Wednesday, January 04, 2012

I was selected to pitch SiliconHillsNews.com at yesterday's Startup America coaching webinar. I highly recommend the Startup America (launched by the White House to accelerate entrepreneurship.)


Earlier, I had been accepted into Startup Texas, which helps me focus on the business. They've got great online seminars and discounts on all kinds of programs like Google Adwords - which I plan to take advantage of this year.  I don’t know much about Google Adwords, but the goal is to employ more advertising to spread the word about Silicon Hills News.

Silicon Hills News continues to grow organically through word-of-mouth advertising.  The site has landed its first corporate sponsor: Rackspace Hosting.


The goal is to land five more major sponsors this year for a total in $100,000 in funding to expand operations. I would like to sell another $50,000 worth of ads this year too.


December was the best month ever for traffic to the site. The traffic continues to nearly double every month. And social media efforts through Twitter and Facebook definitely help drive the hits. Today, Silicon Hills News has 200 Twitter followers and 142 Facebook fans.


Currently, I’m working with a half dozen freelancers. Susan Lahey, a freelancer and owner of Fishpond Content in Austin, is one of the site's most regular contributors. The goal for 2012 is to expand the pool of freelancers in Austin and San Antonio contributing regularly 
to the site.


In addition to finding more sponsors, I’m seeking $100,000 in angel investment on Angellist.com and through Central Texas community sources. That money would allow Silicon Hills News to hire a couple of full-time employees and expand the features on the site as well as beef up technology and add more freelancers.


I would also like to add another co-founder to Silicon Hills News and I’m actively looking for someone to partner with on this venture. I would like someone with business, sales and marketing experience.


The content on the site continues to expand. I signed on with CalendarWiz, which allows the site to have a customizable events calendar. It also allows people to post their own events. This has happened twice and it’s quite nice to get some “user-generated content.” I would like to explore how I could encourage more user-generated content to the site whether it’s guest columns, photos or comics. I also want to hire an artist to create a weekly comic for Silicon Hills News.


I also would like to expand video and audio offerings by adding a weekly podcast and video broadcast to Silicon Hills News.  And I would like to explore more storytelling options with graphics, timelines and maps.


In addition to Startup Texas, I have been taking classes at Tech Ranch Austin that have helped focus on the business.

I’m in their Venture Forth class, I learned how to do a three-year financial forecast from Graham McFarland, an Austin entrepreneur. And last week, Kevin Koym, co-founder of Tech Ranch, taught us about the importance of sales.

When I became a journalist, I never thought I would do sales. But I know realize that we’re all in sales. And sale is an important part of Silicon Hills News. This week, I have to pitch my company to the group. So I’m completing a “pitch deck” which is a series of slides on the company.


One of the goals for 2012 is to a hold an annual event for Silicon Hills News. I’m looking to create a Texas Hill Country tech summit in October. Also, I’m going to do some consulting and offer a few classes on new media to select participants in sessions held throughout the
 year.


Also in late January, Silicon Hills News is going to kick off its first Kickstarter program to raise $15,000. I’ll provide more details on that funding venture in a future post.


Silicon Hills News is in the sweet spot of a national trend of regional “TechCrunch-like” tech sites covering a specific community. Similar ventures include GeekWire in Seattle, SiliconFlorist in Portland, Silicon Prairie News in Omaha and Technically Philly in 
Philadelphia.

What sets Silicon Hills News apart from these other ventures? It’s the only regional tech site run by a woman.

Monday, November 21, 2011

I've had some exciting times at SiliconHillsNews.com these past few months.

Traffic to the site has doubled from September to October and then
doubled again in November and the month isn’t over yet.

So far, it’s all been word-of-mouth advertising and marketing.
The Facebook fan site launched last month and has 111 fans to date. If
you get a chance, please go and “like” it.

This month, SiliconHillsNews.com started a Flickr account to post event photos.
That generates traffic along with its YouTube channel.

Unfortunately along with the highs, there have been some lows. My
computer got hacked and infected with malware in October. I had to
replace it. Then my beloved Flip camera broke – the USB connected to
the computer just snapped off. And my website got hacked and was off
line for several days in October. After two days and lots of
troubleshooting, I figured out how to fix it. That was empowering.

Despite all that, the site continues to grow in popularity. And the
first contributions from two freelancers in Austin appeared on the
website in November. I just hired another freelancer in San Antonio
and assigned her to do some profiles on San Antonio area entrepreneurs
and companies.

I’ve also received two more unsolicited resumes from people
who would like to work for the site in Austin. It looks like by the
end of the year, I could have a staff of half a dozen freelancers
working for the site. That would allow me to focus more fully on the
business side. When I land some permanent funding I would like to hire
a couple of them to work full time.

On that note, I’ve been accepted into Austin-based TechRanch’s next
Venture Forth program, which starts Nov. 29. The start-up accelerator
program lasts eight weeks and helps entrepreneurs do everything from
raising money to building a team. Not only will the program help
develop business skills and contacts, but it will also provide access
to entrepreneurs that I can interview for the site.

I’ve also applied for membership at Geekdom, a new technology
collaborative space in downtown San Antonio. I’ve attended and
reported on a lot of events there since it launched a month ago. And
it’s going to be home to TechStar’s Cloud companies so it should
provide many more stories to come.

To generate more money for the site, I’ve begun to sell ads and
sponsorships. I also recently listed SiliconHillsNews.com on AngelList
to look for some angel investment. I’ve got some meetings set up in
coming weeks and I hope to have more to post on that soon.

I’m also following advice in Eric Ries’ book "The Lean Startup" and I
recently bought Mark Briggs' "Entrepreneurial Journalism: How to Build
What’s Next For News" to learn from others.

Thursday, September 01, 2011

SiliconHillsNews.com launched on Sept. 1 and I’ve posted to the site by covering various conferences in Austin, including Startup Week Austin, The Capital Factor’s Demo Day and, most recently, the Clean Energy Venture Summit. I’ve also covered events like BlogathonATX and Dell World.

My coverage plan is to do profiles of individual entrepreneurs in the Silicon Hills area, and I would like to start doing a weekly profile soon.

Meanwhile, I’ve struggled to find a WordPress template that works easily and effectively. I bought two: the Editorial Theme from Woo Themes and the Deadline theme for Theme Forest. But I soon discovered that I needed additional training in WordPress to understand how to use these themes as content management systems. After struggling for hours to try to make the various themes work, I eventually just gave up and I’m currently using “Themify” a free WordPress theme. I’ve decided the technology can take a back end to the content right now.

Although there are so many features I would love to add to the site as plug-ins, I don’t want to fix it up too much to have to do it all over again when I find a theme that works. To get further training, I found a WordPress meet-up group in Austin, and I’m going to find a tutor there. Hopefully by the end of November, I’ll have the site’s theme solidified.

I did have a lot of trouble finding freelancers. The first one I hired in San Antonio bailed out on me at the last minute after receiving two assignments. I finally found a reliable freelancer in Austin. I would like to hire another freelancer in San Antonio soon.

With additional people working for the site, it gives me a chance to focus on fundraising, ad sales, sponsorships and putting the site’s business plan into action. After attending J-Lab's journalism entrepreneurship workshop at the Online News Association conference in Boston recently I’m thinking a for-profit model is the best way to go for this technology site. I’ve listed the site on Angellist.com to try to find angel funding through a non-traditional method. But so far, I’ve just had some people asking a bunch of questions. I know a few deep-pocketed funders in the Austin-San Antonio area that I’m going to seek out.

I’ve also plugged into the technology incubation scene locally, including a site called TechRanch that I think might be really helpful in providing business guidance.

I’m going to send out press releases and hold a meet-up for the site by the end of the year. I just want to build up the content, find a great theme and make it look as polished as possible before launching a full-fledged marketing campaign.

I did create a Twitter profile for the site - @SiliconHillsNew – it only allows for 15 characters. That has attracted some followers to the site. I’ve had 1,000 page views since launching, which is encouraging since it is only word of mouth marketing right now. I also used 99Designs.com to crowdsource the creation of a logo for the site. I picked my logo from more than 40 design submissions. I may use that site again in the future to create T-shirts for SiliconHillsNews.com. I’ve also created a Facebook page, but I haven’t done a lot with it yet. My plans are to build out that page in the coming weeks.