Creating visibility for a startup is pretty hard work. If you’ve never done it before, it’s easy to massively overestimate the impact your initial efforts will have, from blogging to paid advertising.
When we started myGengo (i.e. back in early 2009 when it was just me & Matt) we tried to create online awareness for the company through any means we could. Basically none of this really worked. Looking back, it was A) understandable that we didn’t get much traction because the business was nascent, but B) we simply didn’t apply the same effort to it as building the product, so we never produced anything like the output we needed to.
Now we understand this stuff a (little) better, we’ve realized the need for our own steady ‘drumbeat’ of news coming out of myGengo. There’s so many reasons why regular output of opinion, stories, product updates, advice and explanations is a Good Thing for a company. Not only for external consumption, but also as part of the story of the company as it grows and takes on more people. This is important stuff. And as a company grows, the important stuff that works should be turned into some kind of process, whether formal or informal.
One of the bits of process we’ve recently put in place is Power Blogging Hour. And we’re feeling like one of the most successful things we’ve done to date:
Every week on Tuesday morning at 11am, all permanent staff pick their blogging topic from a list and complete a blog post on that topic within the hour. We then post the output staggered throughout the week.
Why it works
In this case: Results = Creativity + Process
Everyone in the company has things they feel we should talk about, opinions about the world. And everyone feels like we should blog more.
It’s very much like daily standup meetings — no individual *really* wants to do a standup meeting. But they are essential for the group to keep pace.
So the Creativity is there, and the desire to use it. But we always have better things to do, like fix a bug, or do a sales call. So the Process isn’t.
Scheduling just one hour a week in the calendar where we all HAVE to blog creates a collective responsibility to Do Something About It. Which means it actually gets done, and the Creativity is marshalled by Process into something tangible. I recommend it to any startup that wants to give their PR a kick in the ass.
The Long-term Benefits
If you ask any writer how to become a good writer, they’ll say “Write”.
Obviously we’re not perfect. We’re not creating works of art right of the bat. But we’re not creating crap. We’re all getting better at it, and we’re all producing stuff that represents our company and our ideas, rather than spam. Communicating like this makes us all think about how to best represent what we’re doing and learning; as always a good way to learn is to teach.
The 6 Commandments of Power Blogging Hour
Doing this unstructured or with new staff is tricky. So we came up with the following principles to write by:
Write as yourself
This can be the hardest thing in the world when it should be the easiest thing in the world. Especially when writing about ‘business stuff’, normal people who can have a totally reasonable conversation in real life end up writing like a drone. Writing as yourself, as if you are talking, can take the edge off. And over time, your blog posts can take on your own personality — hopefully more interesting than a marketing brochure.
Avoid regurgitating news
If you’ve ever been on the internets, you’ll know that a good 60% of blogs simply scan for news and then A) chew it up and spit it out in a slightly modified form without adding anything B) simply link to it or C) reprint the article in full.
B and C are pretty nuts. A is slightly less nuts but without an individual point of view, worthless for the reader and worthless for the blog. So we have a policy now of not regurgitating news. If it’s linkworthy, we post about it on twitter. If we have a real opinion, we’ll write the opinion, not the news.
Have an opinion
Despite it being more arrogant than, um, almost anything out there, Signal vs Noise is a pretty amazing blog. Nearly every post has an opinion, nearly every post has a visual, nearly every post is 100% on-topic — which is about desigining and building great products. It’s super hard for one person to sustain this, let alone a whole organization. But the point is to try, the point is to create guidance so it can happen.
Stay relevant
It’s much easier to write a blog post about Power Blogging Hour, for instance, than one about your actual startup. But people who want to read about Power Blogging Hour are not necessarily purchasers of translation, translators or users of a localization tool, eh? So concentrate.
Keep the rhythm
Even if there has been a zombie attack and everyone in the office is off sick, you should still do it. The whole point of the process is the rhythm and the attitude to stick with it. If you miss even one week, it can fall out of place.
Finish (Really Finish) On Time
The initial whirlwind of activity is great; making sure the blog editor is not flooded with cleanup work afterwards is not so great. Better to stop writing 10 minutes early and use that time to find a suitable image for the post and tidy it up than go overboard.
That's it. Written during Power Blogging Hour :)
