RUSNANO and AmBAR Announce the Business Plan Competition of Nanotech Projects 

    AmBAR creates a unique platform to facilitate the exchange of knowledge, ideas, and business contacts between technology entrepreneurs, professionals, and investors. The organization is also dedicated to accelerating access to capital for innovative projects and developing technology partnerships between Russia, Ukraine and other FSU countries and the United States. Through various seminars and conferences AmBAR provides educational programs that help entrepreneurs refine their business plans, and advance their product development and marketing efforts.

Ambar’s Mission:

·       To provide a networking platform for technology entrepreneurs, venture capital investors, and other business professionals from Russian, Ukraine and other CIS countries who are interested in innovation and commercialization of high technology products.

·       To educate, showcase, and support entrepreneurs in Russia, Ukraine and other CIS countries as they seek equity capital, corporate partners, and grow their companies globally.

·       To enhance all aspects of technology partnership between the United States and the countries of the former Soviet Union. 

SVOD Conference is right around the corner and we have an amazing lineup of speakers! Register today and don’t miss out on this unique networking opportunity!

 

    This is a not to be missed event for the entrepreneurs and the Venture Capital community. This year’s theme will drive a very exciting Agenda exploring “re-invention” as it affects the startup process on multiple levels — technologies, business models, financing, monetizing and team building.

 

 

• Vinod Khosla, Founding Partner, Khosla Ventures
• Charles Giancarlo, Managing Director, Silver Lake
• Steve Blank, Serial Entrepreneur; Founder, Epiphany; Lecturer, Stanford University, Graduate School of Engineering
• Sergei Beloussov, CEO, Parallels
• Ron Conway, Founding General Partner, Angel Investors LP
• Jason Pressman, General Partner, Shasta Ventures
• Adam Lashinsky, Editor at large, Fortune magazine; regular panelist and business commentator for Fox network programs
• Esther Dyson, Director, 23andMe, Principal, EDventure Holdings (sold to CNet), investor in Flickr and del.icio.us (both sold to Yahoo!) & Medstory (sold to Microsoft)
• Jeff Crow, General Partner, Norwest Venture Partners
• Vivek Mehra, General Partner, August Capital
• Ping Li, General Partner, Accel Partners
• Kittu Kolluri, General Partner, New Enterprise Associates
• Franklin Pitch Johnson, Founding Partner, Asset Management Company
• Peter Loukianoff, Partner, Almaz Capital Partners
• Guy Kawasaki, Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures
• Pavel Pogodin, Partner, Sughrue Mion LLP
• Dmitry Dubograev, Partner, Femida LLP
• Leonid Gozman, Board Member, RUSNANO
• Mikhail Chuchkevich, Director, Project Office, RUSNANO
• Dmitry Vasuytinsky, Managing Partner, Allianz Asset Management
• Yan Ryazantsev, Investment Director, Russian Venture Company
• Bo Parker, Managing Director, Center for Technology and Innovation, PriceWaterhouseCoopers
• Phil Libin, CEO, Evernote
• Vlad Shmunis, CEO, RingCentral, Sequoia-backed company
• Matthew Trevithick, General Partner, Venrock
• Eric Buatois, General Partner, Sofinnova Ventures
• Vish Makhijani, COO, Zynga
• Vimal Solanki, Vice President, McAfee
• Evgeni Utkin, CEO, Kvazar-Micro, acquired by Sitronics, voted the Best Ukrainian Entrepreneur
• Greg Shenkman, General Partner, Exigen Capital, formerly CEO of Genesys, sold to Alcatel for $1.9B
• Mike Selfridge, Northern California Region Manager, Silicon Valley Bank

Whether you are looking for a deal flow, funding, information or networking – SVOD 2009 is the place to be! - WWW.SVOD.ORG 

 

 

Date: December 9-10, 2009

Location: Computer History Museum, Mountain View, Silicon Valley, CA

To Register: http://www.svod.org/

 

Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies (RUSNANO) and American Business Association of Russian-speaking Professionals (AmBAR) announce the Business Plan Competition cor projects and companies working in the field of nanotechnology. Origination of the project may come from any country or person all over the world, but its implementation or some part of implementation has to be completed in Russia. In 2009 the nominees for the contest are pre-selected by AmBAR among the participants of the Fifth Annual High Tech Investment Conference SVOD 2009. For more information, please go to: http://www.svod.org/ or e-mail to info@ambarclub.org

The projects are evaluated by the following criteria:

• nanotechnology application;
• scientific and technical feasibility of the project;
• quality and feasibility of the business-plan;
• steps already made towards project implementation.

The winner of the competition receives the RUSNANO award and the prize in the amount of 300,000 rubles (~$10,000).

For more details, please see the Contest terms and conditions (in Russian)

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

There is so much to learn from the top bloggers worldwide. To start with, they are individualistic with iconic style and quirks. Secondly, they are interesting people with something valuable to say. Often opinionated, they say things with panache – a little sugar and a little salt. Who are these fascinating people? Is there something we can learn from them?

Seth Godin is one of the top bloggers in the world and a marketing guru. He provides fascinating insight on things like running your business and quirky, interesting ideas on how to get ahead. An interesting and highly intelligent person, Seth is a much loved figure in the blogging world.

Leo Babauta writes a hugely popular blog on simplicity and productivity called Zen Habits. Through hi sincerity and hard work, he has won hundreds of thousands of supports worldwide. Its a strange and endearing story of success attained through humility and hard work.

Penelope Trunk provides counter-intuitive advice on careers and all other sticky things in life: sex, boyfriends, abortion and how they impact work. Thousands of readers are encouraged to gather courage by her thoughts on why the conventional workplace is so uncool.

Then there are the Mommy Bloggers – writing about all aspects of parenting, relationships, families and home business aspects.

There is the inimitable Guy Kawasaki, the former Apple Evangelist whose hugely popular blog is called “How to Change the World: A Practical Blog for Impractical People”. Guy has a lot of experience changing the world one person at a time from the time he worked on the Macintosh project.

In fashion, there is the one and only The Sartorialist blog by Scott Schuman that has come to define fashion and taste on the street. His blog was named among Top 100 Design Influencers by the Time magazine.

In the world of blogging and entrepreneurship, there are guys like Yaro Starak and Darren Rowse - somewhat persistent but nevertheless knowledgeable, successful, and visible.

In my blogging course, I analyze the success mantras of such bloggers. What’s inside their brain, behind the door, under the hood, wrapped under cover or on the drawing board, away from your eyes? How did they attain their spectacular success?

What’s the secret success mantra? How do adapt or adopt, take away the useful stuff, how to apply it to your own style, how do you up your game and take it to the next level?

Let’s discover it together in my blogging course:

Blogging the Ayrton Way!

One of the unique aspects of this course is the personal attention  and individual feedback you will get as we work together to help you attain blogging success.

Register today to benefit from my blog course!

I just finished experiencing the Challenge Your World event with Guy Kawasaki in Montreal entirely through Twitter.

What was this event?

Rendez-vous 09 – A featured event of Global Entrepreneurship Week and Challenge Your World

I wasn’t able to attend tonight’s event, but just by reading the live Tweeting (and vigouous ReTweeting), the Twitterverse was able gave me a real sense of the energy in a room filled with over 500 attendees.

All proceeds of the evening benefited CARE Canada and according to the latest Challenge Your World Tweet – $17,000 was raised.  That’s amazing!

Congrats to Martin Lessard (@martinlessard) and the Challenge Your World Team (#CYW & @challengeworld).  Your hard work has definitely paid off tonight!

Although I wasn’t there to witness and experience the magic of Guy Kawasaki myself, it was obvious that the Twitterverse was able to transfer his passion, positivity and his inspiring keynote 140 characters at a time.  Thanks to RT’s from @kimvallee, @jeromeparadis, @emergent007, @zelaurent, @bdescary, @evablue and many more.

Cheers to Guy Kawasaki, Challenge Your World and Twitter tonight!

Photo by Cambodia4kidsorg

I am reading Guy Kawasaki’s book Reality Check these days. It is like reading many important checklists about how to do just about anything in business. Strange, but interesting. Anyway, in one of the first chapters he talks about why is it better to invest in young inexperienced entrepreneurs than in serial entrepreneurs. One paragraph in that chapter caught my eyes:

Serial entrepreneurs fill new roles in their next companies. For example, in the first company the person was an engineer who became the vice president of engineering. In the next company, she is the CEO and founder. Just because you are good at designing chips doesn’t mean you’re CEO material. You may end up not doing what you’re good at and doing what you’re not good at

I am constantly surprised how people have misguided self-perceptions. They are so good at something and they usually even enjoy and love doing it. Sometimes they feel a state of flow when they are doing it. But something, society, greed, conventional wisdom or something else I cannot fathom, tells them – hey – you should try being a manager. You should try doing something else. You are better than this.

I wrote about this in my E-book:

It is not uncommon to see someone who was very good at his job and is promoted to be a manager. When he was part of a team or even a solo player, he excelled at his job. But when you put him in a managerial position, which is not his comparative advantage, he just can’t handle it. This is interesting. Usually this man actually wanted the promotion even though he was happy with what he was doing and even though he does not like to manage people. We are so used to the Hierarchy Thinking Model and not the Comparative Advantage Thinking Model, that we actually want positions that our abilities are not compatible with. The reason being this is just the way we know the system works. Well, the system sucks! The problem is that not only this man can’t handle the job of a manager, he also can’t handle the truth … He does not have what it takes to be a manager. And I am not just talking about an application of the Peter Principle. This man is actually unhappy being a manager! It is not his comparative advantage. Bill Gates got it when he put Steve Ballmer to manage while he did software development, so why can’t it work for all of us?

I admit this is a natural phenomenon. You know what, it happened to me not a while back. I found myself looking for a career, I am not 100% share was for me. I am actually struggling these days to find a career path that will allow me a better use of my strengths.

It is not always a bad idea to try new things. If we don’t try, we will never know. And sometimes, the only way to discover your strengths is to do something again and again and fail at it. As long as you enjoy failing at it (not being cynical here, seriously, read the post in the link).

However, if we can’t be true with ourselves we will never be able to reach our full potential. If we become managers and our most important job is to help our employees find what they are good at and help them excel at it, there is no way we can do that before we go through the same process with ourselves. And it does not matter of you are a serial entrepreneur that made millions of dollars or if you are just a novice trying to find your place in the world. You can do better, for yourselves and others, by finding and using your strengths.

Elad

Are you tweeting, blogging, linking in and everything else you can think of to get noticed? Is it working? Here is a short read by an expert in the field. I know, everyone and their brother is offering workshops on social media – the difference is that Guy Kawasaki has been around the block a time or two. He was the first software evangalist for a small start up called Apple Computer.  This article is a fun and short read.

 http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/the-world/article/how-to-get-found-guy-kawasaki

‘… following @guykawasaki suggestion repeat tweets …’ — Paulo Coelho, twitter

One metric which may increase our ranking on twitter is the number of tweets we produce, ie the amount of traffic we generate. The temptation therefore is to increase the number of tweets in a crude attempt to bolster our twitter ranking. A temptation to be resisted. Were we to do so we would reduce the signal-to-noise ratio, reduce the value, and worse could be seen as generating spam.

http://keithpp.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/can-we-rank-twitter-streams/

Guy Kawasaki has advised that we repeat our tweets. Were we to follow his advice and repeat every tweet, we would half the information content, decrease the signal-to-noise ratio, reduce the value and worse would quite correctly be seen as generating spam.

http://holykaw.alltop.com/the-art-of-the-repeat-tweet

Repeating tweets should not be confused with re-tweeting, which is to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio and demonstrates our tweets have merit.

I have had followers where every alternate tweet is a repetition of the same tweet, worse, a stream that consists of a repeat of the same tweet! In the past I blocked these followers, now I block and report as spam. So be warned!

A reminder is ok, as is sending a tweet to multiple recipients, anything else is spam.

Special thanks to Paul Coelho, whose tweet of yesterday on following the advice of Guy Kawasaki to repeat tweets gave me the germ of an idea.

See

Can we rank twitter streams?

The art of the repeat tweet

We love this piece written by Guy Kawasaki for the American Express Open Forum blog and hope you will too.

Twitter Cluelessness, by Guy Kawasaki

Oct 26, 2009 -

A funny thing often happens to me: People tell me that they’re really into technology and ask what it was like to work for Steve Jobs. But they pronounce “Jobs” with a long o—that is, like it’s spelled “Jobes.” This is like saying, “What’s it like to live in ‘Frisco?” instead of “the City.” As a small business person, you can’t afford to look clueless anywhere on the Internet, but this is especially true on Twitter. Read on if you want to avoid this fate.

1. Don’t tell other people how to tweet. There are two kinds of Twitter Fascists: first, the “social media guru” who believes that he is the conscience of Twitter and has the God-given right to regulate the use of Twitter. Arguably, there are three people who can do this: Biz Stone, Ev Wiliams, and Jack Dorsey. (I would even debate this at this point, but that’s another posting.)The second kind of Twitter Fascist is the “ninety-day wonder”—that is, someone who’s been on Twitter for less than ninety days, has less than ninety followers, follows less than ninety people, and has made less than ninety tweets but believes that he should be telling everyone else how to use Twitter. This is the Twitter version of the “Ugly American.”

There is no right and wrong with Twitter. There’s only what works for you and what doesn’t, so telling people how to use Twitter is as laughable as telling people what kind of websites were acceptable in 1980. Twitter is a platform—do with it what you want, but don’t tell others what to do.

Nota bene: I realize the irony—even hypocrisy—of me telling you that you shouldn’t tell others what to do on Twitter in a post that is doing just that. The difference is that I’m not doing it personally and publicly to “call you out” in order to make myself feel important; I’m not a social media guru; and I have more followers, followees, and tweets than ninety.

2. Don’t tell the world that you unfollowed someone.

Just why do you think that anyone cares?

What’s going through your brain: “I’m showing this orifice who’s boss. I’m telling my fifty followers that I’m not following her anymore. That will teach her not to tweet the kind of stuff that I don’t like.”

What’s going through the brain of your fifty followers: first, technically, forty are porn spammers. The other ten are thinking: “If you don’t like how someone tweets, just unfollow her. Is this iCarly or Twitter?”

Think of Twitter as television: if you don’t like what’s playing, change the channel. There’s no upside to making a grandiose play for attention because few people care why you did it and even fewer are willing to change if they did know. If anything, you may cause more people to follow the person you unfollowed—and that may piss you off even more.

3. Don’t ask people why they unfollowed you. When, not if, people unfollow you, don’t start feeling jilted. People have the right to use Twitter as they see fit, and the most likely reasons for unfollowing you is that your tweets suck or they got too busy too read so many tweets. So be it—tweet better stuff and get on with your life.

4. Don’t constantly tweet mundane updates and babble. Unfortunately, Twitter contributes this problem when it suggests that you answer the question, “What are you doing?” You should answer the question, “What interests you?” Think “inform” not “meform.”

If you are an incredibly famous person, this rule doesn’t apply. For example, if  @lancearmstrong tweeted that someone stole his bike in France or @therealshaq bought a Prius, that’s interesting. Just make sure you’re incredibly famous. If you’re reading my blog, you’re probably not incredibly famous, though.

5. Don’t use a small picture for an avatar. When people click on your avatar, do they get a nice, in-focus picture? Or is it an out-of-focus, pixelated, and red-eyed calamity? Your avatar is the window into your soul, so for crying out loud use a decent picture, minimum size: 400 x 300 pixels.

6. Don’t use an avatar that makes you look too hot. If you do, people will think you’re a porn account or a gigolo. If you have a deep psychological need to bare your body, migrate over to Hot or Not. An example of a very good avatar is @thebloggess. You can tell that she is one funny woman and is worth following just by looking at her avatar.

7. Don’t go crazy with hashtags. A hashtag looks like this: “SXSW09.” It’s a string of text that people add to their tweets so that others can readily find tweets about a subject such as the South By Southwest conference. Clueless people, however, invent silly hashtags that they think others will adopt or piss someone off—for example, “#guytweetstoomuch.” Get real. Save hashtags for important subjects that at least dozens of people will use.

8. Don’t use ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. All-caps tweets are just like all-caps emails: it looks like you’re yelling. If you have something important to say, just say it—you don’t need to spray it.

9. Don’t use long links. Twitter has a 140-character limit. This doesn’t mean you should use it all up by not shortening your links. Like email and PowerPoint, less is more on Twitter, so shorten your links. It will mean more people will read your tweets and then retweet them to their followers. FYI, Tweetdeck is a Twitter client that automatically shortens your links if you’re looking for an easy way to do this.

I digress, but have you ever wondered why websites make 500-character links but URL-shortening services can create unique links with only five to ten characters? Why don’t websites just make short links so that URL-shortening services aren’t necessary?

10. Don’t call yourself a “guru” or an “expert.” Let your tweets enable people to reach the conclusion that you know your stuff. A “clever” screen name like “TotallyawesomeSEOguru” or a profile that states you’re a guru makes you look clueless. Allow me a hockey analogy: A name with terms like “guru” or “expert” is like wearing a jersey with the number 99 because you think that you’re the next Wayne Gretsky. You’re not.

11. Don’t send out automated “welcome” direct messages. People who follow you will resent this message, and it’s certainly a bad first contact. And while you’re at it, don’t add people who have followed you to your Mafia family; you may think this is cute, engaging, and social. It’s not. It’s clueless.

By the way, if you are following people who send you such detritus, you can use SocialToo to automatically delete these messages and unfollow the person. (Disclosure: I am an advisor to SocialToo.)

Generally, if you’re wondering if you’re about to do something clueless, just don’t do it. This is because people might not know that you’re clueless, but if you do these things, you’ll remove all doubt. However, the last rule, and the most important, is this: Don’t be afraid to break these rules. Like I said, there is no right and wrong on Twitter. There’s only what works for you and what doesn’t.

Thanks to @neenz, @anniecolbert, and @jessestay for contributions to this piece. I’m not telling you which which ones they suggested because you might unfollow them and tell your fifty followers

Photo by stars.alive

Yesterday I wrote about the importance of noticing employees. One of the things I emphasized is the importance of not only noticing people, but actually letting them know that you noticed:

In order to be really unpredictable but also create an effective response to our rewards, we need to notice our employees.  And it is not enough to notice, it is also important to let them that you notice. Most business people will tell you that marketing is all about perception. The qualities of your product are not as important as how people perceive you r product. I think we should employ similar thinking to our employees. Noticing our employees is important but making sure that they know we are noticing them is just as important.

(And today I got some empirical evidence to back that up).

After writing this I kept on thinking about why do some managers notice their employees but don’t tell them that they noticed them. The answer came to me today while I was reading a chapter from Guy Kawasaki’s book Reality Check called: The Sticking Point, where Kawasaki interviews Chip and Dan Heath, the writers of the book: Made to Stick. In the interview they mention a term I described in this blog before called the curse of knowledge. The curse of knowledge basically means that we have problems explaining things because we already know them, which make it hard for us to imagine how someone who does not know what we know sees it. This means we need to actively seek where our assumptions about the knowledge of other people are wrong.

And the same happens to us when we see an employee doing good work. We assume that the fact that we saw him and know what he did means that he knows that we saw hum and knows what he did. What is the solution? Taking the opposite assumption. We need to assume that our employees never know that we noticed them. Then make it a priority to let them know that we did. Let’s overcome the curse of knowledge and starting noticing people.

Elad

It’s easy to get lost in the daily online chatter with the myriad of blogs, tweets, status updates offering everything from how to launch a start-up to which farm animal you are on Facebook. We all have a few voices out there who are exceptions, and mine is Guy Kawasaki. Not that unusual in the entrepreneur community I am sure, but just to prove my point, one of the best blog entries I’ve seen in a while is one entitled “How to get properly exposed.” Before I even opened the link, I was hoping to catch a few pearls of wisdom from the former Apple evangelist himself. Fooled me. The short post is about histograms…the photography kind.

As a long-time photographer, I thought…what is this guy (no pun intended) doing talking about histograms? And here is where I come to the point as to why this is my pick for a favorite post this week: in 2-3 sentences, the post not only touches photography, but loops back to marketing and challenges the reader to draw a link between what seems to be a completely different area and marketing. Clever and short!

The post made me think for more than 6 seconds, and here is what I came up with in the form of an answer to Guy’s wish of creating a histogram for marketing in the context of photography. In its simplest terms, a histogram is an almost perfect distribution of the different tones in a photograph (i.e. highlight, darkness, and  mid-tone). While there are as many unique histograms in the world as there are images, they can be broken down into three general categories:

In most real world situations there is no such thing as an ideal or “perfect” exposure because YOU decide what image rubs you the right way. Likewise, in the real world there is no ideal or “perfect” exposure when marketing your product/service. However, if you think about this in the context of proper exposure for your business, it becomes pretty clear that you don’t want to either be unknown (underexposed) or flood the market with your products/services (overexposed). So barring either extreme end of the graph, your default preferred exposure would probably look similar to the top-most graph.

It’s also useful to think of your company’s life-cycle this way:

You have a product/service that is going to revolutionize the market. The problem is very few people know this. On this side of the histogram, the picture is pretty dim. People can make out details, but there is little in the way of highlights. And few highlights translates into no sharp edge for your image or in this case your business. Define the benefit that your offering brings to your target audience and get out there to promote it. Remember, all your target audience wants to know is: “How does this benefit me?” Answer that in a simple/concise way for best results.

You’re there in the most “perfect” spot you can be. You know your customers (and you have lots of them!). They love your product, and you love them in return. It’s the free-loving days of the 1970’s again, and you can’t wait to roll out new and innovative services/products. VCs love you too, and there is even talk of lucrative partnerships or strategic buyers. Your head spins with how smart you have been in steering the company forward, and every small innovation you bring to light is greeted with thunderous applause. Can this get any better?

To answer the question above, NO it can’t because it’s all downhill from there. This is where you end up if you are over-exposed literally. You are everywhere, and it’s alienating your costumers. There are so many highlights in your line of products/services that you’re blowing out all details, and the results are mediocre. Streamline the process. Identify your most important asset/product/service and position yourself as an expert in this. Stick to it until you get back to the normal range. Then try something new.

And there you have it, how to get properly exposed. Histograms for marketing.

Think about what it means.

At AAPA we don’t do .org accounts on Twitter. There is no @AAPA.org or whatever, individual employees have accounts & that is it. Some may think I’m crazy, but take a look at the pictures to the left…

Now compare the followers…

@GuyKawasaki – 188,517 followers

@alltop – 8,851

I’m sure there are many reasons for this, but one thing is clear, the individual account has many more followers. I know that Guy has started to operate his personal account as a brand account in some ways (always linking, ghost tweeters, tracking campaigns, etc.), but followers still connect with the fact that it is Guy Kawasaki and not Alltop. (Side Note: I do find it funny that the @Alltop account tweets our primarily the postings of Guy’s blog though)

I understand the ease of having an .org account for associations. It’s a great channel to push out the information that you’re wanting to reach your members, there is brand recognition with in the profession or trade, if there is any staff turnover there isn’t the risk of losing those connections (more on this topic later). But there is one major downside to me that negates the benefits… People do not connect with brands, they connect with the people behind the brands. Whether that be your CEO, your President of the Board, etc.  your members want to connect with someone they can recognize and go to.

Twitter to me is NOT a broadcast channel, it is an opportunity to converse with & engage your members.

But that’s just my 2 cents.

~Lynn

We are now following Guy Kawasaki and taking advice from him, being One of the Early Marketing Gurus.

Here is an advice on twitter that we got from http://www.twitter.COM/Guy-Kawasaki

If you’re serious about using Twitter as a marketing tool, you have to check out http://om.ly/bMQB (Disclosure: I am an advisor)

Guy Kawasaki es considerado uno de los grandes gurús del mundillo de la innovación en internet y las startups.

Además, entre los fans de la web social, Guy es muy conocido por el uso que hace de Twitter para promocionar Alltop, su actual proyecto. Alltop ofrece una selección de las mejores fuentes de contenidos de Internet organizadas en función de su temática. Para promocionar el servicio en Twitter, Guy y su equipo comenzaron a compartir enlaces a contenidos muy llamativos, incluyendo además un segundo enlace a la correspondiente sección de Alltop. Un ejemplo:

Promocionando Alltop en Twitter

Recientemente, Kawasaki ha dado una última vuelta de tuerca a la estrategia: muchos de los enlaces que promociona en Twitter ya no llevan directamente a ese sitio tan interesante del que hablan, sino a una página de resumen creada en Holy Kaw, el blog de AllTop. Y, por supuesto, quien explota la publicidad y suma a sus cifras de tráfico con esas páginas intermedias es el propio Kawasaki: todo queda en casa. Aquí podéis ver un ejemplo.

Guy Kawasaki (Alltop)
Nov 02, 2009 -

Way back in July of 2009, I explained how I used Twitter. Lots has changed since then, so this is an update to explain how I tweet. As a small business owner, you can adopt my techniques to use Twitter as a marketing tool.

General

Question: How can you follow more than 180,000 people?

Answer: I don’t read the timelines of all the people that I follow. Instead, I only deal with @s, direct messages, and tweets that contain “guykawasaki,” “alltop,” or “guysreplies.” I answer almost every @ and direct.

Question: Then why do you follow everyone who follows you?

Answer: I follow everyone for two reasons: first, common courtesy; second, so that people can send direct messages to me. I like direct messages because they are more efficient than email.

Question: Why do you use both @guykawasaki and @guysreplies?

Answer: Originally, I created @guysreplies to reply to @s that all my followers do not need to see. Subsequently, Twitter changed the way @s work so that only people who follow both parties will see them. However, there are ways that people can still see all the tweets from @guykawasaki, and I don’t want to waste their time.

Also, I like a high signal/noise ratio from @guykawasaki, so I don’t want a bunch of “Thanks for reading my book” in it. The downside of what I do is that people might think that @guykawasaki is not responsive and “engaged,” but I’m willing to take this risk.

Work Flow

Question: What Twitter applications do you use?

Answer: For reading, I use TweetDeck on my Macintosh and Tweetie on my iPhone. For posting, I use Objective Marketer and Posterous.

Objective enables me to create marketing campaigns and then schedule, frame, repeat, and track tweets. (Disclosure: I am an advisor to Objective.) It is the foundation of my Twitter efforts.

Posterous powers a part of Alltop called Holy Kaw; this sub-domain is a collection of summaries of the third-party sites that I am tweeting about. (Disclosure: I am an investor in Posterous.)

Finally, I use SocialToo to automatically follow people who follow me and to kill spam direct messages. (Disclosure: I am an investor in Posterous.)

Question: How do you find so many links to tweet?

Answer: I use three principal sources: Alltop, StumbleUpon, and SmartBrief. These sites curate and aggregate information to make the hunt for quality links much, much easier.

Question: What is your workflow?

Answer: I find interesting links and write-up a short summary using BBEdit that I post to Holy Kaw, and then Objective checks the Holy Kaw RSS feed once per hour and tweets new articles.

Question: Isn’t that a long, complex process just to tweet something?

Answer: Twitter is a marketing tool for me. It’s not a “social” activity or a game. This process is what it takes to make Alltop successful.

Question: How long do you spend on Twitter every day?

Answer: Asking me this is like asking Tiger Woods how much he plays golf. “It’s what I do.” If I’m on the computer, I’m on Twitter, and I’m on a computer eight hours per day.

Question: If a company wants an active, aggressive presence on Twitter, how many people does it take?

Answer: One person working really hard, unencumbered by a clueless boss and a Luddite legal department, can do it. Certainly one person can get things going enough to prove that Twitter makes sense for a company to add more people to do it even better.

Repeat Tweets

Question: Why do you repeat your tweets from @guykawasaki?

Answer: I repeat my tweets because no one’s followers are on Twitter 24 x 7 x 365 nor do they scroll back to see what was tweeted already. This is the same reason that ESPN and CNN repeat news stories throughout the day—can you imagine a news network assuming that everyone has seen a report after running it once or that everyone has recorded the news and will look back?

I have tracked repeated tweets, and the amount of click throughs on the second and third instances of a tweet is almost as high as the first one.

Question: Do you recommmend that companies repeat their tweets?

Answer: Yes, if they want to ensure that as many followers see their tweets as possible. There will be tiny number of people who will complain, but you cannot make all your followers happy.

In fact, if you’re not pissing someone off on Twitter, you’re not using it to its fullest potential. Companies should not let a few angry people dictate their marketing practices.

Question: What if I don’t want to see the repeats?

Answer: The easiest thing to do is unfollow @guykawasaki and follow @alltop because it contains only one instance of my tweets. You can think of @alltop as @guykawasaki on Tivo.

Ghostwriters
Question: Do you use ghostwriters?

Answer: Yes, four people contribute to my tweets: Annie Colbert, Gina Ruiz, Noelle Chun, and Catherine Faas. I use ghostwriters because I want to provide as many interesting links as possible, and five intelligent people (assuming you think I’m intelligent) looking for interesting stuff will find more than one intelligent person. At the end of every Holy Kaw post, you can see who created it if you’re curious.

Question: Do your ghosts respond to @s and direct messages for you?

Answer: Never. They only tweet outgoing links to interesting sites and blogs. They never respond for me or as me.

Question: Why did you hide your use of ghostwriters?

Answer: I didn’t hide this fact. As soon as I started it, I disclosed it. My attitude is: “As long as the tweets are good, why does it matter who wrote them?” Do you think Ralph Lauren himself designed every article in his store?

Question: Why do some people attack you for using ghostwriters?

Answer: Because they are angry, little people who cannot generate content, so they try to generate controversy to get attention. They also assume that I have to cheat and use ghostwriters to respond to people because they are incapable of dealing with the volume of @s and direct messages that I get.

Question: Do you recommend that companies use ghostwriters?

Answer: Most companies are “brands,” so this isn’t an issue unless people are so dumb as to think that Richard Branson is @VirginAmerica. Issues arise when the Twitter account is a person’s name.

For example, should @Lancearmstrong use a ghost? For some tweets, I’d say it’s perfectly okay—tweets about cycling news and information, for example. However, if @Lancearmstrong says his bike was stolen, he pulled a hamstring, or he can’t stand the color yellow, it has to be him.

Let’s say the Twitter account is for the CEO of a company. I’d rather read the interesting tweets of a good ghost than a clueless CEO. It’s the same reason politicians have speechwriters. As my mother used to say, “Behind every successful politician is an amazed speechwriter.”

Alltop Promotion

Question: Why do you constantly promote Alltop?

Answer: Twitter is a means to an end: Alltop’s success. This is why I put so much time, energy, and money (my ghosts don’t work for free) into it. The Alltop promotion justifies and pays for the efforts all five of us. You can think of my tweets as PBS content and the accompanying Alltop promotion as the fundraising telethon.

Question: OK, but what if I don’t want to see Alltop promotions?

Answer: You can UFM (unfollow me) just like you can change the channel from PBS.

Question: How much promotion can a company get away with?

Answer: It depends on several factors: How much do your followers love the company? How good are the deals that you offer? How much “real” content and “interaction” do the company’s tweets contain? For sure, the answer is not “None.”

Twitter is far beyond Trixie telling Biff and Carly that her cat rolled over. It’s now a “platform.” As such, there is no wrong or right just as there is no wrong or right way to maintain a website or blog—Is Zappos “wrong” for using the Internet to sell shoes? Forty years ago, some Arpanet scientists might have said so.

The bottom line is that there’s only what works and what doesn’t, and you won’t know which is which until you try.

If you have questions about how I tweet, you can reach me at @guykawasaki

via openforum.com

I was listening to Guy Kawasaki when he recently visited Bangalore and gave a few talks and a workshop on Twitter. One question that often pops up is how Guy manages to follow 180,000+ people. His simple answer was that he does not follow their public time line. I understand that because even with less than 2000 people, I have trouble keeping up.

What Guy actually does is track mentions of a few phrases including his name and direct messages. This reduces the load some what but it can still be considerable.

So let us take a hypothetical scenario. I want a piece of information to be propagated to 20 of the top tech bloggers who are actively interested in a specific subject area.  I can’t see anyway this can happen reliably through Twitter. We don’t know how they sample messages. We don’t know how frequently they follow their public time line. We cannot mention all of them in the Tweet. Many of them (understandably) hate to be directly messaged. So how do we really reach them?

This report on Information Diffusion provides some ideas on  how information propagates through Social Media.

“Those who respond very quickly to e-mails, technology addicts who are always connected, are the ones responsible for spreading certain rumors or campaigns quickly via Internet,”

if information is so interesting that it reaches many people, the diffusion is faster because these people quickly forward the message. This explains why some computer viruses quickly spread via e-mail in a matter of hours, despite the fact that the email response time is one day. However, if information is not so interesting, the diffusion is slower because it is controlled by those persons who take a long time to respond; this causes some rumours or bits of information to remain dormant in social networks a long time after they are released.

Will lists alter this? May be. It depends on the patterns of use. I think we still have a lot to study on how to effectively communicate marketing messages on Twitter and reach the right people.

Keynote address by Guy Kawasaki at NASSCOM Product Conclave on Oct 27 2009 in Bangalore.

Today Guy Kawasaki posted a presentation outline on Twitter Marketing. It was just too good not to pass along.

how much has changed in the last 365 days …

october 24, 2008

had dinner with a big group of friends at this chill lebanese restaurant in surry hills, this really trendy part of eastern sydney. who was there? a pretty good mix of high school friends, university friends, a girl i was desperately trying to hook up with. there were probably about 20 people or so. many of whom would be some of sydney great future lawyers, management consultants, bankers and doctors. where was my life at? i was still sitting one butt cheek in that world, one butt cheek in the world of startups. i mean, i didn’t really know too much about startups back then (that actually makes it sound like i know anything about startups now). i had read richard branson’s first autobiography, losing my virginity, which was much of the inspiration, and still is to this day. i was half way through guy kawasaki’s the art of the start. i was already using kawasakisms as a part of my natural vernacular.

i was also much more of a party-goer back in the day. i was living with one jacob list, flatmate, in the suite of sin. on my 21st, it was a big drinking night. even though i used to drunk fairly regularly, without ever being seriously concerned about it, my 21st was one of the few nights i had actually got blackout. i also used to blow money like crazy. i was still on the high of my most recent six months at macquarie bank were i was earning decent bank. that round of a dozen shots i bought for my friends, what was i thinking …

especially considering it lead to this …

i will never forget one james clement forner whose car i vomited in. i passed out in the club, had to be assisted out, stumbled to my friend’s car, and thanked him by vomiting in the gap between the seat and the door, i.e. the hardest place in the car to clean vomit.

october 24, 2009

last night i had dinner with a small group of friends, very low key, just in downtown allston. without any intention, but just because of contextual reasons, all young founders of startups, and i’m proud to say, none in social networking. i had come from a kairos society networking event, met a few interesting mit students working on very cool startups, and a few harvard students wanting to solve the energy crisis with a perpetual motion device or make a lot of money by building a social networking app. that was mean, but kind of true.

i had a wellesley girl come over last night, we’ve seen each other a few times. we hung out and she spent the night. i had an early start with a group meeting with my product design and development class. i wanted to sleep in, but two of the team members are risd industrial designers who’d come up to meet at babson so i couldn’t exactly bar it even thought it was early, and my birthday. we working on a product solution to intersection accidents.

i spent most of the rest of the day working, trying to get ready for the blank label launch in a week’s time. our team’s been punishing themselves pretty intensely doing copy, design and dev work like crazy. i guess one thing that hasn’t really changed in the last year is the amount of time i invest in school. last semester i feel i was a little more serious, but this semester has been an absolute shambles. last week i’m pretty sure i failed my first mid-term since art history in year seven.

where i will be on october 24, 2010?

Over the past few months, there have been several client visits and I have been going through several presentations. I recently realized ‘Death by Powerpoint’ experience and so decided to do some reading on powerpoint best practices which I thought I would share with you.

I recently read Guy Kawasaki’s ‘Art of the Start’.  I also read Seth Godin’s ‘Really Bad Powerpoint (and how to avoid it)’.

There were few points that stuck with me after reading their books.

• Powerpoint is a tool for communication. But most people use it as a tele-prompter. The presenters essentially read through the slides.
• 10/20/30 Rule – No more than 10 slides that last for 20 minutes having 30 font size. I do not completely agree with this rule. This rule is very subjective and the presentation size (number of slides) and time will depend on the topic. The font size will also depend on the size of audience for whom you are going to present.
• Slides should reinforce your words and not repeat them. I have noticed lots of presenters write down everything that they are going to talk about in the slide itself which also results in  the slides being cluttered. In that case, there is no role for the presenter, it is enough if the audience just reads the slides.
• Use Bullet Points. Having white space will make the slide look empty but it will definitely assist the viewer in discovering the focus point.
  
• Do not use Clip Art. Use professional images. A picture is worth a thousand words. There are several sites that offer royalty free images at no cost.
• Use transitions / music minimally in your presentation. Personally I hate it when people use transitions. While sitting in a meeting, the audience usually does not have the patience to watch a new block/text in the slide come at a slow pace.
• Dont hand out print out of your slides. I have noticed that whenever a hard copy is given, people tend to read it whenever the presenter is presenting. So essentially they are not listening to the presenter.

Finally giving effective presentation requires a balance between narrating a good story i.e. quality of the presentation and providing the enough details to support your story. The details should only support the story and not reveal the entire story.

~ Ramya

]]> http://colorrun.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/semi-famous/ Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:22:25 +0000 colorrun http://colorrun.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/semi-famous/

During our first NCT class, Ms. Kwa told us about this guy called Guy Kawasaki. He’s become famous for setting up successful companies and selling them for a gazillion dollars.

Apparently, he’s also famous for following you on Twitter if you follow him on Twitter. If you mention him on Twitter, he will even reply.

So of course, I had to see if he was true to his reputation.

But he didn’t reply! And I started whining and saying that his tweets are boring (which is true, btw) and that Paris Hilton’s tweets are more fun to read.

Then he replied.

Guy Kawasaki is a clever man. By having this public secret of following you if you follow him and replying your tweets, he’s managed to obtain hundreds of thousands of followers. I’m sure many people are out there are probably out for cheap thrills like me. By having so many followers, he can pimp his websites through his tweets and drive more traffic to them.

I guess that’s why he’s selling his ad space by the thousands and I’m with Nuffnang.

Don’t just follow the herd. Twitter is evolving. Maximize its potential around your agency’s new business objectives.

Twitter itself created the conditions that has allowed users to innovate. No one in the beginning envisioned that:

• People would want to follow strangers
• Celebrities would use Twitter to provide updates to fans of their activities
• Businesses would use Twitter to to promote discounts, launch new products and services
• Twitter would be used in so many different ways by broadcasters, educators, politicians, doctors, lawyers, ministers and so many others you can’t keep up with them all

Guy Kawasaki, an early adopter and leader in social media, recently wrote,

“Three years ago Twitter was a nice little pond that people shared with their close friends … The whole point back then was establishing warm-and-fuzzy relationships with people you cared about by answering the question, “What are you doing?”

Fast forward to today. While there is still kumbaya going on via Twitter, many people are now using Twitter as a twool. They’re not trying to have a one-to-one conversation. At best, they want a one-to-many conversation if not out-and-out broadcasting in the advertising and marketing sense.”

There are not many who use Twitter the way that I do. Other than sending personal Direct Messages, I do not send many personal Tweets to others. My point-of-view is  that most of my 10,000+ followers do not care about a specific conversation that I’m having with @jaybaer, @edwardboches, @sheconomy or other Twitter users. What my Twitter followers have come to expect from me is helpful resources for ad agency new business.

For my own Twitter formula …  80 to 90 percent of my Tweets are made up of resourceful articles and posts. My Tweets usually include just the article/post titles and URL links.

Many of these articles/posts come from my online reading, using Google Reader. When I find a good post that I want to share, I click on bit.ly (a tool to shorten, share and track your links) in my browser bar, configure the information about the post and publish it to my Twitter account. If I’m finding lots of good material, I may post them through Social Oomph (Tweetlater) to be able to spread the posts over a period of time.

I also add posts from my blog. I have written over 400+ posts, the vast majority written as a resource for agency new business. Most of these are not time sensitive and continue to be a helpful resource for my readers. I know that because of the traffic each generates to my blog.

I have a number of reasons for repurposing blog content in this way:

• Readers do not ready my blog chronologically. People are so busy they don’t have time. I usually write and post at least once a day, Monday through Friday, but the majority of my readers are not reading my content on a daily basis.
• Even my most ardent readers will read posts through many different channels such as RSS Feed, email newsletter, SEO, Twitter and from mirroring blog post content through my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts.
• Even with a large number of followers, an article that I post at 11 am on a Thursday is going to be missed by 99% of my readers.
• I use post titles that are crystal clear regarding the content that will be found. This may be dull and bland for copywriters but it is much appreciated by my readership. They can find relevant material through my post titles through search and as these posts appear through Twitter.
• I provide links to similar articles that would possibly be of interest to my readers and try to spare them having to search for them on their own.
• There are often posts that I discover, that I know would be of interest to my readers, and I will “bridge-the-gap” specifying how this post/article relates to them. Materials, tools, that isn’t specific to my audience, but I make it specific to them, how it is a resource for ad agency new business.

If you aren’t generating traffic, its a sign of a lack of appeal. Metrics keeps everything on track and focused. I check my blog analytics multiple times a day along with other metrics tools from bit.ly, socialtoo and Twittergrader.

I’d like to recommend an enlightening Wired Magazine article: Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter

Here are 20 additional Twitter articles, specifically for ad agencies that can help you take advantage of Twitter’s growth for new business:

1. How to take advantage of Twitter’s growth for ad agency new business
2. How to Generate Traffic to Your Ad Agency’s Blog with Repeat Tweets
   
3. Twitter 101 for Ad Agency New Business
4. Ad Agencies: Useful In-Depth Data on How Twitter is Being Used
5. Study: Fortune 100 companies using Twitter more than any other social media platform
6. A Simple Twitter Formula for Ad Agency New Business
7. Ad Agencies: 5 Ways to Find Prospects on Twitter
8. 5 Ways I Use Twitter to Help Ad Agency New Business
9. Edward Boches, CCO for the Mullen Agency: What Twitter Can Do For You
10. Ad Agency CEOs Should Use Twitter
11. Twitter Traffic Explosion Being Led By 45-54 Year Olds
12. 3 Ways Twitter Can Make You A Better Writer
13. Tweetlater A Great Ad Agency New Business Tool
14. Ad Agencies: Top 10 Articles for Twitter Search
15. A Twitter Business Model Contest is Won by an Ad Agency
16. Socially Benefitting from My Twitter Habits
17. Today’s Top 10 Twitter Post for Ad Agency New Business
18. List of C Suite Executives Using Twitter
19. Top 5 Twitter Tools for Ad Agency New Business
20. Promoting Your Ad Agency Using Twitter?

We’ve been passing around Guy Kawasaki’s “Reality Check” at the SBDC & CITD. We previously mentioned “Zen of Business Plans,” but we also really liked the “Art of Surviving” chapter.

Especially interesting was his answer to the question, “What are the key stages of overcoming a crisis?”

• Face facts: This awful thing has happened. I can’t roll back the clock. This sucks.
• Choose life, not death: I want to find hope and create options for a positive future.
• Reach out: No one survives alone. Isolation will kill us. Let others into our lives.
• Get moving: You have to get up and out of the house. Do your “survivor sit-ups.”
• Give back: Become a benefactor, not just a beneficiary. Yes, you will add value.

SBDC and CITD staff found this to be a salient topic considering our current economic conditions. And one way you can reach out is by setting up an appointment with one of our small business advisors. Just call (619) 482-6391 to discuss your concerns and we will try to help out.

Have you employed any of these tactics? Something else? Let’s talk about what works in the comments section below.