How I’m Utilizing Lean Startup For Garious

So it’s been just over 2 months since I went to Lean Startup Machine San Francisco and I thought it would be a good idea to document how I’m putting what I learned into practice. (Un)fortunately I learned pretty quick after launching http://www.Garious.com that it is a great tool that small businesses aren’t willing to pay for. I had found a pain in need of aspirin rather than morphine. Additionally, most of the people I was talking to were requiring education about social media beforehand which would have increased support requests and made the business fail.

After a bit of soul searching and a lot of reading, I decided that I needed to pick a different target market and use Customer Development techniques to prove or disprove the new market. I immediately started documenting all of the assumptions and questions I had about social media marketers to get myself started. I was off to start booking meetings and learning. The only problem was that after looking at my LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts I realized that I was only connected to about 2 social media marketers. How in the world was I going to learn from social media marketers when I didn’t have any to talk to?

I decided to give LinkedIn a shot for trying to make some new connections. I started by posting some of my initial questions directly into the Answers system. This turned out to be a GREAT way to get started. Within a few short hours I had a BUNCH of answers from social media marketers and was making some new connections. I replied back to the folks that fit my target market with more follow-up questions and in some cases was even able to get them on the phone. I was amazed at how helpful everyone was and how quickly I was able to start learning about my new target market.

I’m about 2 weeks in to the process and I’ve talked to about 30 social media marketers.  I thought it might be useful to others to share the answers to some of the questions I had.

1. What benefits to social media marketers receive from scheduling posts today?
   Time savings, expanded reach, increased visibility.
2. How much time do they spend scheduling messages today?
   Most tend to spend less than an hour per week scheduling messages.
3. What would they do if they had more time available?
   Handle / grow their own personal accounts (business getting in the way of business).
4. How do they measure success of their social media campaigns?
   This varies from campaign to campaign. Best is for the client to track this and share it with the marketer, but it typically does not happen. By putting a good social CRM system in place you can track leads just like any other marketing campaign.
5. What tools are they utilizing for scheduling today?
   Hootsuite & TweetDeck primarily.  A few using other more advanced tools, but most are happy with manual tools.

I have a few more interviews to do in the coming week where I plan to learn more about what tools they recommend to clients, affiliate network relationships and client acquisition.  In the meantime I have made some adjustments to the Garious home page to better reflect the benefits for social media marketers.  I’m considering launching a Google Adwords campaign to test it out a bit.

What do you think?

Tips for better framing in e-mail communications

Tired of being asked for more context from your boss or co-workers?

I had a situation a few days ago where an co-worker sends me a quick instant message on the computer.  ”Should I set these two items to be dependent on each other?”  he asked.  A few hours prior we had been working on a project together, but the question didn’t really seem relevant to that.  I sat there for a few moments puzzled, staring at the screen.  Finally, I gave up on trying to put the mental puzzle together and asked “What in the world are you talking about?”

You hear over and over again in business that you must be sure to “frame things up” well so that you don’t lose your audience.  Unfortunately, we see this day in and day out, people assuming that the other person they are communicating with is psychic or knows exactly what happens to be on their computer screen.

I thought rather than just complaining about it, I’d put together some quick tips to possibly help others with framing things a little better using e-mail.  If this proves useful then I will probably write up tips for phone and presentation framing.

1. Before you write a single word, think about ONE thing that you want the recipient to do as a result of this email.
2. If this email requires action on the part of the recipient then include that in the subject.  This ensures that the reader can see immediately what they need to do.
3. Start the email by reiterating your requested action
4. Next, provide some framing around what you were doing and why it is you need the requested action.

Here are a few general tips:

1. Keep it short – If you need to have a conversation then pick up the phone, don’t send an e-mail.
2. Review before sending – re-read the entire message again from beginning to end, check your spelling, and verify clarity.

Please let me know what you think in the comments section below.

5 Simple Steps To Your Dream Job

Have you been in your position for a while and are ready to move? Maybe you feel stalled out in your current role and want to move up or are just looking for a change. My goal with this post is to give some tips for those of you looking to move around and have a stable position currently.

Research

Your first step in this process is to figure out what your next job is.  I personally would take a blue sky approach to this task and really think about your dream job.  Don’t hold back!  Come up with a handful of jobs that you might be interested in doing.

Conduct Interviews

Once you’ve nailed down a handful of dream jobs you need to start conducting informational interviews with potential employers.  The point of these interviews are for you to learn about how different jobs are treated at a potential employer.

I would recommend using your friends & family as well as social media networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to quickly identify people that are working in your dream jobs.  When you are connecting to them you’ll want to make it very clear that you aspire to work in that role and would like to learn from them about it

There are many good resources on the internet for how to conduct an “Informational Interview” which I would recommend reading through before starting.  You don’t have to make this into a big deal.  You’re simply trying to learn from them and see if the “dream job” is all it’s cracked up to be.

Choose a Position

Now that you’ve learned all about your dream job inside different organizations your next step is to choose one.  Think long and hard about what you’ve learned and which one will be the best fit for you.  You’ve already made some in-roads with people at these organizations so you’re one step closer!

You should now start assessing gaps in your skills.  You need to identify key areas where you are lacking so you can either address them using your current position or be sure to re-work your resume to cover these gaps effectively.

Monitor

In many cases your dream job will not be available and you’ll need to monitor job boards like HotJobs and Monster to see when your dream job pops up.  Luckily you’ve already refined the search so it should be pretty easy to allow these sites to do the work for you.  This will ensure that you don’t end up with a slew of garbage jobs in your email box every morning.

Apply

Now that your dream job is available you should again tap into your social networks and gather some initial information about the job.  I would recommend using everything you’re able to find out about the job to ensure that you’re able to customize your resume to the position as well as nail the interview.
As you can see it just takes a little connection building, research and friendly talking to be able to nail your dream job!

Have you had success with processes like this in your career already?

July Monsoon Sunset Panoramics

Wow, this year has been incredible for sunsets in Tucson!  I can’t remember a year where there were so many incredible photo opportunities.  I’m thinking that next year I should just put all of my shots into a single blog post as it will probably be more visually powerful.

Here are a couple more that I took with my iPhone 4 and Panorama.

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Taken right behind my house

Taken from the Rillito bridge (Alvernon & River)

Taken from my driveway facing due East!