The Other Stuff

Some of the non-glamorous, non-development grunt labor you might do to make your startup a success

Eric Liu

ezl@rocketlease.com

@ezliu

www.ezliu.com

Product Development is the Easy Part

"If you build it, they will come" -- Some Liar

Many entrepreneurs initially believe that getting product built is their largest obstacle to success.

Unfortunately, for most, getting product built is the easy part. The hard part is convincing people to use/buy it.

Getting The Word Out (Free)

Search Engine Optimization
Blogs
Link Aggregators
Forums
Social: Twitter, Facebook, Linked In
Word of Mouth
Your Friends
Traditional Media PR

Radio
Print
TV

Search

Search is big: 18 BILLION queries/mo in the USA

Search Engine	Monthly Searches	Market Share
Total	18b	100%
Google	12b	66%
Microsoft	2.7b	15%
Yahoo	2.6b	14%
Ask Network	0.53b (530m)	3%
AOL	0.28b (280m)	1.6%

http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/microsoft-core-search-query-volume-rebounds-15739/comscore-us-search-engine-total-core-by-number-of-queries-dec-10gif/

How Search (Sort Of) Works

Web sites and the links to one another form a "graph" of nodes (sites) and directional connections (links) between them. Visualize it as giant spider web.
Google grabs a handful of marbles and throws them over the spider web.
The marbles follow the links from each page, leaving a few at every stop.

Page Rank is a measure of where the marbles collect.

SEO is the practice of controlling that.

Of course, it's fancier than this and the content matters as well.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/search-engine.htm/printable

http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html

Google Alerts

A tool that monitors keywords for you
Track: your brand, your competitors, every keyword you're interested in
http://www.google.com/alerts

Blogs

Write a blog that interests your target market
Find blogs that your target market reads
Ask other bloggers to guest post on your blog
Ask to guest post on other blogs
Ask bloggers to review/promote your product

Link Aggregators

There are places where you can post links to your site/content you create

reddit
hacker news
blog directories/carnivals
a bunch more *

http://karim-ouda.blogspot.com/2012/05/ultimate-list-of-websites-you-need-to.html

http://www.quora.com/Startups/How-do-you-promote-your-startup-without-being-annoying

Forums

Find industry forums and message boards (reddit counts)
If there's a community, engage it -- comment, contribute, don't only go there to self-promote -- people can see right through it
If people can't tell the difference between self promotion and a trusted forum participant that loves you product, there is no difference.

Social

Twitter + Facebook - Have real conversations with people interested in your space. This is a ton of work, but its a methodical climb to the top
Linked In - if you can use it, it's awesome. People self identify by education and profession.

Traditional PR

Make writers lives easier, and they'll make your life easier.
Very time consuming, and low response rate, but can be high impact

Getting The Word Out (Paid)

CPA/Affiliate Networks
Online Advertising

Search - Google
Social - Facebook
Social - Linked In

Traditional Advertising

Radio
Print
TV
Feet on the street

How To Start A Startup If You're Not A Developer

Eric Liu

ezl@rocketlease.com

@ezliu

www.ezliu.com