Here’s a cold and hard reality of entrepreneurship: Most startup businesses will fail. Perhaps we should rephrase that as “most startups will not succeed,” which is not the same as stating that they will succumb to failure. Many entrepreneurs terminate their business ideas before they reach a certain level of success because they feel disappointed; in other words, they attempt to measure their endeavors with the unreasonable yardstick of Silicon Valley giants such as Google.
According to statistics compiled by the United States Bureau of Labor, the failure rate of new businesses is 20% in the first year; this includes startups and traditional businesses such as neighborhood pizza restaurants. This rate doubles around the five-year milestone, but the situation is even more dire for startups. When we look at the 2020 statistics compiled by the Startup Genome, we can see that entrepreneurs whose business ideas fit the startup description have failure rates higher than 80%.
Whenever businesspersons sit down to discuss startup matters, they invariably mention factors such as growth and innovation before turning their attention to financing headaches. It is not very often that you hear entrepreneurs talk about marketing woes, and this is despite the fact that poor marketing is a factor in nearly 25% of startup failures.
To put this into perspective, in a 2014 McKinsey study, “The Cost of Poor Marketing Execution in Startups,” the company found that deficient promotion often results in the loss of 30–40% of revenue plus 40–50% of market share. When this happens, the startup eventually ends up unprofitable even if innovation and growth are there. In the best-case scenario, the startup is acquired, but the entrepreneur still faces losses unless he or she is able to negotiate an optimal sales transaction.
Blogging About Your Brand On Medium
With all the above in mind, let’s talk about Medium, a blogging platform where the effective use of existing content can go a long way in terms of strategic marketing. As you probably know, Medium is a blogging platform with social media features; through careful positioning by its founders, this platform has grown to welcome 100 million active readers each month.
Some people say Medium is to writing like YouTube is to videos. There is no conventional advertising on Medium, and this is by design. If you are an entrepreneur looking for a business boost, you will not be able to purchase banners on Medium. What you need to do is contribute to Medium by means of publishing great content, which can be promotional but only if it is thoughtfully crafted.
Right off the bat, you need to understand that quality is the key ingredient in the Medium success recipe. You do not need to publish very often unless you are able to build a follower base that demands more content. Here’s a tip all entrepreneurs should have on their minds when they sit down to create Medium content: Readers love to learn easily digestible facts, and they will be more interested in the topic of innovation over growth.
Few websites are still able to reach prospects in their respective marketplaces these days. We have to admit that social networks and specialized content platforms have triumphed. Internet users are now spending many of their daily hours on social media; it is easier for entrepreneurs to reach prospects where they are, and this reason alone should motivate you to publish on Medium. There was a time when brand websites were considered to be primary marketing channels, but that was quite a few years ago.
The best way for entrepreneurs to approach Medium is to treat it as a means to amplify existing content. Let’s say your startup offers an innovative line of smartphone accessories such as physical keyboards and game controllers; in this case, you will want to create written content that should be posted on your website first. Once this content has been indexed by Google, you will want to create a version for Medium, but it will need to be more engaging. The Medium algorithm is designed to reward quality, which means that the content you publish therein should be written in a clever manner and with a conversational tone.
SEO professionals will tell you that the “sweet spot” in terms of article length for Medium content is somewhere in between 1,000 and 1,500 words. If this length does not meet your promotion intent, Medium can serve as an introductory chapter; just make sure you are able to link back to your website. What is important is that your website gets an inbound link from a high Domain Authority publication.
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