MacGetIT

Hi all,

I’m not going to post today but I thought I’d give you a chance to tell your story about using a Mac in your startup. Tell the truth and keep it clean, ’cause we all want to hear how you’re doing.

Kevin

You can get the answer here: Professional and Business Services!

… of rogue programmers/marketers that say they have developed an iPhone application when in fact they have not, just to get work or just to get a foot into the door with iPhone development. This Ars Technical article “Developers stealing from developers” discloses how “marketing” really takes credit for things the company has not done. So  beware of companies contacting you to write that iPhone app for you.

As always there are a number of ways of getting your marketing message out to others and social media one one route. I’d like to thank Mark Hayward for his take as I’ve translated his info into Mac specific ideas and areas. Hey, my ideal customers are Mac users or potential Switchers that want to use Macs for their startup.

1. Customer Feedback: Tell your customers “Thank You” that sing the praises of your business on web sites and respond professionally to those that did not like what you offer and see if you can make amends to their situation.
2. Vendor/Helpful Feedback: if you have been helped by someone and it did not cost you anything, thank them publicly for their help via your blog, Facebook, or some other means. You don’t have to mention that it was free to you, but extolling their experience to others builds up them and your credibility with others.
3. Register with HARO (Help A Reporter Out) and respond to those requests that fit your profile of your business.
4. If you’re a Mac person, search for Mac, mac, or #mac and connect with other Mac users or someone in your field and RT their Mac or specific industry comments to others by promoting their efforts and good comments. Nothing like seeing your name by others who think you send out good info.
5. Find Mac specific forums, which number fewer than the Windows world, and begin making positive and helpful comments to get some credibility.
6. Create a Flickr account (a Yahoo account is needed first) and tag a number of of your business photos and upload them via iPhoto to your account. This creates a “separate” account in iPhoto and shows which ones you have uploaded to your account.
7. Create a “Customer Fan Blog” and use iPhoto to get and manage all of your customer’s pictures and their business and post a story about each of them.
8. Set up Twitter Search and Google Alerts to track the response (hey, can’t change this part, it’s already good enough). However, if you use TweetDeck for the Mac or iPhone it makes it easy to automatically track comments about certain subjects.
9. Educate your customers about your business via a blog.
10. Create a Facebook fan page, but there are some limitations as to using this.
11. Rewrite your “About” page (Oh man, do I need to do this). As Mark points out, here’s a good link to good info by Skelliewag. Interesting, she does not take her own advice on her “About” page. Maybe not enough time like all of us.
12. Write a guest blog and post back to your blog.
13. Think creatively about how your blog and web site  stacks up among the search engines.
14. Think about who your “Ideal” customers are, not “everyone” that could buy from you. Concentrate and write for them, not everyone. Create our marketing toward them and them only.
15. Using either Photo Booth using iSight, iSight using iMovie, or a video camera and import into iMovie a video of you and your business and upload to YouTube. Check out YouTube’s copyright Terms of Service (TOS) as what you upload may be lost to them earning tons of money from it.

According to this article by Harvard Business, Big Business is losing, it is creating a “Brain Drain” on it’s intellectual capital, it’s business continuity, and small business is the recipient of this brain drain. Why?

Because people want more fulfillment in their lives than big business is able to give them. Much like big government, big business is costly in human capital. That’s why I recommend “Small Giants” as the way to go for nearly all businesses today.

So, if you want a family like environment and to contribute more, find a small business to work for.

Or better yet, start your own. Whereas a large business you’ll be really be narrowly specialized, a small business you’ll wear lots of hats.

Here’s a good site that can help get you noticed. FiredUpNetwork.com is a place that you can network with others either through a career change or starting or selling a business. It also has a number of resources to help you in your search.

Part of marketing is getting noticed by people, and hopefully the right people. As with getting noticed it’s all marketing, but how can you market? One of the ways is through social media to “go viral” with your product/service. Getting others to talk about your product/service rather than doing a shot gun blast to everyone that you know via the various channels that most companies with money do. But as an entrepreneur you don’t have money to burn so every dollar saved keeps your business afloat longer.

So, that being said, there’s are article, by Spark Media, “Tips for Running Contests” that goes into what you need to consider before you start getting an iPod putting it out for driving traffic to your web site. Contests gain interest, but you need to be careful how you do it as to not cause undue hardship on your startup if there are mistakes.

Hi all,

If you’d like to meet me I’ll be attend the Meetup group Creative Connections tomorrow at 9 AM and give a short talk about improving your marketing for entrepreneurs and start ups. As the marketing for this meeting says:

“The #1 priority for nearly all small businesses is getting new customers. But do you know that by changing the way you market and handle your customer you can make more money? We’ll be working as a group on creating a small marketing piece that will be sure to get better qualified and educated customers, create better communications with your customers about your business, reduce your workload to concentrate on what you do best, and to set the stage for more marketing results. So come prepared to walk out with an Action Plan of increasing your business going forward.”

I look forward to meeting you, we’ll have fun for sure.

This is great, take a look and dream.

Entrepreneurs can change the world

Are you an entrepreneur and trying to grow your business? Are you stuck in “sales hell” and don’t know how to get out? Take a look at Ryan Healy’s comments at his blog “31 ways to grow a business” and you’ll find some good feedback as to what to do.

I can’t change much, and he’s a good blog to follow.