MVP Feedback - Blog post writing+publishing automation SaaS
I have half of my MVP built for my product Zenpost (www.Zenpost.com) which focuses on automating blog and social efforts for small teams.
What's built so far is a monthly subscription that allows Brands to choose blog topics that Writers pitch them, the Writers write the content, the Brand reviews and approves the posts, they're then auto-scheduled and auto-published to the Brand's blog every week.
I'm looking for further feedback and validation on this concept. Below are a few questions to inspire feedback...
- What would deter you from using an automated blog writing solution like this?
- What features or benefits NEED to be in this solution for it to work for you?
- What's your monthly budget (if any) for monthly blog posts? (i.e. $XXX for X total articles)
- What main value/key metric would you need to see for you to want to renew every month?
Can brands make requests for specific article content too? So instead of writers only creating content based on their own suggestions, content can also be created based on suggestions from the brand.
Hey @most - Great question. We have plans to allow this - we already have a feature that lets you organize your blog post ideas so we'd then allow you to turn those ideas into new assignments to writers. But wanted to make sure we built it in such a way that we made sure Brands were providing enough context to their idea before sending it over to writers.
Would you want to lean on coming up with your own topics more than having them developed for you?
Also, would you want the ability to also write your own blog posts? We find that business owners are too busy to do this so having other writers do it is most effective. But we're thinking of letting brands write their own blog content on top of their monthly subscription of outsourced articles.
I'd expect the content to live on my domain. So how would you have any control over whether brands can write their own content?
@most Let me explain my question better...
Zenpost is a platform you log into and approve topics for OTHER writers to write. We have atuomated ideation, writing, SEO, scheduling, and publishing features involved in all of that.
Besides being useful features for the atuomation of outsourced writers writing your content, these could be valuable features for a Brand who wants to also organize and automate steps in their own blogging efforts.
You can obviously write your blog posts within your own blog CMS. But would an alternative tool that helps you ideate, write, optimize, schedule, and publish your blog posts be useful as well? This way you can utilize Zenpost for your in-house blogging efforts, or just utilize it for the autopilot solution.
If someone just wrote the post for me of course that's helpful because it saves me time, especially if the writer matches the voice and tone of the company.
[a] i like the idea.
The best part about this idea, to me, is that I actually wouldn't mind posting 'we sponsored the writing of this post through zenpost' -- I think that would be hugely positive for your growth.
i.e. content writers are pitching what they're interested in writing about, and we are interested in that too, so we're paying for that to exist in the world. It's sort of like patreon in that way, if it's modelled/sold correctly.
[b] main thing would be the ability to see writing samples from the writers ahead of time.
I would probably want to pay for more interesting articles in this way, so probably more long-form or research-based.
[c] I would probably start at a lower price to test out the service first -- i.e. pay per blog article to start. and then based on the results of that I would ramp it up. I could see starting out at ~$400/month being reasonable, but I would probably want to start piecemeal first if possible.
Your current pricing seems reasonable to me (I've only ever paid for blog posting through larger companies, never for myself) -- but depends on quality.
[d] # of unique views, but also # of shares, and how post reach / impressions do (and how ads featuring the articles do).
eventually SEO ranking would matter too, but I guess that would take longer
---
Hey @sobbuh
[a] That's a really interesting concept. I haven't thought about that. You would be okay with that branding being thrown in at the end of the blog post at no additional benefit to you?
Also, how we have it now is the article is ghostwritten. So you or one of your staff is the author of the blog post instead of the Writer. Would you want the Writer to be author instead?
[b] Makes sense. So even if the topic is great, you'd want to understand their writing ability before accepting it.
[c] We're updating our plans to include a 2 articles-per-month plan so you could dip your toe in with 2 blog posts and then increase your monthly thereafter.
You mentioned ~$400/month as your budget. Working backward from that; how many blog posts and at what word count would you want for that budget?
[d] So the main things keeping you returning every month are views and shares.
[a] All of your competitors are offering ghost writing. I would go a different route, personally.
i don't know if customers agree -- something I would talk to them about.
seems like a win-win (you could offer lower pricing to start too get the word out about your articles -- and then from your website link back to all the articles written through your program driving more traffic to those blogs).
This is the kind of flywheel I would try to make work. That's just me, though.
---
[b] yes, writing style / tone / quality matter just as much as the topic
---
[c] I would consider offering a one-off trial at a reasonable price (as long as you have a strong plan to get people to sign up after the trial) -- but a smaller monthly package might be more effective at keeping people on board long term. something you could test.
---
[d] yes. the sales pitch here is that the results will compound over time so a continued investment is necessary.
[a] Good point. Also, we find tone matching is usually one of the biggest hiccups in these services as well. So bylined pieces takes care of that issue.
[c] So possibly a discounted month 1 to make the onboarding cost even more attractive.
We've seen our competitor's pricing and they are upcharging for a bunch of the extra content bells and whistles. Imagery, SEO meta details, social share posts, etc.
We're thinking of having a "Basic" and "Optimized" version. Basic being our current pricing but without the above bells and whistles. Optimized being an increase per article rate but you get a more premium article package.
To your trial point, I'm thinking we offer the Optimized option in month 1 at no additional cost but you'll need to renew at the higher per article rate to keep those additions.
Thanks again! Your feedback has been awesome!
That sounds like a really great solution.
Good luck!