing, we discovered our best means to promote content were email outreach and Quora (see the previous section).Email OutreachEmail outreach helped us leverage the audience’s of other larger companies to spread our content. In the example of my 40 tools post, I emailed someone from each of the tools featured in the post and asked them to share it.I got a positive response.I also used the same strategy to promote a data-driven list-style post. Again, I found that responses were overwhelmingly positive.The components that made this email successful were:A clear link for them to view the postA clear CTASample tweets to make sharing as easy as possibleResources we found useful:Link Building Case Study: How I Increased My Search Traffic by 110% in 14 DaysGuest BloggingGuest blogging can be a challenging, time-consuming strategy for early-stage startups just starting to build credibility in the industry. However, I think it’s an uphill battle worth fighting for.Here are the major benefits to guest blogging I’ve identified:Drive targeted traffic back to your website.Push forward the narrative of your brand/company.Win backlinks for SEO purposes.The more guest posts you do, the better your credibility and you can land progressively better opportunities.Identify and research opportunitiesThis post by Kissmetrics outlines an effective strategy for using Google to discover guest blogging opportunities. I also used their suggestion of “guest post” + “keyword” Twitter searches to discover other opportunities. Finally, I leveraged the list of industry influencers I’d previously created. This list was a great source of potential target-niche blogs to guest post on.After creating a list, I turned it into a spreadsheet to track all potential guest blogging opportunities.For each opportunity I recorded:Blog name and URLTopic (for example Sales, SaaS Growth, Customer Success, or Inside Sales)Alexa rankTotal number of sites linking in (I used Alexa Traffic Rank Chrome extension to discover this)Twitter handleNumber of Twitter followersNewsletter Name of key contact to pitch post ideas to (this could be a content marketer, marketing manager, CMO, or even the CEO depending on the size of the company)Email address for key contact (I used the RepIQ Chrome extension again)Most popular posts (I used BuzzSumo to discover this)This research process is important for identifying the highest potential guest blogging opportunities. The best guest blogging opportunities will be in or related to your niche, have a sizeable audience and good SEO standing, and will partner with you to promote your content.After I went through this process I identified four blogs I wanted to land guest posts on to start with. All the other options were still viable, but I wanted to narrow my focus for the time being. I set a goal of doing one guest post per week.Identify and research opportunitiesFor each opportunity I brainstormed 10 post ideas, and then picked the best 3-5 to pitch. I used the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer to create compelling headlines.Pitch itThe next step was to actually pitch my ideas. Since I’d already identified a key contact in step #1, all I had to do was draft an email and hit “send” (and then hope for the best). Here is a template I’ve used and found successful:The key parts from this template include:– Starts off with a genuine comment about their content.– Pitched ideas are targeted towards their topic/audience.– Multiple pitch ideas so they can pick which one they like best.– Validation with samples of my previous work (so they can examine writing style and quality)It helps to have a few guest posts under your belt to use as validation when pitching new opportunities. It’s even better if these samples are long-form, high-quality content. But when you’re just starting out you won’t have any sample guest posts to share. In this case, I’d say something along the lines of “I’ve written on topics similar to this before,” and then provide links to high-quality content from your blog.Write itWhen it comes to guest blogging, I’ve found that producing high-quality content is key. The better quality content you’re producing, the more quickly you can grow your reputation as a guest blogger. Here are some best-practices for producing high-quality guest blogs:– Do your research and link to lots of high-quality sources.– Link to one or two of the host blogger’s other posts if possible.– Avoid being self-promotional (remember there are other benefits to guest blogging besides promoting your product).– Write long-form content (1,500+ words).– Include images/graphics if possible.– After it’s published, help your host promote it on social media and in your newsletter.Resources we found useful:The Ultimate Guide to Guest BloggingThe Definitive Guide to Guest BloggingTools we found useful:BuzzSumo (not free but it’s awesome!)Alexa Traffic Rank Chrome Extension (free)RepIQ Chrome extension- Email Finder (free)Hemingway App (free)CoSchedule Headline AnalyzerOriginal post: https://www.plainflow.com/blog/saas-customer-acquisition-strategy/