inbound-marketing

Tips from the Trenches for Startups213Start befriending those who are submitting sites that arerelevant and interesting for your startup. Don’t submit yourown stuff—just start contributing.16. Subscribe to LinkedIn Answers. Pick the category(or categories) that best fits your area of interest.Answer one question a day that you feel you’ve got someexpertise in. Don’t self-promote. You’re seeking to buildcredibility and trust, not sell anything.17. Find the bloggers who are writing about yourtopic area. Subscribe to their feed, and read their stuffregularly. Leave valuable comments and participate in theconversation. (Do not spam them or write “fluff” comments.If you don’t have something useful to add to the conversation,don’t comment.)18. Start building some business contacts on Facebook.Organize your users into groups—one for yourbusiness and another for friends/family. This will come inhandy later. Don’t spam people and ask them to visit yourweb site. At this point, your web site is still probably notworth visiting.19. Grade your web site on Website Grader. Fix thebasic errors it finds. You should be able to get a 50+ just bydoing the simple things it suggests.20. Install web analytics software. You need to starttracking your web site traffic. Where is it coming from?Where is it going? What keywords are pulling in qualifiedleads?21. Engage your blog commenters. When you startseeing blog comments (and you will), make sure to