Sunday, April 15, 2012

How To Startup -- Bob Dorf and the Startup Owners Manual

I met Bob Dorf at Startup Weekend Stamford a few weeks back.  He gave a fantastic talk based on his experience and The Startup Owners Manual, the new book he’s co-written with Steven Blank.  The startup weekend attendees were taking copious notes as Bob shared his insights.  Bob and Steven have broken down the startup process into core concepts that will help any entrepreneur make smarter decisions at every step of the process.

In this discussion Bob and I talk about two of the fundamental topics in the Owner’s Manual:
  1. Startups are not smaller version of big companies – sounds obvious but it’s not.
  2. Embracing the Pivot – startups who Pivot are often viewed as close to failure – but Bob and Steven contend that a mature approach to startup development requires many pivots to discover a business model that can ultimately be successful.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Ted Rubin -- Harnessing The Power of the Crowd for successful Social Marketing

I'm happy to have Ted Rubin back on 10MinuteStrategy.  Ted is the Chief Social Marketing Officer for a very cool "Shopper Media" firm called Collective Bias.  And he's been on the forefront of social media and in deploying the strategies necessary for businesses to gain value  from social media.

Nestle recently hired Collective Bias to drive awareness and action around their ice cream brands in a promotion they were running with WalMart.  The results are worth noting.  Watch the video for more detail.



Ted will be back on Skype with me next week to provide some more meaty detail on what's going on in social marketing.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

SEO in a Bottle with Gregory Cox


My friend Gregory Cox is one of those guys who likes to understand how things work at a detailed level that most of us (or most English majors anyway) tend to ignore.  This is great news for Gregory’s clients at ThinkAroundCorners.  This web marketing consultancy attacks marketing challenges with a highly analytical point of view.  And the resulting strategy shifts, when implemented, pay significant dividends.  

In this episode of 10 Minute Strategy, Gregory shares his insights on SEO in an episode we are calling SEO in a Bottle.    Look below the video for a link to an important Google Tool.


Here's the tool that Gregory recommends:  https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal