Usually the product is built first and then the idea of creating content starts with a blog, Facebook page and everything else in an effort to find customers. It turns into a struggle trying to make a content creation and curation strategy. Why not come up with the content first and then build the product?

I’m a fan of the book Lean Startup which promotes the idea of creating a Minimum Viable Product as a strategy for fast and quantitative market testing of a product.

From Wikipedia:

“A Minimum Viable Product has just those features that allow the product to be deployed, and no more. The product is typically deployed to a subset of possible customers, such as early adopters that are thought to be more forgiving, more likely to give feedback, and able to grasp a product vision from an early prototype or marketing information. It is a strategy targeted at avoiding building products that customers do not want, that seeks to maximize the information learned about the customer per dollar spent. “The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.”

Whats more minimum than content? Content allows for the least amount of effort to test a product idea. Especially if the product is a consequence of a cause or purpose that the audience is rallying around. Once you have an audience built, and have continually collected their feedback, then you already have your customers.