The event was hosted by the Boston Globe’s Scott Kirsner (who kindly linked to our footage at his InnoEco blog) the evening was composed of two panels, a panel of venture capitalists (in the above video), and a panel of area entrepreneurs (in the below video). We found the most remarkable moment was in the unofficial vote of the panelists and audience members in the above video that showed a nearly unanimous feeling of optimism for technology ventures in the Boston area.
Check out the videos and let us know what you think.
Above is the video I shot at the 140 Characters Conference (#140conf) in New York City yesterday. Recording artist Wyclef Jean has only been using Twitter for about 3 months but has received tremendous value from it – not just because of the PR he can immediately generate but also because he is using feedback from his followers to help write songs as well as launch his non-profit, Yele Haiti.
He is also using Twitter to make a spiritual connection (see the “Sunday Twittering” segment) as well as provide comedy relief (see the very off-color “Hector Story” segment). While it’s absolutely true that Wyclef Jean already has a huge following in the non-Twitter world, thus making it fairly easy to develop a large list of followers on Twitter, he’s using the tool in ways that are beyond self-promotion and that’s the most important thing to remember about Twitter: it’s not really a separate world, news source, or social environment that you have to adapt your life around – Twitter is a tool for you to leverage for your own life, your own business. Don’t be intimidated by it, commit only what you want to, but get involved.
Last month I had the opportunity to interview actor, broadcaster, and comedian Janeane Garofalo. Garofalo is an avowed Luddite but that never interfered with her desire to become a writer, act in television and film, and to start a radio network from scratch. A lot of people write about Garofalo on the internet but she doesn’t spend much time there. What she does do is make sure that she is a real and genuine human being when interacting with other people. I observed her interact with many different kinds of people at the AltCom Festival – managers, comedians, fans, and press, and she was guileless and direct in all her communications. People will be repeating their experiences with her for a long time to come.
As someone who specialized in helping clients get the most of their inbound marketing programs, I’ve always realized that inbound marketing is part of a marketing mix and should not exist on its own. Yesterday’s Google crash has been written up by some other marketers out there, but not many have taken the position that you should not be 100% reliant on any one marketing program.
Google handles well over 60% of all web searches and that, in combination with its other services means that a failure at Google can affect: email, chat, AdWords ads, chat, banner ads, YouTube, Google Voice, Google Analytics, and many other functions that include communications, advertising, and measurement. Sure, you might say, you should also have Yahoo! search ad campaigns, and ok, that might get you some other exposure but what I’m trying to communicate is that AdWords and SEO shouldn’t be what your organization relies upon exclusively.
Some changes in Google’s indexing algorithms last year prompted AdWords guru, Perry Marshall, to tell his followers via podcast that they needed to diversify their marketing efforts. Changes in indexing can severely affect a website and its AdWords campaigns for weeks or even months. What would happen to your organization if you stopped receiving web traffic from Google for a month or two?
There are regularly infrastructure outages that can affect cities, states, regions, and even hemispheres. Everything from a trawler cutting a transocean cable to a squirrel frying itself at a powerstation can knock drop your website off the map or your connectivity to the web for hours and days at a time. What will happen to your business processes if you don’t have connectivity or if your ISP goes down?
This is more than about having a contingency plan to get back online as quick as possible (which you all have no doubt) – it’s about recognizing that people interested in what you have to offer need to be able to exposed to your messaging and be able to reach you in avenues other than the internet.
Infrastructure issues aside, your target audience needs to know that your organization exists beyond the web and since they exist beyond the web, you need to know what magazines they are reading, what social events they go to, and establish a presence there. It goes without saying that you will have this all backed up with great SEO, a killer website, and sharp branding. The flow goes both ways – someone who has seen you online in all the places they look: websites particular to their subculture, your website, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., will be reassured when they see your ad in “The Journal of ____” as well as the fact that you are a sponsor of _______ social event and that you have real people attending who can have real conversations with them.
You need to have a quiver of arrows, SEO is one of them, AdWords is another, but you need more than just those two unless you have a bank account that can handle the web not working for you for days to weeks at a time. It’s guaranteed to happen.
I’m a big fan of Dharmesh Shah’s OnStartups blog, and his company HubSpot, I’ve used their capable and elegant service to improve businesses I’ve worked at and consulted for. I’ve had the privilege to see Dharmesh speak on a couple of occasions as well as talk to him personally. While I can appreciate the founder-focused perspective of OnStartups, I was disappointed to read his latest post which had elements that displayed a far too stereotypical technologist slant against advertising, and therefore marketing.
Technologists (with blinders on) have the view that anything that isn’t contributing to the actual production of their product or service is a negative. They tend to look at money spent on anything other than production salary, equipment, and software as money down the drain. They seek to eliminate all that “wasteful” spending. Obviously they are making a product so good, that is should sell itself. Any adjustment to features should result in the same customer base coming back to the cash register to fork over more money because the product, by its very nature, telepathically communicates to all parties who have either the interest or the potential interest, that this is the product they need right now.
Dharmesh states, “I still don’t like advertising. I really don’t. I can see why it’s important in a lot of industries — but I don’t know that software is one of them.” The irony here is that, a. Dharmesh’s company does advertise using Google AdWords among other tools, and b. that Dharmesh’s company, HubSpot, is 100% dependent upon advertising in order to survive. HubSpot’s platform helps businesses by improving their websites using search engine optimization and keyword strategy under the premise that a company should attract potential customers using these inbound and permission marketing techniques rather than “interruption” and attention exploitation of standard marketing and advertising.
The problem is that all of the search engines, with the partial exception of Microsoft’s, are 100% advertising-driven. Without advertising, there would be no search engines, and therefore no HubSpot. Advertising is what changed the world from agrarian societies to what we have today. While it isn’t perfect, no one has figured out anything better – they’ve only proposed refinements. There are plenty of producers, and particularly software developers, who think that their products need no advertising because they (Dharmesh again) “solv(e) a user’s problem”. The user has a need, the software addresses the need, a sale is made.
Dharmesh, it’s time to read some Paco Underhill. People don’t buy based on “need” – they buy based on “want”. There is also the false notion in B2B sales that you are working to sell to “companies”, “organizations”, and “business entitities” (my quotes). Sorry, those are all manned by people who still buy based on “want” and other emotional reasons. Advertising is a method to communicate to people reasons, attitudes, positioning, and availability in order that they should want to buy your products. Some of this is non-quantifiable (at this time). We don’t have enough data and understanding to make this coldly scientific enough for some technologists to grasp. I tend to think it’s part of the fun of being a human being.
If I may loosely quote Peter Drucker, “successful entrepreneurship is the combination of innovation and marketing” – advertising is a tool that should not be denied the marketer. Inbound marketing is extremely effective but it can’t do everything. Even noted Google AdWord wizard, Perry Marshall, was forced to admit last year in a podcast that it can’t all be done with SEO and AdWords – those are just two of the legs of the stool.
While covering the 2009 TV Land Awards at the Gibson Amphitheatre for LAist, I had the chance to talk to Jeff Probst, the host and producer of CBS’ “Survivor”. Probst blogs about “Survivor” for Entertainment Weekly and is keenly aware of the influence of the internet, blogging, and social media, on TV programming. He is very aware of, but has not yet, opened a Twitter account – we urged him to do it!
Probst is a great example of someone in “old” media who perceives value in social networks and the web instead of viewing it suspiciously as a threat. Even in this brief conversation, he understands that there are currently limits on what he can do with the feedback but he’s willing to do more and try more things.
About a month ago I had a several hour meeting with sales guys from a software magazine that we’ve advertised in. These guys have heard of Twitter yet they hadn’t looked at it, much less used it, but they are media reps – their existences hinge upon communication and dissemination of information.
I was pleaesed that after the meeting, one of the two fellows created a Twitter account, and has twittered – perhaps 3 or 4 times. What is even more frustrating is that they didn’t create a Twitter account for the magazine – they aren’t rebroadcasting their content, the content they want me to support with my advertising dollars. The content that my ad will run next to.
Fail.
Every media/marketing/communications professional needs to be on Twitter. They don’t need to be on Twitter all day every day, but they need to be there. Any print property, if they have a shred of hope to sustain themselves, needs to have a Twitter account and they need to establish themselves, on Twitter, as experts in their area. They need to be accessible and to make their content accessible via Twitter – or they might as well hang up their hats and move on.
It sounds dire but it’s just common sense, get with the program.
A question to ask here is: when is the last time you attended or even heard about a such an open, accessible, and informal meeting with representatives from a company as large, pervasive (as in embedded/utilized/available/etc.), and important as Google? These folks from Google, execs and evangelists, engineers and public affairs managers, wanted to meet with actual users of their professional systems. This is a company that operates under a microscope, with no end of analysis and press coverage, who decided to go around these sources of broadcast information to interact with real people.
This was not a focus group or some kind of measured and cross-referenced experiment. This was an environment to have interesting and relaxed conversations, to hear frustrations, suggestions, and praise. This was an environment for no-pressure networking between people, local and out-of-town, Google and non-Google.
I have a hope that Google will be able to pull off these kinds of meetings across the country, and hopefully even back in Boston. Due to Google’s extreme popularity, I think that this might be difficult unless they are prepared to put a cap on the number of attendees. I personally couldn’t believe that the event was for real and that I managed to get in. I know that many people who attended this event are eager for the next one and would sign up for it as soon as they hear about it. Count me in – I can’t wait for it to happen.
I also have a hope that other companies would follow Google’s example and provide this kind of access, it’s in their own best interests, it’s proof of availability, and it’s proof of goodwill.
Another great WebInno Group meetup that I covered for Bostonist. I was a bit alarmed that the next one isn’t until summer as these are getting even farther apart. I would suggest that they put a limit on reservations and enforce them. Get my full story at Bostonist.