Update: How We Organically Reached 120K+ Readers [With Zero Paid Ads]
This is a follow up story for Startups of London. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 3 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
Hello, my name is Ozan Dagdeviren and I am the founder of Startups of London, the voice of the startup ecosystem in the UK, especially in London.
I launched the platform in the September of 2019 because as a migrant entrepreneur who had moved to London in early 2018, and as I shared last year, I was surprised by the total lack of rich media content about the startup scene here. Yes, there were the occasional blogs and funding news on social media, but there wasn’t a media company profiling these startups with video and rich content.
After the changes in our business due to the pandemic, we started focusing on SEO and discovering new niche areas of need at startupsoflondon.com.
Thanks to the continuous efforts in creating SEO-focused and high-quality content over the last 2 years, we are now ranking on the first page of Google’s organic results for a lot of key search terms used by our niche audience and have sizeable traffic that is on steady growth.
Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?
Since we last spoke, our content reached more than 120K+ people in the UK without any paid ads or promotional content so far. Our team size has continued growing and we have improved our strategic focus to reach a wider audience in the UK’s startup ecosystem.
We have been practicing our strategy on two main objectives, which are;
- Remaining the monthly content volume including articles, guides, and podcasts to reach more readers as well as followers,
- Launching new products and services that our audience would want to purchase and use
To achieve this, we have collaborated with solution partners, have grown our team and the number of content editors, and also improve our author network to include different perspectives and ideas in our content strategy.
We have launched a new page including the options we offered to our audience who would like to get featured at startupsoflondon.com. On that page, we share transparent information about our monthly traffic and top-performing articles to give our audience more ideas on the value of their future investment and effort.
Make sure, that whatever you are working on, caters to meaningful market size and a big enough appetite from the people.
In addition, we also launched a new product aiming to help startups to find the best investors for their startups. The paid product includes an up-to-date investors sheet with access to contact information as well as industry, scale, and location focus.
What is more, we also included a PDF report on the current state of the startup investment landscape and tips on finding the best investors for startups.
What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?
One of our biggest challenges was struggling with sticking to the content plan and volume which we aimed to achieve in the last 6 months.
Since we were in the process of growing the team and also launching new ideas and products as well as maintaining our podcast series, it has been difficult to achieve stability in our content production and quality as we set high standards to make our platform investment ready.
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
In addition to our startup and investment focus, we have discovered the potential in the recruitment field and decided to expand our strategic focus to that area too.
We have already started receiving candidate leads and working on the next steps and strategies to deliver the best support within the UK’s startup ecosystem.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
As a business owner, there are things that you have control over and there are things that you do not. Market size and market appetite for whatever product, service, experience, or utility you are providing are in the latter category.
If there isn’t a big enough market that has a desire for what you are selling, it is very difficult to grow the business even if you do the rest of it right. So make sure, that whatever you are working on, caters to meaningful market size and a big enough appetite from the people.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
