Help needed: Idea validation for business strategy blog

[gabu4u1]

I have an idea to start a blog where I can share business strategies with my professional colleagues. During college education we go through a business management course which is grossly inadequate to start any business at all.

Many colleagues have gone into their own businesses providing professional services but have performed woefully. Secondly, we compete with quacks who seem to be more successful because of their street smartness having gone through on the job training (learning the trade of selling our products).

My idea is to expose my colleagues to business strategies that could improve their businesses and help those who intend to start theirs to do so on a good footing.

The challenge is that I live in a country with low internet penetration. The attitude to self -development is low. We have a Facebook group with about 5000 plus members but activity on the group is low too. Most discussions on the group center around paid employment and the challenges faced by the professionals in the hands of government and rival professionals. Business discussion is very minimal if any. There are over 15,000 of us and the number is growing as new graduates are being turned out by the universities.

Most of my colleagues who run their own businesses are not online. However, the younger generation are internet savvy. I can get access to the telephone numbers of members at a cost in order to send bulk sms to them.

I want to specifically target my professional colleagues within my country.

What are your suggestions, please?

 

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[snowbank]

The easiest way to validate that something works, is to do it.

So, if you're trying to prove that a different business strategy than they're using is going to be substantially more successful/lucrative than what they're currently doing, you should go create a successful, lucrative business to prove that your way works much better.

Sounds like you're heavily focused on the marketing aspect of what you want to sell them, but validating what you're wanting to sell them would probably be your best form of marketing in the long run. Makes it much easier.

 

[gabu4u1]

Thanks Snowbank. What I plan to do is to expose them to business strategies that work through my blog. What I want to do is share best practices so that they can learn what works and what doesn't. I plan is to interview some successful members of the profession as well as share some basic knowledge on running businesses.

Most of the information I intend to share with my audience will be generated from my discussions and interviews with those in business. With time I plan to approach some of my colleagues to guest post on the blog.

My main challenge is to determine whether it goes in line with the principles shared in TMF especially in terms of scale and magnitude especially since a large number of them is not online.

 

[100k]

Hmm, thats an intr. one. Do they have access to the internet via smart phones? Maybe you could just make a youtube channel and get them to subscribe and exchange ideas etc. through your videos on youtube.

What about making CDs i.e audiotapes of your interviews or maybe organize a place where you guys can meet every 2 weeks (maybe on campus) to network, discuss business ideas and help the students that are thinking about going into the industry.

 

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