photo of Paul Graham (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Take a read of his Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas blog post from earlier this month.

His seven point suggestion about ideas for new startups that disrupt and cause maximum possible returns is an interesting list.  He is honest about the source, Ycombinator startup companies plus his own frustrations with the apps and ways of working that nag at him.  But boy, a replacement for email? That’s ambitious.

We have clients who might fit into numbers 4 and 7.

4. Internet drama

Hollywood has been slower than slow to embrace the internet.  So check out Sirendipity.net where Julian Darley is writing and broadcasting a soap opera online – and using crowdsourcing to fund it.  He’s also got a neat blog about Low Budget Movie Making which is the area from which Hollywood will be diluted, if not crushed within 5 years.  Hell this man wrote a thesis on the ‘elimination of television‘!

7. Automatic Medical Diagnosis

We’re working with Lifetime Health Diary who are setting about overcoming htre silos in which medical data and access to patient information sits.  Their big idea – Make the Patient, the centre of the app.

Now go and read the article.  And don’t forget his last section on tactics

I think the way to use these big ideas is not to try to identify a precise point in the future and then ask yourself how to get from here to there, like the popular image of a visionary. You’ll be better off if you operate like Columbus and just head in a general westerly direction. Don’t try to construct the future like a building, because your current blueprint is almost certainly mistaken. Start with something you know works, and when you expand, expand westward.

You worked in a traditional agency – how did they view biz dev?

They didn’t really have it – they were reliant on the traditional networks of the founders. The growth was dependent on that and referrals. Some limited efforts to do DM pieces and promotions.

Is that normal?

Yes I think in a lot of cases – agencies are built that way. We did research in 2010 into PR agencies only a small % were blogging. They were trying to provide social media services but weren’t doing it wll for themselves.

Agencies tend to come last and that’s why they haven’t done good biz dev work. Take care of your own needs after everything else. I find that messaging and websites are often outdated and they rely on reputation and networks and RFPs for new business.

In the book you liken your business plan to a football field – Why?

I tend to see everything in a sports metaphor. Whether we are bringing in entry level talent (the draft) versus free agency. When I was trying to figure out how to explain to clients how the [online] market was evolving and how these strategies were integrated and they rely on each other, I tried a Venn diagram and in my mind I started thinking about watching

Drive Charts – showing progression down the field 10-20 yard line. This was an analogy – we have to do each of the phases systematically to eventually get to the end zone or the goal. I also wanted to represent different things at once – audiences (stadium) the brand (a place).  See Paul’s diagram here.

Inbound Marketing Gameplan

How do you manage the agency website internally?

One of the senior consultants is also the agency’s marketing manager and is also the blog editor. In most cases her role is to keep the editorial calendar up to date and the team of the writers – we try to do 1-2 per week.  We also have a premium content strategy – the book started as a 2010 e book; we did “The marketers guide to web design”. We also have plans to do premium content which isn’t paid for but is just high quality. Gated content = lead form to access.

How does she report and on what?

Same as clients – traffic, organic, lead generation, blog subscriber base, social media and how engaged – followers and likes we have.  We do a monthly scorecard – pull the data out of GA and Hubspot and create a spreadsheet thta shows core numbers, assess it and 3 takeaweays – highlights, learning snad what we’ll do next month.

Tomorrow, read Part 2 of the interview with Paul.

In the meantime, why not buy the book [affiliate link] it’s in hardback or Kindle editions.

B2B Marketing Pinterest boards

There’s been a profusion of interest in the new(ish) social media site, Pinterest – see my boards .

One of the advantages of Pinterest – compared to Facebook you can’t create a page where people find your interest easily, unless you’re already connected to each other.  On Pinterest you can search for Tennis shoes, or Apple accessories or B2B marketing. You see, it’s so much more powerful for search and discovery.

Pinterest uses the Youtube algorithm for popularity  and so if your pins get relayed/repinned quickly and you get some momentum the popularity of your boards move up fast.

7 things to do today on Pinterest

Here are our suggestions on things you can do to earn revenues, SEO backlinks and more from using the service for your business.

1. Pin things from your own blog – get people reading what you write
2. pin a book on Amazon using your affiliate link – copy the link and paste it into the Pinterest add button… it pulls the picture and makes it part of your page… if it gets re-pinned by anyone else, your affiliate button goes with it!
3. Drive SEO from Pinterest by naming your board creatively – your board name becomes the title of that page (see this one we created on Creative Agency Infographics).  When you create a board the first word of the board name becomes the meta description… So don’t use “Things I like” it gets you nowhere.
4. Use key words for your business or service when describing your pictures AND your boards….like this one for Rowing Gifts for Rowers
5. Don’t forget, it’s also a social site – the more comments and likes you get the higher they show up in search.
6. Write headlines using key words and in a manner that drives traffic ‘I can’t believe this hasn’t got sugar in it…‘ people click to see what it does have in it!
7. Use it for the niche research… find which boards have likes and repins – if you find a board which has both then it may a good product – maybe you should feature it or use for your own site.

Getting legal with brands

Yo need to know that there is a clause in the Terms of use that says no commercial use…But plenty of people are advocating using it for marketing and so Pinterest may have to change TOU.  Let’s face it, the worst thing they’ll do is shut down your board.

Downsides of Pinterest

You have to have more than one Faceboook account to get more than one Pinterest account….so go create!

You’re interested in becoming smarter and more knowledgable about new business development.  You want to win more customers and clients for your business and build an online presence for your organisation or brand…

Join our Weekly Newsletter Group and find out why an investment of 20 minutes a week will improve your business development

The Resources and additional material which add to the slides are:

• Blog post about website keywords and how to test for their use
• Reverse IP Mapping Explained – and download the free e-book
• Leads Explorer and DomoDomain are examples of companies offering IP lookup services
• How to do B2B leads research guide slide deck
• The Word of Mouth marketing website - this is the Otago/Dunedin page, there are many others

How to use these resources:

Check out the original slide deck; then review the Reverse IP Mapping document – it includes a case study done on our own website about visitors, lastly review the slide deck B2B leads research because this shows how to use the reverse IP mapping in your business development methodology.

#OMGdiabetic

I am a diabetic and I live with a chronic disease.  25.8 million in the US today.   A diabetic looks at each meal as a carbohydrate count with high/low glycemic index.  You are thinking about yoiur condition all day long and we know why lab values like A1C are important.

Some of us are bigger experts than others 17million / 67% US diabetics aren’t managing their blood sugar well.  Something is systemically wrong with the system if this number are having problems.  This is not to remove personal responsibility.  Cost to US is enormous in healthcare costs and chronic diseases cause 7/10 deaths per year.

Why aren’t we handling it?

Can technology help us manage it?

IN 21 minute segments (an average doctors visit) we talk about our health.  They ask questions about our lifestyle and health.  It’s isolated within the doctor’s office which is outside the normal pattern of your life (bar, office, restaurant, gym).   This is 2 hours per year approx and the doctors aren’t there when we make daily decisions about our disease.

This isn’t enough for patients with chronic disease.  31% are having problems with their medication in 45-54 age bracket.  Even more are dissatisfied with their eating or exercise plan.  The problem doesn’t lie mostly with the areas where doctors write prescriptions…. “eat well and exercise” doesn’t work.

Read the full post on our client’s site LifetimeHealthDiary.com

Thank you for asking me to comment on how I could help your company improve its business development, incoming leads pipeline and sales pipeline.

The following comments apply not just to you, but to a large nubmer of corporates whose websites have never been updated since launch.  Please don’t take it personally.

Website – this was a perfectly acceptable website for three or five years ago. Static, full of information, but never-changing and not seeking to engage in discussion with a visitor.

Although much of the content can be re-used, the marketing plan needs to be redesigned around moving the whole marketing communications from monologue to dialogue. Your current website talks AT the customer.  The new marketing mode is all about having a chat, a conversation and through that demonstrating your product, your expertise and your solution for their problem.

This theme of moving from monologue to dialogue runs through all the suggestions I would make for you.

So a short list of things to consider:

• Newsletter
• Blog
• Customer reviews
• Surveys / polls
• Forum
• Linked In page
• Podcast interviews
• Participation in groups relevant to your industry sectors – Ning, LinkedIn
• Participation in writing answers to questions relevant to your subject matter expertise – Linked In Answers, Yahoo Answers, Wikio

Take a look at this client website [insert here]. I spent some time working with them on their social media marketing and generating incoming leads for the sales team.

It is a simple site, but there are up to date news and events information, reviews, links to articles in other magazines. It could be improved – but there’s new content, dated and visible.  That helps with Google rankings, search engine optimisation for natural search and creating the impression that there are real people working at your company.

All of which, together, help to make your company visible on other peoples websites, indexed regularly by Google (makes your SEO findable) and participating or leading conversations that are pertinent to your niche area of expertise. You ‘hang out’ in places online where conversations start and where you can speak to show off your knowledge and product range.

B2B marketing hasn’t changed. It is still about being known, demonstrating expertise and connecting with the right people. What has changed is the way in which this is done online and how that integrates with your offline sales and marketing work.

I hope I haven’t frightened you off irretrievably, but please let’s talk.  But if we don’t, you can be sure I’ll be spending my time with an organisation that is so frightened of losing its market that it is prepared for a radical marketing and sales overhaul.

Lots of love

Becky

P.S. I meant it when I said not to take it personally.  You aren’t alone.  You arent’ even late to this party.  I suspect you aren’t even in the last 50% of organisations to make this change.  There is still time to be a winner.

Building closed spaces where you can pay a bit to get  into the ‘inner circle’ and learn new stuff early on thus taking advantage ahead of the crowd.

There is a nice logic to this.  We’ve done it, let us show you how.

The Third Tribe Story

I got an email last week inviting me (and you) to join a new private online space  Third Tribe Marketing. I know where they got my name, I’m signed up to ProBlogger, Copyblogger, Chris Brogan and Lateral Action.  All high volume readership sites that talk about online marketing.

Getting them together to co-launch a members-only site for super-cool-new-stuff is a very neat idea.  The copy on the site is in a frame so I can’t send you separate URLs but the Story, the People and what’s Inside are very well-written pages with compelling reasons why you should spend $27 a month to join the inner crowd.

Join it if you want – or just read the copy and see what a lovely warm feeling it gives you when you see such a great proposition combining and re-working content from a range of great sites into one place.

Congratulations, guys.  It looks like a super money-maker and I hope it works well.

But although funny, truthful and nicely wry, the diagram got me thinking about what web 2.0 really means in real life.  How does it change some of the things we consider to be ‘normal’ now and what will a different future really be like?

There are lots of ways that I forsee
1.    Self-help – go and find it out for yourself
2.    Basic computer skills like editing documents, highlighting, linking
3.    Collaboration skills becoming more important
4.    Blending your private and business life

The cartoon illustrates the self-help trend.  I am marginally better than you at finding stuff online and so you call me to assist your search for a solution.  What’s important about this is not that I try to teach you how to do it yourself, but that I don’t mind that you call me. 

This is a link into the third point.  We will need to un-learn self-direction and move more into collaboration with virtual teams who come together and split apart without formalised enablement. 

The ThinkingPharma team is like this.  They find each other and new skills when their business demands it.

Point two is a possible huge divider between the digitally enabled and those who are cut off from this new world.  This really matters – but isn’t something for today’s post.

The private:public blend is something I personally will have a lot of issue with.  I dislike having to socialise with work and taking my private life into the office is not what I choose to do.  And yet I notice that Facebook has some helpful groups for my work and LinkedIn (which I thought to be business-only) now has a great group for my hobby.

We will all have to un-learn a lot of the habits business has taught us.

Then I read David Armano’s latest slide set about ‘social business by design’. His organisation, Dachis Corp ,  have been working on a management consulting template for enterprise.  They cleverly figured that the only people who will pay top dollar for social media advice are big companies and the only way to get them to do this is using change management or business model improvement.  Both huge consulting gigs.

Way to go, David!

Last week I undertook my first social media training event in which I spent an afternoon with a group of bright people and endeavoured to teach them how to use social media for business development. 

They were all business development professionals so it was a task to explain new ways of working to do the same old job.  Rather like “what web 2.0 will mean for business” as I said earlier.

I learnt a lot from that session.  

And now I feel better informed and ready to work with another company who is interested in teaching themselves, using computer skills and collaboration to work differently in future.

Is that you?

Prio

The authors have re-published the book with some additional chapters by themselves and another luminary, JP .  Which will be great and some added thought-provoking chapters to digest.

What was so great about Cluetrain?  It first foresaw and articulated the concept of the market as a conversation. That is thesis number one.

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.

That corporations are made up of people who (shock horror) may disagree.

How do you speak in a human voice? First, you get a life. And corporations just can't do that. Corporations are like Pinocchio. Or Frankenstein. Their noses grow longer at the oddest moments, or they start breaking things for no good reason. They want to be human, but gosh, they're not.  Christopher Locke

and thesis 15 stands out for me today – have we arrived at the point of 'a few more years'?

In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.

For me what happens next is the really interesting part.  Here's what I think….

1. the rise of the power of the consumer to inform, bargain, leverage and enthuse
2. corporate honesty is tested and changes many organisations
3. Reversal of the advertising-led world of marketing and sales to networked conversations
4. The end of corporate databases and centralised record-keeping.  Only record-verification needs to be centralised
5. B2B engagement and prospect research is easier and cheaper and the opportunities to find good new business partners and clients quickly and cheaply grow massively
6. Shifting budgets from OTL to direct and social media
7. The up-skilling of call centres from help-desks to teams of helpful folk who can get things done, sell more product and work withing the network to facilitate the coompany goals

thanks to David Cushman for the link.

collapsonomics, n.

1. The study of economic and state systems at the edge of their normal social and economic function, including preventative measures to avoid destructive feedback loops and vicious cycles.

2. A consulting practice based on the scientific and historical understanding of collapse conditions, and responses to them.
 

He is writing about social media as a recession-busting tool for the newly unemployed, specifically "digital resource-maps for people who have lost access to the market as a source of resources". 

The comments stream is well worth reading.

I am interested in the slightly anti-establishment comment about how anything proscribed and 'rolled out' nationally is bound to fail.  Is there a middle way between central provision of helpful services e.g. Libraries, Connections, Business Links and strongly local interpretations / adaptations to suit local need? Bottom up feels nice and social media tools could be the glue that enables knowledge sharing and best practice for local interpretation.  This fits nicely into the Ernesto Sirolli enterprise fcilitation model which is being trialled by Rochdale District Council in the UK.