My Twitter 2.0: Why did I stop following more than 75% of the people I followed?

November 5, 2010 Leave a comment

I have been on Twitter for almost a year and a half and this is definitively a platform that helps me to stay informed about what’s going on. But as many folks out there, I got carried away with the whole ranking/number of followers syndrome. It gotten to a point where I was using automation tools to try to augment my number of followers, increasing of course the number of people that I follow. Earlier this week, I decided to go on a Twitter diet and reduce the number of followers by almost 75%. You may wonder why I did such a drastic cut, here’s why:

Signal to noise ratio

While I was still getting all the information I needed, the added number of people that I was following was basically creating noise on the communication channel. Implicitly, I was spending more time and checking more frequently my Twitter feed in order to catch all the tweets I wanted to see. While this is good for Twitter, this was not good on my time and efficiency. Less noise means more quality on my feed.

The importance of a Bio

One of the first things I did to start this aggressive diet was to check each Twitter account I was following and looked at their Bio. Do I know this person? Does his/her bio compel me to follow them? For each Twitter account’s bio that did not meet certain criteria, I stopped following. For me, some of the criteria were entrepreneurship, people in product management and marketing, people in the media (mostly local media that is) and Twitter accounts that were news feed or providers of valuable content (such as Mashable).

Do I know you? What do you have to say?

As part of this diet, the level of relationship I have with these Twitter account was also key. Knowing a specific Twitter account personally increased the chance for me to continue following. Also, the quality of what you had to say had a lot of weight in the balance.

When were the last times you tweeted?

Another factor was to check certain Twitter accounts for the last time they had tweeted. While some accounts had interesting tweets, if you had not tweeted for several months, you have been removed from my list. I do not want to keep following someone just in case that this person might have something to say a few times a year. If its business related, we are most likely connected on LinkedIn and I can see any status updates over there.

The result

Well, it feels like I have truly lost a lot of weight. I have now at a little over 600 people that I follow. My Twitter feed is easier to read and I am getting a lot more quality content each time I check the latest updates. It also makes it much easier to trim the last 10 pounds – I basically got into the habit to removing additional Twitter accounts as they tweet things that I don’t find interesting anymore. Also, for the first time in a lot of time, I have more followers that people that I follow.

I will keep you posted on how my Twitter 2.0 experience pan out, so far it has been a breath of fresh air and makes me appreciate Twitter a lot more…

Filed under Business Principles, Marketing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The cost of Marketing and getting media coverage

April 12, 2010 Leave a comment

I always love to see Apple launch new products (iPad) or new updates (iPhone 4.0 SDK) and the quality of their presentation, message and media coverage they are getting. I don’t know a single company that would not love to have such a marketing machine. Many Entrepreneurs will just assume that this is only possible once you have a gazillion of dollars to spend on Marketing. But then again, if it were the case, every other Fortune 500 company would be just as good, right? While money is key in doing things at a greater scale, there are some basic fundamentals that every company can apply to get an excellent Marketing foundation – that will get just more impressive once you have more money to spend on product launches and marketing campaigns.

Marketing takes time

That is perhaps the most important point. No matter how some people think that marketing can be done in a quickie, it is far from the truth. First, you need to build a team and that does not end once you have hired the staff. As a rule of thumb, I assume that building a team and getting all the contributors to be working as a unified group takes at LEAST 6 months. It does not mean that nothing can be done in the meantime, but you can’t expect a team to function and work cohesively in less time than this (no matter how much you pout, scream, put your foot down and lose patience). I have a similar rule for tracking the impact of Marketing. Getting market traction and media coverage takes time, you won’t get it from a single event or even worse – expecting that one press release or a snazzy re-designed web site will do the trick. Consumers are bombarded with news and information; it takes time to imprint brand value and media awareness into the cerebral cortex…

Spikes vs. marketing buildup

Entrepreneurs (and their CFO) do not often see the hidden cost of doing sporadic Marketing activities. The amount of energy and time that you need to put in order to get a single event to move the needle on media coverage is borderline insane. But I still see companies every day still hoping that this will work for them. What startups don’t seem to understand is that marketing is all about buildup. This is just like collecting wine. Every time someone asks me how I got to build my wine collection (I have about 600 bottles), I simply answer that I just buy a little more than what I drink. After time, this builds up to bigger numbers. Now if I was trying to build the same wine collection over a small amount of time – the effort, pain and cost would be much higher than what it took doing it the right way (if you just won the lottery disregard this comment…). Think of marketing as a long term buildup that after a while (and this is at least beyond a yearly cycle), you will be doing more and more Marketing activities that combined will have a real impact over your business.

Planning and process
In order to get marketing buildup, you need to plan ahead and have simple, yet effective processes. Activities such as blogging, tweeting, writing customer stories & eBooks, and doing press releases all need to fit in a marketing timeline that allows you to successfully spread your message. Each element needs to have it’s own process where things are done on a regular basis and ultimately effortlessly. If each time you write something on your blog, it eats too much of your time, it will be very hard to continue contributing on a regular basis. Without a due process and regularity, you cannot yield more output from your Marketing team. As an example, I rarely take more than 30 min to write each of my blogs. Writing a few times a week then only takes me an hour (two at the most) to support my blogging effort. If it was more than this, I would not be able to sustain such a frequency…

Bottom line is that marketing is more of a process and takes longer than most entrepreneurs are willing to accept. Never underestimate the cost of building a team, and getting this Marketing buildup. Without patience, you will just simply keep changing your team every 6 months to a year, continuously re-working the foundation (and web site) and never achieve any kind of Marketing momentum and media coverage you desire.

Filed under Business Principles, Marketing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

“Patience is the companion of wisdom.”

April 9, 2010 Leave a comment

- St. Augustine

We all want things to happen when we want it but sadly, it does not happen like this very often. I like this quotes as it reminds me that with time and experience (a.k.a. wisdom), I am learning to let things unfold at their pace. It’s never easy as you try to keep things running at a certain speed but I have learned a great deal with several M&A deals and round of fundings under my belt. Time is your friend and you need to learn to use it to your advantage. Patience comes as you learn that you can’t control everything and your success will come with your ability to adapt to other’s timeline. Keeping a tight ship and staying focused will allow you to get things done “as quickly as possible” while staying patient.

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Investment 101: my basic top 10

February 16, 2010 4 Comments

I have been asked recently to give a short 15 min presentation to a bunch of startups about my experience with VCs. This got me thinking about what are my top 10 items that I could tell an entrepreneur about the investment world:

  1. It always takes more time than you think, no matter how realistic you are trying to be. Raising funds it always takes more time than what we initially anticipate. So leave a good buffer before you really NEED that money. Closing a round of funding (or any deal for that matter) is very much like a marathon; but you don’t know how long it will last.
  2. We always need more money than we think. Too many times, I am seeing startups that are trying to raise the bare minimum. Unless your plans happen exactly as you planned, you will overspend here and there. If you have investors that want to give you more, just take the money. No matter how much you worry about dilution, this money early on will most likely cost you less than when you are desperate to get more money.
  3. Your plan won’t realize as planned. Ok we take all this time to build elaborate plans but there is one guarantee in business: plans will change. This is why a startup needs to be agile, as things never happen as we think they should. The plan is key on setting a direction and focus but cannot be followed 100% when it comes to execution.
  4. Get market data at all cost. Spend time browsing the web, looking for any market data that will support your assumptions. Read annual reports of partners and competitors. Purchase market research. I know these can be expensive – but they do provide valuable data that you can actually REFERENCE in your plan.
  5. Find a competitive differentiator. What will make your business unique? What will you do that your competitors cannot or won’t do? If your plan looks like a plan that any other company could write, you are in big trouble. Find things that will differentiate you from the competition (and it does not need to be technology related).
  6. Why will YOU succeed? What are the factors you can provide to the investor that will increase their assurance that you do have a real shot at being successful? Being nice and hard working is just not enough. Take the time to identify the keys to your success.
  7. Draft a clear and concise plan. Investors read a LOT of business plans. So try to make yours clear and concise, and short. Get someone that is not deep into the process to review your business plan. This can be an employee, friends or a business contact (lawyer, accountant, business manager). After a few weeks drafting your plan, you will start losing perspective; getting feedback will be key.
  8. It is virtually impossible to be profitable within 2 years. No matter how much we try, there are a lot of things you need to put in place during the first 2 years of a business. Unless you’ve hit a goldmine of a business, it is very hard to be cash flow positive and profitable before you hit the end of your second year.
  9. What are the goals and objectives of your investors? As you are discussing a potential investment from a VC, take the time to understand how they function. How involved are they? What are there goals and objectives in regards to your business? Do they want to exit in 5 or 10 years? It is ok to ask questions such as these in order to find out if this is a good fit for your business.
  10. Investor relations begin at the first meeting and continue far beyond the closing of the round. Entrepreneurs spend a good deal of time with the investors in order to get the money. In my view, there is a lot more work to be done after as you need to make sure that your investors really understand how your business is doing. Don’t let an investor become pessimistic about your business; this is a hole that is very hard to get out of…

Looking forward to your feedback on this yet another top 10 list :-)

Filed under Business Principles, Finance Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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