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How to Build a Community of Twitter Followers for Your Company

The first thing you absolutely have to do once you sign up for a Twitter account (though you can do this before signing up for Twitter, but you won’t be able to do much beyond this), start monitoring who and what people are saying about your company. Go to Search.Twitter or Tweetscan (it may be worth it to use both, or even additional Twitter search engines, as they don’t all pick up on everything) and search for your company name, your executives’ names, perhaps your competitors’ names. You’ll see all the recent tweets that mention that name or phrase. What’s also great about these services is you can subscribe by RSS to this thread so you’ll be able to keep tabs on new posts about your company. When someone does talk about your company - respond, favorite the tweet perhaps if it’s favorable, and start following the person.

Not sure I agree with the original title of this article. In fact, I don’t and I changed it in my title. The original title was misleading. This is really a short interview with Bogusky on how his agency does some things. There is value in each comment he makes, but I would not call this rules for being a media maverick. As a matter of fact, I quote him below and that quote addresses honesty in advertising. Hmmm…

Alex Bogusky’s 6 rules for being a media maverick

One thing we do as we begin a creative project, instead of working on specific media, we write press releases about our ideas. For example, a press release for the Whopper Freakout campaign would say, “Burger King announced today they would be removing the Whopper from their restaurants.” It would go on to talk about consumer outrage. It’s a good way to determine whether you have a rich idea or not. If an idea is good enough for someone to write about, it’s probably good enough for someone to talk about.

We don’t want to find some trend and then do advertising that basically
lies about the product to attach it to the trend in the hope that it
will sell. If it’s Burger King, and we want to help guys who are being
inundated with the notion of metrosexuality, understand that it’s OK to
have a killer burger — that’s a great path.

I can definitely agree with most of these points. If there is a way for you to gain revenue without funding of any kind, then I would recommend doing it. I understand all the reasons to take funding, including needing to pay the mortgage and eat, but once you have it, you have it and they have you.

7 Reasons Startups Should Not Take VC Funding - Advice from a Serial Entrepreneur

-If you start by selling your concept to potential prospects (rather than stock to VCs), you will either end up with initial customers or a conviction that your idea won’t work. Why raise money and then find out which one it will be?

-Raising money takes time away from understanding your market and potential customers. Often more time than it would take to just go sell something to a customer. Let your customers fund your business through product orders.

-Adding VCs to the mix early gives you an additional set of masters you must serve in addition to your customers. It is always hard to serve two masters, especially in a startup.

-With no money you can’t make a fatal mistake. This is a blessing. Without VC money, you are forced to figure out how to extract funds from your customers for value you deliver. Ultimately that is the only thing that really matters.

Marc Hedlund the CEO of Wesabe gives some great advice on starting a business. My favorite piece although they are all excellent is the idea of asking someone for help everyday whether you know them or not. I am starting with that first thing tomorrow morning.

Entrepreneurship Advice from Marc Hedlund, CEO of Wesabe ∞ Get Rich Slowly

Write someone and ask them for help every day
It’s amazing how well this works. Just make a habit of coming up with one person each day that might be able to help you in some way — with an introduction, an idea, a conversation, anything. If you think of someone you already know, then it’s easy to ask for help, but don’t be bashful about asking people you don’t know for help.

When you tell people you’re working on starting your own business, many of them will get excited or interested, and be willing to offer a hand. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t hear back — just try someone else the next day. When you’re starting a new business no one knows what you’re up to, so reaching out and asking for help very often can do an enormous amount to get things rolling.

You must read this post about buying a rug in Turkey when he never intended to buy a rug in Turkey. It is brilliant. It gives you a precise breakdown of the anatomy of good selling. I always fall for that guilt setup of getting something and feeling obligated to give/get back. If you want to train someone to really sell well, then this is a great place to start. The most beautiful thing about the sales job the guy did on him was that he knew he was being tweaked and turned and used and even tells the salesman exactly what he is doing. Love it!

Hat Tip to my blogger “friend” Guy Kawasaki for the link.

PILOTed: What I Learned Buying a Rug in Turkey

According to Robert Cialdini, there are 6 weapons of influence. We can all use them, and they are used on us, either knowingly or by accident:

1. Reciprocation: we try to repay what another person has provided us
2. Commitment and consistency: we desire to be consistent with what we have already done
3. Social proof: we tend to rely on what other people are doing to determine our own actions
4. Liking: we tend to go along with and follow people we like
5. Authority: we feel a sense of duty to follow someone who has authority
6. Scarcity: opportunities seem more valuable to us when their availability is limited

You can see how the rug salesmen used practically every one of these weapons in getting me to purchase the rug.

The advice in this is fantastic. I am applying it to mine.

How To Demo Your Startup

The longer it takes for you to show your product, the worse your product is. Folks who have a kick-ass product don’t spend five or ten minutes “setting the stage” or “giving the background.” Folks with killer products CAN’T WAIT to show you their product. Their demos start with their homepage and quickly jump into the users experience. If a picture tells a thousand stories, then a product demo tells a million.

…………

The greatest tech products over the past 10 years would take no more than five minutes each to demo. For example:

a) Larry and Sergey could demo Google search in less than five minutes. Here’s a box, type something in and you get a huge reward.

……….

Weak startups and their leaders seem to immediately start talk about “what’s next,” as opposed to focusing on the core product. Anyone can say we’re going to add: a mobile version, collaborative filtering, an advertising network, visualizations, a marketplace, a browser plugin, a browser and a social network to their product.

Read the entire article. It is fantastic advice. While some may seem like common sense I can reflect back on numerous times in the past when I’ve broken every rule listes.