You should start promoting yourself and building your audience before you have a finished product or even before you have a great idea that you want to build.
1. The major problem most startups face is marketing and the ability to carve out a niche, find and retain paying customers.
Even with a stellar developer team and a stellar product, your startup may not grow or survive without a great marketing and sales teams.
You should start promoting yourself and building your audience before you have a finished product or even before you have a great idea that you want to build.
Most first-time developers actually ignore marketing.
They’re oblivious to the challenge of attracting people to take a look at something they’ve created.
There are so many times that I have seen developers spend countless hours building something, releasing it with no fanfare...
Create a website on your domain name and start publishing great content about things that you know (or even things you’re working on or trying to learn about).
Don’t fall into the idealistic developer trap of wanting to build this from scratch.
Use something like WordPress and with a plugin or two you can get a great website, blog or even a MVP done...
This time is better spent on building an audience and talking to actual people you are trying to serve.
Traditional PR and getting press mentions is not as efficient and cost effective for startups. It’s difficult to become a new Warby Parker.
Paid advertising on Google and Facebook is fine if you can afford it and have time to..
It stops producing results as soon as you stop paying. Same can be said for influencer marketing.
Content marketing, on the other hand, is easy to start with (you can simply produce content yourself) and if done well
Content can be anything from blog posts, YouTube videos, podcasts, and live streams.
It depends on what fits best for you (and the audience you’re trying to target).
Your first customers will find you through your content.
Building an audience can even help you figure out what product to create and...
Ask visitors to sign up to a mailing list and follow your journey
You want a reliable way of reaching out to the audience that you are building.
Social media is definitely not a very reliable communication channel.
Due to the different algorithms in place, you rarely get more than 10% of your...
Email marketing is different.
It’s a very low tech and flexible medium.
It’s very personal and gets higher reach than social media.
Start growing that mailing list straight away.
Most people who discover your startup are not ready to buy straight away.
They need time and may need your product only in the future.
You have many WordPress plugins that allow you to insert various calls to action on your content asking people to sign up to hear from you.
This is also something you can experiment a lot with trying to find the best copy, the best offer and the best location for your call to action.
On the other hand, I’m happy to experiment with messages that show up depending on how long a user has been on site, how deep the visitor has scrolled down the page
Get used to being ignored. You have put a lot of time and effort into something be it a product or a blog post.
You release it into the wild but get no feedback whatsoever.
The Internet is a great place for people to join a community and passively observe.
There’s no obligation to respond or interact.
You almost certainly have more people paying attention to you than what you see in your engagement numbers so do beware of that and keep pushing your project.
It’s extremely difficult to get any attention these days.
There’s just so much content and everyone has so many options for what they want to spend their time on.
It helps that you think like the audience you’re trying to reach, that you’ve had a similar experience, been in a similar position and that you can be in their shoes.
Who are they?
Where are they spending their time online?
What questions do they want to get answered?
What issues do they face?
What are their pain points?
Publish content that ranks, gets views and shares.
What makes you different from the other sites in your industry.
The common angle of looking at a topic is no longer of any real interest.
You should add an angle on an angle.
Can you make complicated things simple?
Can you make intimidating solutions painless?
Will you be visiting every country in the world and sharing your journey?
Will you be building your app or product in public and broadcasting it on a live stream?
This can take a long time and may need a lot of testing and experimentation.
Talk about your day-to-day work as a developer or a founder.
Share your journey with the audience.
How are you going about building your product or running your team or your company?
What’s working? What’s not working?
What are the plans for the future?
What are people searching for on Google that’s relevant to your industry and things you know a lot about?
There’s no reason to try and reinvent the wheel.
Use tools such as BuzzSumo to research relevant content that’s shared the most in social media, or to find the content that works best for the competing...
Publish original research.
Look at the data you have access to that others don’t.
Do surveys.
Use industry data.
Or even Google trends or keyword trends.
Speak to your customer support and see what are the most frequently asked questions they get or topics that users struggle with the most.
The goal of your content marketing is to drive brand awareness and business growth.
This means not just publishing content and driving traffic, but also converting blog visitors into subscribers, leads and paying customers.
Fewer but more targeted visitors is much better than masses of irrelevant people who will visit and bounce back within a few seconds.
Keep that in mind.
It’s quality over quantity.
Create content for each of the stages, educate your potential customers, enlighten the prospect on what makes you different from the competitors and sell your product to them.
Don’t forget to also target the newly acquired customers by helping them maximize the value they get from your product.
"Blog and pray” does not work. Promote your work proactively
It doesn’t work like that.
You need to have a marketing strategy ready for things to do after you publish a new piece of content in order to drive awareness and traffic to it.
The organic opportunities on established social platforms pretty much don’t exist.
Ignore them.
Do this instead:
Introduce them to your product, get them to try it (maybe with a free trial or even a free subscription) and eventually add it to their list too.
There will be some similar sites in your specific industry too.
Take the time to look for them.
Syndicating your content to larger, established sites with broader reader bases works in your favor in several ways.
You get your message in front of a large audience that is interested in what you’re doing.
It might give you some clicks and visits to your site, some subscribers to your mailing list or some followers on your social media channels.
These can be considered as low hanging fruit and are a great place to start in your outreach efforts.
Indie Hackers
LinkedIn Publishing Network
Business2Community
Business Insider
Buzzfeed
Entrepreneur. Com
Fast Company
Harvard Business Review
Huffington Post
Inc. Magazine
Mashable
Moz
Social Media Today
TechCrunch
ReadWrite
SitePoint
Social Media Examiner
Journalists, bloggers and other influencers already have built their audiences and have access to platforms that can extend the reach of your messages too.
More from Startups
You May Also Like
1/ Here’s a list of conversational frameworks I’ve picked up that have been helpful.
Please add your own.
2/ The Magic Question: "What would need to be true for you
3/ On evaluating where someone’s head is at regarding a topic they are being wishy-washy about or delaying.
“Gun to the head—what would you decide now?”
“Fast forward 6 months after your sabbatical--how would you decide: what criteria is most important to you?”
4/ Other Q’s re: decisions:
“Putting aside a list of pros/cons, what’s the *one* reason you’re doing this?” “Why is that the most important reason?”
“What’s end-game here?”
“What does success look like in a world where you pick that path?”
5/ When listening, after empathizing, and wanting to help them make their own decisions without imposing your world view:
“What would the best version of yourself do”?
Please add your own.
2/ The Magic Question: "What would need to be true for you
1/\u201cWhat would need to be true for you to\u2026.X\u201d
— Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) December 4, 2018
Why is this the most powerful question you can ask when attempting to reach an agreement with another human being or organization?
A thread, co-written by @deanmbrody: https://t.co/Yo6jHbSit9
3/ On evaluating where someone’s head is at regarding a topic they are being wishy-washy about or delaying.
“Gun to the head—what would you decide now?”
“Fast forward 6 months after your sabbatical--how would you decide: what criteria is most important to you?”
4/ Other Q’s re: decisions:
“Putting aside a list of pros/cons, what’s the *one* reason you’re doing this?” “Why is that the most important reason?”
“What’s end-game here?”
“What does success look like in a world where you pick that path?”
5/ When listening, after empathizing, and wanting to help them make their own decisions without imposing your world view:
“What would the best version of yourself do”?
MASTER THREAD on Short Strangles.
Curated the best tweets from the best traders who are exceptional at managing strangles.
• Positional Strangles
• Intraday Strangles
• Position Sizing
• How to do Adjustments
• Plenty of Examples
• When to avoid
• Exit Criteria
How to sell Strangles in weekly expiry as explained by boss himself. @Mitesh_Engr
• When to sell
• How to do Adjustments
• Exit
Beautiful explanation on positional option selling by @Mitesh_Engr
Sir on how to sell low premium strangles yourself without paying anyone. This is a free mini course in
1st Live example of managing a strangle by Mitesh Sir. @Mitesh_Engr
• Sold Strangles 20% cap used
• Added 20% cap more when in profit
• Booked profitable leg and rolled up
• Kept rolling up profitable leg
• Booked loss in calls
• Sold only
2nd example by @Mitesh_Engr Sir on converting a directional trade into strangles. Option Sellers can use this for consistent profit.
• Identified a reversal and sold puts
• Puts decayed a lot
• When achieved 2% profit through puts then sold
Curated the best tweets from the best traders who are exceptional at managing strangles.
• Positional Strangles
• Intraday Strangles
• Position Sizing
• How to do Adjustments
• Plenty of Examples
• When to avoid
• Exit Criteria
How to sell Strangles in weekly expiry as explained by boss himself. @Mitesh_Engr
• When to sell
• How to do Adjustments
• Exit
1. Let's start option selling learning.
— Mitesh Patel (@Mitesh_Engr) February 10, 2019
Strangle selling. ( I am doing mostly in weekly Bank Nifty)
When to sell? When VIX is below 15
Assume spot is at 27500
Sell 27100 PE & 27900 CE
say premium for both 50-50
If bank nifty will move in narrow range u will get profit from both.
Beautiful explanation on positional option selling by @Mitesh_Engr
Sir on how to sell low premium strangles yourself without paying anyone. This is a free mini course in
Few are selling 20-25 Rs positional option selling course.
— Mitesh Patel (@Mitesh_Engr) November 3, 2019
Nothing big deal in that.
For selling weekly option just identify last week low and high.
Now from that low and high keep 1-1.5% distance from strike.
And sell option on both side.
1/n
1st Live example of managing a strangle by Mitesh Sir. @Mitesh_Engr
• Sold Strangles 20% cap used
• Added 20% cap more when in profit
• Booked profitable leg and rolled up
• Kept rolling up profitable leg
• Booked loss in calls
• Sold only
Sold 29200 put and 30500 call
— Mitesh Patel (@Mitesh_Engr) April 12, 2019
Used 20% capital@44 each
2nd example by @Mitesh_Engr Sir on converting a directional trade into strangles. Option Sellers can use this for consistent profit.
• Identified a reversal and sold puts
• Puts decayed a lot
• When achieved 2% profit through puts then sold
Already giving more than 2% return in a week. Now I will prefer to sell 32500 call at 74 to make it strangle in equal ratio.
— Mitesh Patel (@Mitesh_Engr) February 7, 2020
To all. This is free learning for you. How to play option to make consistent return.
Stay tuned and learn it here free of cost. https://t.co/7J7LC86oW0
