ASK STEVE #7 - How Do I Get Blog Attention?
By Steve Poland • August 30, 2007
Hey Steve-
Since I last wrote to you, FunAdvice.com has continued it’s growth spurt, and we now get close to one million uniques per month.
According to quantcast.com & compete.com, FunAdvice is the fastest growing Q&A site.
A few weeks ago, we launched our biggest upgrade in a year, and signed on Mandy Moore (yes, that mandy – ... ) as a featured advisor. To help promote her new album & tour, she’s answering some questions on our site.
While Yahoo Answers has had celebrities ask questions, we believe it’s more interesting & sincere of them to answer questions, because to answer a question from a fan, you have to care, interact, and acknowledge them – something her fans have appreciated greatly on our site, while she hasn’t had time to answer many questions, it’s been thrilling to have her participate even in a modest way.
Our press release is here: ...
And now my question:
With no venture capital or angel investment, yet with such an amazing story (as everybody we talk to agrees), why is it that we get “ignored” by most sites, tech / social network bloggers, etc? What is it that we have to do before we “matter”…? Is there a size milestone, eg, X million uniques / month?
Thanks in advance as always, I continue to enjoy reading your blog (though the summer break you took resulted in me reading less, it’s good to see you posting again).
Best,
Jeremy Goodrich
Co-founder, FunAdvice.com
Jeremy,
I like the site overall. I checked it out a couple days ago when I saw your comment on the Wis.dm $5mm announcement.
How do you get attention? You need to make it. You need to make a name for yourself — and get people to remember your site’s name. Possibly get a blog up, start writing stuff, become the expert of the ‘question/answer’ market — provide numbers/stats on you and your competition; possibly vs other markets, or vs social networking sites, etc — anything that may compare. Get your face on the blog and maybe seek some investment in your company.
Personally, I think giving up 5-7% equity for $15k — if you were accepted — into Y Combinator or TechStars, is more than worth it. Because then you get to go on the roadshow and give a presentation to a room full of VCs and the press that can’t wait to write about the demo’s. But first ask yourself, why? Why do you need the press you’re asking about — and thus, for what I just said, do you really need to give up equity to get money, to hopefully get press? If you’re seeking VC or angel funding, I think this is the way to go.
Or get an advisor or angel to give you some investment — if you get a big dog advisor/investor behind you, you’ll likely get some press. But above all, just have a really great product that users are using. If I were you, I’d focus on building your community — the press will eventually follow if you keep growing it. But really, anytime your competitors are mentioned anywhere in the blogoshere — comment on the post and email the author personally. Don’t make it sound like, “Why didn’t you write about us?”, but rather “Another player in the question/answers market is FunAdvice” — and promote your competition a bit; start showing some charts that plots you against Yahoo Answers and another competitor.
You should feature Mandy Moore on your homepage.
Any widgets for myspace/blogs? facebook app? What about a widget that I could put on my blog that allows people to ask me a question? And also lists the most recent questions I’ve answered? There you go — there’s a viral mktg idea for you. [note: make signup simple and maybe right through the widget — the widget will be flash. just require an email address and username, maybe password too?]
Wow - some deep, serious shit on here — ...
This is really sad — ...
P.S. Get a logo — they are like $50 for a cheapie. You can try running a contest with your current userbase — give away a MP3 player or something, and make the winner the featured advisor or user for the week. Or contact Juan who did the logo for Techquila Shots, he rocks!
Anyone else have some advice for Jeremy (and the other entrepreneurs reading this)?
Best,
Steve
Do you want my advice?
Comments
4 Responses to “ASK STEVE #7 - How Do I Get Blog Attention?”
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Hey Jeremy,
Just checked out the site and it looks good. I must say I think Steve hit it right on the head. Just from browsing for a couple of minutes, it looks like the majority of your users are high school/college aged, which is obviously the MySpace/Facebook crowd. Get a widget out there and your passionate users will bring in other users in drones. I also agree that Mandy Moore should be on the front page, that’s something that would draw a first-time visitor in deeper as well as give your site some real credibility.
Oh, just found your widgets… I’d say you’re on the right track!
I just found the widgets too — those should be front and center, particularly once I sign-up. And it looks like you can ask a question without being registered, but once I do that — it brings me to a sign-up page; maybe on that page it could say, “your question has been asked — but register if you want to be notified of a response, as well as letting others ask you a question”. Because actually, it looks like my question didn’t register — that it’ll only go to the person if i register; so tell the user on the next page, “You must register in order for (username) to receive your question of (question)”.
I could see the ‘my questions’ widget being cool on blogs like mine, fred wilson, any active blogger — being able to ask for advice from their community. And allowing me to select which questions of mine to display in a certain widget — or specifically highlight certain questions to always display.
And maybe once someone asks a question, do the digg-like duplicate story checker, “we think we may have a question like yours already — (show questions) — if not, click to submit”.
Put a spin on the idea to make people feel important or like experts. Allow people to ping others with the same question — maybe I follow one of the advice givers, and then I see a question somewhere and want to hear how that person would respond — let me easily send/share it to that person; send that person an email saying, “Steve has requested how you’d answer the following question — …dksfjdlfjldskjflsd”.
I agree, make your widgets easier to find/post onto blogs, I didn’t find it at first glance either. A better logo would also be a plus for branding, and maybe some slightly ’slicker’ looking interface would help.
We have something similar to this going with .... We have managed to get some minor press from bloggers, mostly by reading their blogs, understanding what they like to write about and contacting them directly.
I’d love to hear anyone’s comments/suggestions on Fliva, you can email them to me directly as well at suggestions(at)fliva(dot)com.
Hey, no offense but FunAdvice looks like a social network spam site. By showing me those members supposedly near me (yeah right) you’ve just confirmed my suspicions.
PS: Mandy Moore logged in 2 days ago… I bet she has people write stuff for her.