3 ms·

Blogging for your business is worth it even if you get no traffic

52 points by robfitz 15y ago

timjahn 15y ago
Agreed. Blogging can be great for building awareness and credibility, which can create financial rewards down the road.
rgrieselhuber 15y ago
Great post. You mentioned using real time analytics to polish your articles. What tools did you have in mind?
- robfitz 15y ago
  Hey Ray, thanks. I've tried chartbeat, gosquared, and google's realtime. They're all fine, but now I mostly just get it via twitter. It's not "analytics" per se, but the first 10 minutes worth of retweets is a better indicator of whether a post has legs or not than anything else. With the proper realtime tools, I would basically just watch for irregular spikes after I pushed a post. The actual numbers never really mattered. A quick SMS saying the post was doing better than 80% of my other posts would do the trick too.
  - rgrieselhuber 15y ago
    Great, thanks!
  - bravura 15y ago
    How do people know about your blog posts initially? A tweet by you? Anything else?
    - robfitz 15y ago
      Yeah, I tweet it and post a subset (maybe 1 in 5) to HN if I think it's good and relevant to most people. I haven't really dug into RSS metrics, but you get those in realtime via feedburner, so that could be another valid source.
danhodgins 15y ago
Video blogging is still an untapped opportunity. Most people either think it's too much work, or they cannot commit to doing video blog posts that take 15 - 20 minutes, and put you on any mobile/laptop screen where an existing or potential customer, joint venture partner, blogger or reporter might wish to find you 24/7/365. The idea with blogging is to start a data-driven feedback loop that you can fine-tune 'on the fly' similar to the following process the author outlined in the article: * Capture every idea * Don’t wait for good ideas – shipping regularly creates quality * Don’t obsess — publish posts on the 2nd draft * Watch realtime analytics and heavily polish only the posts which start to take off Of course some types of startups enjoy viral growth through invites/recruiting, so perhaps blogging is less important for them. For many startups creating compelling content, syndicating the heck out of it, and connecting with as many people as possible are core drivers of organic traffic growth.
- danso 15y ago
  I guess I'm old fashioned but I almost never look at video blogs...for informational value anyway. It might be a great way to communicate the personality/likability of the blogger, but it seems like a really inefficient way to communicate ideas compared to static graphics and well-formatted text. Imagine if HN were a discussion board filled with youtube embeds for web-cam comments.
  - danhodgins 15y ago
    You're absolutely right that video blogging is not for everyone, and not for every startup. I also agree that HN would not work as a web cam comment site. For the right startups and founders with a certain type of DNA video related content (with transcripts and time-coded key points) can be an excellent marketing tactic. Just look at Gary Vaynerchuk - his videos are far from polished, but they are entertaining, and get the job done.
    - robfitz 15y ago
      I've been trying to start on videos[1] because I also feel it's got a lot of potential reach. Even though the view numbers are significantly lower on my videos than my blog, I get many more emails and comments about the videos. I guess people respond better to a face and a voice than to text. It's definitely something I'll be putting significantly more time toward exploring in the new year. [1] About 30 videos up so far at http://youtube.com/robfitzpatrickable http://youtube.com/robfitzpatrickable
JS_startup 15y ago
Blogging has its place in a lot of startups but is hard to justify for ours. We're selling a purely commercial product to technologically unsavvy clients who expect a professional public face. It's a triple whammy. Very few of them follow blogs (you're lucky if they own a smartphone) and any posts come off either as tacky schilling or unprofessional commentary. That being said, we still blog for the purpose of content and keywords for SERPs.
- robfitz 15y ago
  Hey JS, I think you've got two fallacies baked into your perspective. First, that blogs have to be unprofessional. That's simply not true -- for more "serious" industries, you can treat the content like mini-whitepapers or slices of a conference presentation. Second, that non-technical people can't appreciate and share good content. They can, although it goes through email rather than rss. If you provide the mini-report and analysis which helps someone win an intra-management dispute, you're going to have an evangelist forever. The less your industry does it already, the more value I see in you breaking the mould. Which supplier are you going to pick up the phone and call? The one you've heard very highly of, or the one whose report you just spent the morning poring over?
  - JS_startup 15y ago
    Good points Rob, and I can see what you mean about breaking the mold in an industry where blogging isn't common. My comment on the blog posts appearing unprofessional just meant that I can't take a casual, conversational approach to blogging which makes posts a lot easier and more fun to write. Everything has to be written from that anonymous company-as-a-person perspective so the resultant posts are dry and difficult to write. I like your idea about providing thorough technical content though, I'm going to keep it in mind the next time I write one.

52 points by robfitz 15y ago

timjahn 15y ago

Agreed. Blogging can be great for building awareness and credibility, which can create financial rewards down the road.

rgrieselhuber 15y ago

Great post. You mentioned using real time analytics to polish your articles. What tools did you have in mind?

robfitz 15y ago
Hey Ray, thanks. I've tried chartbeat, gosquared, and google's realtime. They're all fine, but now I mostly just get it via twitter. It's not "analytics" per se, but the first 10 minutes worth of retweets is a better indicator of whether a post has legs or not than anything else. With the proper realtime tools, I would basically just watch for irregular spikes after I pushed a post. The actual numbers never really mattered. A quick SMS saying the post was doing better than 80% of my other posts would do the trick too.
- rgrieselhuber 15y ago
  Great, thanks!
- bravura 15y ago
  How do people know about your blog posts initially? A tweet by you? Anything else?
  - robfitz 15y ago
    Yeah, I tweet it and post a subset (maybe 1 in 5) to HN if I think it's good and relevant to most people. I haven't really dug into RSS metrics, but you get those in realtime via feedburner, so that could be another valid source.

danhodgins 15y ago

Video blogging is still an untapped opportunity. Most people either think it's too much work, or they cannot commit to doing video blog posts that take 15 - 20 minutes, and put you on any mobile/laptop screen where an existing or potential customer, joint venture partner, blogger or reporter might wish to find you 24/7/365. The idea with blogging is to start a data-driven feedback loop that you can fine-tune 'on the fly' similar to the following process the author outlined in the article: * Capture every idea * Don’t wait for good ideas – shipping regularly creates quality * Don’t obsess — publish posts on the 2nd draft * Watch realtime analytics and heavily polish only the posts which start to take off Of course some types of startups enjoy viral growth through invites/recruiting, so perhaps blogging is less important for them. For many startups creating compelling content, syndicating the heck out of it, and connecting with as many people as possible are core drivers of organic traffic growth.

danso 15y ago
I guess I'm old fashioned but I almost never look at video blogs...for informational value anyway. It might be a great way to communicate the personality/likability of the blogger, but it seems like a really inefficient way to communicate ideas compared to static graphics and well-formatted text. Imagine if HN were a discussion board filled with youtube embeds for web-cam comments.
- danhodgins 15y ago
  You're absolutely right that video blogging is not for everyone, and not for every startup. I also agree that HN would not work as a web cam comment site. For the right startups and founders with a certain type of DNA video related content (with transcripts and time-coded key points) can be an excellent marketing tactic. Just look at Gary Vaynerchuk - his videos are far from polished, but they are entertaining, and get the job done.
  - robfitz 15y ago
    I've been trying to start on videos[1] because I also feel it's got a lot of potential reach. Even though the view numbers are significantly lower on my videos than my blog, I get many more emails and comments about the videos. I guess people respond better to a face and a voice than to text. It's definitely something I'll be putting significantly more time toward exploring in the new year. [1] About 30 videos up so far at http://youtube.com/robfitzpatrickable http://youtube.com/robfitzpatrickable

JS_startup 15y ago

Blogging has its place in a lot of startups but is hard to justify for ours. We're selling a purely commercial product to technologically unsavvy clients who expect a professional public face. It's a triple whammy. Very few of them follow blogs (you're lucky if they own a smartphone) and any posts come off either as tacky schilling or unprofessional commentary. That being said, we still blog for the purpose of content and keywords for SERPs.

robfitz 15y ago
Hey JS, I think you've got two fallacies baked into your perspective. First, that blogs have to be unprofessional. That's simply not true -- for more "serious" industries, you can treat the content like mini-whitepapers or slices of a conference presentation. Second, that non-technical people can't appreciate and share good content. They can, although it goes through email rather than rss. If you provide the mini-report and analysis which helps someone win an intra-management dispute, you're going to have an evangelist forever. The less your industry does it already, the more value I see in you breaking the mould. Which supplier are you going to pick up the phone and call? The one you've heard very highly of, or the one whose report you just spent the morning poring over?
- JS_startup 15y ago
  Good points Rob, and I can see what you mean about breaking the mold in an industry where blogging isn't common. My comment on the blog posts appearing unprofessional just meant that I can't take a casual, conversational approach to blogging which makes posts a lot easier and more fun to write. Everything has to be written from that anonymous company-as-a-person perspective so the resultant posts are dry and difficult to write. I like your idea about providing thorough technical content though, I'm going to keep it in mind the next time I write one.