media Archives - Page 19 of 23

the 5% rule

Posted on October 2, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

5% of our customers wont pay on time

5% of our customers wont pay at all

5% of our employees wont deliver what they are paid to

5% of our employees will steal and or damage company property

5% of business partners will break contracts and even worse, not keep their word

5% the people we meet will be genuinly dishonest and painful to deal with

It’s the 5% rule. In fact quite often business discussion are too often focused on the 5% of times the business model will break down and we will get cheated in some way. The amount of strategy, board room and agency discussions I’ve had about the 5% of people who make business models and ideas imperfect are countless. The point for startups, no less any business, is to accept the fact that all models have gaps. And more often than not these gaps the doing of the 5% rule.

the 5% rule

The problems with trying to remove the 5% is that we build gates and protections which often stuff up the 95% which is working. We create unnecessary friction. What we are better off doing is thinking about the problem like water evaporation. It’s going to happening, no matter what we try. But we must remember that the very large majority of people are good.

My advice is simple. Know that it exists, and forge ahead anyway.

Kraft needs lesson in ‘Crowd Sourcing’

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

The bungled Kraft Vegemite iSnack 2.0 comes down to a really simple problem. Something they (Kraft) do all the time, and I should know, I used to work there.

They can never seem to fully embrace new ideas in their entirety. They want to innovate, but leave the final decisions to senior management. They tend ignore research, or take snippets from consumers. They only ever go half way.

Latest news is that they are changing the name – your jar might be a collectors item in 10 years!

What Kraft should’ve done:

Not ask for ideas to chose from, but let the crowd choose and vote – like Digg! It’s crowd sourcing 101. If you want an opinion from the crowd, then you’ve got to let them decide too. That way you have them ‘on your side’. To choose a brand name for 48,000 is as pointless as letting a very uncool CEO decide. Which is ultimately what they did.

Startup blog says: Embrace the crowd entirely, or don’t bother engaging them.

Espousing others

Posted on September 7, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

In world of media proliferation it’s becoming harder to get someone, anyone, let alone our target audience to listen. A better way than blasting our own foghorn is to espouse others. Something I’ve seen a lot of smart startups do lately is become brand advocates. That is, take a lead role in communicating, promoting and essentially spreading the love for other companies whose values we feel aligned to. It’s even better if we all move in the same entrepreneurial circles. Though it doesn’t have to be this way.

When we share great stuff other people are doing it rubs off on us. Just like proper referencing does in academia. We need to find stuff other companies are doing that we think is worth sharing. Ideas we think rock and companies with cultures we admire.

This is my current love list of other Startups & SME’s

Some of which even loosely compete with each other. This is fine in my view as often the biggest challenge we have in startup land is market development. Helping our competitors, though counter intuitive, can also benefit us. It get’s more people interested in the space, generates mainstream media coverage and can increase market size. This type of thinking would have been a sackable offense in my old consumer goods marketing days. The world has changed.

We’ve always been told it’s better to give than receive and the on-line world is the greatest exemplar of this theorem. It’s also a super way build significant brand credentials and trust. When people trust what we have to say by introducing them to other cool stuff it gives us a chance at gaining our own momentum.

Quote of the Year

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

“We’re living in a hyper accelerated era where advances in technology have doomed our culture. Before anything interesting can develop it’s blogged to death, marketed and raped until the next hot thing comes along, then repeat process”

Annon – As found in the comments section of www.nowtoronto.com

I am on Twitter – Click here to chat with me

Social media – Numbers are irrelevant

Posted on August 4, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

I saw this little 1 minute video from Seth Godin (Who I used to worship, and now just ‘like’) and had to post it here. Be sure to read my comments below the video.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0h0LlCu8Ks]

Why the numbers are irrelevant to me….

My blog has few promotional elements on it (they’ll find me if I deserve it)
I only follow people on twitter I know. I want a conversation. Mind you if you @sammartino at some point I will follow you…. yes I’m interested in conversation.
Quantity loses to quality every time. Scores are misleading. Numbers are pointless.
Yes you can meet people on line and then create strong physical friendships. I have many times.

In summary I’d say this. If it doesn’t make sense in the real world (physical life) then there’s a good chance it doesn’t make sense on line. In ‘real life’, that is our off line life we think of our friendships and even business contacts in terms of quality. We don’t go around trying to make 1000 friends and wear a t-shirt that says ‘I have 1000 friends’. Rather, we prefer to have strong meaningful relationships which are one on one. Where both parties benefit. We don’t have a list in spread sheet with the people we’ve met. Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it?

Startups should be using social media to build relationships – not gathering numbers.

From now on I’ve changed my twitter link below on my blog posts. Can you see the change?

I am on Twitter – Click here to chat with me

Difference between traditional & social media

Posted on July 25, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

This is the difference between traditional and social media in one simple chart (albeit a little fuzzy). Forget all the crap you have read on how social media differs to traditional media. This is it summarized right here on startup blog in terms which matter for business:

I’ve made some notes above. Don’t believe what you’ve heard – old media isn’t dead – sure it’s more expensive for the return, but it still kicks but. When rentoid was featured on a nightly news TV show as a positive story, we had more hits that one day than we did for the entire year. And we had been and are investing a tremendous amount of time on new and social media. It’s been a two year effort.

If you want a few other qualitative ideas to take with you then here’s a few:

They work better together
Social media is incredibly slow but has a compound effect
If I had endless funds available for media, I’d still prefer traditional media (for now)

These comments are based on fact and real experience in Australia from my business rentoid.com which has had heavy exposure in both.

I am on Twitter – Click here to follow me

Startup Blog Live

Posted on July 21, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

I’ll be doing a live chat on all things StartUp and Entrepreneurship this Wednesday night Australian EST at 7.3opm.

Problogger has inspired this idea from his session today – big ups.

I’ll be using the relatively new service www.twitcam.com – where you can ask live questions which I’ll answer.

It’ll be using my twitter sign in which is @sammartino

here is the url: http://twitcam.com/user/sammartino

Here’s where you challenge me, ask me, disagree with me for anything I’ve written on this here blog. Ask me questions about marketing, startups, outsourcing, getting to revenue, and generating massive free TV coverage. I’ve done them all successfully. These are the things you start up needs to rock the world. Looking forward to chatting with you.

Steve.