I am in the process of building my blog, podcast & ebook, how can I build a bigger fanbase while in pre-production?

I've been in the picture messaging space for a while now with my apps Lutebox (voted one of London's top ten most loved apps) and now Click Messenger. I've written a few articles about the space including a recent post about the Future of Mobile Messaging. Snapchat started out as an app called Picaboo, which pretty much did what it does now (prior to the latest update with chat and video calling). They quickly rebranded but saw a little uptake in user numbers and had quite low downloads for several months. Then around Christmas 2011 one of the founders' mom had told her friend about the app, who told her kid and her kid basically then spread the word throughout their high school in L.A. That was what really blew up their download numbers as it spread across teenagers at local high schools. As far as I know they didn't advertise in the early days, relied solely on word of mouth. Also it is assumed that they have a solid user base. Comparatively speaking, their user base may be in the low tens of millions, which may a great base of users, but nowhere even close to being as big as Facebook or Twitter. I'd be happy to speak about this in more detail or about the picture messaging landscape and what I believe to be the future of mobile messaging.

Hi! Happy to answer this question. Initially, I'd ask "what are you tracking at present?" And "what are your goals?" Software wise, I love to use a few tools for Twitter. Hootsuite to schedule relevant content (and not all tweets should be scheduled--happy to touch on this more), Tweetreach to get a feel for impressions/influencers who HAVE been engaging (in my mind, impressions are KEY, more so than Follower count because hashtags can help you reach more people) and Sprout Social for a more in depth view of your Twitter analytics. Getting more visibility/followers: what hashtags are you using? How often do you acknowledge those who follow you (new followers vs existing followers)? Are you just sharing autoscheduled content and links OR are you creating conversations? Hashtags wise: find those that have a community already centered around them! *You don't want to "hashtag hijack" however, tags like #smallbiz #blogchat #_________ specific to your industry or ideal client's industry can go a long way. Other tools that people use to track community and engagement include Sum All, and Commun It https://commun.it/ Once you start tracking impressions (and monitoring growth vs plateaus) you can then go back and look at your content to see which posts generated the most response/engagement. Again, just want to emphasize that creating conversations and asking questions are great methods to do all of the things you are looking to accomplish.

Start with creating your USP (aka Message). This message will be the statement that sums up the reasons for doing business with you from THEIR perspective based on what THEY want (versus why YOU think they should do business with you). It may feature a unique ability your company can provide - some feature or benefit or experience that they either can't get anywhere else or that you do better than anyone else - and I'd strongly suggest it NOT be based on your low pricing. To do this - get very clear about what pain (or problem) your business gets rid of (or solves) and what promise you make to your market. For example: When you say "excellent quality" and "affordable"... what exactly does that mean and why should your market care? -How will they KNOW it's "excellent" (according to them)? And do they want excellent? Maybe they want fast... -What does "quality" mean and how will they know? If you fix my cellphone and it works... How is that qualitatively different from anyone else fixing my phone? Isn't fixed the same as fixed? -What is "affordable"? And affordable for whom? Lastly - When you say "specialize" - and then say cellphone and tablet repair... Does that mean you specialize in ALL cellphones and tablets? Because when you say "cellphones and tablets" it sounds more like you generalize in a type of handheld electronic product. A specialist is an expert in a small area of products or services. Think deep and narrow. For example - You can specialize in repairing a certain brand - Such as "we specialize exclusively in the repair of Samsung cellphones and tablets"... Or you can specialize in the repair of devices running on the Android platform.... (you get the idea) Once you find your USP - use it in all of your inbound and outbound marketing platforms. I wish you the best of luck in your marketing efforts! -David

I might suggest starting with Bitly and exploring the possibility of getting a custom branded shortener, which you can set up through Bitly once the domain is purchased. For example, my website is philpallen.com but I shorten all links to philp.al/link so it's more professional. I feel like many other shorteners look like spam, but I'd say your safe with Bitly because it's widely used. A custom one would be even better!

Here are some answers for you that I believe will help you. 1. You should implement a long term and short term strategy right at the beginning. What I mean is that there are essential parts to your marketing like SEO and content marketing that you need to implement right in the beginning, but will take a while to filter through, but these are essential if you want to have organic traffic. That would be L-T. The best for Short term for a newly launched site is ad's. Word of warning though. Know your customers demographics such as age, income, education etc, know your competitors demographics and then find the platform (such as social media channels) where your ideal customer is based on those researched demographics and then roll out targeted ad's for them. 2. You have to implement social media strategies right from the beginning of course, based on your demographic research. 3. Get busy Blogging - start with content marketing now. 4. Sweepstakes - start a giveaway to get traction with clients and create awareness. 5. Make sure you collect emails as these are like gold dust for future email marketing. 6. Video marketing is essential for competitive retail space and very powerful to get found on search engines like Google. Prior to me launching my digital marketing business 5 years ago, I built an online retail business and made many expensive mistakes. And they can be costly if not implemented correctly from the beginning. So in summary: SEO - very important, Ad's, Social Media, Sweepstakes, Blogging, Video & email marketing. I trust this will assist you. Let me know if you wish to have a call to discuss these or have follow up questions. Regards Kenneth