A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 29, 2015

Oh how the media loves superlatives (but only because that’s what we click on and share). Jake Lodwick wrote an article on PandoDaily entitled “An acquisition is always a failure.” ” He explains: Either the founders failed to achieve their goal, or – far likelier – they failed to dream big enough.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 11, 2010

Tags: How-To advertising branding lead-gen marketing positioning social media.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 9, 2011

I mean, as much as Social Media is supposed to be about “honesty&# and “being human&# and “genuineness,&# of course most isn’t. Surely the recipient of my missive couldn’t care less, but it’s important to me because I finally grew the stones to say what I feel even if it pisses someone off.

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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

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

Small: Buffer is a 5-year old company with profits and growth, in the overcrowded space of “Social Media Tools,” with a product that’s not particularly special or unique (sorry guys, love you but it’s true!),

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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. Are you surprised? They say "under-promise, over-deliver," and tech support has "under-promise" built in!

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Technical Review Sales Turkey Software Review 245

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 8, 2019

Startups need luck too, in finding advertisement channels that work, in the right mix of features and usability that triggers product/market fit, in cultivating a useful social media presence, on employee number one working out well, on a competitor not making a fatal move, on there being enough money in the market , on appropriate pricing , on market (..)

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 9, 2014

Watch a bunch of interviews of founders of successful companies, and here’s what you don’t hear: We tried eight different marketing channels — AdWords, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, social media, events, retargeting, SEO, guest-posting, PR, and so on.

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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.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 4, 2015

Counter-Example: Social Media. Example: SEO, where the top three search results receive nearly all the traffic. Even getting 10 of the slots ranged 11-30 doesn’t add up to a fraction of what the winners get. If company X has an awesome Twitter feed, that doesn’t prevent company Y from also having an awesome Twitter feed.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 25, 2010

I know, you thought "print media" was dead. Related posts: Painful, Surreal, and Surprisingly Effective: The Personal Checklist Love the messenger Avatar Marketing: Sell to Carol Five ways to listen to customers instead of goin' fishin' Why you have to engage in social media, even if you don't want to. With customization (i.e.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 25, 2010

He knows all the major players in the industry including the key folks at WordPress.com, BZ Media (the CopyBlogger media group), ProBlogger, and members of the press at Mashable, TechCrunch, and others. Tags: Essays blogging fame marketing sales social media. Maybe with an Aaron we'd have a chance.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

So you “put it out there&# hoping that the magical world of “social media word of mouth marketing&# will bestow eager users upon your sign-up form. No one has the time, and it’s quite possible that in a roomful of consultants no one has the skill-set either. But, of course, that’s not what happens.

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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

MARCH 21, 2011

One big exception is anything that requires authority , like blogging and other social media stuff. Social media marketeers (like mouse-katteers but with larger Twitter followings) have already beat this point to death; no reason to repeat it. You can’t buy authority.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 2, 2013

Never mind managing consultants or employees!

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

Chris Brogan, prolific social media how-to author, blogger, and $22,000/day consultant , recently wrote a post describing his "Simple Blogging Formula" in under 1000 words. Tags: Essays advice blogging choices honesty introspection social media writing. Thing is though, I do almost the opposite of his formula.

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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?), John Price (CEO Vast) mused on this last one: “A true friend is someone I can telephone at 2am, out of the blue, ask them to bring $20,000, no questions asked… and they do.”

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 21, 2009

More than that, knowing your "padding" as I used to call it is helpful in making decisions like "Can I afford to try this Risky Expensive Thing," such as making your first hire or trying a $20,000 media blitz.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 31, 2011

There’s all the startup marketing ideas you’d expect: Adverts, split-tests, media splashes, networking, pitch-competitions, inside baseball, creative stunts, SxSW launches, you name it. But for every one of those, another founder has the opposite experience.

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Customer Software Review SEM Technical Review 279

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 22, 2013

A great writer (content marketing, social media) versus 100 average bloggers. Because they’ll come up with ideas and implementations that 100 others wouldn’t. This is approximately true everywhere. A great manager who develops the careers of their folks versus several average ones who are glorified project managers.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 8, 2015

But we are judged, by our customers choosing between us and a competitor, by our employees choosing whether to entwine their careers with our fate, and by our peers, allies, and passive-aggressive antagonists on social media. We’re instructed to respect others, especially other cultures.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 9, 2012

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. ” Wah wah wah. I didn’t send it; what’s the point ? ” I liked that part!

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 16, 2014

the darlings of the news media, and this is not a path to finding good answers. Because, if you’re not confident in reasoning about yourself, you have no choice but to compare your worst fears (exaggerated negative) with the public façade of other people (exaggerated positive), and to the absurd extremities that are (rightly!)

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 18, 2016

What if Facebook can make $20b/yr in advertising, but since the teens and social media elite have left, it will never make $200b/yr? What if OpenTable is the perfect reservation system but nothing else? What if Yelp has ratings but can’t solve the logistics of food delivery?

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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

JUNE 10, 2010

So true, so true, and that's the perspective you must adopt to become adroit in social media.". "The New Oxford American Dictionary defines 'authentic' as 'relating to or denoting an emotionally appropriate, significant, purposive, and responsible mode of human life.'. "So

Social Media 227

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

Chris Brogan commands $22,000 for a single day of consulting in an industry (social media marketing) where all the information you need is already online and free. For more, here are detailed examples of how this mindset also sets up your sales pitch. Personal authority.

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Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

Gary Vaynerchuk (the founder of Wine Library TV and the so-called " Social Media Sommelier ") made a similar point in a speech at the Web 2.0 Most overnight successes you see have been working at it for ten years. And that's exactly how it was for us." [ starting at the 0:12 mark ].

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 18, 2012

Is that a pipe-dream? Well, I know one woman who did exactly that.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 25, 2012

Getting consistent attention from the media is easy too — why wouldn’t popular bloggers want to write about you all the time? Getting them to buy once they’re there is even easier — why did they come to the website if they didn’t want to buy?

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 5, 2012

I eventually built a system that could measure campaign efficacy with pinpoint accuracy, even with traditionally different media like print. (I At Smart Bear I tried literally a hundred campaigns: paid search, trade shows, postcard mailers, newsletter sponsorships, and magazine ads (yes, print!).

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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. You already know the (alleged) benefits of having a personal or business blog. But you still don’t blog, and for good reason, right? Blogging is work, and ten other things are more important.

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Widget Social Media Software RSS 268

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 28, 2010

Tags: Essays culture honesty inspiration introspection marketing persona philosophy positioning social media.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 7, 2012

“Old Media” will be consumed less. ” A lot of predictions are easy. In the next 10 years: There will be another “surprising” Black Swan financial market event. Mobile device usage will increase. Attention spans will shrink. India and China will grow in population and influence.

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Institutional Investors India China Viral 240

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 4, 2010

Tags: Announcements Guest Posts blogging social media writing.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

Related posts: Behind the scenes of a viral post: Why your startup shouldn't copy 37signals or FogCreek How I got 6000 RSS subscribers in 12 months Don't write a business plan New empirical data for SEO and social media marketing strategies Startup Therapy: Ten questions to ask yourself every month.

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