How to build a community

We all want to build a web and or brand community. But we forget the most important fact. We need individuals first.

Only we please one individual can we please two. Only when we please two, can we please three….

There will never be a community unless we love our orginal individuals unconditionally. It’s the love we give someone that makes what we do worth talking about. There is never a community unless love is shared at the most personal level. One to one. It’s something we should remember in startup land.

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Know what you’re selling

It was Friday night and I was having a drinks with colleagues who were discussing the relative taste profiles of various beers. I went on challenge the crowd that they wouldn’t know which beers was which in a blind taste test. None of them believed me.

Turns out it’s true. I once worked in a marketing role at Fosters, and 90% of beer drinkers cannot pick any brand within the same type (eg lager, pillsner, bitter ale). Beer is not bought on taste, it’s bought by brand. Sure, there are other factors which come into the decision like availability and price. But both trail and subsequent loyalty is never about taste.

So we have to know what we are selling. Not in the primary sense (the physical product) but in the secondary sense, the real motivation which makes us choose brand A over brand B. And in most categories it’s not what it seems

Beer = fashion

Electricity = company interactions

Coffee = socialisation

Cameras = memory library

For entrepreneurs the message is simple, we must know what we are selling. It’s most often how we market the secondary benefit which will drive our brand over the competitor.

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The law of focus

We can only beat the big guys with focus. It has to be so small the big guys don’t care. Big guys rarely buy big businesses anyway, especially not in the tech or web scene. They want it to fit tightly into their portfolio. We ought put all our eggs in a  tiny basket. In this way we wont get short short of resources, both human and financial.

When we do this in startup land, we have a chance of winning.

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The internet lives in Dog years

The internet is a bit like dogs. Life moves a bit more quickly. Which is why I still laugh whenever I hear that the latest hit website is going to be the dominate force forever in that that category. As Facebook is currently being touted to be, then I love to remind the pundit just a little bit about the history of the internet.

Yahoo was search. it was game set and match, then came Google.

Myspace was social networking – it had won, apparently…

Blackbery had stitched up the hand held internet enabled smart phone market…

Geocites was the way we’d all have our own websites… then came blogging

All of which remind us how things can change ever so quickly on the intenert. This wont change, because the barriers to entry are so low. $5 an hour in India for a coder, $9.99 for a domain, $Free internet access and a wifi enabled laptop for a few hundred dollars and you’re an internet entrepreneur. Unlike TV and tradtional media outlets, anyone can play. Creativity wins, not financial resources.

The insight is that the forums people hang out in will always change, like disco’s and pubs (the web is social) – it’s also kinda Punk. Our job isn’t to predict which is the next big thing, but to learn how to use them quickly so that we can participate in a timely manner.

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the cool thing about blogging

I’ve had to very quickly pull together a social media straetgy for a project I am working on. The timeline I had was a few hours. I’m certain that only due to the fact that I’ve been an avid blogger for a few years was I able to meet the deadline. Blogging creates great habits. It forces us to consider our chosen topic deeply and regularly. (startups & marketing in my case) It forces us to respond to our ideas quickly, to trust their value and publish them anyway, before tomorrow comes. It’s a personal newspaper and our readers want to know what’s new everyday. They’re not looking for perfection, but inspiration.

Whatver we do, are interested in and regardless of our industry, blogging is a must for those of us wanting to get better and faster.

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Top 7 startup tips

I was asked to give a list to Tim Reid on a few micro marketing / startup tips for his terrific podcast. I thought they were worth sharing in point form here.

  1. Project management is the key skill (Outsource weaknesses, be blissfully unaware how to do technical things, manage the value chain.)
  2. Think micro (Start small, no tiny. think hyper-local, and expand out from there)
  3. Compound effort (Our labour compounds over time like interest and investments do, social media takes compound effort)
  4. Speed is better than perfection (perfection is the enemy of success, launch review and iterate constantly)
  5. Manage for cash flow not profit (Money in and money out are the only 2 financials that matter, we can’t go broke when cash flow positive)
  6. We’ve got to sell (Selling is a core skill, we have to sell not just to customers but to everyone in our business world, employees & suppliers too, have a sales guru in your team)
  7. Start now (The right is never going to come, stop waiting for it)

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Everyone cares

How to make a Hungry Jacks (Burger King) Whopper:

  1. Take the top of the bun and swipe mayonnaise across it twice starting in the middle of the bun and swiping out ways
  2. Sprinkle lettuce onto mayo base just enough so the white of the mayo shows through the lettuce.
  3. Add two slices of tomato on top of the lettuce at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock.
  4. Put the meat patty into the base of the bun.
  5. Spread 4 pickles in a dice configuration while using the squeeze ketchup bottle in opposite hand to spread the pickles.
  6. Squirt 3.5 circles of ketchup on the beef patty starting at the outside of the circumference.
  7. Lightly sprinkle onion onto the ketchup at 50% of the thickness of the lettuce.
  8. Place both thumbs onto the tomatoes of the bun top and flip onto the base.

Serve hot!

The reason I’m sharing this with you is, that I learned how to make a whopper over 20 years ago, at a wage of $3.00 per hour and I still remember exactly how to make it. It was and probably still is, the lowest paid job available in the economy.

And yet a business colleague recently told me his his employees didn’t care about their job or the brand of his company because they were Uni students, and part time workers. What a crock. I took particular pride in making fast, well formed whoppers. Even thought it was a menial wage. At the time I was in year 9 at school and had zero intention of going to University or finishing school for that matter, yet I still cared. I cared because I had good managers, encouragement and there was a culture of doing your best, maybe even a little healthy competition to make the fastest and best burgers. It’s my strong belief that the vast majority of people take pride in what they do, no matter how menial it happens to be. So when I hear people saying their employees don’t care about their job, because it is part time, or low paid, I tell them this story. The story that all people no matter what they do have pride in their job, so long as one ingredient is in place:

They know we value what they do, and we treat all employee efforts with respect, regardless of where they stand in the hierarchy.

Startup Blog says: Employees will respond to how we treat them. We must respect them in the first instance. When we do this and we’ll get results reflective of human nature, not the hourly pay rate.