6 Secrets to be a great website to boost tech startups

Blog Boost
“Good exposure is really needed for startups to get out in front of more people and early adopters,” says Muhammad Nasrullah, founder and CTO of Pringit.com. “There just isn’t a great single source covering the tech industry in Pakistan,” he laments.

State of Play
“The closest thing we have is ProPakistani.pk but they primarily cover the Telecom sector,” adds Muhammad Nasrullah. “You will see posts on new mobile packages and news on hiring/firing in the telecom industry which would not interest more hardcore techies.”

Fizzling Out
One of the best efforts was made by Osama Hashmi in the form of Green and White (greenwhite.org). Unfortunately, it ran out of steam. But one great thing that happened was that greenwhite was made "opensourced" which meant anyone could contribute. But the quality of content on the site lacks the former passion it had.

Missed Opportunities
Muhammad Nasrullah relates examples of how bad the coverage has been: Badar Khushnood with Bramerz had a whole launch event for their Mobile App / Pakistani Foursquare called olaround.me. This was a big deal because Google Pakistan participated in the launch and was a first Google/Local tech private sector venture. None of the common-named blogs like ProPakistani or CIOPakistan had a post on it. The worst offender is PASHA(Pakistan Software Houses Association) – not only because they represent the local industry but they were also part of the launch event. There's no article about the launch on their website. They just have a general article at  http://pasha.org.pk/?s=olaround

Similarly, the biggest IT event in Pakistan is ITCN Asia. It's not great but it's the only large scale industry effort. Yet, the coverage for this is terrible. This is CIOPakistan's coverage of the event: http://ciopakistan.com/2012/09/itcn-asia-2012-goes-on/

It's dry and written like a boring PR release. Compare this with what Osama used to write four years ago: http://greenwhite.org/blog/2008/05/19/marketing-via-easyload-stoppks-approach-to-increasing-signups/

Passionate, Positive and Responsive
There is a fundamentally different writing style of entrepreneurs: it's passionate, it's positive and it's always asking for feedback. This is what makes Desi Back to Desh: http://blog.alchemya.com/ such a good read.

Everybody else writing about the startup world ends up missing the point altogether.

But once again, Desi is too busy to continue writing regularly, as is the case with all other personal blogs like Jehan's. Afterall, this is a time consuming hobby.

6 ways to be a great website according to Muhammad Nasrulalh

1. Cover Everyone:

Don't pick and choose about what news to drop so long as it's not marketing fluff.

1. Live Event Coverage:

Send people to major events and cover them live!

1. Video:

Take videos at the events. Do interviews!

1. Good Analysis:

Don't just cover the news, we need to hear an expert's opinion. Is this great news? What implications does it have for the industry?

1. Great Community:

It's very important to build a community of tech people. People who want to hear about startups, people who run startups, investors, mentors, advisers.

1. Great Contributors:

Get people from the industry to write. It would be great to get their knowledge and insight out for the public.

Last Point: ProPakistani clarified that they weren't invited to the olaround launch because it was a closed event.  It goes without saying, the local industry needs to work with the bloggers as well.

Muhammad Nasrullah
is the founder and CTO
of Pakistan’s biggest
social network Pring