You may have a website, billboards, and radio ad spots, but do you really want more business or are you hiding from your customers?
Sometimes we can hide in plain sight simply because we are doing everything right – we’re not “rocking the boat” so to speak. Our hope is that if we keep out nose to the grindstone and do everything right, business will come and your business will grow. As you can probably tell by my tone that viewpoint is slightly naive. What has worked in the past may not work now. The times they are a changing and people (your customers) are too.
What to do?
It’s not going to be easy. In fact, it’s going to be uncomfortable. That’s because you’re going to have to stop doing what feels good and start getting outside your safety zone. Are you willing to do what it takes to grow? I’m not talking about spending more money. I’m talking about how you spend your time and how you think about attracting customers – that is if you want to. You’d be suprised at how many self-limiting business owners there are out there making excuses for why they don’t hear the phone ringing. You can make the phone ring anytime you want by picking it up and making a call.
Put the pieces together.
Cracker has a song that goes, “If you want to change the world, start to spin it.” How are you spinning your business? Do you blend in with the crowd or are you a solution to be sought? You don’t have to be mediocre. You can be great. If you don’t like the customers you have now, attract a different set of clients. Remember why you got into business in the first place and don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself. It’s your business. Own it.
As a fellow business owner I can understand that it’s been a wild ride over the last couple of years. Since I created Erich Stauffer back in 2007 we have seen markets rise and fall, businesses start and fail, and entire economies collapse. Next year promises more of the same, or worse, but we have reason for hope. There will always be a place for the kind of business owner that adds value to each customer interaction because people will always have needs to be met. Meeting customer’s needs and exceeding their expectations no matter what happens will continue to pay dividends despite the economy.
We have gone through several changes since 2007. We added more services as our customers have asked for them, such as search engine optimization (SEO), social media management, and traditional advertising assistance in addition to our original web design and development services. Jason Cobb, Chris Hendrickson, and most recently my wife, Suzanne Stauffer, have all worked hard to serve our customers since 2007.
Jason Cobb and Chris Hendrickson have served as executive and sales managers, respectively, but will both be transitioning into sales support role part-time as they take on new roles in other endeavors. Because of Suzanne’s work over the last year I have promoted her to Marketing Director and Vice President of the company, while I am remaining as CEO. In this role I lead and guide the direction of the company.
I want to personally thank you for your business over the last year and together look forward to not as things are, but as they could be.
Twitter is over capacity. Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again
I use both Tweetdeck and Twitter itself to post messages, or tweets, to update both my account, the accounts of my businesses and brands, and the accounts of my customers. It’s really frustrating when the Twitter API (the connection between third-party programs like Tweetdeck and Twitter) and/or the website is unavailable. I’ve somewhat learned the times when Twitter is most busy and tried to avoid these times, but this is a trade off. Because of the way Twitter works, you have to be kind of “in the moment” to matter. Yes, followers can go back and look at old tweets, but for the most part, they are only looking at their current stream and if you aren’t in it when they are, they don’t see you.
Why is Twitter so Overloaded All the Time?
Twitter has become the SMS of the Internet. Because of its restricted 140 characters per post, It has become the hottest thing in social networking. Every one from big companies, to CEO’s to teens uses Twitter. The more popular the site becomes the more load there is on the servers and the software running on that server. The original code used to run Twitter, Ruby on Rails, didn’t scale well, but that has been in the process of being fixed for a while now. The issue now may be the simple lack of available servers. However, the new Twitter interface seems to be more available than the old one which could indicate that the new profiles are running on both new software and new hardware platforms.
I am one of the 58,000 Microsoft Bob users from 1995 and to celebrate 15 years I thought I’d write a fake news article imagining what Bob would be like today if released as a social network.
Microsoft Announces ‘Bob’ Social Network Based on Microsoft Bob Could this be a Facebook killer?
Microsoft Bob, the toy operating system within an operating system, which debuted in 1995, is now back in a big way as a new social network. Although revolutionary at the time, the three dimensional software that let you store and retrieve files from an actual file cabinet in a virtual office room is regarded as one of the worst applications ever made after Windows ME. But this version of Bob hopes to change that perception and get back to Microsoft’s original interpretation of Neil Stephenson’s Metaverse by taking the house, rooms, and avatar to a new level. In the same way that you got to your PC’s desktop in Bob .’95, at Bob.com PCs are used like widgets to display RSS feeds or Facebook. In Facebook terms, your profile is your house in Bob. When someone is “viewing your profile” on Bob you will see their avatar in your house if you are logged in and there too.
How is this different than Second Life?
In Second Life there is a virtual world that you explore and create things like houses in. In Bob, the world is created by you building a house, liking a band, or following a friend. Each time you add something to Bob it gets a physical place in your virtual Bob world. Each user’s world will look different un layout, but the content of each unit will be the same to all users. For example, if you want to live next door to Ace Freely and he agrees to be your friend, his house would be next to yours, but from his perspective, your house may be blocks from his in his Bob world.
Integration
Because Microsoft is involved expect to be able to integrate pictures and files from your PC in Bob, which will use Azure and will enable sharing and collaborations much like the Microsoft / Facebook project, Docs.com. Also Bing search and maps will be used. Expect Bing local search to be heavily promoted as businesses get on board and begin joining. Unlike Facebook, expect to be able to buy things from shops you have added to your network.
Summary and Analysis
In the same way we didn’t need a layer on top of Windows 95 to use Windows 95 I’m not sure we need an Internet world layered on top of our existing Internet, but it would be nice to hang out with other friends in their avatar forms in some sweet man cave I built in my FRIGGIN mansion on Bob.
A lot of SEO companies market how they will promote your business online using Internet marketing and online advertising techniques, but Erich Stauffer noticed a gap between where promotion stops and business begins and so we used social media management to not just promote your business, but grow your business.
Digital Marketing Strategy
We’ll work with you to create a comprehensive strategy to marry your business brand, vision, values, products, and services with traditional outdoor, radio, TV, and yellow page advertising alongside social networking and social spaces like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other technologies like apps for the iPhone and Android phones.
SEO is Not Enough – Content Marketing
It’s no longer enough to have a top-ranking website in Google if your web site is not converting traffic, your story is not consistent, and you are not creating lasting relationships with customers. Erich Stauffer can help you to do all three with content marketing.
Social Media Management
We are excited to offer social media management to help your business organize and streamline their marketing efforts with a consistent message that is in-line with their mission, vision, and values. We believe so strongly about this product that we would be happy to take you out to lunch to show you how it works in a one-on-one session. Are you interested in learning more?
I just got a little scare when I clicked, “Sign out,” at Twitter and got the message, “Your account will be deactivated, Bye!” I logged back in successfully, but am still unsure of what is going on. Hopefully it’s just a glitch at Twitter and will be fixed soon.
A List of the 5 Most Popular Microblogging Social Networks: Jaiku, Plurk, Present.ly, Tumblr, and Twitter.
This list of microblogging social networks is listed alphabetically and includes their availability, rank, popularity, and features.
Jaiku
Jaiku is a social networking, microblogging and lifestreaming service comparable to Twitter. Jaiku was founded in February, 2006 by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen from Finland and opened in July, 2006. Based out of Helsinki, Jaiku was purchased by Google on October 9, 2007.
The founders of Jaiku chose the name because the posts on Jaiku resemble Japanese haiku. Also, the indigenous Sami people of Finland have traditionally shared stories by singing joiks. On January 14, 2009 Google announced that it would be open-sourcing the product, but would, “No longer actively develop the Jaiku codebase,” leaving development to a, “Passionate volunteer team of Googlers”. (more…)
CollegeClub.com was registered on April 4, 1996 and by 2000 had around 3 million registered users. I was one of those users who used it to find friends at other colleges online. On August 22, 2000, CollegeClub.com announced bankruptcy and said it would be acquired by Student Advantage, an Internet educational content and commerce specialist, for $7 million in cash and 1.5 million shares of its stock. Almost exactly three years later, in August of 2003, MySpace.com launched. Less than a year after that Facebook.com began as a social network for colleges on February 4, 2004, but eventually opened up to the general public on September 26, 2006. What happened to College Club? What made it different from Myspace or Facebook?
Why did MySpace and Facebook succeed when CollegeClub failed?
All of a sudden what seemed so hard for CollegeClub.com to do seemed easy for others. Was it the curse of the “first to market first to fail” concept that’s befell such greats as Palm, Netscape, and Tivo? Or was it something else? EDIT: since writing this initially in September of 2009, MySpace may not be the best comparison, but Facebook is still doing just fine. 11/4/2011.
CollegeClub.com’s Business Model
Lets take a look at the business model. CollegeClub.com allowed users to sign up for free, create profiles, communicate with each other, and post pictures online. Once it attracted a certain number of users, the site was then able to sells advertising to businesses looking to sell to this highly impressionable market with loads of free time and disposable income. Marketers know that if they can hook a customer in college, they may have them for life. Both MySpace.com and Facebook.com used this same model so why did CollegeClub.com fail?
CollegeClub.com was getting funding at the tune of $15 million from a group of investors that included Convergence Partners and France-based Viventures as well as $40 million from Seligman Technology Group via the group’s investment fund and additional money from previous investors Convergence and Sony. Later deals included partnerships with Ericsson and General Motors, with a planned IPO in the offing. The old addage of “it takes money to make money” wasn’t making CollegeClub.com any money. Why?
I have two reasons why I think this site tanked:
The first reason is bad management and the second reason is the high cost of technology at the time.
Infoworld said at the time, “While one source close to the company traces the financial difficulties to some unorthodox spending practices by management, [new owner, Student Advantage] said it believes that problems stemmed from the nature of the site’s business model.” I think Student Advantage was wrong. We now know there was nothing wrong with their business model (because it worked for both Myspace and Facebook) and this next statement from Infoworld backs this up:
In the recent past, Student Advantage has shown less than stellar financial performance itself. Since the beginning of the year, the company’s stock price has plummeted from a high mark of just over $20 to its current price, which is hovering just above $7. In addition, Student Advantage has continually met analysts’ predictions of red ink, and the company has suggested that losses will continue throughout next year.
The company went from bad management to worse management – and technology costs were adding up.
“The business model works.” said Monte Brem, senior vice president of corporate development at CollegeClub in said in 2000 – and he was right – but he noted that with nearly 3 million users, the back-end costs for the site ran high and needed multiple rounds of financing for success. “It requires a tremendous amount of scaling to be profitable,” Brem added. And back then, scaling cost much more than it did in 2003 and 2004 for MySpace and Facebook respectively. Moore’s Law has two effects. Not only does technology double in speed or capacity each year, but the price almost always shrinks by half every two years. For example, a Pentium III desktop PC with 128 MB RAM and a 40 GB hard drive cost $1800.00 in 2000. In 2003, the price of a desktop had dropped below $1000 for over twice the power. Multiply that over all the equipment needed to run a large social network. In April, 2008 Facebook expanded the number of servers it uses to 10,000. The more CollegeClub.com added users, the more technology they had to add on back-end to support the load. Their revenue simply could not overcome their expenses.
So why did CollegeClub.com fail?
Primarily, it was ahead of its time. It had a good idea, but no one had really succeeded with it before. Bad management decisions were made and the implementation of the idea did not match up with the cost of the infrastructure at the time. Had they waited until 2002 to launch, they could have superseded either MySpace or Facebook, but there is another reason why they may never have made it: their name. Names like MySpace and Facebook are not associated with a specific group like CollegeClub.com is. Eventually CollegeClub.com started HighSchool.com to address this problem but even it has the same problem of locking it into a specific group. There were also privacy and age related problems on the site, much like MySpace ran into in 2006 and Facebook has ran into almost every year of it’s existence.
What can we learn from CollegeClub.com?
There are three things they could have done differently:
They didn’t pick a scalable name that was generic enough to be applied to almost anyone, anywhere. Sometimes it is good to be niche, but you take on more risk if you’re running your own equipment. Sometimes is pays to have a name that can be used broadly, even if you start off small within a specific niche.
Take the time to develop a good business plan and don’t be afraid to change the business plan as you go. Create metrics for success, track them, and change course if necessary. The businesses that are most successful are the most agile.
Avoid debt if possible when starting a business. It always catches up with you. And the more debt you have the less your’e able to (as in #1) scale or (as in #2) change course. One of the most important things in any business is cash flow.
When You Say Yes but Mean No: How Silencing Conflict Wrecks Relationships and Companies…and What You Can Do About It
“Saying yes when you really mean no” is a problem that haunts organizations from startups to big businesses. It exists across industries, levels, and functions and is inflamed by a sour economy, when the fear of losing your job is on everyone’s mind and the idea of allowing conflict to surface or disagreeing with others seems inherently risky. Too often, the conversation at work bespeaks harmony and togetherness, even though passionate disagreements exist beneath the surface. Is this what really happened to CollegeClub.com? Read the book to find out.
CollegeClub even had email by phone. It was pretty advanced for its time.
CollegeClub “The world’s largest college community” FREE E-mail you can also hear through the phone! FREE voicemail, with your own 800 number! FREE discount card! FREE Web page builder! TONS of ways to meet people like you! (Chat, Interest Groups, and more!) LOTS of other cool stuff! (Including online games and music videos!)
Suprise. CollegeClub is no longer offering free email.
In 2007, Alloy Media, owner of the CollegeClub.com trademark, discontinued the CollegeClub email service rendering all “@collegeclub.com” email addresses defunct. Their website (http://mail.collegeclub.com), simply said:
“Oops! Sorry about that! These CollegeClub applications are no longer in service.
If you are trying to access your old emails so that you can forward them on to another address, use this url: http://legacy.collegeclub.com/mail.
This Service will only be available until Friday, March 16th, 2007.
Here is what the email login screen last looked like in March, 2007:
CollegeClub.com Where Are You Now?
If you type ‘http://www.collegeclub.com‘ into your browser you will be taken to Teen.com, which is, according to their web site the, “ultimate online destination for teens on celebrities, entertainment, music, and fashion.” I think what they mean to say was that they are a ‘destination for teens’ that covers ‘celebrities’, not “teens on celebrities,” which has an entirely different meaning.
Teen.com is owned and operated by Alloy Media, LLC, which is a New York based media company that is partners with Alloy Marketing and Alloy Entertainment. Alloy Media also owns Channel One News, which most know is a 12 minute news program for teens broadcast via satellite to middle schools and high schools across the United States.
The Internet is not a friendly place. Things that don’t stay relevant don’t even get the luxury of leaving ruins. They disappear.” -Facebook’s Little Red Book
For those looking for other ex-CollegeClub.com members, check out ExCollegeClubbers. The ‘tribe’ is “for everyone who wants to meet new friends, but in particular for ex members of Collegeclub.com…It used to be cool like Tribe and we have all lost contact with each other. So non-ex members and ex- members alike are invited to join.”
Currently there are many social websites that have created a platform for you to speak directly to and with your current and future customers. There are also many tools that help manage this relationship, pushing the same content out to all platforms at once, or changing it slightly using built in rules. There are no hard and fast rules for the Web 2.0 landscape because it is all still so new, but what we can do is look to those businesses who are having success in these new areas.
We measure success by the three methods, “know, trust, buy.”:
Brand awareness. (Does the customer know you?)
Brand favorableness. (Does the client trust you?)
Increased sales. (Does the client buy from you?)
Blasting your message out to one or as many social media sites as you can will help get your brand more noticed, and so achieve more awareness, but you also need to be genuine. The best Internet marketers make sure to engage with the customer and not just try to sell them something at every turn. The medium lends itself to this sort of engagement and turning down the opportunity to do so may break the trust, or the brand favorableness. Once you have established both the know and the trust, then the customer feels free to buy from you, but there is value to both brand awareness and brand favorableness even if the one who you are impressing does not buy. Once the goodwill is out there, the person you engaged with may refer you to someone else. Like the butterfly flapping it’s wings, even the smallest twit on Twitter may lead to a hurricane sale on the other side of the world.
Twitter is over capacity. Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again
Jaiku
I have two reasons why I think this site tanked:
