How much time do you spend on marketing?
are you getting the message out there?
Last night I gave a presentation to a group of 17 people that are in the process of getting their business ideas off the ground. My talk was about using online media to grow your business.
One of the students asked, “how much time should we spend on marketing?” I think I shattered some dreams when I said about half of your time.
Unless you are a seasoned entrepreneur, most people get into business because
- they don’t want to work for someone else
- they have a product or service that they love and are passionate about it
- they want to make lots of money and
- they want time freedom and flexibility
The reality is, to start and build a business is more about getting your message to the right target market than it is producing a great product or delivering a great service. If you are starting a business where you are doing most of the work you have to be the CEO, the financial controller, the salesperson, the marketer, the customer service person as well as delivering the product or service.
If you don’t have the resources to employer or contract a dedicated marketing person then you are going to have to do it yourself and it will take up half of your time.
If you are offering a service then you have to consider
- employing someone else to provide all of part of that service
- charge a high enough hourly rate, that you can earn a full income from providing that service half the time
- add a product to your service to increase your income for your given output
If you are offering a product then you have to consider
- creating a production team to make the products for you
- outsourcing the production to another company, but make sure you still have lots of margin to make a product
If you really hate marketing or really don’t want to do it, then consider finding a business partner that is strong in marketing and loves doing it so you can spend the time doing what you love.
Google doesn’t use the keywords meta tag in web search
Straight from the horses mouth – Matt Cutt’s from Google talks about keywords in the meta tag.
What is Google Wave?
Google Wave is tipped to be the “next generation” of Internet communication and was first announced by Google in May this year. The name was inspired by the Firefly television series in which a Wave is an electronic communication (often consisting of a video call or video message). Google Wave will be launched to a select group of people at the end of this month and soon after that to the internet population.
In traditional email, you send a message to one or more recipients which consists of a message and possibly attached. The recipient can then reply to the sender or reply to all. Google’s Gmail, built on this with the threading of conversations, so replies to emails are joined together in one thread. This can be confusing at first but is really useful once you get the hang of it.
Google Wave is the next innovation on this. Instead of having of a message (eg email) as a standalone piece of information you have a Wave which is an entire conversation containing many forms of media between 2 or more people.
Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. You see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.
So that makes it an email, document, forum, wiki, chat, video library, image library, podcast, social network and collabation system all in one.
An example of google wave
Terminology that is currently used is;
Wave is a group of wavelets, consisting of one or more participants. A wave is a living thing, with participants communicating and modifying the wave in real time.
Wavelet is a part of wave, a threaded conversation that is spawned from a wave (including the initial conversation). Wavelets serve as the container for one or more messages, known as blips. The wavelet is the basic unit of access control for data in the wave. All participants on a wavelet have full read/write access to all of the content within the wavelet.
During the lifetime of a wave, you may spawn private conversations, which become separate wavelets, but are bundled together within the same “wave.” Since events occur at the wavelet level or below, the context of an event is restricted to a single wavelet.
Blip is the basic unit of conversation and consists of a single messages which appears on a wavelet. Blips may either be drafts or published (by clicking “Done” within the Wave client).
Below is the 1hr20min video of the announcement of Google Wave in May this year.
Selling is everyone’s job
Selling is not just the responsibility of pepole with ”business development” or “sales” on their business card, it is the responsibility of everyone in the company. A lot of people see their job as a silo and may not think sales is part of their responsibility, however most organisations are sales centric. So no sales, no job. Lots of sales, lots of prosperity for the company and good times for everyone. Read more
Moving to WordPress
I first created this blog in February 2007 after attending Ad:Tech in Sydney and sitting in on the blogging for business panel discussion. I decided to start writing my own blog and subscribed to blogharbor (based on blogware) because some of the panelists were using blogharbor. I have since set up Typepad and Blogspot blogs for many of my clients.
Recently I decided to install a WordPress blog (www.34days.com) on my own host and give it a go.
It was love at first site! Read more
Be Responsive
From Cow Command Blog http://blog.cowcommand.com/2009/08/be-responsive.html. Also have a look at the new Cow Command eCommerce Site – http://www.healthandwellbeing.com.au
The key to E-commerce happiness is responsiveness. Full stop.
It’s what gets you talked about positively by your colleagues, and recommended to others by your clients. It’s what gets talked about on forums and twitter, if you do everything right. Read more
Sleeping rough for one night to help the homeless
Last night I slept rough at Luna Park in support of the homeless at the Vinnies CEO Sleepout.
See the Seven Network’s Sunrise interview with David Coch and Dick Smith
To support St Vinnies Winter Appeal and help the homeless, please donate at https://www.ceosleepout.org.au/donate/donate2/ceoId/226
Getting Ready for the CEO Sleepout
Sleeping rough, refers to one type of homelessness, the most visible form, which is people sleeping wherever they can find a place out of the weather. It maybe in a doorway, corner, between a couple of building or just right in the middle of the street. In winter you get cold, when it rains you might get wet, but invariably you are never comfortable and rarely safe.
Last night from 7pm until 7am this morning I joined with other Sydney CEOs to raise money and raise awareness for the plight of the homeless. I slept rough, though not nearly as rough as homeless people do. From 7pm until 11pm I was indoors, had a soup dinner and a cup of tea and heard from people who have been homeless and heard of the good work that St Vinnies does.
From 11pm I found shelter from the pouring rain in amongst the dodgem cars. I had a piece of cardboard between me and the hard steel floor, but unlike most rough sleepers I also had the comforts of a pillow and sleeping bag. I was able to remain relatively warm, but got little sleep on the hard floor.
I also learned that there is a bigger group of homeless people that are a lot less visible. There are many homeless people that have lost permanent accommodation through circumstances such as losing their job or escaping domestic violence that live in cars, hostels, homes provided by organisations like St Vinnies and other types of short term accommodation. They’re not sleeping on the streets, but they don’t have any stability or security and find it hard to function within society.
I commend St Vinnies on the excellent work that they do in giving people immediate help when they find themselves homeless, but particularly in the long term programs that they run, which give people a sence of purpose and the skills they need to find a maintain permanent accommodation.
I was proud to be part of such an event and look forward to doing it again next year.
