shop4localdeals
Circleville
Login to Send PM
Graybeak said:
Hey now! The arrows have already stopped flashing.
It looks like someone is taking advice.
Yay.
I took the bulbs out the arrows and threw them....I took all the advice and am using it to my advantage. I hated being told off when I was a kid, so I guess the kid came out in me....thanks all....."Mark"
JonMyers
HCMC, Vietnam ✈
Login to Send PM
Sounds good Mark. One thing, at least you're actually doing something rather than just talking about it. So cheers to doing something.
A few resources, and blogs, which might be helpful for getting up to speed, and maybe this is helpful for others, so I'll get my ramble on, and throw it out there.
Research Resources:
1. Activate/ use Google Reader. It allows you to "subscribe" (via RSS) to news and keep all your news sources in one place.
2. If you have an iPad I would highly recommend downloading an app like Reeder. This allows you to import all the blog and news subscriptions you track into an elegant, trackable easy to read format.
3. Sign up for Instapaper. This gives you the ability to "bookmark", and read later, articles that you intend to take action on within your business.
This combination allows me to track, skim, and gain actionable insights for my businesses from over three hundred news sources. These sources range from science blogs, technology blogs, marketing blogs, photography sites, and design blogs, and on, and on.
It takes me 30 - 60 minutes in the morning to get my skim on. You can grab your coffee and just get this done.
If you're not constantly staying on top of developments in this business, you're not in the game. That's all there is to it.
A few other news resources:
Techmeme is my homepage, and has been for over 5 years. They aggregate news from lots of different mainstream and tech blogs, and display what matters. It's one "discovery tool" I use.
Another is HackerNews, which is similar and something I check religiously.
I also am active in a lot of other forums where I gain information, which is relevant to my businesses. Some are paid forums. Also, this allows you to network, identify partners, and gain some needed mentorship for scaling your business. Find your peers, and form accountability partnerships to keep you on track.
I honestly believe having an information consumption strategy is a must for any business owner, and it's especially a must for anyone playing the online game.
Also, the beauty of an information consumption strategy is that if you find something that is relevant to a client or prospect you can "share" that information with them.
Sharing is much better than badgering someone with "hey, hey, did you get my proposal??". They received it. Every business exchange should contain a seed of value. Sharing high value, relevant information is a good way to plant those seeds.
Lastly on this point, it becomes fodder for your social strategy and helps you discovery, and "get the goods" that matter to the audience you're serving.
Of course, skimming and reading isn't enough, you must determine what is actionable (if anything), take notes and integrate that into your process. Obviously sometimes you're just feeding your mind, shaping your mental models as an entrepreneur.
Anyhow, for the action part I use Evernote. This is a note taking system that allows you to take notes on your computer, smartphone, and tablet device. These notes can be "web clippings" of a particular insight, text, audio or image notes. You can create different notebooks for your business research and all your notes are stored in the cloud, synched and accessible on any device.
It's a brilliant tool I use everyday.
Blogs
Here are a few decent blogs on design to get you started:
Design
Smashing Magazine - while they also cover social marketing, they dig into design in a thoughtful way.
Speckyboy - here you will find some technical information, design info, and design inspiration.
Design Inspiration
Dribbble - this is where designers go to share what they're working on. There is some amazing work on there.
Marketing
Copyblogger - this is a good place to start wrapping your head around what to write about, the voice of how you write, and how to effectively communicate with your prospects.
Chris Brogan - he puts the folks in folksy, while a bit basic, and the equivalent of the Tony Robbins of social media, I think this is another good starting point. Sign up for the free newsletter on there.
ProBlogger - another good resource for marketing and copywriting information.
Tech Startups
If you're interested in the tech startup game, here are a few of the old standbys:
Techcrunch - it used to be a lot better. No longer the leader in tech news they were, but still worth checking.
PandoDaily - a new comer in this world. I'm digging the writing on here.
Mixergy - I love this site. The site owner, Andrew Warner has interviewed over 700 startup founders who share their successes and failures in a podcast format. Put this on when you're tired of listening to music and need some inspiration. Keep evernote open and take notes.
One last thing on getting up to business speed.
If you were only going to read two business books in your life read these two:
Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
At its core this is a book about differentiation. How do you differentiate your business, your products and services. To me this is the essence of business, and the book provides many stories of differentiation (creating new markets), and a quantitative framework for developing a differentiation strategy for your business.
The second book is this:
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Persuasion, asking people to change a behavior, to do or buy something is at the core of any business. This is the ultimate book on influence.
Alrighty, over and out.
Take care.
JonMyers
HCMC, Vietnam ✈
Login to Send PM
Shoot, you're lucky, brag away. I wish my coding skills were stronger like that. I'm scouring around for a front-end coder at the moment because my layouts tend to be too complicated, and I can't code em' myself.
I know enough to tweak stuff, spec, and communicate technical requirements, but that's it. I've been dabbling around on Treehouse and Code Academy to try and get up to snuff.
There just isn't enough time in the day, so it's better to work with experts.
I suppose looking at what I wrote that all seems over the top, elaborate, and a lot of work. I enjoy it, so it's not really work, and the advantage it gives me is worth it. Second, and most important, it doesn't have to take that much time. The whole process usually takes 30 minutes of my day, if I'm feeling inspired it might take 60 minutes. It's just like checking email.
I believe this process could give most people, in most industries an advantage given the rate of change in business.
Now, what is really over the top is listening to podcasts all day while you're working. If you wanna go mutant I can give you a list. :)
alexs said:
Jon, you make me feel like a complete slacker. So much for bragging about coding HTML in Notepad.
shop4localdeals
Circleville
Login to Send PM
I have taken note of you all especially Jon. Thanks to you all, really....A major revamp is on it's way and it's going to be awesome. And I've just been give a ROYAL CARIBBEAN 3 Night Bahamas Cruise (worth $1200) by one of my advertisers to giveaway....I am going to add some news feeds until the revamp and looking into blogs....When I say thank you, I mean it from my heart...It's great to get guidance from good people and people that want you to succeed.....Mark
Mister Shifter
Lewis Center
Login to Send PM
If you're going to reach out to people via social media you may try to avoid typing in walls of text with lots of weird punctuation like using consecutive periods (....) every other sentence.
I'm not trying to be snarky or facetious with this message. It's just that if you're going for professionalism, and want to attract businesses and customers, it can seriously hinder your chances of engaging prospective clients. Many people often don't want to read large blocks of text with spotty grammar.
Best of luck. Super awesome advice from Jon btw, wow.
shop4localdeals
Circleville
Login to Send PM
Mister Shifter said:
If you're going to reach out to people via social media you may try to avoid typing in walls of text with lots of weird punctuation like using consecutive periods (....) every other sentence.I'm not trying to be snarky or facetious with this message. It's just that if you're going for professionalism, and want to attract businesses and customers, it can seriously hinder your chances of engaging prospective clients. Many people often don't want to read large blocks of text with spotty grammar.
Best of luck. Super awesome advice from Jon btw, wow.
Jon has given some fantastic advice. Sorry for writing large blocks and being spotty! But I will take your advice kindly, it makes me laugh because I don't even realise what I do half the time. I am English, but don't hold that against me. Thanks for the friendly nudge and I have taken note......Ooooops sorry ;O) Mark
JonMyers
HCMC, Vietnam ✈
Login to Send PM
Thanks I'm happy to help. This helps me get my thoughts outta my head for something I'm about to do, so it helps me as well.
A few other thoughts.
One of the biggest things to understand is that this stuff is not a one-size fits all strategy. If you're taking a cookie cutter approach you're not going to achieve maximum impact, and you're not baking in a defensible position for your business because someone else can easily come along, copy your advantage, and create noise and confusion in the markets your competing.
When you're a content driven business like yours on a low budget, brand, the tactics you use to get your message out, and hopefully stick in the minds of your audience is probably your best hope for a defensible position.
Put your users, your customers at the center of everything, and listen. Pay attention, and become obsessed with the data and metrics that govern your business, and you'll get the information you need to identify positioning.
A last point. Constantly experiment. What worked for me a year, two years ago, doesn't always work now. There are always business altruisms, but in terms of tactics it's fluid. If you can, you need a sandbox (sites) to play in, run your marketing experiments, and measure the results.
I maintain some sites, which have little commercial value, but serve this purpose well. It can be as simple as setting up a Blogspot blog, and hiring someone on oDesk to populate it with content in a niche, and running experiments against it to test results.
Another tactic is using a landing page platform like Unbounce and running pay per click advertising campaigns against the page you've created. This way you can measure interest for a product or service in a niche by targeting keywords people seek said products or services.
You can set up a page in 30 minutes on Unbounce, and you can set up and optimize a Google geo-targeted PPC campaign in a few hours. PPC is not for the inexperienced though, and can be a money pit. Be careful, and research it thoroughly.
I used to do a lot of these kind of experiments. Now my focus has shifted.
In most cases of marketing the goal is to fail as quickly as possible because most things won't work. You need data to back up your failures, quantify them and learn.
When you do strike upon something that works scale it as quickly as possible, and keep in mind that it won't work forever.
You always have to be thinking - what's next.
Ahhhhhh, the fun of it. :)
shop4localdeals
Circleville
Login to Send PM
Jon, thank you so much for all the advice and keep sending it my way. I'm hoping that a "now" friend is going to allow me to use his coupon platform but I need to change some of his ideas. There is so little good advertising companies in the smaller cities and towns that I want to pounce on. The local newspaper is so corrupt and all they want to do is take the businesses money and run. The good thing about you is that your ideas, well you can put them into writing and tell the world. My ideas get stuck in my head and can't even pop out of my ears! Until I get the thumbs up for the new site I added a simple forum and hopefully all the yobs and thugs will post their views. Oh no what have I done! Thanks again Jon for your advice, kind words and guidance to drive me in the right direction.
http://shop4localdeals.com/yard.html
Mark
You must log in to post.
Launched in August 2010, TheMetropreneur.com is a local online resource devoted to small business development and entrepreneurship. Its aim is to tell the stories of Central Ohio's business community, foster regional economic development and assist entrepreneurs with its resource-heavy focus. Click here to visit TheMetropreneur.com.
RSS
Twitter
Facebook
YouTube
