Sales And Marketing Are Important

English: Red Pinterest logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

LinkedIn has taught us sales is really important. Pinterest is saying marketing is key. I believe.

The Secret Behind Pinterest’s Growth Was Marketing, Not Engineering, Says CEO Ben Silbermann

now the third-largest source of referral traffic on the Internet .... The way Pinterest grew had little to do with Silicon Valley wisdom. It was about marketing — mostly grassroots marketing — not better algorithms. ..... In 2010, three months after Pinterest launched, the site had only 3,000 users. ..... So Pinterest started to have meet-ups at local boutiques, and to take fun pictures of people who attended them, and to engage with bloggers to do invitation campaigns like “Pin It Forward,” where bloggers got more invites to the site by spreading the world. ....... Fundamentally, the future is unwritten ..... he himself thought for a while that the secret to Pinterest’s growth woes would be finding some undiscovered Stanford grad student to build a better algorithm.

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Use Of Social Media Is Like Physical Fitness

You probably got drilled into you early that exercise is good for you, and most people still just don't do it. Much of the social media message is to just do it.

Just like exercise takes many forms, so does social media. You can walk, you can jog, you can do freehand exercise. You can use the machines, the weights. You can go for fitness, or for bulk. You could train for the Olympics. You could train like Rocky. And this is where the social media experts come in. There is something called heavy hitting social media. Having a social media expert in house is like hiring a trainer. The boxers don't wing it, they hire people who help them train.

Social Media: Listening Tools Are The Next Frontier

(Article first published as Social Media: Listening Tools are the Next Frontier on Technorati)

Image via CrunchBaseThe terms social media and new media are makeshift. Watching TV with friends can be a perfectly social activity, but we are not thinking TV when we say social media. Radio was new at one point. But we don't think radio as new media. Social media, new media have been birthed by the internet, more specifically Web 2.0. But we don't think of email, the web's central application still, as social media, new media.

Facebook, Twitter and blogs are the most often thought of tools of social media. How are these tools so different from television, radio, books, movies, music, even a website?

No matter how many people are talking to you, you should still be able to listen, and listen well. I believe that is the next frontier of social media. Social media has so far presented itself as the antithesis of broadcast media like television and radio. They spoke to us and we listened. But so far social media has been primarily a miniature version of that same broadcast media. Some listening is possible, sure, and is done. But social media still has been primarily a broadcast mechanism.



Twitter meaningfully spitting out all the tweets it takes in would be a sign we are getting good also at listening.

The frontier after that would be to get closer and closer to realizing everyone on the planet is connected to everyone else. We will use the web to explore our interest graphs in ways that we will find ourselves interacting with people who are out there, but before new technology we just did not have the option to get to know them well. That is partly about getting everyone to come online, that is partly about getting people more bandwidth. But it goes beyond that. In 2000 we did not see Twitter coming. Today it is fair to say we don't exactly see the tools of 2015. There are Twitter size surprises ahead of us.
Image via CrunchBase
New forms of collaboration will become possible. Richer social relationships and interactions will become possible. More meaningful dialogues will become possible. Ambitious social goals will be achieved.

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Passion For Microfinance, Passion For Social Media

Image via WikipediaWhen you are gelling the DNA of a young company, when you are laying down the rudiments of its culture, when you are slowly building a team, there are decisions you have to make.

Tony of Zappos has a few things to say about the topic. One thing Tony does is after he trains people, he offers them 3,000 dollars to leave. Another thing he does is he lets go the top talented people who deliver when they don't fit into the Zappos corporate culture.

Two obvious things I have figured out are that you have to have a passion for microfinance - duh! - and you have to have a passion for social media if you want to belong on my corporate team.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is not black magic. It is essential. It is basic. Unless you entirely missed out on the whole internet thing. How could you have?

You want to be found. That applies to big media websites, but also applies to local businesses. People will look you up on the internet before they show up at your storefront.

SEO is not about tricking people into showing up. It is about helping people find you. Big difference.

It is about putting in the right words, but it is also about deserving and getting inbound links. This is a link economy, many would say.

And the online world is hardly for just tech companies. There is no line of business that need not be online. No business is too small to get online. People do local search to get to you. Are you optimized yet?

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