The Entrepreneurs Unpluggd

Online feedback can make or break a brand, especially when that feedback is presented in a public place that’s easily accessible for potential customers. Today, more than ever, online users resort to reviews and feedback from other buyers before making purchasing decisions or deciding which companies to do business with.

Because of this, learning what is being said online should be a top priority for all companies interested in managing their reputations for optimal results.

Find Out Where the Comments Are

To find out where individuals are commenting online, you have to know your brand, your industry and your target market. For some industries, users are most likely to be found on Facebook.

On others, Twitter or Tumblr might be more relevant. For others – think restaurants and brick and mortar stores – users are likely to comment on Google Places accounts or specialty travel sites for hotels and getaways.

If you’re unsure, ask. This is a general rule of thumb that applies to multiple areas of business. When you have a question that relates to your customers, the easiest way to get answers is to ask the right questions.

Create a survey that rewards those who complete it, start a social media contest where entries are gained by answering specific questions; the options are limitless. Find out where your target customers spend their time online. This is where the comments will be found.

To successfully navigate these comments, become a part of that online community. If a certain social network is a hot spot for comments and reviews, start a business page so that you can address each one individually. If it’s another site, or Google Places, optimize your brand’s presence accordingly.

Once you’ve set up an account, market it. Put it on your receipts, your website, any company collaterals and anywhere else that your customers may see it. By raising awareness of your online presence, you’re making it more likely that customers will comment directly to you, rather than to the general online world.

Set Up Alerts

Sometimes, regardless of whether you have a branded online presence or not, comments will still happen that you may be unaware of. Because of the availability of information and the vast number of websites and applications that allow for reviews, keeping up with them all, or running a general search may not be enough. This is where Google Alerts come into play.

Alerts allow business owners – and the general public – to create online alerts based on specific keywords or phrases. These alerts can be set up to notify you on an instant, daily, weekly or other preset term, when articles and comments relating to the keywords you designate, like your company name, are posted.

For example, Envisupply, an environmental equipment and supply company, could set up a Google alert for a specific product, like their YSI 63 meter, designed to monitor specific environmental factors.

When a review or piece of information would be posted online relating to the keyword in question, Envisupply would be notified, allowing the company to respond quickly and adequately to ensure positive reputation management.

Setting up alerts and responding professionally and quickly can mitigate any negativity associated with online reviews and public comments.

Respond Properly

All of the account creating and brand tracking may not matter if your responses to online comments don’t work in your company’s favor.

Customer service matters just as much today as it did 20 years ago. While the format has changed, in many cases online communication is now the method of choice, the fundamentals are the same. People want to connect with brands that take the time to listen and respond to their customers. They want wrong actions to be corrected and they want responses that are considerate.

By taking the time to monitor online comments and by responding publically, even if it’s with a “We will respond immediately through e-mail” message, you’re showing your existing and potential customers that they matter to you. Your responses can drive just as much traffic as a successful SEO campaign or solid website. Remember that at all times.

Finding out what people are saying about your business online can be the difference between making it to the next level and stalling for the next five years. Take the time to explore what the public has to say and set up a strategy for dealing with it, starting today. Your business may depend on it.

Making a bad decision when it comes to choosing office space can have negative repercussions for any business, including loss of customers and a big impact on your bottom line.

As many landlords prefer three to five year leases, it’s essential to know what you’re looking for before signing on the dotted line. Find the right office, make the best decision for your company and start making money.

Tenant Representation

Choosing the wrong broker, or not using one at all, can add up to a very expensive error. Tenant representation is essential, but you don’t want to rely on a broker with a conflict of interest, such as one who represents both the tenant and the landlord.

Use one who strictly represents you as the tenant, which ensures that the broker remains true to their fiduciary duty. You wouldn’t use an attorney to represent bother parties, and the same holds true when signing an office lease.

As a business’s office space is usually one of its biggest expenses, having the right broker on your side can often help to reduce the company’s bottom line and also help protect its interests in a number of other ways.

Determining Priorities

Before signing, have you considered all of the short and long-term priorities of the business? Ideally, you should have an architect conduct a space program to determine your size needs including aspects like floor load capacity in order to support heavy equipment. You may also want a space within a complex that allows for future growth.

Business Identity Theft

Be certain all parties you’re dealing with are honest and reputable, as its not only individuals who are at threat of identity theft. You may even want to check out your landlord prior to signing any paperwork. Due to numerous leasing and rental scams, CheckYourLandlord.com offers a new service that checks property records for prospective tenants, as MSN Real Estate reports.

A business’s identity can be stolen by thieves who might be able to get access to bank accounts, credit cards, tax identification numbers or even the owner’s personal information. To decrease the chances of this financially devastating occurrence, you may want to consider enlisting in the help of professionals like LifeLock. Sign up for fraud protection services before you make any move to help reduce your risk.

Understand Associated Costs

In addition to monthly rent, make sure you understand all costs involved, such as utility costs, common area maintenance fees, Internet and telephone installation costs and possible extra HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning) costs for running your business after hours.

Both you and your broker should inspect all documents thoroughly as they are designed to benefit the landlord and make them money, not you.

Take Your Time

Not giving yourself enough time to make the decision and to go through the entire process of securing a lease can be a big mistake. You need time to explore the market, tour facilities and interview landlords. Most tenants tend to significantly underestimate the time it takes to complete each stage, whether renewing, moving or starting fresh.

Depending on your space needs and how complex your technology, it may take 6 to 12 months or longer just to negotiate the deal, according to The Office Space Guys.

E-commerce specialists and digital marketers have been debating whether SEO still plays a vital role in online marketing for a long time. Some digital marketers question the relevance of SEO today, and some predict that they will soon be extinct in the future. Other SEO researchers and consultants disagree with this theory.

These people who think that SEO is not dead simply believes that it is slowly evolving. Today, SEO focuses on user intent, social signals, and content quality. Marketers think that producing an informative and engaging content will have better chances at ranking higher and staying in the authoritative position.

Meanwhile, sites that rely on blackhat SEO techniques such as spammy backlinks, keyword stuffing, and low-quality content will either see their rankings drop or never rank at all.

Altogether, optimization strategies remains a valuable tool that many marketers and webmasters use with Google algorithm updates as the critical driver of SEO. With the constant updates by Google, many marketers and SEO experts need to adapt quickly to the implemented changes and come up with a more efficient SEO practice.

For many specialists and SEO enthusiast, conferences offer an interactive way to stay updated on the developments in digital marketing. As this is an industry that undergoes constant changes, the information shared by the experts in these conferences is valuable to to all people interested in SEO. If you are thinking about joining a digital marketing conference, here are the top three conventions you can attend yearly.

Search Engine Journal Summit (SEJ)

The SEJ summit is a conference that focuses on topics like on-page SEO tips, link building, and content strategy. They emphasize original and first-run presentations that will provide the participants the opportunities to interact and connect with the speakers.

This conference focuses only on the essential points for maximum efficiency. They only accept 18 attendees per speaker. Because of this small ratio, they can easily cater and attend to the questions of the attendees. That is also the reason why the SEJ summit only lasts for a day.

MozCon

The MozCon conference focuses on dynamic sessions filled with actionable tips and informative talks delivered by the leaders at moz.com. Aside from SEO, they also tackle many different topics such as content marketing, social media marketing, customer relations, mobile optimization, conversion rate optimization and overall analytics. This conference usually lasts three days.

Search Marketing Expo (SMX)

The Search Marketing Expo is produced by the Third Door Media and helps thousands of SEM and SEO professionals fine-tune their marketing skills. They provide tutorials, exclusive training, seminars and workshops for digital marketers who would like to learn from the sharpest minds in search marketing.

This conference invites the best people in the business like Jerry Dischler and Scott Brinker – both of whom work at Google. Their recent speaker was Olga Andrienko, SEMrush’s head of global marketing.

What makes SMX unique to other conferences in that it provides different streams for different participants. Anybody can sign up and choose between workshops or sub-conferences that best suit an individual’s needs. That means whether you are a beginner, an intermediate or an expert, there is a place for you in this conference.

If you are a specialist in digital marketing, attending conferences in the industry is the surest way to stay on top of your professional career. Learning from the researchers and the experts in the industry is an essential component of understanding the entirety of the industry you are in and where it is headed to.

SEO conferences also showcase unconventional and controversial methods that will help attendees dominate the search engine results page. Intimate events like these reveal the best tactics, strategies, and secrets every SEO specialist needs.

Yesterday, an article from INC entitled 11 Reasons a 23 Year Old Shouldn’t Run Your Social Media popped up in my Facebook newsfeed. It was posted by a friend who, out of school, was hired to run social media for a startup. She commented along the lines of: “I guess it might be time to throw in the towel.”

This article really pissed me off for a number of reasons, even though it had disclaimers at the beginning. The graphic accompanying the article itself is a photo that could’ve been out of Mean Girls, showing two catty girls gossipping. After reading the article, I scrolled down and was not surprised to find it was written by a lady who runs a digital marketing firm. A ha! I thought. No wonder. I’ve seen this before…just plain FUD.

Here’s my response….a 25 year old who ran social media for a startup for 3 years, who hired and fired several agencies because they just didn’t make the cut. Oh and disclaimer…not every firm is like the one I’m describing, but I just want to make a point.

1) They’re not on your team – As a firm, the agency you hired has one goal: do the minimal amount of work to get the job done. I mean come on: they have many other clients to please. To scale their business they need new clients and happy retained old clients. They are happy when you don’t really pay attention to what is going on. If you hire a young person to join your team, he/she will want to please the company as they want to progress their career and have a great recommendation when it’s time to move on.

2) They don’t really know what’s happening at your company – Sure, you may have regular update calls but do you remember to update them on every single little thing happening at the company? Things that may not seem important actually are: hiring someone new and welcoming them through social media is one example. A young person doing social media at your company can be like a fly on the wall, absorbing information and sharing with the world in a real time manner.

3) They are not physically there – Are they there when everyone pulls a prank on the CEO or a customer stops by to take a picture with the team? The glory of social media its ability to show progress in real time…something a young person on your team can capture and post instantly.

4) They are expensive – You can hire someone (especially in this economy) for a lot cheaper than engaging a digital marketing/social media agency. Young people are hungry for experience and are willing to live off of ramen to be part of something cool. This is not a stereotype…I know plenty of young folks who gave up lucrative jobs out of top schools for the ability to have a more meaningful, interesting experience (I did). Luckily for your budget, social media falls into that realm.

5) They are not as willing to learn – Someone who is just out of college is used to learning. They understand they don’t have experience but are willing to hear you out, try hard, and adjust willingly. Unfortunately, firms tend to have policies and procedures in place that are “just how it’s done.” They may be willing to budge a bit but hey you know what….they know better because they do this for a living damnit. This kind of mentality is super detrimental in any company, but especially a startup.

6) Their goals are not in line with yours – The goal of an agency is to have happy clients who keep paying monthly fees. The goal of your social media is to get the most bang out of your buck and grow your following/audience online. Who do you think will accomplish this more?

7) They may not understand your business – One of the firms we hired never took the time to actually understand what my startup was doing. It was a little complicated (in the payments space) and throughout the entire time we engaged them, they kept talking about it in different ways, trying to mold it into something they could understand. A young person who does your social media will absolutely understand what you do, because that is their job.

I could keep going on and on making the point that an agency will not be as invested in your company’s success, not be as flexible and willing to work long and hard, etc etc, but you know what….I have to go run social media for my startup.

When attempting to find the market sweet spot for your startup, entrepreneurs often walk the line of embracing history, and forging their own path. As the late Steve Jobs so eloquently stated,

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

Obviously, there is no denying the success that Steve Jobs enjoyed, and the history of Apple has been well chronicled. However, not everyone can create history, and there is a lot to be learned from it when evaluating a potential business model.

How to Identify a Product-Market Fit

When attempting to find an ideal market for your product or service, it is imperative to understand what the competition is doing, and how you can iterate or improve upon it to meet a unique customer need. Much of this is done by talking to prospective customers, figuring out the products they use, and what they would want from an ideal product.

Often, people don’t know what they’re looking for, but you can see, when talking to them face to face, and seeing their reactions, if your idea is unique and exciting. Steve Jobs once asserted that people don’t know what they want until they see it.

However, it is important to see how a potential customer, or preferably hundreds of prospective customers’ reactions to your product in order to determine if there really is a fit for what you’re offering. In the case of Jobs, the reaction to the product was obvious and Apple now is one of the most recognized brands in the world.

Cause Marketing Works

There have been numerous examples in recent history of entrepreneurs who based their marketing efforts on supporting a cause. Some of the more notable that come to mind are Toms and Tickets for Charity. In both cases, the success of the offering was almost wholly reliant on the cause that they supported.

In the case of Toms, for every pair of shoes purchased, another is given to a person in need. Without this sort of altruistic approach, the simply-crafted shoes would more than likely have remained anonymous.

Tickets for Charity launched in 2007, with the idea of reselling tickets purchased by corporations that would otherwise go unused. Part of the proceeds would then go to various charitable organizations that these companies would be proud to support.

This business model is an excellent example of both identifying a product-market fit and leveraging cause marketing. TFC founder, Jord Poster found that 30-70% of the event tickets corporations purchase each year go unused. He also realized that these same corporations also had strong charitable ties and made significant amounts of donations to charitable organizations.

By providing an easy way for these companies to give back without costing them any extra money, and with his company facilitating the entire process, Poster found his market sweet spot.

Company Culture Matters

There are numerous examples of crazy company cultures out there. Google is among the most prominent of those with their sleep pods, infinity pools, wall-to-wall whiteboards, among other Googley things. Whether it is global juggernauts like Google and Amazon, Successful shoe moguls Zappos, or small-time operations everywhere, company culture plays a huge role in a company’s success.

It is important to hire those who are on board with your company vision and values, and do their best to perpetrate it. Those who detract from a company’s virtues can be cancerous to the overall culture, and have a negative ripple effect on others. In the words of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, “I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person”. Employees shape company culture. Company culture determines company success.

Emulating Inspiring Entrepreneurs

While the vast majority of us will never be as successful as these inspiring modern-day entrepreneurs, we can certainly learn from their achievements. Get to know your customers, figure out what they want, find a cause they believe in, and put the right people in place to bring it all together.

Don’t get discouraged if your idea doesn’t come to fruition right away, or when you meet with opposition. There have been many shocking starts to successful businesses. Why not us?

You’ve got that perfect idea for a startup — the one that you know is going to revolutionize the way everyone spends the time they currently spend on FarmVille.

It’s nothing like anything that’s come before, and that’s something of a problem. Unless you are one of the best programmers the world has ever seen, a revolutionary startup may come with some serious technical challenges.

And if you aren’t even a programmer, handling the technology at your startup can be a serious challenge.

So how do you get from an amazing idea to a world-changing startup?

The Magic of a Technical Cofounder

Even if you’ve got some mad programming chops yourself, your best bet is to look for a technical cofounder — someone who can take on a big share of the development work, without needing to be a fully salaried employee right off the bat.

It’s tempting to try to avoid cofounders. Some of us have a little voice in our heads that tell us a project needs to be ours alone and that we’re better off just bringing in help as needed. But there’s more ego in that line of thought than entrepreneurship. The right person can take your business to a higher level, but only if you can make sure she’s invested in what you’re doing.

A contract coder is only invested to the point he gets paid. You may not always agree with a cofounder, but you’ll know that she’s in it for the long haul.

You can find someone to work with who will challenge you to find new solutions and to build the best company you can. Finding the right cofounder is as much a matter of finding someone who motivates you as a question of bringing on a new skill set. Together, you should be more than the sum of your parts.

Finding that Perfect Cofounder

There are several matchmaking sites out there that allow people interested in creating a startup to advertise what sort of cofounder they’re looking for. This seems like a pretty bad idea: while a stranger isn’t necessarily the wrong person to work with on a startup, you do want to at least know a little about his skills.

Working on a few small projects that can let you get a feel for how someone works and if you make a good pair is an ideal way to start. The open source community can be an amazing place to build the sort of connections you need to found a startup and, even better, you can get a very objective look at the quality of the work done by any prospective partners you’re interested in.

Just counting the number of commits a coder has under her belt can give you a lot of insight into whether you want to work with that person.

Once you’ve got the right partner, actually executing the idea you have in mind becomes a whole lot easier.

Sharing Your Ideas the Right Way

You don’t need to slap an NDA down in front of someone before you start telling them about your idea. There’s a certain sense that you have to protect your ideas, but the truth is that there is ultimately no way to do that. If you trust a person enough to ask them to partner with you, skip the NDA.

Your first sit down should be casual: it’s as much a brainstorming session as an opportunity for you to share what you’ve been thinking about.

Any cofounder you bring in is going to need an opportunity to put his stamp on your idea, no matter how much you’ve already done. That can be difficult to handle — we tend to start to think about our ideas as our babies.

But don’t get too protective. If you chose a partner whose abilities you respect, the insight she may offer could be exactly what’s needed to take a concept to the next level (or to turn it into something that is actually feasible to build).

At the end of the day, execution is just as much a question of who you choose to work with as picking up the technical skills necessary for a particular idea.

A young, talented copywriter we’ve worked with at Sprk’d recently found an amazing opportunity on the creative team at one of the most well-know hotel brands out there.

Even though she’s focused on writing she’s also always had an interest in learning design. She asked me a question:

As a designer, do you think the two skills [design and writing] are mutually exclusive?

People have told me, “you’re either a writer or a designer”, but I’m interested in both.

Here was my response and I am curious to hear how you would have answered:

I do not think that design and writing are mutually exclusive at all. In fact, I’ve found them very complimentary. Originally, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go to college for journalism or Design and well… design won out. I’ve now built a business around content marketing where it’s the best of both worlds and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Word and image need to work together so if you have an eye for design you can more easily compliment the words/messages portrayed via copy.

Design and development? or Writing and Development? Now those are skill sets that are more likely mutually exclusive. Design and writing are both very creative and development is much more logic-based. Sure, there are times when you need to think creatively to solve code-based problems but the process is very different to reach those solutions. Left vs. right brain.

It’s an interesting question with—I’m sure—many opinions. But those are my initial thoughts
My other go-to thought on these things is typically “don’t listen to anyone and just do want you love.” You know what’s best for you.

I’ve also noticed that people with multiple skill sets like this or people who are more “generalists” tend to make great entrepreneurs because they have varied skills with which they can rely upon. It’s not “Jack of all trades, master of none.” It’s more like a phrase my Japanese teacher once told our class, “I have nine knives—and they are all sharp.”

What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts below or on Twitter @EntUnpluggd.

Christine created Sprk’d Online Marketing and Design in order to help startups and small businesses grow by creating content and marketing that doesn’t suck. By combining the learnings of User Experience Design with the principals of Visual Design, she leads the Sprk’d team to create content that drives conversions.

No matter the industry, she believes creating quality content that’s relevant to user needs (i.e., your potential customers) is not only achievable but fun too. How can we help you? When she’s not busy writing about herself in the third person she can be found playing volleyball, or writing reviews of Chicago’s Bloody Mary’s.

Women are the fastest growing demographic of consumers. More than 75 percent of women are the decision-makers when it comes to spending for their households. Not only do they buy for themselves, they also buy for their whole family, whether shopping by list or by impulse.

Their purchasing power isn’t in the millions or billions. According to The Boston Consulting Group, women wield $12 trillion dollars in purchasing power. They spend nearly 60 percent of their budgets on retail, according to TIME magazine. Given that reality, it would benefit marketers to make sure they are pitching to women properly.

Avoid cliches

Advertisers should refrain from using generalized or trite images when depicting female identity. Using stereotypical traits, props, settings or even a typical age or look can over time devolve into an exercise in caricature.

The meme of the domestic goddess still lingers as one of the most widespread images of women, along with the soccer mom and the doting wife. Such images are archaic and simplistic, often reducing women to one dimension without showing other facets of her life.

To ditch stereotypes, marketers must pepper campaigns with a diverse and genuine palette of women that resemble the real life variety: the kind of women found in boardrooms, classrooms, supermarkets, government centers or right next door.

Be authentic

Contemporary marketing should show imperfect women who face challenges, rather than the unblemished, never-stymied mirages. It is acceptable to show flaws and life struggles because real women relate to that and are more likely to connect with the ad’s message. Struggle is authentic; perfection is not. Raw and real images of women allow ads to become more personable and less sterile.

One caveat: showing real and genuine women need not mean creating a downtrodden ad tone. Themes of triumph, perseverance or just plain coping or surviving at the end of the day are all tones that resonate with today’s woman.

Most women like feeling good about what they’ve accomplished even if they haven’t mastered every task and every goal. Capturing this feeling of women being fulfilled and satisfied just as they are is something ads and promotions should strive for.

Build social ties with women

Women are social and talkative creatures who like to bond, sociologists attest. They build networks and are influenced and sustained by the close connections within their social circles. This relationship motif should be present not only in advertising, but it should manifest also in social media relationships.

Companies can build bonds with women in the social media landscape by answering questions, sharing posts, offering surveys, holding webinars, sending emails, inviting women to online focus groups or by requesting input and opinion.

Some companies, such as Pantene, have sought to include women in viral videos by requesting that women send in videos of themselves using Pantene products, showing their luxurious hair and discussing why the company’s conditioner or shampoo was perfect for them. Other companies have held contests to find women to serve as spokespeople or models for certain events or promotional campaigns.

By actually interacting with a broad range of real women on a consistent and informal basis via social media, marketers can gain insight into women’s real psychology and behavior. They can discern women’s genuine concerns, wants and needs, resulting in more realistic profiles of target audiences. Furthermore, geolocational data available through social media allows marketers to customize messages to specific audiences for greater impact.

Finally, the more women feel a connection with a company, the more likely they are to respond to media messages from that company.

Key into women’s passions

Many marketers still make the mistake of simply targeting why women need and want certain products or services. However, women are motivated by passions and principles, too. Effective marketing to women must include some tie- in to their real life motivational drives and emotions. Advertisers must link the material and commercial offerings to women’s inner consciences and behavior drivers.

Research different types of female personalites

Once marketers decide to break new ground and present women in their real glory, sometimes they ARE clueless about what a realistic depiction is. Fortunately, there are many studies and surveys dedicated to identifying different types of women. One study of note comes from Insights In Marketing, LLC and it divides women into 5 personality profiles that matter to marketers:

Profile 1. These women are the goal-setters, risk-takers and competitors. They work long and hard to achieve what they want. They like services and products that support their goal-oriented lives.

Profile 2. The next common type of woman is the “nurturer.” They spend their lives self-sacrificing and taking care of others. They are the great negotiators who seek peace and to bring everyone together. They are drawn to comfort products and products that make life easy and simple.

Profile 3. These women are exceptional organizers who can multi-task and make complex situations run efficiently. They loathe when any area of life is out of whack. When they encounter obstacles, they inquisitively seek out all the ways to overcome them, and then decide on the best plan. They buy things that help them sort and manage the chaos of life.

Profile 4. These women eschew the crowds and the product fads, pursuing their own individualistic spirits. They are thoughtful, introspective and cautious enough to research all the different drawbacks of a product. They want all the product facts and want product variety so they don’t feel like everyone else.

Profile 5. These women are open, social and outgoing. These women feel that real living exists when they try something new.

Once marketers understand the different personality types or profiles of women, they can incorporate them into promotions.

Not marketing specifically towards women yet? The above should change your tune!