Jason Berek-Lewis Creator, Healthy Startups
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To blog or not to blog: that is the question. My answer? Hell yeah! I have been blogging seriously for a number of years, here and at my former public relations blog (see http://www.jasonbereklewis.com). Blogging has helped me build great relationships with inspiring people and led to my first paid speaking opportunity at a conference about social media and the pharmaceutical industry. For startups in healthcare, or any sector, blogging is a must: we operate in a tech and social media-heavy environment, so we need to be in the game.
Ignite your discussion!
Right at the begining your blog won't have much traffic as people won't even know you are there. It's going to be hard for your audience to find you, especially if you are in stealth mode or some way from launching. At this stage, don't focus too closely on your analytics: if your audience numbers are flat you may end up walking away from your blog. Instead, focus on engaging your readers in discussion.
You can do this on your blog by posting generally about your industry, commenting on trends, other players, government decisions, new software/platforms/tools that may be relevant to your sector. You may be a while off from launch, so shine the light on the people in your startup, turn your startup into a story about personal growth, about people working to achieve ambitions or to deliver change... Maybe you are building a disease mapping tool, a self management app for patients with chronic diseases, a new condition-specific social network or health-centered software. Maybe you can't talk specifically about your product, but you can talk about why your product is needed: change is coming to healthcare, change that empowers patients and your startup wants in... NOW!
These discussions should't just be limited to your own blog. Think of how you can contribute to the blog of another startup or a blog in your startup community, like Healthy Startups. Start and/or contribute to discussions on sites like Mashable and TechCrunch or on social media platforms including LinkedIn, Sprouter, Quora, Facebook and Twitter.
You can get involved in the discussions in a Facebook or LinkedIn group, on a Twitter chat or you could answer user questions on a site like Sprouter, an online forum for entrepreneurs. While entrepreneurs should be focused on our own industries, be open to contributing to broader discussions: chances are you will have learned lessons in a health startup that are just as relevant for a fashion, finance, travel or food-related startup.
Starting up or disrupting your industry...
Are you a startup or a change agent? I think you are both and focusing on why healthcare needs to change with the advent of new technologies and social media is your niche. There is nothing wrong with questioning the status quo - it's a must! - and using a blog in this way can help to explain the need for your product, as well as branding yourself or your company as a thought leader, as well as generating some serious discussions with competitors and collaborators.
Start an idea virus
A key element to your plans for total disruption is spreading your ideas. Blogs, more so than other social media tools, can help you achieve this. Think about Twitter, Facebook or Q+A platforms, they aren't very well suited to long form exploration of significant issues in health (or any other sector). Whoever said blogging was dead was dead wrong. Using your blog, which you can easily set up on platforms such as Wordpress, Blogger or Squarespace, is an easy, cheap (sometimes free!) way to get your ideas out there. Using your blog to ask questions, to explore trends, to share your creativity is a great way to spark new ideas - the crazier the better! Some elements of healthcare are particularly staid, stagnant and conservative: let's shake them up with subversive blog posts that generate discussions and get shared around on social media. Getting shared sounds harder than it is: if your ideas are disruptive, innovative and inspiring, people will want to share them and join in your discussion... it's contaigous!
Share advice? Think community, community, community!
Yours isn't the first startup in the history of the world and it won't be the last. There are many others who are experiencing similar challenges to you, some of whom have come through their trials by fire. You can use your blog to share advice on dealing with angel investors, managing creative differences between founders, choosing the best social network for your startup... the possibilities are endless. The important thing to think about is "Are you blogging for yourself or for your community?" - both paths are equally valid, but each will require a different approach.
Blogging for your community will help you gain an audience, but it also means that you will be creating content that is relevant to people outside your company, your customer base or even outside your industry. Last week I was speaking to a friend who owns an IT company about their corporate blog. When the blog was focused on the "Deal of the Week", the site wasn't getting much traction. When the blog started focusing on providing answers to regular customer questions, the site began to take off. The blog began to contribute value to its community.
Another important point to remember (and it's one that I can let slip) is that you must be an active member of your own community - no matter how big or small it is. If someone leaves a comment on your blog that is not answered, you have missed the chance to build a connection and to sow the seeds of a community. Blogs are kind of pointless if the posts are one way rants - comments are the lifeblood of blogging and the blogging community.
Conversely, on top of your own blogging efforts making the time to comment on other blogs is a great way to contribute to your wider community (and even build up some of your own brand recognition!).
Which analytics matter?
Unless your product is The Next Big Thing, your early analytics are going to be pretty poor. Remember, it takes time (months and months) to build an audience. You can use Google Analytics or your site platform such as Wordpress or Squarespace to track how your audience grows, identify what type of content attracts the most readers and determine which third party sites are sending traffic to your pages. All of this information is vital in getting a strong sense of what works and what doesn't on your blog.
Analytics do matter and they don't matter. Yes, I have contradicted myself there, but both answers are correct. They matter because startups, indeed all businesses, are about numbers and tracking outcomes. Analytics can give you a sense of who your community are, of what platforms/ OSes they use, of their geographic spread and
the type of content they like to read. You need to know all this and more because analytics are just another tool for gathering market intelligence and knowledge. But, don't get trapped into blogging for your analytics... sooner or later the authenticity in your posts will be washed out as your blog starts to read like a random collection of key words.
Who cares wins...
Your startup should be blogging because using this platform is a great way of building authentic, human connections with your future customers, with the broader startup community, with investors. The key words in that sentence are "authentic" and "human". No one wants to read your product brochure chopped up into short and sweet blog posts... People want to demystify the whole startup story: they want to know about the people behind the cool name, awesome logo and sweet as teaser/ landing page.
Readers want to know what inspires you to start up, how you scored an angel investor, how you managed to get that initial cash injection to stretch and stretch into an iPhone application and dazzling website. People want to know how you reacted to a key failure or missed opportunity. Yes, it can be messy stuff, yes it can be roar and all too real, but that's why people want to read it!
Startups are the new cool and many of us on the outside are clamouring for a peek at how the other half live: it might be sleeping rough, eating instant noodles and drowning in code, but we want to go through it with you... Think of what makes The Social Network such a great movie - it has nothing to do with Facebook and everthing to do with the human drama behind it. Give us some of that and you'll have a user/ fanbase for life.
That's why your startup should be blogging!
If you are interested in helping me to launch the Startup Blog on this site, contact me via http://www.twitter.com/healthystartups
Monday, September 12, 2011 at 10:32PM 
