In the past few weeks, we are doing whatever we can to get Noobpreneur.com back on track. In the past, we neglect the importance of branding and focus on getting found online. Last month, we are transforming Noobpreneur.com to be the go-to source for credible resources, starting from getting endorsed by small business owners, experts and professionals. Learn what we have done and how we are doing so far and see whether you can take a thing or two for your business…
Why endorsement?
It’s simple, really. Getting endorsed gives a boost to your business brand, especially if your brand is new. With that being said, it’s important to get endorsed by a public figure, especially someone who is well known in your industry.
Let’s take Noobpreneur.com as an example.
We learn that endorsement in a business offering information, such as blogs, can come in different ways that the typical endorsement in advertisements.
Well, you could have your endorser’s photo on your blog, but that’s not really ideal for many. My strategy for Noobpreneur.com is to get endorsement in a subtler way: Via accepting experts’ posts.
I truly think that endorsement is the way to go, partly because Noobpreneur.com is founded and managed by a relatively nobody in business world (me!) Unlike those sites run by experts, such as John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing and Anita Campbell’s Small Biz Trends, we need to leverage the limited resources we have – with the help of endorsement.
How we are doing things differently
As you might have already known, Noobpreneur.com accepts user-submitted posts. In the past, we accept any kind of such posts, as long as they are related to small business. The main benefit of such strategy is that you will get fresh insights from various authors. The major drawback is you often need to compromise on quality.
My biggest mistake in the past is that I never really consider who’s writing the blog posts: Freelancers, professional writers, small business owners, business managers, agencies, and so on. Diverse, yes. But credential does matters in one way or another. Moreover, blog posting requests have come to me to a point that they are more spams than requests.
So, in our effort to fix things up, we overhaul our policies. Now, we are only publishing blog posts from those with certain credentials, typically CEOs, Managers, Entrepreneurs and Professionals. There are a couple of blog posts we published with exception: Those that are excellent read.
Now, we only publish a handful of hand-picked blog posts that are written – or ghost-written – by people who are the experts – or at least the players – in the industry. Of course, we have also raised the bar in term of quality.
The impact
It’s promising; some of the people I know have seen the difference in Noobpreneur.com content – for the better. Some people I didn’t know also giving two thumbs up for the… guess what… authors’ credentials!
Maybe I should measure better via a poll or something similar. But nevertheless, we are getting there!
The only metric we use at this time is web traffic. According to various analytics we have (Google Analytics, Alexa, and an internal traffic stats plugin, we have seen a jump in traffic since we revamped our blog posting policy. Of course, I am writing articles as usual, but what’s making the real difference is the quality of the blog posts published.
The plan for the future
We, of course, will continue what’s working well, and getting the rest better.
We will continue to accept quality blog posts that are endorsed by influential figures in small business. We will also continue to pitch small business public figures to contribute to Noobpreneur.com.
With regard to the quite popular post about my little consulting gig (free consulting, that is!) I will continue to do, offering people what I know about entrepreneurship, especially webpreneurship. I will pitch forums and social network, such as LinkedIn, Biznik, OPEN Forum and VISA Business Network to offer my expertise – with a hope that I will continue enhancing Noobpreneur.com as a brand.
I’ll keep you posted!
Ivan Widjaya
Noobpreneur.com is open for endorsement :)