In a service business, sometimes you have to identify who your client should really be. I used to say in the web design world that I would rather have one client at $40,000 then try and manage eight different projects with eight different clients for $5,000 a piece. It’s a whole lot less work for me, less people to deal with and more of my time can be dedicated to making the one client happy. It also seems to be easier to deal with someone with a realistic budget because the clients you try to service as a “favor” tend to be the pickiest. Typically, because the project could be a large financial commitment in their eyes – even at $5,000 – the smaller clients want to make sure every penny is spent wisely, and the project can easily become micromanaged. Needless to say, there are multiple benefits when servicing the larger clients.

However, with larger clients come larger responsibilities.

Social Media Marketing, explained by someone that is actually doing it. Well, at least I tend to think I am; however, the term is VERY broad. In this blog I will outline SOME of the key tools, as well as tracking/analytics utilities. It is very important to know where your users are coming from, what makes them visit, what trends are radiating, and how many click-thrus you are actually getting. You also need to know the importance of building a personal brand online and the public relations aspect that comes along with that. A social media marketer is not your publicist, but it doesn’t mean they don’t need to act like one! They are creating profiles for you across the web where you may voice your opinions as well as helping to syndicate your press releases.

 

Nowadays everyone seems to be talking about Viral Marketing. But what is it exactly? The problem with viral marketing is it is such a broad term. It really only became vastly popular with the proliferation of online video sharing services like YouTube because that’s when people were finally able to witness the sheer power of virility on the net. Well it is here now and we all need to embrace it!

 

 

White-label is a term used to refer to a product that is re-branded multiple times and licensed out. The old-industry motto was “I want to own everything”. Nowadays, people have learned to share and for the better. When it comes down to coding a social network you hit quite a few obstacles:

1)    Finding developers that are experienced and have worked on large-scale sites before.
2)    Writing the 1M lines of code before your competitor beats you to market.
3)    Coming up with a budget to meet the six-figure price tag associated with development.

 

I should be able to understand your entire business by reading one page: Your executive summary. If I, as an investor, am compelled to read further, then I might read the rest of your plan. Make sure you include a solid monetization plan. Have several methods lined up and get quotes from all the ad networks. For instance, how many users before they will place ads on your site. CPM rates, etc. Explain how you plan to optimize your site and show that in your projections. Make sure you also account for all your possible expenses. Explain how you differentiate and how you plan to gain traction.

It’s important for any business, but with start-ups it’s more likely to be a pressing issue. The problem with start-ups is that they always have entrepreneurs involved. This is actually a detriment because entrepreneurs have trouble focusing. In an entrepreneur’s world, new ideas are developed every day.

The whole idea of incubators is to offer start-ups the recourses they lack. By providing key pieces to the puzzle, a start-up develops from a concept into a full-fledged wealth generating machine. Or at least you hope.

ycombinator.com and launchboxdigital.com are two great examples of successful ones. The whole idea is to identify promising startups, give them seed money, mentor them, and set them up to pitch VCs. If you bring in several start-ups every year and one of them hits, you make bank. The advantage to putting them through a program is that you have control of their direction and you can make sure they don't screw up.  Not to be harsh on start-up founders, but they are just more prone to making mistakes.

Going to college and getting a business degree is great, but for the average start-up founder; it’s inevitable that you will still be completely lost in the real world. Understanding general business practices, statements of cash-flow, how to crank out sexy looking projection charts in excel, etc. Is all good; However, you don’t learn to sit in a board room across from a high powered exec and deal with the stress, nerve, and fast paced interrogation. Nobody coming out of college is ready for that!

Hiring a mechanic to rebuild your engine, paint your car, and post it to Ebay motors is only bound to have implications. The web design and marketing business is tight nit. We don't compete as much as you think. My firm provides fully disclosed outsourcing services to many of the other firms in my area, and vice versa. That's how we are all able to offer such a large pallet. Regardless, if I don't excel at something I won't submit it as part of my service offering. You need to determine what these firms are capable of before hiring them.

To the average person, just the ability to manage content is the biggest concern. Some companies will pay thousands of dollars to have custom CMS’s written while others will pay hourly maintenance rates for updates. The later is the stupidest approach, but some people just don’t know any better. I don’t prefer re-inventing the wheel. I recommend open-source content management systems to most of my clients.

In the open-source world of CMS’s, two leaders rein king. It’s a duel between Drupal and Joomla. Both have excellent developer communities and many modules are available to utilize with both. There are drawbacks though:

The Bebo acquisition this morning raised many a tech bloggers eyebrows to valuation data. AOL paid $850 million for the successful social networking site. Bebo has about 40 million users, so doing the simple math that equates to about $21.25 per user. Are their users really worth that much? Well ask Facebook, who values their users at $300. Newscorp paid $580 for Myspace, a service reporting 21 million users at the time. Did Murdoch really think that $27.62 per user was a smart asking price? Well according to most of the press at the time, Rupert overpaid for the crazy platform he makes $25 million per month off of now. (In the United States alone!!!) Ebay claimed they overpaid when they decided to pay $52 per user for Skype, a $4.1 Billion purchase, but did they? Probably so.

Facebook is a great company, and they have had numerous billionaires back their $15 Billion valuation. To be honest though, I don’t think $300 is reasonable by any means. However, if you compare a Facebook user to a Myspace user, the likelihood that a Facebook user’s account is fake has a much lower probability. Myspace may report 80+ million registered profiles today, but how many of those are fake celebrity profiles, marketing platforms for web cam girls, etc. I personally have two. One is where I develop on (hacking up that CSS). Facebook knows its users are real, and are less likely to lie about important profiling data in fear that their classmates will call them out on it. This worked better before they unrestricted the network of course. On Myspace, I can say whatever I want because nobody close to me is in my network. If I want to impress the ladies, I can put down that I make 1M+ a year, I can say I graduated from an ivy-league university, and I can post pictures of me test driving Ferraris that I claim to actually be my car. Targeting ads is easier when you can guarantee that the data isn’t fabricated. Does Facebook have an edge because of that? Of course they do, but at $300 per user, they are never going to get bought. I don’t think Zuckerberg has any intentions of selling though, hence turning down billion dollar offers. I think Zuckerberg likes the idea that his startup is a real company now. Under his reigns he has the power to acquire other properties such as Parakey which he snagged in July of 2007. The concept of being like Google, Yahoo, AOL, Newscorp, Viacom, etc. and having that power is an appealing ideal. I shall officially add them to my list of potential exit strategy accomplices.

Your Favorite Web 2.0 Guru,

Zach Hurst
Contributing Editor from--
www.1dawg.com

Let’s take Facebook as an example and discuss why they are so valuable. A $15 Billion valuation that is! Facebook identified a niche. They specifically targeted university students. Once they got enough University students at one campus, it started spreading virally. It’s more of a clique mentality than anything else. If you get enough people within the same network or group to adopt a standard, then the game is over. University students felt like Facebook was that one ideal platform where they could share their information with a trusted source, their classmates. Privacy was the secret sauce in this scenario, and of course user control comes hand in hand with that. Privacy in general is becoming a huge concern for many on the web today. When Zuckerberg addresses data portability he says “Granular control over degrees of openness are vital to making openness viable”. He is essentially proclaiming that we need to convince our users that they don’t have to share everything. This is why the news feed almost destroyed Facebook when it was released. All the users were too caught up in the fact that their data was being shared. From Facebook’s perspective, their data was always accessible, now it’s just being displayed in more places. I can go to a friend’s profile and see they ended their relationship, or added more photos; however now I don’t have to click on every one of my friend’s profiles every day to be updated about this type of thing. Privacy issues were raised and Facebook responded. Now the newsfeed is very popular.

When Beacon was announced, not many people heard about it, or seemed to care until in directly affected them. In Zuckerberg’s awkward 60 minutes interview, the fact that Beacon actually told one of his users that their boyfriend had just purchased a diamond ring was brought up. This basically ruined the surprise of the engagement for the poor girl. This is a very broad example; however, I do believe that Facebook has crossed the line with Beacon. It’s no longer about data being put in more places. It’s about data being shared that wasn’t meant to be shared, a commercialized advertising model. Users freak out about sensitive information being made accessible to people they don’t trust. Just look at all the social aggregators popping up. The major issue is, as a user, I have to trust that all my different social site credentials aren’t going to leak into the hands of someone that could potentially do harm with them. Some people use different passwords on every site for this reason.

Another major player in this discussion is the mobile development community. Cell phones pose as one of the most intimate objects an individual owns. Just think about all the times you have been in a cell phone shop and seen people screaming at the rep over lost data. Think about all the Facebook groups regarding users that dropped their phones in water and lost all their contacts. Losing this type of data is very stressful because not many people keep backups of their device. When you ask a user to type in their phone number, so you can send them a file you are posing a threat. Some users may think you could be sending a virus to their phone, or you are going to share their number with a bunch of telemarketers. Some may be scared of getting huge data usage bills from their carrier. The easiest way to accomplish this is to gain the user’s trust on your main site before you give them that option. By developing a site with intense privacy options and allowing your users to control where their content is shared, you can make a lot of people feel much more comfortable. This will inevitably make you superior to sites that ignore the concerns. Remember – Users first, monetization later; because without users, you won’t make jack.

Your Favorite Web 2.0 Guru,

Zach Hurst
Contributing Editor from--
www.1dawg.com

Lately there has been A LOT of controversy over the fact that Facebook won’t let you permanently delete your account. Have you ever wondered why? How is it that all you have to do is re-submit your email address and everything re-appears as you last left it? You are automatically friends with the same people again; all the photos you were tagged in, re-tag you, etc. In the programming world we refer to this as “live” and “not live”.

Facebook has been under some pressure to make their user’s happy. Taken from a recent New York Times article: “Aiming to address the privacy concerns of disenchanted users, Facebook.com said on Tuesday that it was trying to make it easier for people to delete their accounts permanently” The help page now states “If you…would like your account deleted, we can take care of this for you. Keep in mind that you will not be able to reactivate your account”

You know why this is BS? Because they cannot legally do it!!! Many people don’t know this because they don’t own large internet sites, or possess law degrees; but internet companies are legally required to keep all data on their servers for seven years. This is the case because if Joe Blo in Arkansas creates a lawsuit because his daughter was sexually solicited over the Social Network, the Federal Government subpoenas Facebook for all records of the incident, and specifically asks for profile data, message history, etc.; Facebook will have it. “I deleted all traces, so the creeper could vanish” is not an excuse. I agree that they shouldn’t utilize deactivated information for monetary gain, but they cannot permanently delete it! So stop creating the Facebook groups petitioning against Facebook, because it’s out of their control!!!

To me this is a bad publicity stunt by Facebook. Blatantly lying to the public is only going to hurt them down the line. All they have to do is be honest. Alternately, the users need to wake up and realize that posting personal information on the Web is their first mistake. Facebook is a free service because they make money off of YOUR information. The terms of use you agree to gives them that right. If you are that worried about your data leaking, you shouldn’t post it in the first place. Don't post sensitive data on Facebook and you won’t have to worry about anything

This is my first contributing post to Facey Spacey.

Signed,

Zach Hurst
Creative Director
www.1dawg.com