Why the Web Hasn't Birthed a Prettier Craigslist

Source: http://mashable.com/2013/02/17/prettier-craigslist/

No Marketing Budget? 3 Proven Strategies for Direct Selling

1. Send emails from real people.
2. Host webinars to boost interactivity and cull feedback.
3. Give your product away.

Source: http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/startingup/internet-marketing/no-marketing-budget-3-proven-strategies-for-direct-selling/

6 Trips to Get to Gangnam 1 Billion Views

I was in Korea this week, and looked up Gangnam on the map (Gangnam is an upmarket district of Seoul). I also looked up Gangnam Style’s PSY. How many trips did it take to get to 1 billion views on Youtube? Wow. It took 6 eventful trips, and here they are -

TRIP 1 – Park Jae-sang was groomed to take over his father’s business, and sent to Boston to get his MBA in 1996. Instead, he blew all his tuition funds on musical instruments after being inspired by Queen’s performance of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody. He dropped out of university, renamed himself ‘PSY’ (after ‘Psycho’) and returned to South Korea as a singer, having failed to get a degree.

TRIP 2 – His first album in 2001, ‘PSY from the PSYcho World!’ led to him being fined by the government for ‘inappropriate content’. With his strange dance moves, he was now in the bad books of his dad, the government, and even the public, who named him ‘The Bizarre Singer.’

TRIP 3 – To make matters worse, he was arrested for possession of marijuana. While in jail, he missed his grandfather’s funeral, leading PSY to say ‘I was not there at the funeral. I will regret this for the rest of my life.’

TRIP 4 – His second album in 2002, ‘Sa 2’ earned him a country-wide ban to under 19s for additional inappropriateness. His saving grace was the football World Cup coming to Seoul, which made his ‘appropriate’ song ‘Champion’ his first hit.

TRIP 5 – Off the back of his first success, he was enlisted into the South Korea military (which has mandatory service) in 2003. He snuck out to hold concerts, leading to state prosecutors accusing him of neglecting his work. PSY sued the government but lost, and got re-drafted, having to stay in the army until 2009.

TRIP 6 – PSY entered 2010 broke, with no money to release new songs. With the help of a friend he launched a new single ‘Right Now’ which was promptly banned by the government from under-19s.

In fact, it was only in January 2012, at 35 years old, that PSY had his first foreign TV appearance. While on stage in Japan he put up a sign ‘”I’m a famous singer well-known for driving the audience wild in Korea, but here, today, I’m just a little chubby newcomer’. Fuji TV picked it up, and PSY realised his winning formula to go international would be in making fun of himself.

For a month he worked on the cheesiest dance moves he could come up with, rejecting panda and kangaroo moves for a horse trot. In July 2012 ‘Gangnam Style’ was released on Youtube, and rapidly grew to become the No.1 video in history on Youtube, breaking the 1 billion views mark on 21.12.12 (and now approaching 1.2b).

It took six big trips that led to PSY dancing to his success. Many others would have stopped at the first. How many would have persevered through all six to make it to their ‘overnight success’?

“When you trip in life, make it part of the dance”

How can you make your trips and stumbles in life a part of your dance? Make each of your trips a trip worth taking.

…………………

Postscript – What about PSY and his father? PSY, who was born in Gangnam district, went against his father’s wishes, embarrassed the family multiple times and ended up mocking his own family’s neighbourhood in ‘Gangnam Style’.

The story, however, has a happy ending. The family is now closer than ever, PSY and his wife have twin daughters, and his father’s company, DI Corporation, has seen its shares increase by 300% over the last year due to being in the spotlight of PSY’s success – and is now worth over US$130 million in value.)

Source: http://www.nextupasia.com/6-trips-to-get-to-gangnam-1-billion-views/

The Cheapest Marketing Tools On The Planet

Google Global Market Finder – Find out if your product has global demand
Google Correlate –Pick emerging  opportunities!
Google Keyword Tool – Keyword market sizing for mobile users
Source: http://www.nextupasia.com/the-cheapest-marketing-tools-on-the-planet/

5 Facebook Marketing Resources You’re Not Using Yet

1. Facebook Studio

2. Success Stories

3. Brand Resource & Permissions Center

4. Facebook Demo Tool

5. Facebook Marketing Page

Source: http://mashable.com/2012/07/27/facebook-marketing-resources/

3 Mistakes You're Making Trying to Grow Your Company

Building a business that will last is not an easy task. You need to be ready to run a marathon instead of a quick sprint. Your company’s growth should be your number one focus.

It’s harder than it sounds. That’s why companies seem to implode as quickly as they start. In my time as both an investor and an entrepreneur, I’ve noticed some themes among the businesses that do make it--practices that often fly in the face of conventional wisdom. Each company and each market is different, but no matter what your business is, here are three common mistakes that entrepreneurs often make.

Don’t go niche.

There’s plenty of talk about how smaller, niche markets provide endless opportunities. And while that might be true for certain sectors, it’s almost always better to focus your attention on large markets if you’re looking to build a company that will last. There are plenty of examples of companies that took off in niche markets and then collapsed because the market couldn’t support their success. We’re watching Groupon become a prime example of this. The daily deals market mayhave been an exciting new space at first, but Groupon’s single-digit stock price attests to the fact that, in the end, flash deals aren’t a large enough draw to support the hype.

It’s actually much better to be a smaller player in a big, complicated market than it is to be the biggest player in a small, simple one. If you want to grow aggressively, you’re going to need room. There are plenty of examples of companies that successfully moved into larger markets (don’t forget that HP started in calculators and Intel started in memory chips before moving into processors), but launching in a large market gives you the best chance for big success.

Forget apps.

If customers are talking directly to you and buying from you, you have a solution. If a partner is embedding you into their platform or infrastructure (à la Apple’s App Store), you’re a widget or an app. It is critical to own the customer: Even if the conversation starts small, it will eventually allow you to expand and grab market share from the larger players.

Being part of a platform isn’t automatically a bad decision, but if you are totally reliant on that platform to bring in your business, you may want to think twice. Just look at how Zynga has had to struggle to separate itself from its Facebook dependence. Even the battle between Google and Apple over Google Maps serves as a prime example. Apple completely controls the players on its platform, so they can decide whether Google’s maps stay or go. That may be okay for a giant like Google, but it’s not so great if you’re a start-up with nowhere else to go.

On the other hand, Amazon Web Services is an example of a platform that still allows developing companies to own the customer relationship (it just provides the necessary APIs). Companies building on AWS still have the opportunity to reach their customers, independent of Amazon.

Sure, you can create a successful company by building an app on someone else’s platform, but it is more difficult to be a lasting player. Ideally, you want to build a company that becomes the platform, and have an impact through your direct relationship with customers. 

Face it: You’re not as great as you think.

If you are operating in the open market world of Silicon Valley, the rules of survival are fairly simple. You have to scale, and scale fast, in order to survive. All start-up founders can wax poetic about what makes their idea unique, but admiring your plumage isn’t going to get you anywhere. If you are as unique and valuable as you think you are, and if you know how to communicate and sell your value, then you will grow. If you’re not growing, then your solution isn’t as valuable as it needs to be, or your market strategy is flawed.

Take a good hard look at what is holding you back. If you’re not growing, there are a handful of things that could be to blame: your product, your market, your team. Very often, you’ll realize that your original product isn’t sustainable. That’s okay. A great team can build anything. You can still pull everyone together and quickly move on to the next (better) idea. Most people don’t know that Intel was an early failure. They had the wrong product for the wrong market: memory chips. But, they had a great team, so they focused on another product and became one of the Valley’s original success stories.

On the other hand, if your team is what is holding you back, you’re going to have a hard time. Even a brilliant idea in the right market is going to fail if you don’t have the right team in place. Don’t be afraid to shuffle the deck in order to kick start the company’s chemistry and growth.

Source: http://www.inc.com/mehdi-maghsoodnia/3-mistakes-youre-making-trying-to-grow.html