Just starting up, bootstrapped and looking for customers? Welcome to the world of every early-stage startup.
So what can you do to get your startup in front of your target audience without having to spend a fortune on online advertising.
Sure, you’ll get a boost for when you launch your product, but what about all that time in between major updates and product launches – what do you do then? You’ll need something that attracts people to your startup without speaking too much about yourself and your products, which is where the role of content marketing starts to play an important role.
Content marketing is essentially creating valuable, relevant and consistent content for your target audience, which ultimately gives your audience a reason to come back to your startup.
But starting anything new is challenging, which is why it’s always a good idea to learn from the best. Here I’ve listed six startups (in no particular order) which I personally follow and think they do a stellar job engaging potential customers.
1. Buffer
Whenever you talk about content marketing and startups – social media scheduling app Buffer is always bound to come up as a great example of how to do it properly. Buffer currently focuses their content marketing on publishing daily posts on their blog helping people achieve better results with social media, and helping them get more things done with posts on productivity and life hacks.
2. Mention
Mention is a real-time media monitoring tool, whose content marketing focuses on marketing and startups. They also highlight neat ways you can use their application for your business through their blog and webinars. But another thing worth mentioning, is their approach to social media and how they use humour to engage their community.
3. Freeletics
Freeletics is an application which delivers high intensity bodyweight workouts. The fitness startup uses social media to showcase their athletes and how they’ve gotten into shape with Freeletics. Their blog also provides advice to their users on healthy eating, how to stay motivated, fitness advice and user stories.
4. Canva
For folks with no design experience, Canva is a simple and easy platform to create visual content on the fly. Through their Design School Blog, you’ll find resources on how you can be more creative and how to create beautiful designs for your business. Canva also features tutorials on how to use their product and delivers advice on a variety of design topics such as how to choose the right font, and the relationship of colours, etc.
5. Groove
Groove is a simple help desk software designed to help small businesses scale their customer support. Their blog will be of particular interest to anybody who’s running a software as a service (SaaS) business, as their posts describe their journey to reaching $500k in monthly revenue. The Groove Blog is packed with personal experience and actionable tips that other startups can use for attracting more growth.
6. UXPin
UXPin is arguably a designer’s best friend when it comes to wireframing. And hence their content marketing activities cover a wide range of design topics, all aimed at helping designers become better in user experience (UX). Their blog is filled with guides and tutorials, where they also feature a wealth of e-books to download.
From the startups listed above you’ve probably noticed a recurring trend. The main focus of their content marketing is on their target audience, and designed to help them become better at what they do. For Buffer, it’s helping folks become better at social media. Canva and UXPin, focus on helping you become better at design and UX. Whereas Groove uses their personal learning to help other SaaS startups grow their business.
What about you – which startup blogs are you following?
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