My blog, also my first successful product
As a Product Manager of my blog, I have applied practical methods to make Thinhnotes.com one of the favorite destinations of people who want to learn and read about Business Analyst work in particular and product design in general.
Product Strategy & Discovery
In 2017, there was almost no Vietnamese-language blog sharing about Business Analyst work. Although there are still Business Analyst training centers on the market, the gap between people who want to learn about Business Analyst and the source of knowledge is still quite far and difficult to access. Besides, the fount of quality knowledge is not much, and this topic needs to be simplified to make it easy to read and understand.
Therefore, I created this blog in early 2018 with the passion of sharing what I’ve learned & experienced throughout my journey.
Initially, there are 3 audiences that the product is intended to serve.
- The first one is college students from 18-22 years old who are cherishing career orientation in the IT industry.
- Second is workers with few years of experience interested in business analyst work.
- And the last one is those who work in the IT industry and want to learn about Business Analyst to expand their career opportunities.
Initially, I relied on these attributes to generate ideas for content and engage readers (and these attributes change later, of course).
I have defined the following OKRs for the first 6 months since first launching:
- Publish 8 articles/ month
- Reach +1,000 views/ day
- Reach +50 comments/ month
OKRs are continuously evaluated and increased every 6 months. I’m still using this set of 3 OKRs to drive the blog to grow.
Research & Define
Before the official blog launch, I spent 4 months piloting the blog with several audiences. Pilot users are mainly university students and some random people from my social networks.
After the pilot phase, I continuously upgraded/ removed features to make the product more suitable for my target audience.
On the content side, I also tested some new content and measured reader engagement with Google Analytics. I started my blog with 5 main topics, but now it’s only 2 topics that I’m most interested in.
I also conducted some quantitative surveys to listen to readers’ opinions to adjust my writing style more appropriately but still retain the unique value proposition compared to other blogs: sharing from real experience, always with simple examples, effortless to understand, and witty writing style.
In addition, I conducted some qualitative surveys, such as tracking readers’ reactions through comments on Facebook Groups and interviewing some people about new topics.
Design & Develop
I use WordPress & some related services to build the blog, such as Google Analytics for Metric Monitoring and Mailchimps for Newsletter Process.
In terms of designs, I changed the existing theme to better adapt to my readers’ tastes. (I’ve learned HTML & CSS by myself to make it).
Key Takeaways
After 3 years, the blog has also recorded the following key figures.
P.S.
“The success” mentioned above is a personal perspective (when the goal has been achieved).
Blogging is not something difficult, and I do not “overdo” my blog building. These are typical steps in building my blog through the lens of Product Management. This article proves that: the methods in Product Management can be applied practically to the minor things & everyday things around us.
