inbound-marketing

212Tips from the Trenches for Startups12. Find your closest three competitors. Pretendsomeone is paying you $10,000 for locating each competitor.Really try hard. Barely managed to find three? Take alot of effort? Great. Now find three more. Of these six, pickthe two that you think are the most marketing savvy. Theyshould have a Website Grade >95, a blog with some readers,a web site that you can envision people using, a Twitteraccount that they actually post to, and so on. These arethe competitors you’re going to start tracking and learningfrom. Add their names and web sites to your GoogleAlerts.13. Update your LinkedIn profile. YoudohaveaLinkedIn profile, right? Mention your new startup web site,and add a link to your startup to one of the three slots for thispurpose. Make sure you specify the anchor text. Don’t gowith the default of “My Website.” The anchor text should beyour startup’s name and maybe a couple of words describingwhat it does.14. Find relevant Twitter users. Use the Twitter.grader.com search feature to find high-impact Twitter usersin your industry. Start following them. You want to start forgingrelationships and building your Twitter network. Resistthe temptation to mass follow a bunch of random peopleor play other games just to get your follower count up.That’s not going to matter. Get some high-quality relationshipsgoing. If you’re really serious, start using an app likeTweetDeck so you can more easily monitor conversations.15. Create a StumbleUpon account. Specify yourareas of interest (part of the registration). Spend 10 minutesa day (no more!) stumbling and voting things up/down.