6 signs that your startup needs a new marketing team.

Here is a post that outlines 6 different things that may be a sign that your marketing team is not fit for the Job.

1. Whenever someone Googles your startup's name, pages about your site on websiteoutlook, compete.com, alexa, about.com come up in the first results page.

This means your marketing team has only been updating a few wiki pages and checking up the value of your site instead of getting you valuable users.

2. Whenever someone googles your startup's name, they don't get press releases about your startup on the first page, and hardly one profile for your startup from either myspace, facebook, folkd and definitely not twitter.

Your marketing team is not leveraging the power of press releases and they are so web1.0.

3. Your startup is less than a year old and traffic increase has been less than 30% in the recent months.

Growth is very slow, its time you put your marketing on steroids.

4. The only links you can find about your startup are the ones you put up yourself, obviously no blogger thinks it is worth writing about.

They are not sending the right message about your company.

5. Your webmaster's inbox is always empty, seems nobody bothers to know where you headed.

They lack creativity.

6. The Google Pagerank of your just months old site is thesame after 2 Google Pagerank updates.

They have never heard of authority sites. They have been link building for a while but hardly get a link from any site that is not a low traffic directory.

Internet Marketing that has worked for me.

Tips on promotion techniques that have brought traffic to my site for free.

>>> Google.
Google will always be on top. Atleast since I don't have a Yahoo! directory listing. Back in 2004 when I cleverly got my website listed in the Yahoo! directory for free, Yahoo! used to be my biggest traffic source.
Now even if I do secure the listing, I don't expect my Yahoo! traffic to exceed the one I already get from Google. My site is doing really good on the Google SERPS with top 10 listing and even #5 listing for my best keyphrase and #1 for many other keyphrases. (Atleast 3 more).
Well incase you want to know what my secret is, content. Content is the key, build more pages, link to them from blogposts, Digg them and more traffic will come from Google.

>>> Yahoo!
I am doing decently well on the Yahoo! search, (though I don't know how well I will still be doing since they turned to Bing). The thing is, this time around my site doesn't have a Yahoo! directory listing so I don't expect Yahoo search to favour my site in it's result so much.

>>> Nairaland
Participating on the Nairaland forum has helped me a lot scoop up some home website traffic. I get significant traffic to my site from 2 of the threads I participated in on the forum.
Here are some tips for participating on Nairaland.
- Respond to threads that have lots of activities, with responses into the hundreds.
- Some Google PR of 1 or 2 would do.
- And please say something reasonable. (it's ok to include a link on your response or add a sig file).


>>> Twitter
As long as you follow the right people and get followed on twitter, you will get some traffic to your site and lot's of mention about you. participate in discussions, send @replies, follow the right people and update your status regularly. Just logging on and listening to what others are saying will give you the idea on what to say.


>>> Digg
Digg it, don't spam it.

>>> Stumbleupon
Make friends with people on related industry, stumble their favorites and make sure they like you so they stumble yours too.

>>> Hubpages
This is really a great service. all you have to do is write and publish articles, ping them and add them to other social bookmarking sites and watch the traffic grow and Google Pagerank rise. You can publish a good article and it can reach a Google Pagerank of 2 in a few weeks. You can also network with people in related industry so they know when you publish a new hub. You can publish weekly, though publishing monthly isn't bad at all.

>>> Blogging
I started blogging early, probably around thesame time that blogging experts like Yaro Starak started. It was really great then back in 2004-2005 doing wonders with blogs and pings.
Well blogging is not like it used to be. I have had blogs with close to a thousand daily visitors. But now apart from this blog, I only use blogs for some link building.

>>> Reciprocal links
links I requeted from other webmasters.

New techniques I will be using

Press release
article marketing ( I have done this to some extent, but not big time).
squidoo lenses
paid ads

4 reasons why Nigerian startups are not funded

1. Traffic does not hold value. No analytics to specify value of each and every website visitor, advertisers are acting blindly.

2. The issue of online scam or 419. reminds me of my post where I said this lies on the back of the netpreneurs, It's time we start seeing b2b startups in Nigeria that solely address the problem of security.

3. Infastructure. see the post "can we build silicon valley in Nigeria?" well, do we have the infastructure.
http://www.sturvs.com/Science_Tech/Startups_Nigeria_-_Can_We_Build_Silicon_Valley_in_Nigeria/

4. Absense of a developed ecommerce system. Most startups have to run on the ad revenue model. The question is, how many companies want to advertise online in Nigeria? Since no one is buying online.

June so far

This month has been the busiest since we started out online TV startup. I just sent a draft copy of a paper I am supposed to present in a conference in November, and ot looks like we have finally secured a technology partner.

I can't remember the last time I blogged here, it's probably been about 2 months. I am hoping I will post a few things before the month ends including a review of a hot new Nigerian startup.

The month is still not over and I am looking forward to reaching deals with about 5 content owners before the month end or early next month.

I have to go now, I have think and respond to an email.

I am not a travel blogger, but I blog when I travel.

I have not been on here for a while, I have been away. I really miss blogging but don't have the energy to write.
Anyways I am enjoying my trip and hop to blog something good from the trip.

Why and how you should find a co-founder for your startup.

I have been working on startup ideas for a long time (close to ten years), and I've only seen significant change by working together with a partner (co-founder), someone with equal determination and vision as mine.

The co-founder is there to fill in your weaknesses and having one gets you through the lows as Sep Bishop said to Entrepreneur TV, "if you are looking to start your own business, from my experience, I've always felt that having a partner is a good idea. You tend to find that entrepreneurs usually have big egos and seem to think that they are good at everything and know the answer to everything."

He said " Daniel and I were quick to recognize that we have weaknesses in certain areas, mine was fund raising, Daniel had a huge amount of experience in that area and he particularly didn't have any experience in advertising which I brought."

He continued, " In startups, there will be incredible highs and incredible lows, and having a partner in those times when particularly the lows, you will need somebody to pick you up. At some point a lot of entrepreneurs are willing to give up."
Seb Bishop later sold his ad company Espotting for $186 million.

So many startups were started by 2 or more founders. Yahoo, Google, Myspace, Youtube, Facebook and the list goes on.

Having a co-founder with same passion and some set of skills or chracter that you may lack increases your chances of building a successful startup.

Look for people that are very good at what they are doing, open-minded, ready to learn and who believe in what you are doing.

They don't have to be people you know personally or in the real life. Micheal Cerda founder of Jangl met his co founder Ben Dean on Craigslist.

I met my partner in the Startup I am working on now on Spidgit. I went through some of his posts, I knew he knew what he was doing and he was good at it. I approached him and we exchanged emails.

Been busy lately, but will soon reap the benefits.

I am just squeezing some time to write this post. I don't want the blog to seem quite even if it's for a day. Sometimes you just don't feel like typing and even if you have already typed posts, you just may feel too lazy to copy and paste especially after long hours of work with very little sleep.

I have a long list of upcoming posts with lots of tips for the Internet startup guys like me. I haven't been writing lately but I have been reading and doing a lot, so look out for my latest tips on startup ideas and some stories too.

I love blogging and I won't hold out any thing to myself, I just feel free and write everything here, and most of the things I write here are those that I have tested myself. I am very careful at writing what I have not tried out myself.

Anyways, this blog is not meant for my personal news or news about my Startup, still I feel I should share this good news with you guys. I am about to close on my first partnership deal for my startup. The only clue that I am going to give here is that the company I am in talks with is from Kenya. It's going to be a great partnership, let's all hope that it will go through.