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8 Things to Think About Before You Make Your Next Product Pitch
Mar 1st
St. Louis became the 22nd city to have a branch of the Founders Institute today. The operation helps entrepreneurs in a very structured four-month paid mentoring program. It involves intensive coaching and has resulted in more than 700 startups, with over 40% of them receiving funding. We have written about FI before here.
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At the St. Louis kickoff meeting last night, I heard about one of the group’s signature tenets, what you need to know before you make your next pitch to a similar entrepreneurial group. These come from FI’s founder, Adeo Ressi. He launched his first business at the ripe old age of 22 back in 1994, and eventually sold it for $600 million.
As I was listening to local VC Kyle Welborn go through these items, I was struck how these can be used the next time you are thinking about making any pitch for something new, such as a product idea or a project for your own company. So let’s take a look and see what they are.
- First, share your idea frequently. This really isn’t a question, but gets at the heart of what anyone who is trying to do something new is all about. The more often you try out your idea on others, the more you tend to think about it and rephrase or reformulate it. And don’t worry about someone else stealing your idea. You might even find someone else who is simpatico to partner up with.
- Simple ideas win over complex ones. This seems pretty obvious, but is worth repeating.
- Have a single revenue stream. The best businesses, and the best products, have focus. Don’t muck things up with making it more complicated. This isn’t to say that you can have multiple products with different revenue streams.
- Identify your ideal and hopefully sole customer. This doesn’t mean that you are trying to make a sale to a limited market (see below). Just that you again focus on someone who you know in your mind is the ideal customer. As a writer, I started out my career with similar advice, keeping in mind a particular reader as I was writing my stories.
- Small markets suck. While you want focus, you also want your idea to find a large market with plenty of potential customers. Many firms have died trying to find a very small niche. That isn’t to say that you can’t find a niche and dominate it – just make sure it is a sizable market.
- Explain your idea in less than 10 words. Keep this short and sweet. At the pitch meeting last night, prospects had a minute to do their pitches. Some did it in less time, which was pretty awesome.
- Have a secret sauce. You need to find something that you can do better than anyone else, to establish your own street cred and also the value of your approach. Explaining that sauce (you don’t have to go into details) is what makes the pitch come alive.
- Be original, be new.
At the meeting, Welborn put together a MadLibs kind of structure to the ideal pitch:
I am developing (my idea) to help (my intended audience) to solve (my particular problem) with (my secret sauce).
Good luck with your pitching!
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Why You Should Build Brand Loyalty Before Worrying About SEO, Especially In … – Forbes
Mar 1st
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Why You Should Build Brand Loyalty Before Worrying About SEO, Especially In …
Forbes She notes that revenue is up for the New York Times, and that the ability of that publication to build a strong brand, rather than cater simply to the whims of SEO, has made it a stronger company for the long haul: If I search for “get red wine stain … BILL GOFF GOLF HOLIDAYS LAUNCH NEW WEBSITE |
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Hurdles Remain Before College Classrooms Go Completely Digital
Feb 20th
OnlineUniversities.com came out with an optimistic infographic last week about how college classrooms are going digital.
But as someone who makes as much as a quarter of his income from teaching college classes in any given year, and who also spends a good amount of time speaking at conferences trying to help professors incorporate technology and social media into their curriculum, the view from the trenches is very different than the iPad-in-every-backpack proponents would have you believe.
This is not to say that tech isn’t changing the way we teach and the way students learn: it most certainly is. But probably not as fast as some people outside of higher ed think it is.
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People who say we’re at the dawn of a new way of learning at the college level are overlooking some rather significant economic and cultural hurdles. At the same time, academic freedom means professors can choose to implement technology a lot, a little bit or not at all into their curriculum. And implementing it “a lot” isn’t always a good thing, particularly if it isn’t used in a way that boosts learning outcomes.
We (Don’t) Have The Technology
If you were to visit the library on the campus where I teach, you would see students waiting to use outdated desktops in the computer labs and library, particularly around midterms and finals week. It seems odd at first, considering the school has a laptop requirement for all undergraduates. That means you have to have a laptop computer when you enroll, and presumably, as an instructor, I can require my students to bring them to any class.
But here’s the reality: laptops break, and students can’t afford replacements.
The mainstream media has sold us a myth of college still being the place for the ultra-elite, for kids who start compiling “brag sheets” in the fourth grade and have parents that shell out five figures to hire a college admissions coach.
But in practice, most college students these days are like the ones I teach at a four-year state college: they are, by-and-large, the first in their family to attend college. Almost all of my students work, and many work full-time or multiple part-time jobs. Some are parents. An increasing number are so-called nontraditional students and are enrolling after an extended break from education. These students often support families and, in many case, have college-aged children who need their own laptops.
Now factor in that the fastest growing segment of higher education are community colleges, which by-and-large draw kids from working class backgrounds or cater to people who have been laid off and are trying to get trained for a new career.
For a lot of students, replacing a broken laptop is a choice between skipping a rent payment or sucking it up and waiting in those long lines at the computer lab. Asking them to shell out for an iPad on top of the laptop just isn’t feasible for many college students, and that means its going to take longer to get everyone on board with the tech revolution in higher ed.
Tenure Doesn’t Equal Tech Savvy
One of the concerns among students on the campus where I teach is that the university employs an alert system that sends them text and email messages if there is a life-threatening emergency on campus (think Virginia Tech in 2007). But what are they supposed to do, these students ask, if they’re in a class where the teacher bans them from using smartphones and laptops?
Academic freedom means professors get to run their classrooms in the way they want, and that includes choosing the tools they use to teach. Having sat in meetings where faculty members have threatened to file union complaints because email means students can – GASP! – contact them at any time, I think we’re a ways off from blanket incorporation of social media and tablet textbooks across the curriculum.
These same professors, many of whom predate the Internet era in higher ed, never concede that email also means fewer student visits during office hours for simple questions, which means more time to get actual work done. This isn’t meant as a knock on them, but there are varying degrees of enthusiasm for incorporating tech into teaching and, unlike high schools, tech enthusiasm can’t be mandated by a curriculum committee.
High School’s Chilling Effects
Career academics are not, however, the only ones to blame. A lot of students come to college with backward views of what social media is and what it can accomplish. And most importantly, what is and isn’t acceptable on social media.
And why shouldn’t they? They come from schools where teachers can be reprimanded or even fired for connecting with students on social networks. Several schools across the country are implementing bans on teachers friending not only current students but former students on Facebook.
There’s no easy fix for overcoming these preexisting biases. Step one, as a professor, is make sure you don’t use Facebook for classwork: even though it’s the default social network for so many of us, there’s still too much of a creep factor in crossing that student-professor line (and, frankly, with Facebook’s ever-shifting privacy policies, even if you think you’re protected you may end up seeing stuff about your students you’d be better off not knowing about).
But that leaves us to decide which social network we should use with our students. Dedicated social networks like the one being rolled out for students by Microsoft seem like a good idea, but my own experience is that a site students check for reasons other than school tends to produce more frequent check-ins and a more organic discussion about classwork, which is exactly what I want to accomplish with social media in my classes.
I tried using Google+ last September, only to be thwarted in a freshman writing class where some of the students were not yet 18. Google has since relaxed its age restrictions, but the social network is still too new for students to gravitate toward it. In my experiment, students found it confusing, or at least less intuitive than Facebook, and I was finding most would only use it if I mandated it.
I’ve had the best luck with Twitter, including the use of it in a film class so we can discuss the film as we’re screening it each week (for a sample, see this storify of tweets from the class discussion of Shawshank Redmeption). But, again, only about half of my students will use it if I don’t require it. And of the students who start using it because I require it in my class, fewer than 10% will continue to use it when the semester ends.
Hope On The Horizon: The Kindle Effect
The people I thought would be stingiest about adopting technology in their classrooms have, in many cases, been the most willing to change. I now see a lot of those seemingly stodgy old English professors walking around campus with a Kindle tucked under their arm.
“I still love all of my books,” one told me recently. “But this is so much easier when you have three or four going.”
Science departments have always been better about being early adopters than people stuck in the humanities, but as colleges increasingly compete with one another for students, and as students increasingly look at college as job training, the colleges that at least acknowledge social media and tech are such an integral part of the workplace and the world, are going to do a better job of recruiting top-tier students.
When I started teaching five years ago, a colleague called me “tech savvy” because I would use YouTube videos to supplement class lectures. Now that same colleague tweets regularly with students, has given up PowerPoint for Prezi and is having students use Google Earth to map the plot of a book they are reading for a class assignment.
Progress in adopting technology in academia is probably slower than the people who make those technologies would hope, but it is happening.
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The Ultimate Guide To Enterprise SEO: 25 Things To Know Before You Take The Plunge – Search Engine Land
Jan 31st
 Search Engine Land |
The Ultimate Guide To Enterprise SEO: 25 Things To Know Before You Take The Plunge
Search Engine Land Enterprise Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not rocket science. In fact, it is not even as faceted as many other sectors of SEO in which practitioners have to perform many more nuanced SEO tasks (and often by themselves). So why is Enterprise SEO so … SEO Positive Partners With Bournemouth Nursing & Residential Home Brick Marketing Hosts February Boston SEO Workshop Don't slack off your SEO resolutions |
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The Ultimate Guide To Enterprise SEO: 25 Things To Know Before You Take The Plunge
Jan 31st
Enterprise Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not rocket science. In fact, it is not even as faceted as many other sectors of SEO in which practitioners have to perform many more nuanced SEO tasks (and often by themselves). So why is Enterprise SEO so underserved and why do so few large…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Think Before You Tweet, And Other Good Advice From The Experts
Jan 30th
Officially, Sree Sreenivasan is the dean of student affairs and a professor at Columbia University’s Journalism School, but for many he is the curator of Sree’s Tips, a Tumblr blog crammed with how-to social media information, as well as a leading figure in the social media movement. This past weekend he was also the point person for Columbia’s Social Media Weekend in New York.
What follows is a recap of some of Sreenivasan’s best advice for better utilizing Twitter from the weekend, as well as nuggets of information for doing better social media that were culled from the more than 50 speakers. When talking about social media, Sreenivasan tends to stress connections over self promotion (although being connected tends to lead to better promotion). He was also quick to stress throughout the weekend “We’re all learning here.”
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Think Before You Tweet
Sreenivasan says he spends an average of three to five minutes thinking about and composing every tweet he sends out, which is a lot of time for a guy who pumps out half a dozen tweets on an average day.
It’s even more time considering that Sreenivasan concedes that “most people will miss most of what we send” through social networks. Still, Sreenivasan says what he tweets tend to have the biggest impact, and are therefore worth the extra care.
Content Is King
On Sunday, Sreenivasan pulled up his own Twitter page, which had tweets full of links, hash tags and mentions of other users. An @ mention insures at least one person will see your tweet, while links add value to the tweets you put out into the world.
“See all that blue?” he said, referring to the links. “All of those are connections or potential connections.”
Indeed, several presenters stressed the importance of not only including content, but presenting content in a way that encourages click-throughs. Erica Anderson, Twitter’s manager for news and journalism, said when sharing articles, try to find an interesting quote or tidbit from the story instead of simply tweeting the headline.
Anderson also said photos and video had also become more important since Twitter’s redesign late last year. In particular, they have become popular among reporters embedded with the presidential campaigns, who have been sharing candid moments. “People love photos on Twitter,” Anderson said.
Overhaul Your Twitter Profile
Sreenivasan pulled up the Twitter profile of New York Times reporter Brian Stelter and noted that he included two phone numbers, an email address, a Web site and a description of what he covered for the Times (as opposed to just saying he was a reporter for the paper).
Sreenivasan said that despite having more than 100,000 followers, Stelter has never received a prank phone call.
Stelter, who is as close to being a social media expert as one can get in journalism circles, also uses his full name on his profile. Users who just defer to their Twitter handle, a company name, or nick name risk not being found by people who want to follow them, Sreenivasan said.
Finally, Sreenivasan directed people to look past the number of people following Stelter and look at the 2,500 Stelter himself follows. That, Sreenivasan said, is the real value for using social media in journalism and other fields: by seeking out people to follow, we’re seeking more information, he said.
“Whatever you have as a number in that ‘following,’ space, it’s not enough,” Sreenivasan said.
Be Safe
Anderson spent a portion of her Saturday morning talk stressing security. She gave a plug for multi-platform manager 1Password and said people should get in the habit of checking their browser’s address bar for https:// as opposed to http:// before logging into Twitter and other sites.
Anderson also recommended using a company email account when signing up for Twitter and other sites where social interaction is encouraged. That can prevent hackers from accessing personal email accounts, which may have more sensitive personal information.
Keep Reading
One blog post is not enough to digest a weekend’s worth of info sessions. Some of the best tips have been curated under the hash tags #smwknd and #smwkndcool.
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Now Test Your Sitemaps Before Submitting Them To Google
Jan 26th
Google has quietly added a feature to Google Webmaster Tools that allows you to test your sitemap files prior to submitting them to Google. Google’s Pierre Far confirmed that this is indeed a brand new feature built to help webmasters debug their sitemap files prior to submitting them. One of…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Will Windows Phone Get Instagram Before Android?
Jan 19th
Fast Company is reporting that Instagram is working with Microsoft to develop a version of the popular photography app for Windows Phone.
Critics love Windows Phone, but it still has a relatively low market share, which left most people to assume Instagram would next aim to conquer Android. The photography application was named the iPhone’s app of the year by Apple and now has more than 15 million users.
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Both Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom and Microsoft were vague when asked about the potential for a partnership by Fast Company, but an unnamed source said Microsoft’s new focus on quality and design standards had resulted in collaboration between the two companies. Systrom has already said Instagram will soon be available on Android, but the Fast Company report suggests it may be available on Windows Phone at the same time, if not sooner.
One of the biggest drawbacks for Windows Phone has been its lack of apps, and securing a partnership with Instagram ahead of Android would be a big coup. Instagram wants to someday be on par with the major mobile social networks (Systrom once told Fast Company he wants 300 million users), meaning it will need to be available on devices beyond the iPhone.
Windows Phone designers have been insisting that phone makers meet certain design standards – something that plagued Microsoft’s previous mobile efforts. That means better cameras and platforms that are fast enough to handle Instagram. Microsoft is also undertaking a big marketing push, reportedly pumping $1 billion into Nokia to promote their partnership.
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Will Windows Phone Get Instagram Before Andorid?
Jan 19th
FastCompany is reporting that Instagram is working with Microsoft to develop a version of the popular photography app for Windows Phone.
Critics love Windows Phone, but it still has a relatively low market share, which left most people to assume Instagram would next aim to conquer Android. The photography application was named the iPhone’s app of the year by Apple and now has more than 15 million users.
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Both Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom and Microsoft were vague when asked about the potential for a partnership by FastCompany, but an unnamed source said Microsoft’s new focus on quality and design standards had resulted in collaboration between the two companies. Systrom has already said Instagram will soon be available on Android, but the FastCompany report suggests it may be available on Windows Phone at the same time, if not sooner.
One of the biggest drawbacks for Windows Phone has been its lack of apps, and securing a partnership with Instagram ahead of Android would be a big coup. Instagram wants to someday be on par with the major mobile social networks (Systrom once told FastCompany he wants 300 million users), meaning it will need to be available on devices beyond the iPhone.
Windows Phone designers have been insisting that phone makers meet certain design standards – something that plagued Microsoft’s previous mobile efforts. That means better cameras and platforms that are fast enough to handle Instagram. Microsoft is also undertaking a big marketing push, reportedly pumping $1 billion into Nokia to promote their partnership.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
SEO Positive Reviews New Site Before January Launch – PR Web (press release)
Jan 8th
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SEO Positive Reviews New Site Before January Launch
PR Web (press release) The website development team at SEO Positive are making final adjustments to the SEO company's brand new website, which is set to be launched next week. SEO Positive is no stranger to the trials and tribulations associated with professional website … SEO Positive Partners With Renowned Cheshire Multi-Sensory Impairment Unit |
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