Fred's Blog

As a business, which should you do first? Twitter or Facebook? Here are some simplified facts to help you make the right choice:

1. Facebook has way more users than Twitter in Ireland.
2. People use Facebook to keep in touch with their friends.
3. People use Twitter to connect with networks and professional relationships.

And a simple three-step process to help pick what is right for you:

1. Ask your customers if they use Facebook or Twitter. Pick the one that is most popular.
2. Still not sure? Use Twitter if you want to do PR activities or keep in touch with a professional network.
3. If you are still not sure, use Facebook.

Image by Sean MacEntee via Flickr

An amazing idea without actions is still just an idea. It does not solve any real-world problems, it does not bring customers, it does not generate income.

A half-decent idea with great execution can still be a very decent business. It solves problems, it has customers, it pays the bills.

Everyone can have great ideas. In fact, most people probably have one or more great ideas loitering around in their heads. But those ideas are only brain-fluff until they are executed, until action happens.

So, if you have a great idea, allocate a few hours every week to work with your idea. Take action and help the idea turn into reality.

Here are two different marketing approaches:

1. Spend buckets of money marketing your product via radio/tv/papers, and hope that the brand sticks in people’s’ heads until they actually need your product
2. Another approach is to get your product in front of customers at the very right moment, when they are ready to actually use your services

The second approach means you only spend money on people who are very likely to become customers that same day, at that very moment. It also means you don’t fork out lots of money before you know if customers are willing to pay for your product/service.

For a web site this normally means you show up in Google when people are searching for certain suitable keywords.

I have not come across any good terms for the second approach yet. How about “getting into the loop”. Have you got a better name for it? Please comment below.

Came across a very honest blog post from a guy who started a web site. He tells how much new stuff you have to learn to grow your company.

When you start a company you are suddenly supposed to know everything about recruitment, accounting, cash-flow, marketing, tax, health & safety, and so on. Truth is, most of the time you just wing it.

Read his blog post here

Word of mouth is a great way to market your company. It is free, it comes from a trusted source (a friend), and it spreads really fast.

There are lots of things you can do to help word of mouth happen. Here are two ways to get started: conversation starters and prepping.

Conversation Starter

This is anything that helps people start talking about your company. Typical examples are t-shirts, stickers, pens, etc.

For DoneDeal the conversation starter is often an email someone sends to a friend with a link to a specific ad on DoneDeal. Or they might share an ad on their Facebook page. The ad might have a cool or funny photo, or it might show a cool car, cute pups, a bike with super-duper go-faster-stripes, or anything else interesting.

Emails and Facebook entries can be great conversation starters, but real-life items can work even better. For example, we often use prizes for competitions as great conversation starters (t-shirts, beer koozies, balloons, etc)

Prepping

Prepping is when you coach people to tell others about your company. You educated them with stories and anecdotes that they can bring up during conversations.

For example, customers who know how your company got started might discuss it with a friend over a beer. Any interesting facts they know about your product or company help them talk about you more often.

So, go on, tell your customers more about yourself, your life, your company, and your product.

More

Read more about Word-of-mouth marketing on the clever TrendWatching site.