Why Startups should Embrace Tech Bloggers

Paul Chen

Hello there entrepreneurs. So, congratulations on launching your new startup! How's it going? I'm sure it's going great. Now, are you ready to tell the world about your awesome project?  I'm sure you are, so how do you do that? You probably are very busy developing your MVP and talking to customers, and you might not have enough money to hire a marketing person. Sure, you would like to get your name up in lights and on the pages of Forbes, TechCrunch, Mashables, and others. The problem is you probably don't know anybody who writes for any of those publications. What do you do? Well a good way to get your name out there is to make friends with a tech blogger. And what are the benefits? Let's take a look:

Easier Access

OK, so one of the reasons why tech bloggers are great is that they are relatively easy to have access to. Most likely you probably don't know people like John Biggs, Mike Butcher, Jordan Cooke, Robin Wauters, or Kara Swisher. These writers are usually very busy and they get pitched by hundreds of emails and in person all the time. Most likely if you attend a lot of startup events, you will see tech bloggers pretty easily. They usually have the media credentials and they're relatively easy to approach and happy to talk to you, so why not go up to them and introduce yourself!

Start a web presence

Another reason why you should get to know a blogger is that if you get them to like what you do and you as a person then they will most likely write a blog post about your startup. The good thing about that is you will start to have a web presence and that is really important for the very beginning of your startup. Why? With a web presence, you get to use lot of the social media CRM for analytics and monitoring. For example, Brand24  from Wroclaw run by my good friend Michal Sadowski, will let you know who is talking about your startup on the internet and that can be quite valuable. Another social media CRM is a Brand Embassy from the Czech Republic and they are good for helping you provide customer service to make your customers happy.

Another reason to have a web presence is you will be able to attract the attention from my more popular or more famous tech writers. They will have seen you talked about by someone they trust. This trust cannot be bought, it has to be earned.

Get early leads

Oh, one of the things about getting a blogger to write a blog post about you is that you are able to generate early leads for your start up and those lead is worth its weight in gold. With those leads you can start a relationship with those potential customers. If you don't have a lot of money to spend on lead generating services, this can be a good shortcut. For example, I published a piece about Rombo Games and based on the social media response, I got a lot of interest towards their games. As a result, Rombo Games can really benefit from knowing who were asking me about them.

Advice: Reciprocate the love

One big piece of advice about your interactions with tech bloggers. Don’t go to them thinking, oh this is a good way to get free and easy publicity. If you just go up to them and say, “oh I see you are a blogger so write a blog post about my startup”, they will tell you where to go. Get to know them, treat them like a person. They have needs and feelings. A lot of them are doing this for free or they don't earn a lot of money for it at all. They can write about a billion of other startups, not just yours. So a good thing to do is to reciprocate the love. One of them is to give them free swag. Another one is to allow them access to you, even if you become really successful. They might even help you generate content for your content marketing campaign (paid).  And sometimes one of those tech bloggers might become successful like Kara Swisher and if you show them enough love in the beginning they are more likely to help you get connected to other tech writers or major publications. Showing some appreciation during the beginning phases of your relationship could result in good karma exponentially. Anyway, it's good PR.

Thank you for reading another one of my posts done for you!  If you liked what you read please share it by using one of the buttons below and check out other posts in this blog.  I don’t want you to miss out on future posts so please follow me on Twitter @Eurodude23.  If you haven’t done it already, please like my Facebook fan page by clicking here!  And if you like the content you have read, and are looking for a content writer for your team please go to www.contentfarm.org for details. See you next time!