Stop me if you've heard this one before: A young company works and works on its first (or next great) product. Blood, sweat and tears are sacrificed. When the product is finally finished, they share it with the world. And, guess what? The world loves it. Mainstream media, blogs, Facebook, Twitter — everyone is talking about this young company. "Buzz" has been created.
And then … everyone moves on. The attention is diverted somewhere else.
In today's online environment, attention is a commodity. It comes and goes in a flash, and while you may have the eyes and ears of the world one instant, they are sure to be fixated on the next big thing a moment later. If you're Google or Apple or Facebook this doesn't matter. They can sneeze and the world will watch. But, for the rest of us, this attention can drive real business value. So, how do you sustain it while ensuring it actually creates real value and not just hot air? Here are a few best practices.
Don't Let It Go to Your Head
At my company, we see a lot of startups that feel as though the first taste of success is the finish line. In reality, that's when the hard part begins. A false sense of security can be dangerous. Sustaining a successful business is a hell of a lot of work, and staying hungry is half the battle.
For example, my company got a major boost from running a Twitter competition to give away 10 Macbook Pros. We began a trending topic and saw our Google page rank dramatically improve. Our traffic permanently increased by 20% and customer adoption began to grow in a meaningful way. However, we...
