Startup Revolution

Creating A Successful Startup
Creating a startup can be solipsistic. Startups are passionate and creative. Feedback loops can be hard to pipe into what can be a sealed ecosystem. Sealed ecosystems cost money.

Better to go early and ugly with EVERYTHING starting with keyword research. One of the benefits of keyword research is well described here - ALIGNMENT.

Startups must align their passion and language to customers. When startups try to crate NEW language they fail. The key is slipping THE NEW inside of a comfortable shoe that customers know and trust.

Made To Stick, the excellent book by the Heath brothers, explains how to present The New from inside of The Old. Trusted ideas, even when wrong, bring the value of the trust they created. If a startup NEWNESS obliterates a trusted idea it may be seen as so disruptive that trust can't form.

Better to couch The New as an understandable IMPROVEMENT upon The Old since doing so allows TRUST to transfer. Many startups REJECT such a "downgrade" of their ideas and so many startups FAIL.

Passion is important and valuable, but so is listening and learning. As a content marketer I've discovered that when ideas are TOO NEW they fail (i.e. don't get viral pickup or link support). Most people want to understand and trust something before they believe and so are willing to advocate.

Understanding and trusting comes from several things including:

* Simplicity (why OLD understood ideas help explain The New).

* Who else trusts and understands.

* How much NEWNESS I'm being asked to swallow.

* What is the BENEFIT (to me the potential customer) of understanding?

The last bullet should probably be first on the list since the old, "What's in it for ME" question is paramount. If benefit isn't an immediate hook chances for further engagement are diminished.

Keyword research helps form NEW ideas with trusted language, existing traffic patterns and so allows The New to survive while new keyword patterns become established, new patterns our successful startup helped create.