Young entrepreneur on blogging for Start-Ups.

Yesterday I spoke to a friend of mine, Anders Mjåset, co-founder of Norwegian PramPack. The company sells bags to protect prams under transport. In his start-up he told me they started a blog, but maintaining it took to much effort. He elaborated on his experience from launching a successful venture. I've reproduced some of his comments from my memory here.

When you're starting a business it's hard to set time aside to write a blog. It's hard for a blog to compete against the value of PR; a article in a newspaper or a news feature. This kind of attention will cause several hundred thousand to hear about the company (Norway is a small country, this number is probably way bigger for more populated countries). A blog on the other hand has a way slower progress. You start out by a few followers and then it develops over time through a daily effort.

We did use blogs in a more indirect way. First we located the most esteemed bloggers in our market. These would have a large following and thereby influence the product launch to a large degree. We ordered up about 50 products that were sent to these elite potential customers. Meeting them in person was crucial. They would often be positive after the meeting and generous in their blogging about our company and the product. Another side to this was the motivation it gave us in the founding team to meet these enthusiast. Before we started this process we were uncertain whether it was a smart move or not. We knew that there was a possibility that the sample we sent out would break on the first journey. If this would happen, it might have such a negative impact on the business that we would have to shut it down. A brand is extremely vulnerable in a start-up that is about to launch it's first product. If one of the leading voices of the enthusiasts is negative, the launch could very well be unsuccessful. But fortunately, all went well.

Here I commented that a news feed on the PramPack web page sounded like a good idea. There are a lot of users and future users out there that blog about your product. Why not gather the value these "marketers" represent to the company homepage? Anders agreed and elaborated that negative feed back often took care of itself. When a negative post would show up, other users would counter it. This is also great information that could be linked to from the company web page. If your company has a favorable opinion amongst the masses, it has amazing spillover effects.