February, 2006 Archive

Blogs to Riches

There’s a really good article in the latest New York magazine about “the emerging hierarchy of the New New Media.” Really interesting and definitely worth reading if you have any interest at all in blogging.

Three:Twenty Interactive, The Blog

Today marks the launch of Three:Twenty Interactive as a blog. It’s not a blog in the typical sense, but using WordPress gives me an easy way to get some features that I really wanted to have for the site. Namely…

Interactivity
Now that everyone has the ability to comment on each entry and each advice article, we can get some interactivity going. I’m anxious to hear about your specific experiences with the stuff I write about since how you apply it varies from industry to industry.

Better Content Management
WordPress makes managing all this content so much easier. This is the first true content site I’ve worked on (the others have all been sites where users were actually doing something, not just reading), so I needed some way to keep all this content organized and structured.

I’ve also added more content during the time I’ve been setting things up and, hopefully, will make that more of a regular occurrence now that I have an easy way to do it.

Convenience Stores a Growth Business?

Here in Canada, we have changed the rules. So says Alain Bouchard of his chain of convenience stores, Alimentation Couche-Tard, which saw fiscal 2005 sales of $8.7. He’s created a successful business by doing the same old thing in a much different way, and has begun to acquire U.S. convenience stores at a rapid pace to bring that different way to America. Read more about it here (registration required).

Doing the same thing in a different way is a great growth strategy. I think it was Tom Peters in his book The Pursuit of Wow who said that some of the greatest growth opportunities lie in mature, even stagnant, industries—places where no one is innovating anymore. That opens the gate for an innovator to blow in, shake things up, start doing things a better way, and take over the sector.

As new as the Internet is, there aren’t nearly as many opportunities like that, but we’re already seeing new companies arising as part of “Web 2.0″ where the rules are being changed yet again. Are you doing the same old thing, the same old way, or is there something new and different to what you’re doing? One is obviously a much better growth strategy than the other.

Two Great Principles for Lasting Success

In his Digital Rules column in the February 13 issue of Forbes magazine, Rich Karlgaard makes a couple of points that I think are key to creating lasting success for your business.

First:

Success is not a zero-sum game, though most academic economists, pundits and politicians act as if it were–maybe because they vie for glory in zero-sum professions. (There can be only 1 U.S. President and 100 senators, for example.)

Too often, I hear people who are focused on their success at someone else’s expense. While true competition does often involve consumers switching from one company to its competitor, and competition is the foundation of a healthy economy, you’re ultimately facing a much less successful future if you can’t see beyond that.

Focus on providing valuable content that’s unique from what any else is producing. Find your niche. Create new interest. Add something brand new to what’s already there. There are always bigger fish in the lake, so survival can be a very a stressful game. Don’t be afraid to explore uncharted waters.

Second:

The Golden Rule is more than a spiritual truth, it is a business truth. You get ahead in business by serving others. Sure, you can try to cheat or cut corners–and you may succeed. But the odds overwhelmingly favor the company that serves its customers with great products and services at a fair price. This is even truer today, in the age of Internet price transparency and activist consumers.

This is so true, especially on the Internet. If you’re very good, word will always spread. Work on doing good for others, and it will always come back around.

What does that mean for a website in particular? Be free with your links. Don’t hesitate to quote people and link to their sites. Let someone know if you had a good experience. Be transparent. Admit when you make mistakes.

There are thousands of ways to do good, and doing good is the best way to do well.

Yahoo Search Marketing (née Overture) vs. Google AdWords

Greg Boser (aka WebGuerrilla) commented yesterday on a recent Media Post article. It was an interesting article, but I disagree about one of the major conclusions they drew from it.

According to the study of 1,200 PPC advertisers, those with larger budgets preferred Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM, née Overture) and MSN over Google:

[W]hen Outsell looked more closely at the results, it found that the most enthusiastic Google fans also had the smallest marketing budgets. The average marketing budget of respondents who rated Google “extremely” effective totaled $3.7 million. But average budgets for those who considered Yahoo and MSN extremely effective came to $4.6 million.

Be careful before taking that as proof that YSM or MSN is actually better than Google, though. For one thing, is there really a material difference between budgets of $3.7 million and $4.6 million? As “a” writes in over the comments on Greg’s blog: Those who spend 3 or 4 million will not care…but suddenly, those who spend 5 million turn out to be coldly rational? I could see there being a big difference in preference between $37,000 and $4.6 million, or even $370,000 and $4.6 million, but $3.7 and $4.6 don’t seem statistically different.

Second, my experience tells me just the opposite. AdWords gives you much more ability to fine-tune your bids to really dial-in optimal conversion costs. YSM doesn’t give you anywhere near the same level of control. It’s like comparing a shotgun with a sniper rifle.

That said, that may in fact be the reason that many people prefer YSM. While a sniper rifle gives you much more accurate results, a shotgun is obviously much easier to use. Even for those without great PPC skills, YSM gives them ability to get good results without worrying too much about what they’re doing, and those who have never gotten down into the level of control AdWords provides might not even notice a difference between the two.

I’m just guessing on that, though, as I very much prefer AdWords. It’s not even close. And I’m looking forward to trying out MSN as soon as possible.

In the meantime, what do you think? Do you prefer YSM over Google, or the other way around? Why?

So Easy, an Eight-Year-Old Can Do It

Hilarious entry over at VentureBlog yesterday. Venture capitalist David Hornik relates how, after a discussion with his eight-year-old about what daddy does for a living, the eight-year-old really took it to heart:

A couple nights ago my son came to me with a handful of papers with various designs and announced that he was ready to start his skate brand. After an exhaustive process, he had decided to name his company Ollie King ™, and he was ready to go. I told him that he would have to wait because I was reading to his sister, at which point he stormed up stairs to his mother, ripped up his skate designs, threw them in the trash, and screamed to her “daddy won’t fund my company!” This did not sit well with my wife — apparently, as his father, I have an obligation to fund my son’s skate brand. I was instructed to do something to fix the problem I had created.

After that, using some of the interactive tools of the new web (namely TypePad, GoDaddy, and CafePress), he launched his own skate brand in a matter of just a few hours…at eight years old.

The whole entry is definitely worth a read.