How to find a voice for your product
As I work on getting traction for Twitter Analytics at your Inbox I found that I needed to develop a content strategy that creates inbound leads.
So I started looking at other founders that I admire and are getting good traction to learn what is it that they are doing to get consistently good engagement.
I will share the 10 steps that I used to define my content strategy for my product and include concrete examples to help you define yours.
1. Choose a message that is relevant to your product.
For me, it will be growing an audience because is amazing how many different opinions there are about the subject. Plus, people looking to receive their Twitter Analytics periodically are most likely trying to build an audience.
2. Make your message bigger than your product.
I'm not choosing Twitter as a message as it would be boring! And because my product plays only a small role in the audience-building space I can start creating awareness to people that might not be ready to use my product.
My goal when I tweet is that people that read my tweets think:
Wow! Santiago writes such cool content. I wonder what product does he offers?
3. Find a funny take to support your message.
Try to make people smile! It works the best if you are consistent about what you make fun of to let people know what to expect from you.
After some deliberation, I chose first-time founders. Particularly, those that do not focus on marketing and distribution enough when building a product.
4. Promote successful people that capture your product's values.
This serves two outcomes: create engaging content and building strategic relationships with influencers in your niche. I recommend you take a look at the concept of the Dream 100 to learn who are the people you may want to promote.
An example for me is Arvid Kahl that wrote a book about building an audience.
5. Provide valuable advice for the problem you solve.
The obvious, you will need to become a domain expert. I plan to do this by reading regularly about my niche. I will start by sharing it with technically oriented founders and as I scale, I will generalize my message to include other people with whom I do not share a background.
6. Advice on what not to do it's just as valuable.
Might be intuitive, but is better to be conscious about this. We learn as much from good examples as from bad ones. This step works great in conjunction with step 3 and might also be possible to include autobiographical references.
By admitting your mistakes is easier for people to relate to you. This will be easy for me as I'm still a first-time founder and most of my income today comes from consulting not my products.
7. Convey one idea per tweet.
It is tempting to deliver a lot of value but Twitter rewards short content so when writing a Tweet focus on delivering a single message.
8. Share media congruent with the message you deliver.
Despite being a text-based social network it's okay to occasionally share images that support the values you promote. To support my product I can share screenshots of other successful products that achieved impressive growth by building an audience.
9. Debunk myths around your niche.
Unpopular opinions are engaging! So stir some controversy by challenging common wisdom related to the problem you solve. Examples for me are that building an audience only brings benefit in the long term, or that it involves a lot of effort.
10. Be inspirational when you promote your product.
Your product is not only a solution, it is a lifestyle. Be sure to share that vision when you (very occasionally) promote your product. I would say, more than promotion is a reminder of the values that you stand for.
My newsletter believes that an audience is the shortest path to living a free, creative, fulfilling life.
I'm happy to read your thoughts!
