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Can you handle social media in-house?

by ON
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I’m always concerned when I see job ads running for social media managers of companies. I can’t help but wonder if it’s something of a knee-jerk reaction along the lines of ‘this social media thing isn’t going away, throw resources at it, and hopefully that sorts it out,’ by a management team.

While social media has been around a while now, when it comes to recruitment, in my mind it’s a wild frontier with plenty of candidates to choose from, all purporting to know what they are doing because they’ve had a Facebook profile for more than two years and post status updates fairly regularly.

In actual fact, I’d dare say there are more than a few cowboys and cowgirls in the mix, spurred on by a motivation for a job playing on social networks eight hours a day and hopefully having a hell of a lot of fun in the process. Sure they might bamboozle you with talk of ‘engagement’, ‘Hootsuite’ and ‘daily insights’ in the hope of convincing you that they know what they are doing, but I’d say your chances of finding someone who can really do it justice are about as hopeful of finding a gold nugget at the end of the gold rush.

All the good ones are taken

You see chances are, all the good ones are probably not looking for a J.O.B (Just Over Broke). They’re much more likely to be riding their own crazy horse in the massive stampede that is social media by running their own business, or as a highly paid consultant or professional speaker. The other tell-tale sign is that they will have a significant social media imprint of their own. After all, if they are talking the talk, are they walking the walk? The social media specialist for The Creative Collective for instance has 60,000 Twitter followers and 100,000 video views on her YouTube account. The Creative Collective as a company has combined social networks in excess of 100,000. And we didn’t buy one of them.

Collaboration is key

I reckon you’d be hard pressed to find someone who actually knows not only what they are doing across networks, but who has the marketing and business acumen to execute and effective strategy and keep up with all the trends, tools and emerging networks.

Instead of hiring and hoping, I’d therefore encourage a collaborative approach, with a significant training budget to still work closely with an agency to ensure you are keeping at the cutting edge of what is a very fast and vast marketplace.

In 2012 alone we had Facebook introduce promoted posts and sponsored stories, effectively ambushing Facebook posts as we knew it, Pinterest launch a business version, Facebook buy Instagram and Google buy Wildfire. Have you got an internal social media person already? Try them out now by asking them if they’ve heard of any of these major developments and watch them sweat.

What I predict will happen

I predict that this year, many companies will wake up to the fact that they can’t do social media justice without a strong commitment to training and will look to rightfully outsource, or certainly call in for some assistance. The sooner they do the better.

By working with professionals, they’ll discover that there is a lot more to social media than what meets the eye and will start to dabble with it for more elaborate HR purposes then checking up on what a prospective staff member did on the weekend, and straight-forward marketing and promotion.

 

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The hottest 10 Australian online success stories

by ON
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In the vein of Triple J’s Hottest 100 song countdown on Australia Day each year, I thought in the lead up to the country’s national public holiday this weekend I’d share those companies that are the hottest online success stories right now and why.

My list is based on a number of factors including:

  • how financially successful they are (where information is available),
  • the size of the online community/following they seem to have,
  • the authenticity of their brand – do I buy into their story and purpose? Do they have a pretty logo and brand (yes, aesthetics are important!), and
  • whether I like them or not (opinion only).

 

10. iPledg

Founders: Bryan Vadas, Andy Tompkins
Revenue: $500,000
Started: 2011
Head office: Queensland
Employees: Two
Industry: Finance and insurance

With both Government and private funding drying up, organisations needing funding to continue existing, or for a one-off project, can now turn to ipledge.com. The site is exceptionally easy to use and is doing a lot of social good, which I think is awesome.

9. Kogan

Founder: Ruslan Kogan
Revenue: $100M
Started: 2006
Head office: Melbourne
Employees: 11-50 (according to LinkedIn)
Industry: Consumer electronics, online retail

Kogan Technologies is an Australian manufacturer and retailer of consumer electronics devices. The company, founded in 2006 by Ruslan Kogan, sells products direct from Asia to customers in Australia and the United Kingdom. The company competes on price by selling a budget range direct to consumers, bypassing wholesalers, distributors, and retailers. This business model and some of the company’s advertising tactics have resulted in high-profile controversies.

8. Shoes of Prey

Founders: Jodie Fox, Michael Fox, Mike Knapp
Revenue: Unknown, though worth mentioning it was funded $3 million in July 2012
Started: 2009
Head office: Sydney
Employees: 11-50 (according to LinkedIn)
Industry: Retail

Okay, so I’ll admit I haven’t actually used this site, as in bought shoes from it, but I’d love to – it’s a veritable fashion-conscious girl’s nirvana. If you haven’t heard of the site, essentially you can design your perfect shoes. Using their 3D designer, you choose the shape, colour and height of your shoes. They custom make them and ship worldwide within around four weeks. Worth noting that the founders are ex-Google employees and kind of have the hang of dominating on the search engines. But they’ve also been clever enough to actively pursue media coverage, and being such an innovative idea, the media love them right back.

7. CatchOfTheDay.com.au

Founder: Gabby Leibovich
Revenue: $250 million
Started: 2006
Head office: 16,000 square metre distribution centre in Braeside and another 25,000 square metre one in Truganina, Victoria
Employees: 600
Industry: Retail

Love or hate coupon sites, this Aussie ripper lifted revenue by 62% in 2012 to $230 million. Kudos to that. It’s a highly competitive market, but these guys come out on top of the coupon pile, and therefore make my top 10 list.

6. SourceBottle

Founder: Rebecca Derrington
Revenue: Unknown
Started: 2009
Head office: Melbourne
Employees: 1-10 (according to LinkedIn)
Industry: PR and media

I’ve had the pleasure of hosting SourceBottle’s founder Rebecca at one of our Web Wednesday events in 2011 on the topic of online PR. Rebecca has somewhat revolutionised online PR, starting with Australia and branching out to the UK and US in a quest for world domination. It’s a beautifully-designed and easy-to-use site, that serves a great purpose: to connect media to interviewees, and businesses who have something to promote or a specialist knowledge to media. Simple, but effective.

5. RSVP

Founders: Jay Hennock and Hannah Schwartz
Revenue: Unknown
Started: 1997
Head office: Sydney
Employees: Unknown
Industry: Online dating

I haven’t ever needed to use RSVP.com.au – I’ve been happily in a relationship since 1998, which was pre the whole internet dating thing. But I’ve sat looking over the shoulder of many a single girlfriend, and marvelled at the world of RSVP. RSVP.com.au is ranked the number one dating site in Australia by Hitwise. It was bought by Fairfax in 2005 for $38.9 million.

4. SurfStitch

Founder: Justin Cameron and Lex Pederson
Revenue: $30 million
Started: 2008
Head office: Gold Coast
Employees: More than 100
Industry: Retail

In a way, it’s not surprising that Australia has created an online success story selling surf gear, given that the surfing culture here is huge. Nearly three years after launch, Surfstitch is riding the wave to success, adding the 200th brand to its portfolio and is forecast to reach revenue of $30 million.

According to Experian Hitwise, Surfstitch is one of the country’s most highly trafficked ecommerce sites, clocking 30 million site visits and over 250 million page views since launch. The company has expanded beyond its Northern Beaches birthplace, employing over 100 staff on the Gold Coast and processing up to 4500 orders a day.

3. Flippa

Founders: Matt Mickiewicz and Mark Harbottle
Revenue: Unknown
Started: 2009
Head office: Melbourne
Employees: 13
Industry: Internet

Flippa is a marketplace for buying and selling websites and it’s not only Australian, but it’s the best in the world at what it does. Over 200,000 users have registered to buy or sell websites on Flippa. Notably Flippa is also part of the large and nurturing SitePoint family of web start-ups that includes 99designs, Learnable, and SitePoint Market.

2. Freelancer.com

Founder: Matt Barrie
Revenue: $50 million
Started: 2009
Head office: Sydney
Employees: 200
Industry: Freelance marketplace/online jobs

I’ve been using online freelance sites since 1998 in England and am so in awe of Freelancer.com, and how they’ve managed to come along, overtake some seriously solid competition, and now dominate globally. Their revenue is astounding, their continued growth and future plans ambitious but solid. Watch this space. We intend to.

1. Wotif.com

Founder: Graeme Wood
Revenue: $1.161 billion
Started: 2000
Head office: Brisbane
Employees: More than 500 staff in 19 countries on six continents
Industry: Travel

I doubt there are many people in Australia who haven’t booked something on Wotif.com before. It’s the first port of call for accommodation for most, as well as a range of other travel needs. There’s no denying their seriously impressive revenue and large staff size that has had a real global impact. All in all, a very worthy winner of this inaugural Hottest 10 Aussie Online Success Stories.

 

Conclusion

I’d love to know if you’ve heard of those on this list or not, if you use them, or if there are any others you deem to be real online success stories that should have made the list.

Leave your thoughts in the comments section below, or tweet us @YRAdams and @Marketingmag.

 

Could you outsource that? The small business guide to online outsourcing

by ON
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It is now possible to outsource just about anything online. From a simple logo to a customised website built from the ground up, armies of start-ups and business owners are turning to a virtual market place of talent to ‘get a job done’. But just because you can turn to outsourcing, does it mean you should?

I know many a creative type in the industry are feeling increasingly threatened by the burgeoning outsourcing population and the increasing public consciousness that outsourcing is an option.

Just this week on a private Facebook group I belong to, one of the members, a graphic designer of many years, posted:

“How do you respond to a client who is sooo impressed with fiverr.com? I got my own answers… which one is yours?”

 

My answer to her? “For a fiverr I will prepare a response on why fiverr is not a good outsourcing strategy.”

Not sure what ‘fiverr’ is? Then read on…
In tough economic times when consumers are driven by the dollar, the highly-competitive outsourcing rates which transcend borders and currencies suddenly become highly attractive.

I’ve never been one for judging anything unless I’ve given it a test drive (don’t judge a person unless you’ve walked a mile in their shoes right?), so I thought I’d conduct a little social experiment, as much for your benefit as mine, by outsourcing some tasks to some off-shore freelancers, and share my experiences of this exercise with you in a blog post.

First, a little context

Way back in 1998, I was actually a freelancer or outsource talent you could turn to myself. As I led a hedonistic lifestyle of travelling and partying, occasionally I had to do a bit of work to support my luxurious lifestyle, so I turned to sites such as writerfind.com (still unchanged in design I note from the days I used it) and elance.com, which was big even back then in the UK.

Through sites like these, I picked up odd writing or editing jobs, either in between or in addition to day jobs. While I wouldn’t have wanted to rely on those sites to support myself in those days, they were certainly good for some extra dosh.

For some jobs within these sites the budget was set by the person seeking the assistance. Other times you had to bid. And when you won a project it was a pretty good arrangement. Work when you want, where you want, how you want, no boss breathing down your neck. Suited me a treat, actually.

Even way back then, there were plenty of ghostwriting gigs, that is, where you write the ebook, book, article etc. but the person who pays you for the gig gets to put their name on it. Yes. Really. I’m still amazed to this day how many people I explain the concept of ghostwriting who look at me as if they’re a kid who’s helium balloon I’ve let off into the stratosphere. Just think, perhaps that last book you read wasn’t really written by that author at all!

My (somewhat) outsourced business model

When I started The Creative Collective back in 2007, I was a time-poor mum, at home, who knew I couldn’t do it all and that I simply had to find a way to leverage my time. While I could comfortably graphic design, write, edit, plan and execute marketing campaigns, take photos and more, I turned to freelancers to be the ‘technicians’ of my business, while I took the responsibility of sourcing clients, wining clients and managing clients. I soon discovered that this was a pretty good arrangement. By playing on their strengths (creativity and the ability to use software to get the desired end result) and eliminating their weaknesses (marketing, admin and finances) it was a win-win situation. Interestingly however, many a so-called ‘expert’ told me it was a bad business model. “You’ll never get loyalty from a contractor,” some said. “You’ll pay more for the privilege,” said others. “They’ll steal your IP and move on,” I was also warned.

Well today five years on, some of the contractors I had in the beginning are still with me, and almost all of the 35-strong team are Aussies (with a few Kiwis thrown in for good measure). I’ve watched as many a business who thought they had it right with an employee model has laid off staff or even gone under through tough economic times, and I’ve counted my lucky stars that I did go for a contractor model when I started. It is important to note however that I also employ five people and have two franchisees. And of the 35 contractors some of them are living here in Australia, and others living the Life Of Reilly around the world.

Take two Brissie boys for example, who are doing work for us while currently living in Lake Garda, Italy – one with a penchant for sailing, the other wind-surfing, and enjoying regular, low-stress work that allows them plenty of time for R&D and plenty of time for R&R. I really should take them up on their offers to go for a visit some time.

Back to the outsourcing test drive

So as any of you who have read some of my previous blog posts will know, recently I stated a new online business, awardshub.com. Being a start-up, with zero capital injection I haven’t wanted to incur any expenses that aren’t absolutely necessary in the early stages while I’m still building it up. So while hiring a part-time staff member that reports to me on a daily basis at my office might seem like a good idea, it ain’t going to happen any time soon because I’d be looking at $20 per hour at least and that is a cost I simply don’t want to bank roll at the current time.

Armed instead with an hourly budget of $5 to $10 I hit the outsourcing sites with a view of nabbing myself a fabulously diligent, hard-working and reliable outsourcer who would help me with my most pressing business development issue – adding content to the ever expanding website.

So where did I look for them?

There are stacks of outsourcing sites, as any Google search for ‘find an outsourcer’ will prove (480,000 results at last check).
Here are the ones I tested, why I tested them and how I found them:

1. Odesk.com

oDesk enables buyers to hire, manage (that’s different from many other similar services), and pay technology service providers from around the world. The service is fairly well organised, fast and reasonably priced – that’s if you are prepared to pay fees. In my case, someone had recommended a particular person on oDesk (which is a way to minimise your risks when outsourcing) so I went looking for her, made the connection and she performed some work for me, at a very reasonable rate of US$5 per hour. This person was a US citizen, living in the US, with impeccable English and courtesies.

The result?

Overall a good experience (though I found my oDesk account a little tricky to set up), while it lasted. Things were going swimmingly with the person performing as many as 20 hours a week each week for several weeks…until she dropped off the face of the earth. Despite several follow ups, no response.
Fortunately the tasks handed to her were not particularly time sensitive, so there was no real impact on the business. But lesson learned: probably safest not to give your outsourced staff anything that is time sensitive or sensitive full stop. If they ran off into the sunset with your IP, where would that leave your business?

2. Freelancer.com

Created by Aussie entrepreneur Matt Barrie (who won the 2011 BRW Entrepreneur of the Year, which is fair enough with US$23.5 million turnover in 2010) I had heard all about Freelancer but never used it until my experiment. The landing page says it all. They have freelancers across a lot of disciplines. Creating an account was easy enough (they let me connect my Facebook account – a facility I love) and from there I posted my novice listing (for free). Which read as follows:

Subject: Assistance in building up the content of my website

Hi there,
I’ve recently created a new online business and I need someone to further investigate links I send them, gather relevant information online, then upload them to the website.
As the website is also soliciting suggestions from users, they will also need to review and enable relevant content submitted by users.
There is potential for the role to expand to also be writing business awards submissions and doing some PR and/or social media if the person also had this skill set. They may also be emailing clients to respond to their enquiries.
The person needs to have good written English.
Experience with business awards would be ideal but is not essential.
I look forward to seeing who is interested!

 

Note I did not give too much away. I mean, these people could be anybody, and one has to keep their cards to their chest somewhat don’t they?

The result?

Pretty good. All in all I received nine bids, most of which were in a relatively short space of time (2 to 3 days – your listing stays live seven days for free) and from five different countries: India, Jamaica, USA, Pakistan and Indonesia. Immediately dispelling the common misconception that all freelancers are Philippinos or Indians. Interestingly a couple of the American bids were quite comparable with the Indonesian, Pakistan and Jamaican bids, quite possibly indicating that outsourcing is making the world flat.

I hired a Philippino woman at a rate of US$6.50. Similar to my American friend above, this freelancer started off wonderfully. She sailed through the trial (another recommendation I have if you want to dabble in outsourcing), moved into week one as I watched with great excitement as the content on my site seemed to finally be gaining some momentum and then activity flatlined. I receive an email saying she is experiencing problems with her internet connection: “I shifted to another provider and was approved just yesterday. I think installation will be done today or tomorrow” (but no fore-warning that this was going to be happening and I may experience issues), then nothing.

I’d been warned about the dodgy internet and phone connections in the Philippines  before when one of our board of advisors spent some time there scoping out the outsourcing scene (which by the way is pretty interesting – did you know for instance a lot of Indian firms sub-contract work from Western countries to the Philippines?)

Anyway, two weeks later, when I’d started the search for someone new, a bunch of listings went up on the site and I hear from her out of the blue via email: “Our home is 3 metres higher than the street. So, the flood is already waist high and about to enter our home.” Wow, first internet connection, then floods. Well, any Queenslander would have to be empathetic to that. On this front, shall we just say ‘we’ll see’ but I’m certainly not counting any chickens.

3. Fiverr.com

Fiverr is a newer entry to the outsourcing world. It is a small but very powerful micro freelancer site which plays on the simple concept – things people will do for you for $5. That’s right – five bucks. Whether you’re in the market for a freelancer or not, it’s a pretty interesting exercise to visit the site, just to check out the random crap bored or desperate people will offer up for $5. Everything from creating an awesome sketch from your photo for $5, designing logos for $5, answering 10 questions about Tunisia and the Tunisian revolution for $5, to drawing a scary monster for $5.

The result?

I thought I’d struck gold when I found someone offering “Upload content in your website and manage it daily” posted by a guy from India. For $5. So I took a $5 gamble enlisting the guy from India and his outlandish offer. He did an OK job, though some feedback had to be provided to get the first few listings where they needed to be. In his defence he did finish the job, for which I paid him, but no follow-up for further work from him – I fear I asked too much for the princely sum of $5 (but after all he offered in the first place!)

The verdict?

In short: a very mixed bag. Outsourcing is great… when it works. But getting the right team in place that have an operational workplace, who communicate when there is a problem and who are ready and hungry for the work takes some doing.

My latest quest is trialling another team on the recommendation from an industry colleague. He’s had such great success with them, he’s managed to fully autopilot his business and over a coffee last week, explained how he is now in a position that he can provide one paragraph which they turn into a fully fledged online program. Only time will tell if I can get awardshub.com to where I want it to be – autopilot as much as possible, too. With a little tenacity, I’m sure I can.

 

Have you tried outsourcing before? What were your experiences? What do you think of all the work going from Australia to off-shore freelancers? Would love you to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

 

The tricky art of naming your new small business

by ON
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Recently my partner Steve was let go of his job working with QBuild, the Queensland Government’s building division, after five years. Rather than get down in the dumps, he decided to become the master of his own destiny by going out on his own, and offering his services as a qualified builder/handyman/maintenance guy. All I had to do was brand him and help him establish some basic marketing materials.

You’d think that given what I do (and have done), a task like this would be an absolute cinch. However, what I quickly discovered was that naming your business has become progressively harder over the years as domain names have been snapped up, and the business names register has gone national.

Why using your own name is never a good idea

Steve’s first inclination was to state the bleeding obvious and call himself ‘SL Constructions’ – his initials with ‘Constructions’ tagged on at the end. Thankfully he listened to me when I duly pointed out that this was a bad idea because he would just be joining the armies of other builders out there with their initials + ‘constructions’ or ‘build’ thus making it difficult to differentiate himself from a branding perspective. I encouraged him rather to try and come up with something short, sharp and memorable. I also let him know going in this direction would make it difficult to build up any real value in the business in case one day he should choose to sell or retire (a very important consideration any new start-up should give some consideration to). After all, why would anyone want your name all over their new business?

The business name brainstorming phase

With this discussion out of the way it was time to brainstorm. We started by thinking of words that had some relevance to the building industry that we may be able to use in some shape or form.

Not having spent any great deal of time on a building site I asked him what sort of words, phrases, tools, etc. are very commonly used, in the hope we might be able to salvage something creative. The response was not particularly useful – Steve stood there producing hammer and drill sounds and suggested there was not a lot of time for talking over the noise of such tools on a work site. Hmmm.

I tried to explain that what I was getting at was similar to when I was naming the Get Up To Speed program, a Government funded program we are currently delivering across Queensland. In this case we were promoting the opportunity for business owners to better understand the roll out of the NBN and what opportunities the new speedy internet presented to them as a business owner in Australia, as well as the fact that we would be imparting knowledge that would help them improve their online presence and become a more modern, technologically-savvy business owner.

It may have taken me two weeks, but when I struck on ‘Get Up To Speed’ and called it the Get Up To Speed program it seemed insanely appropriate. And I love the fact that to this day people take great pride in telling me they really are ‘getting up to speed’ thanks to the program.

Unfortunately, we were unable to turn up anything on this train of thought for our budding builder business.

Bring out the thesaurus

Next I started looking up generic ‘broad term’ phrases in my trusty Microsoft Word thesaurus such as ‘builder’ and ‘construction’.

As potential words and combinations came to mind I jumped straight on over to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) website (asic.gov.au). On their current home page, in the bottom right, find the heading ‘Search ASIC Registers’ and then use the drop down menu to ‘Organisations and Business Names’. Where it says ‘For’ type in the proposed business name.

Understanding the national business names register changes

Until recently registering your business name was as simple as thinking up a name, ducking into your local Office of Fair Trading and getting them to conduct a similar search for you. Provided no one else was using that name within your site, $200 or so later it was yours.

In February 2012 the roll out of the new national business names registration system commenced, replacing the current state and territory registers. All business name registrations are now managed by ASIC.

The good thing about the introduction of this national business names Registration is you now only need to register for a business name once, instead of having to register your name in each state and territory you want to operate in. Once your name is registered, it is registered nationally. You need to have an Australian Business Number (ABN), or be in the process of applying for one and not have been refused, in order to apply for a business name. (ABN registrations continue to be free and you can access yours from abn.gov.au.)

The bad thing about the national business names registration is that anyone who ever had a name in another state that you want is now preventing you from ever securing that name. Talk about narrowing the field. Despite the fact that little old builder in Tasmania, for instance, is unlikely to ever move to Queensland (unless the cold gets to him) and start offering building services, you can’t have his name.

Can you trademark that?

It’s a step many business owners overlook but an extremely important one too. With each search on asic.gov.au that produced a semi-available result, my next port of call was running trademark searches over on IP Australia. If you are not familiar with trademarks, it may also be advantageous to have a read of this page, and to potentially engage the services of a suitably qualified and experienced professional in this area as getting it wrong can seriously unravel your good work and impact dramatically on the value of your business.

Buy the domain name

On the odd occasion we turned up a potentially available business name from our ASIC and trademark searches, our next port of call was to search for available domain names.

Having sold domain names since 2008, I’ve been aware since then that available domains have been becoming more and more rare, with many reasonable combinations having long since been secured by domain squatters (yes, they exist!) who purchase them in the hope one day, just maybe, you will come grovelling over to them to buy it with $10,000 in your back pocket.

Knowing hyphens were not really desirable and starting to deviate too far from the proposed business name, in many cases the domain name searches sent us back to square one – bringing out the thesaurus, much to our growing frustration!

Check NameChk.com

It should be mentioned that securing your social media networks are just as important as securing your domain names these days and namechk.com should also be included as part of any due diligence you are performing on the suitability and availability of potential business names. Simply enter your desired username and the system will let you know whether your desired usernames are available across a multitude of networks. Ensure the networks which are important to you are available.

More brainstorming

Involving the kids as well as our family and friends in the brainstorming of a suitable name for Steve’s new business was also conducted throughout the process, though I secretly feared what they may suggest. While on a drive back from a family holiday on the Gold Coast, great entertainment during the three hour road trip was all family members brainstorming prospective business names which ranged from the reasonably good (i.e. eight-year-old’s ‘Straight Up Constructions’ – though ultimately not available) to the absolutely absurd (Krispy Kreme Constructions) aimed at getting a laugh from the others by the time we started considering everything viewed outside the car windows.

Exasperation kicks in… so we googled

Could it really be this hard to name a building business, we wondered? If anybody would know the answer to how to come up with a good name for a building company, surely Google would.

Knowing they existed I searched ‘brand name generator’ and turned up some interesting sites including those which used their ‘brand name generator’ as a lead generator for people to buy their domains to brandstack-name-generators which literally do as the name suggests – combine random keywords to create unique (and largely inappropriate) potential new brand names, especially for a building business, eg. VivaCocoa, MusicBear, CloudFlutter, PianoPaper, Fapdu, BananaRebel, PenguinButter, DragonPenguin etc. (For a fun sideline note, check out http://www.bandnamemaker.com/ where you can come up with a random band name, which has somewhat more scope than a building business for ‘out there’ literary combinations).

For a list of a few brand generators you may like to check out if you ever find yourself in this position see here or here.

And we facebooked…

Still seeking answers we asked our Facebook peers. Surely someone who knew us well could come up with something strikingly apt, via way of a status update late one random week night. Sadly, they could not (though we do appreciate the effort everyone gave to the cause!)

Then finally it came to us!

In a moment of highly uncharacteristic behaviour I decided to take matters into my own hands, and offline. I dug out one of several ‘creative inspiration’ books I keep for moments of emergency, and in flicking through its pages, the word ‘Pronto’ suddenly emerged from a page.

Having spent a total of nine months on two occasions in South America, Steve and I both speak some street Spanish, so a word such as this immediately connected with us – an important consideration in taking ownership of a brand you will have to look at (and hopefully love) every day thereafter. Importantly it also fulfilled our criteria of being short, sharp and memorable.

Secondly, knowing words from other languages are often a good way of getting around the lack of available business names, I searched with baited breathe for the availability of ‘prontobuild’ across the networks. And what do you know, we could get it!

All is well that ends well

One day after finally settling on a name we had registered the business, secured the business page, created a logo and even had shirts printed up. Next up it’s business cards and a website, which we’re getting onto… pronto! (In the meantime we’d love you to pop on over to the ProntoBuild facebook page and say hi.)

What do you think of the brand we came up with? Have you ever had a hard time naming your business or a new product, event or something else? How did you tap into your creative energies and finally settle on your name? Did you use a brand name generator? Perhaps one we haven’t listed? We’d love to hear from you. Share your thoughts through your social networks or via the comments box below.

 

Thriving in the age of digital publishing

by ON
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This week myself and our social media specialist, Zoe Wyatt, had the pleasure of being a guest speaker at an event called Thriving in the Age of Digital Publishing, a ‘tech clinic’ on innovation in Queensland publishing. The event was run by the Business Innovation Services unit of the Department of Science, Information Technology, Innovation and the Arts in partnership with the Australian Institute of Commercialisation and was targeted at a wide range of publishers from across the state including those with single titles, multiple titles, newspapers and magazines.

The event was much needed. In short, out of all the industries on LinkedIn, newspapers and traditional media forms are experiencing the biggest decline. In stark contrast, digital publishing is experiencing the biggest increase.

Having come from a media background (my first journalism gig was on the sports desk of the main daily newspaper of my home town of Wellington at the tender age of 16, I started my own secondary school sports newspaper at 17 and worked in media roles in newspapers, magazines and online in New Zealand and the UK through my 20s) I certainly knew where the 30 to 40 publishers in the room were ‘coming from’; and with my experience in the online world (and innate opinion) I was happy to give them my two cents worth.

It was an onerous task to take the stage immediately after Spiros Kotsialos, digital delivery general manager for News Corp, but I spoke from the heart, as I always do, and my slot was on digital strategies and potential business models.

So what did I tell them?

The fact is there have been numerous casualties within this industry over a period of time, but at an increasing rate more recently. To name but a few in Queensland alone, in March this year we lost The Weekender and all Journals on the Sunshine Coast, in April the Queensland Business Review, Queensland 400 and Book of Lists and the Gold Coast Mail and Robina Mail have also all gone by the way side.

As I am telling lots of businesses at the moment, certainly not just publishing, it’s high time to get your head out of the sand and continue to be busy being busy. If you do, you risk not having a business to be busy in any longer.

The question in this case, as it is with many businesses across all industries, is actually not ‘How do we become more digital?’ it is in fact ‘How do we completely review and potentially revise our business model to become more profitable and sustainable?’

Four possible business models

As far as I can see there are four potential business models when it comes to publishing:

1. Replicate the publication experience online

Many regional publications have gone this way in a token gesture to get with the digital age using technologies such as Issue, Yudu and similar which basically take their printed product, and turn it into a PDF online, with the ability to flip pages and zoom in on articles. Not particularly time consuming, which is good. Not particularly expensive, which is good. In my mind, not particularly effective, which is bad.

2. Go purely online

There are several examples of publications who were once offline such as Anthill magazine who are now entirely online. Others are starting off life as a purely online product with the thought of potentially getting enough interest and advertising dollars to produce hard copies (eg. AusMumpreneur), while others have no intention at all of taking on expensive print runs and distribution runs – the bane of most publishers lives (eg. Adore Home).

3. Put up a pay wall

In your online travels you may have stumbled onto one of these – either a taste test of an article, and then an instruction to buy, or an entirely ‘buy it or leave it’ approach. The likes of the Wall Street Journal and the LA Times have all gone this way. I think it’s important to note that these are ‘uber-publications’ with seriously established brands and followings.

Whilst it’s a lovely idea that you could be making a buck for every download of every article, miraculously turning you into a money magnate, my gut feeling is the reality will be a lot harsher. While the argument exists that people will pay for information they really want, I’d counter-argue that it would have to be very well researched and exclusive content to incite a desire so strong to pay for it, to overpower the alternative of seeking the information elsewhere online, and for free.

4. Freemium

Of all the models listed above, if I had to pick one to put my money on, I’d probably go with this one. This is where some information is made available for free, with a stepped approach to pay for more exclusive content, an approach News Ltd has currently gone with. There are many examples of other industries, particularly in the software space using this business model with a good level of success. Just think of all the cloud-based solutions which offer the ability to try it for free for 30 days, pay a limited amount for a limited service, and then grow into higher plans as you better understand the offering and are coaxed into paying larger amounts for it.

Only time will tell which business model is indeed the winner, but in the mean time, the great thing about being a part of the event is that I witnessed more than a few ‘light bulb’ moments at the event, and can’t wait to see some of the dramatic, though positive, changes some of those present in the room will make.

It was heartening to see a wide range of great service providers in the room including Oomph (a smart digital publishing/tablet platform), webqem (who specialise in the Adobe offerings), pixelnatives (who have great app solutions) and City Desktop training who train people in the use of a wide range of software.

If you’re in the publishing game, I encourage you to go check them out, or suggest those you like in comments.

 

Pinterest: the social network that came out of nowhere

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If I’d said to you just six months ago that yet another social network was on its way, and it would take the world by storm, you’d probably have laughed at me. I mean, we have enough social networks to contend with at the moment right? And not only that, but the ones we do have update the interface and features enough to make us feel like we’re on a completely new network half the time anyway, especially with several recent and major updates on Facebook!

So, like many, I was initially skeptical about checking out this new player, but curiosity got the better of me when Pinterest kept popping up in conversations. I asked a friend to invite me (essential to gain access to the network – new users must receive an invitation from a friend already registered on Pinterest or request an invitation directly from the Pinterest website) and jumped on in.

Like many social networks, initial impressions were ‘not sure how you make this work for you business-wise’. Then I observed. Then I played. Then I marvelled. And it seems I’m not alone.

So what the hell is it?

Pinterest is a pinboard-style social photo sharing website. The service allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections. The site’s mission statement is to “Connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.”
Like many of the great tech starts ups, they’re based out of Silicon Valley. Palo Alto, California to be exact.

So how big is it? Well, last month, comScore reported the site had 11.7 million unique users, making it the fastest site in history to break through the 10 million unique visitor mark. Yet rumours have it they’re only operating with 16 staff.

Who’s using it?

In short: females. Given the interface is something like a shop window, the best analogy I can give you is that Pinterest is like one big online window shopping experience. You can choose to ‘just look’ at the pretty things in the window or you can choose to click on them and go right into the shop, and, if you like what you see, purchase. And it is exactly this that is making people sit up and take notice about the newest social network on the block.
In January 2012, Pinterest drove more referral traffic to retailers than LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google+ combined (source).

The staggering thing about all of this is how new this network is. Development of Pinterest only began in December 2009, the site launched as a closed beta, or testing site, in March 2010, yet by August 16, 2011, Time magazine was listing it in its ’50 Best Websites of 2011′ column.

Unsurprisingly, investors are swooning to get a slice of the action as valuations of the company continue to skyrocket. Like many of the social networks who have gone before it, it appears you don’t have to be profitable (which Pinterest are reportedly not) to be valued at US$200 million and enjoy rounds of investment money if you have a large and rapidly growing community. In short, it’s a numbers game.

The interesting thing about their business model is that it is deriving revenue by replacing the original affiliate tracking code from pins to sites, with Pinterest’s tracking code, any affiliate payment is passed to Pinterest instead of the original affiliate.

It’s a highly intuitive site meaning it’s simple, clean and you can find your way around it fairly easily. Apart from what it is doing on its site, what is really interesting to me is the impact it is having on the industry in general.

Some articles have stated that it is driving trends in web design and just today I received an email from a start-up company who have developed a Facebook application that converts your Facebook wall into a Pinterest pinboard. I’m currently playing with it and I must say, I’m quite impressed and can see some good potential for it.

What does all this mean to your business?

Pinterest is definitely worth taking a look at, particularly if your audience is female, likes pretty things and likes buying online. As share buttons for Pinterest become available add them to your site and keep an eye on the spin-offs in the form of apps, or get involved in being an early innovator in this space. It could pay off big dividends.

Are you using Pinterest? What do you think of it? Have any Pinterest success stories to share? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

 

Trash email! Communication in the modern workplace

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As I write, the National Broadband Network (NBN) is being rolled out throughout Australia. The roll out represents the single biggest investment in infrastructure by any Australian Government in history.

However, many business owners bemoan the $50 billion investment, arguing that they can do most everything they need to do online already, and that faster internet will not make any difference to their day to day lives. But what many do not realise is that the arrival of the NBN represents an opportunity to do things differently, so the trick is really in being open-minded about new possibilities, and translating this change into your business.

Over the coming weeks I’ll explore a variety of business areas and sectors which will be presented with new ways to do business with the arrival of the NBN to their area, and hence faster internet. I welcome your feedback and suggestions on other aspects and sectors you’d like to see covered in future posts.

Communication

I am not too young to remember the days when the fax and phone ruled communication in the workplace. Indeed, one of my first jobs for a government department involved standing over a fax machine for a good part of the day and sending out press releases to every journalist in the country!

When email arrived, we all rejoiced. No more standing over fax machines as the sender, and no more making sure the thing was on, full of ink and full of paper as the recipient.

But interestingly, email has gone from our saving grace in business communications to our biggest bug bear, with many people hard pressed to stay on top of an overflowing inbox despite their best attempts to use filters, rules, forwards and other associated tricks. Thankfully, this is just one area I can see being revolutionised by the coming of the NBN.

While many alternative forms of communication such as VoIP (voice over internet protocol), Skype, live chat, video conferencing and social networks already exist, to date these have not really become mainstream business communication tools. With the arrival of the NBN, their potential becomes much more of a reality.

In my own business, based on the Sunshine Coast (which will not receive NBN roll out for 6 years or so L), already we use a range of online solutions to minimise the amount of emails we receive. My staff know that they should only send me an email if absolutely necessary and that my preference is to receive a Skype text chat whereever possible.

Using Skype’s text chat function for basic internal queries such as ‘Where is the file for ABC client kept?’, forwarding contact details or transferring a file to work on is a much better solution than an email complete with a superfluous subject header and signature. The communication is still date stamped, the sender identifiable and files can most certainly be attached.

Now I’ll admit that as a creative agency we don’t deal with any particularly sensitive data, and that some of these strategies may not suit every situation in every industry. However, it’s important to remember that once upon a time emails were not considered formal or legally binding enough for certain situations, whereas today they are in many cases. If enough people move with the times, the legislation will likely have to move with it.

For large scale organisations who are suffering internal email overload and high telephone bills, there are many alternative communication solutions in the marketplace, and finding the right one really depends on analysing the company’s specific needs.

Some companies have found investments in VoIP systems have been a source of significant cost savings and the use of this technology becomes more realistic with the advent of the NBN.

Microblogging networks (such as Twitter), blogging, and use of other social networking applications increases people’s ability to communicate with a multitude, discuss issues virtually, think critically about issues informed by many perspectives, and provide alternatives to make decisions. Microblogging also provides the mechanism to ask a question, express a thought, ignite discussions, or share information. Indeed I know of public facing organisations with significant call centres who are transferring staff from the call centre to focus on the management and response of their Twitter accounts, such is the decrease in the number of calls and the increase in the level of Twitter conversations!

Blogs and other social network platforms provide the collaborative tools to add more content and context – there have been cases of private Facebook groups being used successfully for internal communications within organisations. Yammer is yet another social network of an enterprise kind which many companies have successfully implemented for better internal communications.

When it comes to collaborating on documents, email is really ineffective. Much better solutions include Google Docs where you can create spread sheets, documents (as per Microsoft Word), presentations and more, and share them with relevant staff members. Collaborators can see when others are working on the live document (a great reference for meetings) and/or share the document once updated, ensuring effective version control.

Similarly, for those managing multiple projects, email falls down on several fronts. More effective is an online project management system of some description (for those we use see our website) which allows you to set up message trails and grant access to team members who are involved in different aspects of any given project. In that way, rather than hunting high and low in your inbox for who said what and when, provided everyone uses it effectively you have one tidy trail of messages related to any given project and can dip in and out and know exactly what is going on.

One must also not forget webinars as an alternative form of communication (virtual meetings), and face to face meetings which can get everyone ‘on the same page’.

In short, high-speed broadband presents a world of opportunities if email overload is getting you and your company down. But ultimately a transition will require a careful look at what specific problems you are facing, careful selection of the systems and tools which will best suit your situation, and mapping out a transition process, complete with training.