A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 25, 2010

I know, you thought "print media" was dead. Emails probably work. Because you can use the tradeshow's name in the subject of the email, people will probably read your email blast. Call/email everyone you can find. Add a line to everyone's email signature with the show info and your booth number.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 17, 2010

Apparently tech support is a better "social media outreach" program than hiring interns to spray comments on random blogs. If you just answer email with a non-automated response you're killing it. Are you surprised? They say "under-promise, over-deliver," and tech support has "under-promise" built in! Yes, it's that critical.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 4, 2017

Sure, when WP Engine launches a new product, the marketing department needs predictability for the launch date, but that’s because it’s a highly-skilled, well-funded group, which explodes with press, events, campaigns, social media, and newsletters, grabbing more attention in a single week than a smaller company might garner in a year.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 12, 2010

When they hear about a new social media craze they cringe in agony, desperately hoping it's a passing fad and not another new goddamn thing they'll be aimlessly paddling around in for the next decade. But most people are creatures of habit. They don't want their lives turned upside down. There were many competitors, both huge (APC with $1.5

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 5, 2010

Zero media appearances in traditional media. Or really any connections for media. I’ve been blessed to have snuck into the media over 100 times including ABC, CNN, CBC, The Wall Street Journal, Bnet and more. Here are some of the lessons learned: #1: It Starts With Being A Media Source & Creating Interesting Content.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 15, 2013

” I vividly recall the moment when I connected on this level with Austin Gunter — our social media keymaster (are you the gatekeeper?), I just got an email from our VP Marketing about an interesting conversation she had with Austin and, now that they’re both in San Francisco, that’s happening all the time.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 11, 2011

You already know that nowadays you’re invisible without some sort of social media presence. For example, email newsletter systems like Constant Contact or MailChimp let you collect names and send email. You already know the (alleged) benefits of having a personal or business blog. Now write about that.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 21, 2011

You are coordinating customers by email. Those are the things that we have to do, and that’s what email for. If the problem is email integration then redoing a CRM is probably not the most necessary part of the solution. And I think you need to disabuse yourself from the on-line media definition of success for a start-up.

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Widget Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 204

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 8, 2010

You can't answer emails during normal business hours. For example, you know that to avoid social media shitstorms you're supposed to have stupendous customer service , so you claim as much on your website. If they decide to sue, they get to look through your email records (it's called "discovery"). Even that is not enough.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

You can subscribe to Smart Bear Live on iTunes (please review the podcast as well!) … and if you’d like to appear on a future episode of Smart Bear Live, send an email to Patrick.Foley@microsoft.com to schedule a recording with Jason. Jason: Because you said premium digital media, so I didn’t get selling music out of that.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 4, 2010

In your email, attach a plain-Jane HTML file and separate images. Please use comments and email to keep me honest and let me know what you think. Tags: Announcements Guest Posts blogging social media writing. No Word® or PDF™ or iWork® Pages®. Most submissions will not be accepted, without explanation. Try one of those!

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 5, 2012

To get your question answered , email me at asmartbear -at- shortmail -dot- com. I eventually built a system that could measure campaign efficacy with pinpoint accuracy, even with traditionally different media like print. (I This is part of an ongoing startup advice series where I answer (anonymized!)

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 9, 2012

In the past six months the tenor of the comments and email from strangers has changed. Social media usually isn’t a debate, it’s a combination rotary club and soap box. Talk about the social media echo chamber!) The media predicted an embarrassment, playing to a massive, largely empty stadium.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 13, 2015

Yet another answer might be developing a digital following through social media, email lists, blog posts, eBooks, and so on. HubSpot and Buffer, although note that both are in the space of social media marketing; it might be harder to get lots of shares and Twitter chatter if the vertical is manufacturing).

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 3, 2011

But remember you’re deciding between spending hours iterating to a 15% lift, versus spending all your energy, time, emails, social media, creativity, new features, marketing efforts, ads, measurement, trying to get a 2x or 3x change in the Most Important Number, that’s an order of magnitude better.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

If someone wants to become an entrepreneur, is it more important to keep looking for a really good media idea that you can do a month’s worth of customer development on or is it better to think of literally what complete start up can I make in a week? So I have a question for you, Jason.

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