You are the PM for Pratilipi app. How will you acquire the next 10K writers on the platform?

The first step is to align on what the product is. This specially needs to be done with products not so well known, yet! So Pratilipi is a multi-lingual website/app or both for readers and writers. There is content on several topics, recommended to users based on their topics of interest and reading history. Writers make money by publishing great content and readers pay to read the article through a subscription model or a freemium model.

After the alignment, there are still a few open questions to clarify. First of which is, Are we growing the first 10k writer base or is it the next 10k writers that we are looking at? This is important as the strategy will have to be tailored to the specific problem. The second question is why are we trying to solve this problem or in other words why is this problem worth solving ? To further narrow down the problem, are we focusing on writers who write in a particular language or on a particular topic ? The last question is, can we add features to the app or is this is a pure strategic question where we need to work with what we have as features ?

Once all the answers are clarified, summarise the problem statement. For the purposes of this problem, let’s say : We are trying to get the first 10k writers to write on a few trending topics in two languages to start with. The goal is to acquire more writers in order to start the flywheel of this supplier and consumer platform.

Now let’s understand the different writer personas:

1. The casual/wanna be writer, people who post once in a while when the FOMO on twitter hits them.
2. The professional writers, the people who have their substacks, basically people who earn a decent living through writing
3. Really popular creators who are not necessarily writers but popular on platforms like reddit, youtube etc. Basically they have the ability to create, have a fan base and have a regular uploading schedule.

Since our goal is to “acquire” writers with the eventual outcome of providing quality content to the readers on our platform, we should focus on personas 2 and 3. Not that we will stop anyone from writing on our platform but won’t necessarily be going after them. Now let’s discuss the pain points of the two personas that we have picked.

Pro-tip: Check-in with your interviewer if they are good with the choices made and if they have any questions. This keeps the conversation interactive.

The first pain point is why would “they” come to a new platform specially the one where the user base is quite small as of now. The second for the “creators” is that they don’t write a lot, that doesn’t mean they can’t but we all agree with Newton’s second law of motion. The third pain point is posting content and measuring stats on multiple platforms is tedious.

Now let’s think of a few solutions to solve their pain points:

1. Incentive to write articles: Facebook, Instagram, snapchat all have their catchy ways to attract more creators on their platform. We can devise an incentive plan which can be a combination of number of views, likes and comments. This will encourage writers to really publicise their content and for us as a company to not pay a lot of money( cash burn). Writers who attain a certain milestone in a given span of time can be rewarded heavily so that it encourages more writers to do the same. Variable reward will keep the writers at it.
2. Writing support: Providing creators tools to write, proof read, SEO tips, trending topics, writing templates will remove the barrier to entry. There can be partnerships with tools like “grammarly” which will help them write specially persona 3 and leverage their fanbase and also opening another revenue channel for them. Tools such as this on the platform will eventually make it the editor of choice for the writers, even persona 2.
3. Recommendation on what is working and what is not working: Eventually there can be a recommendation algorithm that tells writers what is working and what is not.
4. Having a writer’s community: The community would be for the writers to connect, learn and celebrate each other.

Now these are the features that our platform should have to entice more writers. The reason I did this was because we first need the PMF to start growth hacking. Now getting these writers:

1. Reach them where they are: Substack, medium, twitter and Linkedin are where most writers write. Picking people who write about trending topics from these platforms and then convincing them to write on the platform and how it “would serve them — money, flywheel using multiple platforms, more followers” is the next logical step.
2. Influencers: People who talk about passive income, side hustles can be paid to popularise our platform. This will help us reach the right audience.
3. Referrals: If writers can bring on more writers there should be an incentive to make it worth doing so.
4. Founders network: Utilise the network of people you know as founders/leaders who can write on the platform
5. Run catchy ads on Facebook and Google: For example Earn 2000 rupees/hour by writing.
6. Reaching out to creators on youtube who don’t write but really talk about trending topics and have a substantial following.

These are some of the strategies(other than the usual ones) that best suit our problem at hand in terms of cost, effort and outcome. Try to be creative and not suggest the usual.

Pro tip: Talk to the writers often to understand what’s working and what is not. It is important to double down on channels that are working and therefore understanding each channels attribution.

You as a good PM should forsee the risks with each of the recommended solutions. For example, not every writer you get on the internet may be a good one and it is important we deliver quality content on the platform. Therefore content moderation is crucial. Coming up with an incentive program should be treated as an experiment where you continuously learn and refine the structure.

You can then summarise your solution and answer any questions the interviewer may have.

Happy interviewing!