Sunny Mui & Brenden Johnson on locating trusted business relationships with manufacturers from around the world using networking tools in Globial.com
Today we chat with two startup entrepreneurs in the trenches at Globial. Sunny Mui and Brenden Johnson share with us their content strategy and the history and evolution of the Globial blog.
We met these guys at their office at the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, and had to follow up with this interview once we saw their extensive blogging efforts.
Sunny tells us that Globial started the blog on day one, about two years ago. They started with a free theme, and started building up content. They eventually purchased a more advanced theme and started customizing it for their needs.
The blog used to simply link back to the Globial homepage, but now the call to action is to join a newsletter that offers free global business guides, expert tips and news. With this strategy, they're able to continually engage with their visitors, providing more valuable content and eventually converting them into passionate Globial users.
Brenden tells us how they've use social media in the the early days, and now are focusing on search engine optimization of their own social network. Optimizing their social network profile pages for search engine indexing is invaluable with over 30,000 company profiles having joined the network.
We're excited about the network growth of their clearly valuable product. It seems natural for existing members to bring on personal connections via referral, and Brenden says at least 500 invites have already been accepted.
They are currently talking to companies and quickly gaining traction in Turkey, where their founder is from. Most of the user base is international, with roughly 25% in the United States. Offering these global connections that other networks don't have is a big advantage for the little guys around the world.
Sending bulk emails that reach the inbox takes an engineering effort. They even built a tool to rotate among several email services to send their newsletter.
We love content marketing and starting a business with a blog. Sunny tells us his progress from content writer to editor and curator of the blog since they've added guest posting about a year in. Now that they're getting 1,000 unique a day, they also have a steady flow of blog post's being submitted they can choose from to share with their audience. What a great strategy to efficiently serve the readers great content you couldn't write yourself.
Brenden has been working on optimizing their conversion rates from google, their blog and email newsletters. Also events generated from inside the site like network invites. Increasing their conversion even a percent is a huge advantage for Globial.
One of the biggest wins was optimizing the profile pages inside their social network. Having vanity URLs and clean title's and some internal linking has helped with inbound traffic tremendously.
We get the guys to login and show us the product itself. Brenden gives us a tour of his profile on the social network, that appears to have all of the expected tools and more. Right away we notice the focus on a visual representation of your network and references.
The focus of the network is to engage relationship building and finding credible partners. Rather than job hunters, this network squarely aims at buyers and sellers from companies. There's even a marketplace where you can post and search for buyer leads and seller deals, with time saving filtering.
Much like other networks, the homepage is built to register users and doesn't show too much. Sunny tells us they used to highlight profiles and offer search, but it would distract users from joining. After getting a look at the product, we're sure this tool is making deals happen for companies around the world. We look forward to hear the success stories from the big and small companies using Globial.
Thanks to Brenden and Sunny for braving our impromptu interview and sharing their hard work and awesome product with us!
http://www.globial.com/
We met these guys at their office at the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, and had to follow up with this interview once we saw their extensive blogging efforts.
Sunny tells us that Globial started the blog on day one, about two years ago. They started with a free theme, and started building up content. They eventually purchased a more advanced theme and started customizing it for their needs.
The blog used to simply link back to the Globial homepage, but now the call to action is to join a newsletter that offers free global business guides, expert tips and news. With this strategy, they're able to continually engage with their visitors, providing more valuable content and eventually converting them into passionate Globial users.
Brenden tells us how they've use social media in the the early days, and now are focusing on search engine optimization of their own social network. Optimizing their social network profile pages for search engine indexing is invaluable with over 30,000 company profiles having joined the network.
We're excited about the network growth of their clearly valuable product. It seems natural for existing members to bring on personal connections via referral, and Brenden says at least 500 invites have already been accepted.
They are currently talking to companies and quickly gaining traction in Turkey, where their founder is from. Most of the user base is international, with roughly 25% in the United States. Offering these global connections that other networks don't have is a big advantage for the little guys around the world.
Sending bulk emails that reach the inbox takes an engineering effort. They even built a tool to rotate among several email services to send their newsletter.
We love content marketing and starting a business with a blog. Sunny tells us his progress from content writer to editor and curator of the blog since they've added guest posting about a year in. Now that they're getting 1,000 unique a day, they also have a steady flow of blog post's being submitted they can choose from to share with their audience. What a great strategy to efficiently serve the readers great content you couldn't write yourself.
Brenden has been working on optimizing their conversion rates from google, their blog and email newsletters. Also events generated from inside the site like network invites. Increasing their conversion even a percent is a huge advantage for Globial.
One of the biggest wins was optimizing the profile pages inside their social network. Having vanity URLs and clean title's and some internal linking has helped with inbound traffic tremendously.
We get the guys to login and show us the product itself. Brenden gives us a tour of his profile on the social network, that appears to have all of the expected tools and more. Right away we notice the focus on a visual representation of your network and references.
The focus of the network is to engage relationship building and finding credible partners. Rather than job hunters, this network squarely aims at buyers and sellers from companies. There's even a marketplace where you can post and search for buyer leads and seller deals, with time saving filtering.
Much like other networks, the homepage is built to register users and doesn't show too much. Sunny tells us they used to highlight profiles and offer search, but it would distract users from joining. After getting a look at the product, we're sure this tool is making deals happen for companies around the world. We look forward to hear the success stories from the big and small companies using Globial.
Thanks to Brenden and Sunny for braving our impromptu interview and sharing their hard work and awesome product with us!
http://www.globial.com/