StartupNation Blogs

Weird that I’d write a blog post about paying for content in a free content world, isn’t it?! Weirder yet that StartupNation has for years on end been a STRICTLY free content site and hosts many tens of thousands of pages of free content and features.

So why have we recently launched a paid content offering [...]

Do you really need a newsletter? Well, if you don’t have one, you are missing out on a cost-effective way to attract new business and provide loyal customers with valuable information.
Here’s how it works it three simple points:
1. Think about what your customers want.
How you can provide your customers with new and worthwhile information?
How can you [...]

When you consider your business model (which includes your marketing efforts), you generally concentrate on these core components:

Why will people pay you? (money, votes, donations)
What does it cost you to sell your item…margins?
What protects you from competition, price-feature battles?
How will you turn an agnostic audience into loyal customers?

Early on when transactions had no costs, doing [...]

Today’s post covers 3 ways to find out if social media could make an impact on your company’s brand before spinning your wheels. You don’t want to start leading customers down a path if you don’t intend to commit to communication in a social world.
1)    Ask yourself, do your customers and the influencers in your [...]

The love affair started about ten years ago. I was flipping through the channels on late night television and stumbled across one of Felix Trinidad’s early fights. He was an amazing athlete full of unwavering determination, brute physicality, and an innate ability for overcoming obstacles. It was no secret that he would often get knocked [...]

Obviously John Wooden is not on my advisory board, but he is in my Pantheon-of-Wonderful-People.
Quote to consider
No written word, no spoken plea Can teach our youth what they should be; Nor all the books on all the shelves It’s what the teachers are themselves. Given to John Wooden by his Father upon Graduation And now [...]

Sometimes, being “widely aware” is as important as being “narrowly focused.”
Thought you folks would benefit from this audio-visual snapshot of what’s happened over the past two hundred years in the world and why it’s so seismic relative to the history/future of humankind and the planet we inhabit. While this isn’t specifically about business, it is [...]

I typically focus on email marketing, since it is cost effective, it has a viral quality, and VerticalResponse happens to offer a great email solution for startups, but the following suggestions can apply to direct mail projects as well.
When designing your email campaign or your promotion mailing, from copy to layout, consider how your recipient [...]

I received a press release today that deserves a few minutes of your scanning. It’s the monthly consumer confidence report issued by The Conference Board.
It shows that consumer confidence actually trended up this month for the first time this year. Is this a sign that we’re going to start hustling and bustling again? Well, little by little, [...]

You have news and you don’t even know it. It might not be the Wall Street Journal that picks up the fact that you have a new head chef in your restaurant, or a new winemaker at the winery, or that your software company just hired a new VP, but you’ll be surprised at the [...]