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Request for Feedback: Startup Blog Exchange Concept
Last month, I was one of the startups that attended an event in NYC which offered a chance for startups to meet the tech press of NYC. While I was there I started to think about an idea that might help the startups by helping each other. I’d like to share a rough sketch of the concept and would ask for your feedback if the idea has any merit.
The concept is pretty simple…a startup blog exchange. Nearly every startup I visit either for CN coverage, requests for assistance or URL verification at my startup has a blog. Startup Ticker is a great place to find all of the blog posts in one place. We run the ST ticker on the right menu of CN.
Instead of an aggregator, what I am proposing is a blog exchange where each startup blog includes a post from another startup on their blog. To make it simple, let’s assume there were three blogs in the exchange – they might exchange a post once a month in the following fashion:
- Blog A guest posts on Blog C
- Blog B guest posts on Blog A
- Blog C guest posts on Blog B
For this concept to work, we would need enough blogs in the exchange network to make sure that there is a good variety. I guess we would need some sort of categorization system as well. My initial thought is that the guest posts must be non-promotional but they should include a note about the author and his or her startup.
The goal would be to provide startups with a new layer of visibility to a new set of users and potential customers. Most startups want more visibility but it seems these days only a small batch of startups receive the majority of the press attention. This startup blog exchange would give all of us a chance to reach further outside our communities. What would it take to make this exchange successful? One new user? One new customer? The nice thing is that it might not even take any real work as the content would most likely already be posted on the startup’s blog - it would just be syndicated to another blog in the exchange.
Let’s ignore the back-end technical piece for now. Please leave your honest thoughts about this concept in the comments. I purposely tried to keep this post simple so we can iterate (potentially) towards a stronger final concept.
Sound idea.
To make it work could each particpating company outline the profile of their readers and the types of guest post they are looking for?
For example, ProofHQ reaches designers, marketers and production managers. We would hope to have guest posts relevant to that audience.
It’s a great idea! Why because the start ups would be beyond eager to get the word out in a pseudo albeit friendly competition/debate such as the FriendFeed/Twitter back & forth which I’m sure you’re familiar with. That tension, the battle to be the best, is captivating entertainment that’s useful (yes I know for geeks). That scenario, implemented properly, would attract a dedicated following.
Brilliant – great idea. I’d be happy to participate. What’s the process – or is that TBD?
I think it’s a good idea. Why should I not write about another startup, specially if it has something in common but is not a competitor?
I think this is a terrific idea. We’d absolutely participate. I think the key to success is keeping it simple. One could easily over-engineer such a system. A simple place to keep track of posts-given and posts-received would probably suffice. And then rely on the community to police fairness.
Allen,
As long as you have no hard feelings when I send you home crying after getting slaughtered in the pizza eating contest, I would like to be involved. Both http://www.rev2.org and http://www.scommerce.com would be my two to offer.
Craig
you are all talk
Allen, I think this is an excellent idea and something that should be very useful to startups because it can be very difficult to get coverage on major tech blogs while helping each other out might be a great solution. At that it should be noted that only non-competing startups should probably post on each others’ blogs to avoid any potential problems regarding unfair competition.
What could further help is actually participating in promotion of such posts additionally because every startup has a Twitter, a Facebook page, and many other things that could be used to further spread the word.
Thanks Svetlana – I like your idea about the promotion…
Yeah I could be interested and could volunteer a site (tech focused, non-startup though) that could be a post point.
But yeah I think more thought around this is needed, in that startups often struggle to keep their own blogs (internally focused) up and running, let alone being required to blog (externally focused) in a network scenario.
It’d almost be better off just leveraging the likes of CN and Studiowhiz as platforms, then have a place where start ups can register: interested blogs (you & me) then can contact these startups to interview them, or ask them to write a bit on their subject matter (educational rather than self promotion) which is then published and linked with as you say a blurb and link about them
This way there is an avenue for me as a publisher to get content, tailored to my audience, it’s a chance for startups to get promotion & link love etc and it cuts out the issue say MailChimp guest posting on CampaignMonitor’s blog (names used as an example only)
Thanks K for the reply – I agree keeping up the content is hard – that’s why this works because it really does not involve any new content creation. Plus, if the startup knows they are getting free marketing, maybe it will give them more incentive to do it.
Yeah … you know I’m keen – while I don’t have a start up (just now) I do have a blog that gets decent traffic & I’m passionate about start ups & online technology so would love to have new ways to explore content & help small business get a leg up. I wish I’d had more support for my early 2001/02 start up days .. :D
You miss one important piece – are you sure that the startups will want to help other startups?
idea sounds interesting, at least worth a discussion – the technology to make it work would be fun to discuss