Comments on: Friday Q & A: Three Business Ideas You Can Start Today, Starting a Business From Scratch, and Content Marketing In Developing Countries

By: Saras

Saras — Fri, 29 Jan 2016 09:58:19 +0000

I have over 200 business ideas and want to share! Check my BIO for a link

By: Cathy Patalas

Cathy Patalas — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 09:05:34 +0000

Hi Alex,

Really interesting article. I totally aggree with the approach you write about in the third answer (the one about using content marketing where reading culture is really poor). When I hear “content marketing”, I almost immediately think “blog” — and I bet many people do the same. But blog isn’t the only way to provide value, and as you rightly point out, the channel depends to a great extent on what problem we’re trying to solve and for whom. I think the key is to understand your target group and to provide people with solutions tailor-made for their problems, at the same time building trust and genuinely valuable relationships with them.
Great advice!

By: Petr Pinkas

Petr Pinkas — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 11:29:20 +0000

Alex, thanks a lot for asking my question. Great inspiration, I totally agree with you on the subject of what needs to be solved.

By: Ngan Pham

Ngan Pham — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 02:45:01 +0000

Hi Alex,

Thank you for sharing your insights. I have been a long time reader of your blog and I love every single post. Our startup has been bootstrapping, we are in private beta testing and planning to start our content marketing to attract more potential customers for our public beta test in January. I am still debating whether we should try to learn to do content marketing and keep it in house, or we should start with a Pro, and hire a content marketing agency, to help us kick-start this effort. Would you mind sharing your thoughts/ advices?

Thanks,
Ngan @ Rakuna
http://www.rakuna.co/

By: Dave @ Posto

Dave @ Posto — Sat, 26 Sep 2015 15:56:12 +0000

Thanks again for sharing these great insights. We are taking your advice Alex and really applying the blogging and customer development aspect of building a business on the front end. As a result, in the last 2 months, we have started to hit our stride as a result of focusing on exactly what problem the customer is trying to solve (in our case, finding the right candidates for their jobs in the most efficient manner possible). We are attracting the right customers, with the right problems that we solve.

Focusing on SEO and building relationships with Influencers is next to add to the strategy.

@Tweheyo – you are going to change the world, never give up . I, too, am rooting for you. If we can ever be of assitance to you, please reach out and let us know.

Always great to start my Saturday mornings reading this content.

Thanks
Dave @ Posto
http://www.posto.io

By: Tripzuki team

Tripzuki team — Sat, 26 Sep 2015 07:19:36 +0000

Hey Alex,
the reading culture question is really interesting for us as we’re a travel start-up based in India (https://www.tripzuki.com/) and we’ve put huge amounts of time into our written content (partly inspired by yourselves, I should add).
As much as we’d like to believe that adding value and problem solving with our content is a great way to get customers, the reality has proven quite different.
Ultimately, the Indian market doesn’t really care too much about what you do for it if you sell something for 50 cents more than the next guy – people will simply go to the cheapest vendor. A bit depressing though this is, it’s a challenge we’re determined to meet (and luckily we can compete on price).
I should add that India does have a fantastic literary tradition – people read newspapers fanatically – but this does not carry through to today’s online/mobile carrying audience.
Would be interesting to hear anyone else’s take on this subject; when it comes to marketing blogs/discussions the internet is horribly US/Euro-centric at the best of times,
cheers!

By: Pablo

Pablo — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 21:22:33 +0000

Really good answers Alex!
Each blog post is getting better and better.

You should offer an “Ask Me Anything” webinar (or Periscope). Would be great.

Best regards!

By: Ryan Angilly

Ryan Angilly — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 16:38:51 +0000

Geez just when I think I’ve read all your stuff you go linking to something like this: https://www.groovehq.com/blog/seo-for-startups

Hadn’t read that yet. Great stuff.

One quick question: what’s the blurred out tool in these images? https://www.groovehq.com/attachments/blog/seo-for-startups/conversions-external.png

By: Mart Shark

Mart Shark — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 15:33:30 +0000

That’s really interesting that you’ve considered building a content marketing management tool – us too.

We looked at Writeaid.net a while back, which came close to doing what we wanted, but we still use a cobbled together selection of Trello boards. There’s so much that could be automated by a good tool as well – not least audience research.

There was quite an interesting thread about it on Quora too – but no proper solution as yet. https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-manage-freelance-writers-editors