Archive for February, 2009

The Twitter Explosion

by admin on Friday, February 6th, 2009

When Jonathan Ross (@wossy) discusses Twitter with Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) on Friday night telly you know that Twitter is going mainstream.

Indeed Hitwise’s new figures suggest that Twitter use in the UK has risen ten-fold in the last year - making it one of the top 300 websites in the UK.

So what can aspiring entrepreneurs - especially those in the tech and web 2.0 arenas - learn from Twitter?

Certainly simple is good - Twitter is easy to explain and has limited functionality. Not everyone might grasp ‘why’ you might want to spend your days tweeting away but a simple idea makes Twitter easy to share.

Network effects make a big difference too. The more people who use Twitter, the more useful Twitter becomes, and the more people who will use it.

If you’re building a community, Twitter also teaches us to ‘get the hell out of the way‘ - the founders of Twitter are surprisingly uninvolved in what goes on in the twitterverse. They let people use it however they like and make it simple for developers to build new apps and businesses around Twitter.

To those points I’d also add customisation as a key factor - and competition. There’s certainly an element of Twitter users determined to attract as many followers as possible - and beat everyone else.

Perhaps it’s too simplistic to think that you could design a Twitter-like business - much of what has happened is surely as much a happy surprise to the founders as anyone.

But, as social media becomes more mainstream - from blogs, to Facebook to Twittering on the BBC - smart entrepreneurs are using the lessons learned from the successes (and failures) to help develop their own products and services.

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What Do Your Potential Customers Really Want to Know

by admin on Thursday, February 5th, 2009

Let’s say you’ve just decided to launch the greatest ever social network or the coolest new Twitter app on the planet.

Great.

But, and it is a big but, you now need to educate your potential market - or potential investors - as to just what exactly your new product or service can do for them.

So how can you put across that information in the best possible way?

  1. Keep It Simple - Nobody is going to read pages of technical documentation, they want a simple answer to a simple question - what’ll do for me. Sure, you might want to have more detailed information available for those who do need to know more but for Joe Public the key is ’simple is better’.
  2. Keep It Personal / Focus on Benefits - People want to know what’s in it for them - not how technically advanced your product may be. Features are the things that describe your business, benefits are how those features affect the person who uses your service. Keep to the benefits in your marketing and information.
  3. Keep It Lingo Free - Unless your end-users are in ‘the trade’ then keep any jargon, acronyms or slang out of the information you provide. Simple information, delivered in plain-English.
  4. Include Your Personality - There’s no need to be overly dry or corporate in your approach - let some of your personality shine through.
  5. Focus - Your product or service may have a million cool features and benefits that you could talk about - don’t. Stick to one or two key ideas that makes what you have to offer different. One big idea is easier to spared than dozens of small ideas.

You may have noticed a common theme or two - less is more and focus on what your audience wants to know - not what you want to tell them. Keep those two ideas  in mind and you won’t go far wrong.

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Tweetdeck Gets Angel Funding

by admin on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Twitter users are probably already familiar with Tweetdeck - the application that allows you to organise and simplify your Twitter-life by splitting your main feed into groups.

What you might not know though is that Tweetdeck was developed by a single UK-based developer, Iain Dodsworth, who had the idea just a few months ago.

The good news is that in the last few weeks, Tweetdeck has confirmed that they have received angle investment to the tune of 1/2 a million dollars. It’s a promising sign that if you have a good idea, there are still people willing to invest - despite the current economic climate.

In fact, you might just find a few on acfuse!

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Business Ideas and News Startups · No Comments

Phenomenal Customer Service

by admin on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

No doubt most businesses would say that they strive to provide excellent customer service but in reality, as customers, we know better.

In fact, a lot of what passes as customer service is downright poor and serves more to creating barriers between businesses and their customers than actually engaging with them. Even where customer service is satisfactory, it’s often nothing to write home about.

As with so many thing in business in general and marketing in particular, you need to be outstanding to get noticed. Good service is no longer good enough - you need to deliver phenomenal service to get the word-of-mouth buzz going.

So what makes phenomenal customer service?

Phenomenal customer service starts with exceeding customer expectations. To simply meet expectations, you need to provide a good product or service and do so in a friendly, hospitable, open and honest fashion. By and large, customers are willing to forgive mistakes or problems so long as you treat those customers with respect when problems do arise.

Phenomenal customer service is therefore about one, or two, or ten steps beyond what would be considered reasonable or good service. It might not immediately sound like an exercise in marketing but in providing remarkable and memorable service you start to create advocates.

Advocates are people who are happy to do whatever they can to support you and your business – they’ll use you more often, they’ll ‘recruit’ friends and family to your cause and they’ll speak more convincingly about your business than any advertisement or press release ever can.

Planning for Phenomenal Customer Service

Start with a blank sheet for your planned business. Make a list of all the contact points - occasions where customers come into contact with your business.

From that list, identify what would be acceptable service in each situation. Now, go one step further, what would be exceptional and what would make you tell someone else about your experience?

That’s your benchmark.

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General, Marketing · No Comments

Building a Brand Community

by admin on Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Entrepreneurs will frequently talk about building a community around their brands. In some cases - especially startups in the web 2.0 space - this is both literal and metaphorical.

The idea is simple enough, involving consumers with your brand – and with other customers like them – leads to all sorts of positive things.

In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a major website or brand without some kind of blog, forum, or social network designed to encourage ‘membership’ and participation in that brand’s community. Internet tools have helped customer communities to become more obvious, bigger, bolder and better than ever before.

For the most part, communities can’t be willed into being. You can however create a place that’s conducive to community and make it that much more likely by playing host.

Here are a few quick ideas to help create a community around your business, online or offline:

  1. If you haven’t started yet, see if there is an existing community you can serve or tap in to.
  2. Have a story. If people are going to talk about your brand it better be interesting.
  3. Encourage conversation. Give them a place to talk and the tools to do it.
  4. Play host. Make them comfortable and do some introductions to get the conversation started.
  5. Be supportive of your community but don’t try to run it. Facilitate.
  6. Treat them special. Not great grammar, but where’s the payoff, the reward, for being part of this community?

However you decide to market your business, building community aspects into the plan can pay huge dividends – just don’t expect to be the person in charge. You can’t force a community – but you can foster it.

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Marketing · No Comments