Thursday, June 23rd 2011- Earlier tonight at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, Matt Moog hosted his first Built In Chicago event to a packed room of entrepreneurs; so packed that people who showed up without registering had to be turned away by the lovely Maria Katris. (Who, I am sure, did not enjoy the task- but rules is rules when the house is packed). The talented Olena Javorska wrote a Tech.li post highlighting the night’s events. This post is an open message to all of Chicago’s digital entrepreneurs. Here’s the message: Blog on Built In Chicago. Why? Because if you want to be noticed, if you want Chicago (and the world) to know what an awesome, innovative company you have, you need to be your own spokesperson. (Other than getting covered on Tech.li, of course.) When you blog, you generate content. And when you generate content, Google, Bing and Yahoo index it. And when people do searches, they’ll be more likely to find you. Content is King, baby. Blog here Going beyond that point, Chicago is full of entrepreneurs in the digital space that want to help you- if you have a particular problem you’re facing, one of the entrepreneurs on BIC can likely help you solve it. When I launched Flyover Geeks (the precursor to Tech.li) last year, many entrepreneurs opened their doors to me and offered advice when I asked for it. I am a networker and went looking for those people but now that BIC is growing so fast, you’ll likely be able to reach those people a lot easier for an initial contact on BIC. Then there are the first time digital entrepreneurs. They know what they want to do but don’t know how to get there. When you start blogging about your area of expertise, the newcomers on the scene can learn from your wisdom and maybe even purchase or use your service or product. The Digital startup entrepreneurial space is not like other businesses- we like to help each other. We are visionaries and want to change the world and it’s a lot more fun disrupting the old school when you have others on the ride up with you. In the last year I have watched brand new startups making big strides (Cloudbot), successful startups get even more successful (GrubHub), and others that needed some mentorship and support for their not widely known products get a chance to shine (All the Excelerate companies). And guess what? They are all on BIC. BIC creator Matt Moog didn’t have to create BIC. He is plenty successful enough already with Viewpoints and Maria Katris didn’t have join Matt running BIC as she is busy enough with Tie Midwest and 100 other things. They do it because they like to help entrepreneurs too. So now that you’ve joined the club and made the leap into the Digital wilds of Chicago, don’t labor in obscurity. Spend a little time doing a blog post once a week on BIC and I can guarantee people you haven’t met yet will respond and you’ll likely make a valuable business connection. Matt Moog asked everyone at the end of the presentation to ask 10 of his or her friends in the Digital space to join BIC. The bigger and more well connected the community gets, the better off we all are- so now I am asking all of YOU reading this to join BIC if you haven’t yet. To help get things moving in the right direction, the first 10 Chicago Digital Entrepreneurs to join BIC and send a message to Maria & Matt through BIC that they joined from reading this post will get moved to the top of the priority list for upcoming Tech.li articles and we’ll cover your business first- same thing applies if you are already a member and get a friend to sign up- but you have to email Matt or Maria and then they’ll let Olena know and she’ll arrange coverage of your endeavor. Were you there last night? Comment and let us know what you thought!
