方兴东：收回博客网全部股权 第二次创业
november 2009 by wenxin
就像一个女人说，我的理想是成为艺术家，但现在当艺术家不挣钱，所以我只能暂时靠卖身挣钱养活自己的艺术理想，而且，卖身这件事我不会全身心投入的。听上去很感人对不对？但身你都卖了，你还会看得上那个不挣钱的艺术理想？而且，万一想卖身都无人买单呢？
方兴东：收回博客网全部股权 第二次创业:
方兴东表示，目前游戏用户付费是最容易实现的，未来希望通过游戏的盈收来加大博客网的研发，这种研发不是游戏产品的研发，而是强化博客界面的游戏化，娱乐性，通过游戏化的界面，增加博客界面的娱乐性，来吸引更多的用户。
blog
startup
people
game
from google
方兴东：收回博客网全部股权 第二次创业:
方兴东表示，目前游戏用户付费是最容易实现的，未来希望通过游戏的盈收来加大博客网的研发，这种研发不是游戏产品的研发，而是强化博客界面的游戏化，娱乐性，通过游戏化的界面，增加博客界面的娱乐性，来吸引更多的用户。
november 2009 by wenxin
关于经营模式
november 2009 by wenxin
上个月，重庆一本商务杂志的编辑来信，问我能不能写一篇介绍创业知识的文章。
放在平时，我肯定就推辞了。但是，最近正好在看塞思·戈丁的《创业者圣经》，做了一些笔记，很想整理出来，所以就答应了。
下面就是我为这本杂志写的文章。对这个话题缺乏兴趣的朋友，可以直接用鼠标往下拉，我觉得最后一部分总结的四个误区，还是相当精辟的。
===========================
如何让企业的资产产生现金——谈谈经营模式
作者：阮一峰
某一个早晨，你睁开眼睛，突然之间再也不想为别人打工了，想要自己当老板。用时髦的话说，你决心成为一个创业者。那么，你要做的第一件事情是什么呢？
有人也许会说，你必须先搞到一笔钱，没钱怎么能创业！话是这么说，但是这并不是你的头等大事，还有一件事比融资更重要。那就是在搞到钱之前，你必须先想好怎么使用这些钱。创业的第一步，就是你要想好你到底要干什么。在动身之前，你必须确定前进的方向。创业可不是旅行，你不能先把背包收拾好，然后再考虑去哪里。这就是为什么在融资之前，创业者都要先写一份《项目计划书》的原因。
一般来说，在正式动手之前，你已经想好了自己要从事哪个行业。你的心里有一个基本的判断，你觉得由你来提供某种产品或者服务，应该是可以赚到钱的。那么，接下来的事情就很自然了。你就要筹划，如何把这种产品或服务生产出来，如何把它们送到消费者手中，如何才能取回货款。一句话，你要想好通过哪些步骤，你的“点子”可以变成现实。在管理学中，这些步骤就被称为“经营模式”。
“经营模式”实际上是创业中最关键的东西之一。它有点像一种魔法，可以把你拥有的一切资源都发动起来，让它们设法产生现金。如果没有“经营模式”，你的创业梦想就停留在纸上谈兵的阶段，只不过是你脑海中泛起的一朵浪花而已；而一旦你找到了正确的“经营模式”，你的所有资产就会充分运作起来，变成了一部为你不断创造出现金的机器。
美国著名创业家塞思•戈丁在《创业者圣经》一书中，用了整整一章来讨论经营模式。下面让我们来看看，他是怎么说的。
一、什么是“经营模式”
通俗地说，所谓企业的“经营模式”，就是企业赚钱的方式，即企业如何将自己所有的人力、物力、财力等资源有效组合，产生现金流入的一系列方法。它是你创业成功的关键。哪怕你的产品很普通，但是只要你的经营模式很出色，那么你照样能够成功。
我来举一个例子。假定你发明了一种方法，可以油炸出美味的鸡腿，你决定通过炸鸡腿来创业。那么接下来，你就要开始思考你的经营模式了，也就是你打算怎样来经营炸鸡腿这个事业。
显而易见的经营模式是，你自己去开一家炸鸡腿店。这种模式比较常规，可能成功也可能不成功，但是肯定很难在短期中就取得大的增长，而且开店很辛苦。但是，还有另一种不用自己开店的模式，那就是你向其他餐馆免费出借炸鸡腿的机器，条件是他们每售出一支鸡腿，你就提成5毛钱。看上去第二种模式比第一种模式更容易一些，而且增长的空间比较大。试想一下，如果全国各地都有餐馆出售你的炸鸡腿，那么你会赚到多少钱？
事实上，这就是肯德基连锁快餐店（KFC）的发家模式。1952年，62年的退休上校哈兰德•山德士经营餐馆失败，他不得不寻找新的经营模式，后来他想到了出售炸鸡配方的主意。新的经营模式最终创造出一家年销售额高达80亿美元的快餐王国。从这个例子，我们可以看到，一种好的经营模式对企业的发展是多么重要。
二、如何制定经营模式
制定经营模式的窍门，就是使用倒推法，从最终消费者开始一步步倒推到生产阶段。你可以按下面的顺序，向自己提问：
第一步：谁来购买你的产品？为什么购买？市场有多大？
第二步：客户愿意付多少钱购买你的产品？竞争对手是什么价格？
第三步：客户在什么地方能买到你的产品？
第四步：为了让客户买到你的产品，你要付出多少销售成本？
第五步：你要生产出这些产品，能够负担的最高生产成本是多少？
通过这一系列的步骤，你就可以整理出经营模式的大概轮廓，其中包括这样几个要点：产品定位（最终消费者如何看待你的该产品）、原料（你的上游厂商是谁）、生产过程（产品如何生产出来）、定价（你卖给批发商、零售商、消费者的价格分别是多少）、经销渠道（你怎样向最终消费者出售你的产品？存在哪些中间商？你如何向他们付酬？）、营销（你如何让消费者了解你的产品）、市场的进入壁垒（你的竞争对手会不会轻易地复制你的经营模式）、规模的扩大（如何扩大业务）等等。
三、成功经营模式的特征
成功的经营模式，有一些共同的特征。你可以看看，你的经营模式是否具有这些特征。
1. 这种模式最终应该能够实行盈利。无法实行盈利的企业，迟早要关门，所以盈利是最起码的要求。但是，刚刚开始创业的时候，你可能会经历一段日子亏损的痛苦煎熬。这个时候，你要研究亏损的原因，学会区分这到底是因为经营模式的缺陷，还是属于企业经营步入正规前的正常磨合期。这里有一个窍门，那就是根据现金流来判断，如果你的项目迟迟无法产生现金流入，或者现金流入始终处于萎缩状态，那么很可能就说明你的经营模式存在问题。
2. 你的经营模式应该是不容易被复制的。如果你的竞争对手，可以很容易地开出一家同你一模一样的企业，那么你的麻烦就大了。你必须保证能够向顾客提供一些不一样的东西，或者说顾客只有在你这里才能买到的东西，否则的话你就会做得很辛苦，陷入价格战的泥坑，劳碌了一年，年终时收益寥寥。如果你不能保证有独门技术，那么确定细分市场，然后着力建设自己的品牌是常规的做法。
3. 你的经营模式应该具有可扩展性。通常刚开始创业的时候，企业规模很小，只服务少数几个客户。这个时候，你的经营模式能够奏效，并不等于说将来企业做大以后还能奏效。很多成功的小企业，一旦扩展经营规模，向大企业的级别跃升，就会出现各种各样的问题，利润的增长开始变缓甚至亏损。你在10个竞争对手中脱颖而出，也许不是很难，但是在1万个、10万个、甚至100万个竞争对手中脱颖而出，就是难度完全不同的事情了。这里没有通用的解决方法，只有靠你自己慢慢摸索，毕竟不是每家公司都有机会变成世界500强的。但是好在很多时候，一个小规模的市场就能保证企业的存活了。
4. 你的经营模式不应该包含太多的个体因素。这里的意思是，不应该太依赖单个的个人或企业，不管他是员工、还是供货商或客户。如果你的公司很依赖某一个个人，哪怕这个人是你自己，那也意味着你的公司存在很大的制约性，风险很大。要是有一天，你失去了这个人，那么你的公司就有一落千丈的可能。另一方面，如果你的公司不太依赖某个特定对象，那么在转让和上市的时候，就容易得到一个好的估价。
四、经营模式的误区
在制定经营模式的时候，有一些常见的错误，是你需要避免的：
1. 不要因为某种企业容易开办，就去开办这种企业。前面已经说过，容易复制的经营模式往往不是成功的经营模式。
2. 不要因为某种企业很有趣，就去开办这种企业。因为有趣并不代表它会成功，而经营一个失败的企业，肯定是非常无趣的。事实是，经营很乏味的企业，反而容易生存下去。
3. 你要搞清楚自己到底属于自由职业者，还是属于企业家，两者适合的经营模式是不同的。自由职业者喜欢创业的自由，而不愿意承担太大的风险，更不愿意自己的生活被企业管理的琐事拖累。企业家的目标是创造一项赚钱的事业（business），他愿意承担更大的风险，愿意把自己全身心地投入企业管理之中，哪怕每周工作60个小时也无所谓。
4. 不要以为自己可以发明一种全新的经营模式。实际上，世界上赚钱的方式就那么几种，想要发明一种全新的赚钱方法是很难的，你更应该做的，就是充分利用他人已经被证明有效的经营模式。因为既然这种模式已经被证明可能成功，所以你不至于走入一个完全错误的方向，而且你还可以从他人的失败中吸取教训。
（完）
Startup
from google
放在平时，我肯定就推辞了。但是，最近正好在看塞思·戈丁的《创业者圣经》，做了一些笔记，很想整理出来，所以就答应了。
下面就是我为这本杂志写的文章。对这个话题缺乏兴趣的朋友，可以直接用鼠标往下拉，我觉得最后一部分总结的四个误区，还是相当精辟的。
===========================
如何让企业的资产产生现金——谈谈经营模式
作者：阮一峰
某一个早晨，你睁开眼睛，突然之间再也不想为别人打工了，想要自己当老板。用时髦的话说，你决心成为一个创业者。那么，你要做的第一件事情是什么呢？
有人也许会说，你必须先搞到一笔钱，没钱怎么能创业！话是这么说，但是这并不是你的头等大事，还有一件事比融资更重要。那就是在搞到钱之前，你必须先想好怎么使用这些钱。创业的第一步，就是你要想好你到底要干什么。在动身之前，你必须确定前进的方向。创业可不是旅行，你不能先把背包收拾好，然后再考虑去哪里。这就是为什么在融资之前，创业者都要先写一份《项目计划书》的原因。
一般来说，在正式动手之前，你已经想好了自己要从事哪个行业。你的心里有一个基本的判断，你觉得由你来提供某种产品或者服务，应该是可以赚到钱的。那么，接下来的事情就很自然了。你就要筹划，如何把这种产品或服务生产出来，如何把它们送到消费者手中，如何才能取回货款。一句话，你要想好通过哪些步骤，你的“点子”可以变成现实。在管理学中，这些步骤就被称为“经营模式”。
“经营模式”实际上是创业中最关键的东西之一。它有点像一种魔法，可以把你拥有的一切资源都发动起来，让它们设法产生现金。如果没有“经营模式”，你的创业梦想就停留在纸上谈兵的阶段，只不过是你脑海中泛起的一朵浪花而已；而一旦你找到了正确的“经营模式”，你的所有资产就会充分运作起来，变成了一部为你不断创造出现金的机器。
美国著名创业家塞思•戈丁在《创业者圣经》一书中，用了整整一章来讨论经营模式。下面让我们来看看，他是怎么说的。
一、什么是“经营模式”
通俗地说，所谓企业的“经营模式”，就是企业赚钱的方式，即企业如何将自己所有的人力、物力、财力等资源有效组合，产生现金流入的一系列方法。它是你创业成功的关键。哪怕你的产品很普通，但是只要你的经营模式很出色，那么你照样能够成功。
我来举一个例子。假定你发明了一种方法，可以油炸出美味的鸡腿，你决定通过炸鸡腿来创业。那么接下来，你就要开始思考你的经营模式了，也就是你打算怎样来经营炸鸡腿这个事业。
显而易见的经营模式是，你自己去开一家炸鸡腿店。这种模式比较常规，可能成功也可能不成功，但是肯定很难在短期中就取得大的增长，而且开店很辛苦。但是，还有另一种不用自己开店的模式，那就是你向其他餐馆免费出借炸鸡腿的机器，条件是他们每售出一支鸡腿，你就提成5毛钱。看上去第二种模式比第一种模式更容易一些，而且增长的空间比较大。试想一下，如果全国各地都有餐馆出售你的炸鸡腿，那么你会赚到多少钱？
事实上，这就是肯德基连锁快餐店（KFC）的发家模式。1952年，62年的退休上校哈兰德•山德士经营餐馆失败，他不得不寻找新的经营模式，后来他想到了出售炸鸡配方的主意。新的经营模式最终创造出一家年销售额高达80亿美元的快餐王国。从这个例子，我们可以看到，一种好的经营模式对企业的发展是多么重要。
二、如何制定经营模式
制定经营模式的窍门，就是使用倒推法，从最终消费者开始一步步倒推到生产阶段。你可以按下面的顺序，向自己提问：
第一步：谁来购买你的产品？为什么购买？市场有多大？
第二步：客户愿意付多少钱购买你的产品？竞争对手是什么价格？
第三步：客户在什么地方能买到你的产品？
第四步：为了让客户买到你的产品，你要付出多少销售成本？
第五步：你要生产出这些产品，能够负担的最高生产成本是多少？
通过这一系列的步骤，你就可以整理出经营模式的大概轮廓，其中包括这样几个要点：产品定位（最终消费者如何看待你的该产品）、原料（你的上游厂商是谁）、生产过程（产品如何生产出来）、定价（你卖给批发商、零售商、消费者的价格分别是多少）、经销渠道（你怎样向最终消费者出售你的产品？存在哪些中间商？你如何向他们付酬？）、营销（你如何让消费者了解你的产品）、市场的进入壁垒（你的竞争对手会不会轻易地复制你的经营模式）、规模的扩大（如何扩大业务）等等。
三、成功经营模式的特征
成功的经营模式，有一些共同的特征。你可以看看，你的经营模式是否具有这些特征。
1. 这种模式最终应该能够实行盈利。无法实行盈利的企业，迟早要关门，所以盈利是最起码的要求。但是，刚刚开始创业的时候，你可能会经历一段日子亏损的痛苦煎熬。这个时候，你要研究亏损的原因，学会区分这到底是因为经营模式的缺陷，还是属于企业经营步入正规前的正常磨合期。这里有一个窍门，那就是根据现金流来判断，如果你的项目迟迟无法产生现金流入，或者现金流入始终处于萎缩状态，那么很可能就说明你的经营模式存在问题。
2. 你的经营模式应该是不容易被复制的。如果你的竞争对手，可以很容易地开出一家同你一模一样的企业，那么你的麻烦就大了。你必须保证能够向顾客提供一些不一样的东西，或者说顾客只有在你这里才能买到的东西，否则的话你就会做得很辛苦，陷入价格战的泥坑，劳碌了一年，年终时收益寥寥。如果你不能保证有独门技术，那么确定细分市场，然后着力建设自己的品牌是常规的做法。
3. 你的经营模式应该具有可扩展性。通常刚开始创业的时候，企业规模很小，只服务少数几个客户。这个时候，你的经营模式能够奏效，并不等于说将来企业做大以后还能奏效。很多成功的小企业，一旦扩展经营规模，向大企业的级别跃升，就会出现各种各样的问题，利润的增长开始变缓甚至亏损。你在10个竞争对手中脱颖而出，也许不是很难，但是在1万个、10万个、甚至100万个竞争对手中脱颖而出，就是难度完全不同的事情了。这里没有通用的解决方法，只有靠你自己慢慢摸索，毕竟不是每家公司都有机会变成世界500强的。但是好在很多时候，一个小规模的市场就能保证企业的存活了。
4. 你的经营模式不应该包含太多的个体因素。这里的意思是，不应该太依赖单个的个人或企业，不管他是员工、还是供货商或客户。如果你的公司很依赖某一个个人，哪怕这个人是你自己，那也意味着你的公司存在很大的制约性，风险很大。要是有一天，你失去了这个人，那么你的公司就有一落千丈的可能。另一方面，如果你的公司不太依赖某个特定对象，那么在转让和上市的时候，就容易得到一个好的估价。
四、经营模式的误区
在制定经营模式的时候，有一些常见的错误，是你需要避免的：
1. 不要因为某种企业容易开办，就去开办这种企业。前面已经说过，容易复制的经营模式往往不是成功的经营模式。
2. 不要因为某种企业很有趣，就去开办这种企业。因为有趣并不代表它会成功，而经营一个失败的企业，肯定是非常无趣的。事实是，经营很乏味的企业，反而容易生存下去。
3. 你要搞清楚自己到底属于自由职业者，还是属于企业家，两者适合的经营模式是不同的。自由职业者喜欢创业的自由，而不愿意承担太大的风险，更不愿意自己的生活被企业管理的琐事拖累。企业家的目标是创造一项赚钱的事业（business），他愿意承担更大的风险，愿意把自己全身心地投入企业管理之中，哪怕每周工作60个小时也无所谓。
4. 不要以为自己可以发明一种全新的经营模式。实际上，世界上赚钱的方式就那么几种，想要发明一种全新的赚钱方法是很难的，你更应该做的，就是充分利用他人已经被证明有效的经营模式。因为既然这种模式已经被证明可能成功，所以你不至于走入一个完全错误的方向，而且你还可以从他人的失败中吸取教训。
（完）
november 2009 by wenxin
10 of the Best Social Media Tools for Entrepreneurs
october 2009 by wenxin
This series is supported by Grasshopper, the Virtual Phone System designed for entrepreneurs. Learn more about Grasshopper at Grasshopper.com.
Whether your company is just starting out, just starting to turn a profit or already on the verge of an acquisition, as an entrepreneur you’ll be constantly evaluating the tools that will help get your business to the next stage.
Even if the ink on the business plan isn’t dry yet, you want to be armed with the social media tools that will play an important role in company communication, product and brand promotions, and business development for your startup. Some of the tools in this list will be familiar, but it’s worth taking a moment to reframe how they might become power tools in a business context.
10. Monitter
As an entrepreneur, you need to know what people are saying about your company as well as your competitors. Enter Monitter, a service that monitors Twitter mentions in real-time in a multi-column interface reminiscent of TweetDeck. Simply input a search term into a column, add or remove columns as desired, and get an automatically-refreshing picture of what people are saying about your brand or competing brands in your space.
Pro Tip: By default, the Monitter interface is gray on black, which can be hard on the eyes. You can switch to a more typical color scheme by selecting the “light” theme in the menu at the upper right.
9. YouTube
You already know about YouTube, but have you thought about how it could help your business? Could your product benefit from an awesome video walkthrough? Could your marketing strategy include a viral video strategy that gets you lots of exposure at relatively low cost?
And now with Promoted Videos getting placement in AdSense units around the web, there’s even more incentive to think about leveraging social video as a brand exposure tool. If you can create interesting content that’s relevant to your brand or products, a positive visual association with your company can attract new interest, build company culture, turn inquiries into sales, and give back significant brand dividends over time.
Pro Tip: The most obvious and frequent business use of YouTube is for marketing and advertising, but don’t overlook other ways in which your company can leverage YouTube. Visual walkthroughs and FAQs can be a great boon to customer service. Videos of you and your team giving public presentations, speaking at conferences or engaging with the media can establish and enhance your company’s reputation as a thought leader. And don’t forget the utility of private videos for use in executive and new employee trainings and recording company events; access can be shared with only the people who should be able to see each item.
8. UserVoice
As a small business, it’s hard to juggle building and improving your products with supporting what’s already out there. That’s where UserVoice can help.
From bug reports to feature requests, UserVoice can help track and manage the feedback of your users and customers. Not only does it assure your userbase that you care about what they have to say, but it can potentially leverage the best suggestions from the people who are actually using your tool or service. Since users can vote on the ideas of other users, you can start to get a picture of the most-requested features and fixes for your app or service to feed back into your products’ lifecycles.
Pro Tip: You can also use UserVoice to get feedback on a limited release or beta version of a product by setting up a private forum or forums. You can send invites to specific email addresses, or limit your feedback to company-wide participants by restricting access by email domain.
7. MailChimp
Most reports and punditry on the death of email are a bit premature. The good old fashioned mailing list is still a good way to maintain relationships with customers, especially when done well.
The web-based mailing list manager MailChimp offers list management, tracking and analysis, and custom HTML templates for up to 500 subscribers and 3000 emails a month for free. Paid plans kick in at larger subscriber numbers. Featuring integration with WordPress, Twitter, Salesforce and more, MailChimp is the list manager of choice for an impressive list of heavyweights including Mozilla, Intel, Canon, Fujitsu, Staples and more.
Pro Tip: MailChimp has a well-documented API that allows you to integrate the service with your own existing applications, tools, content management system or CRM solution. There’s a growing list of plug-ins already created for a number of platforms.
[Disclosure: Mailchimp is a sponsor of Mashable]
6. Get Satisfaction
Great customer support is important, but it can also be time-consuming and costly. Get Satisfaction aims to help by leveraging the strength of your user community and cutting down on repetitive support costs.
Get Satisfaction provides a forum where your customers can get answers to questions, solutions to problems, and submit feature and new product requests. Those answers and solutions are stored and searchable over time, cutting down on support costs and building trust with your userbase.
Used by small businesses and large popular brands alike, Get Satisfaction gets rave reviews for human customer service and helping to build communities around brands and products.
Pro Tip: Embeddable widgets allow you to bring the conversation back to your own company’s site or even within your products themselves. Drop a searchable FAQ or a feedback tab or page right into your website or service to integrate the customer service experience right where your users need it.
5. Twitter
What would this list be without our favorite microblogging service? From best practices for brands to tips for executives to using Twitter for customer service, there’s no shortage of creative ideas for leveraging Twitter for your business.
Even if you’re not in a technically-oriented industry, you’ll want to know which influencers in your domain are on Twitter and which of your potential clients and customers are there (hint: probably a bunch). You’ll want to wrap your head around hashtags for business, and more certainly check out Twitter’s own guidebook for businesses (as well as our own guidebook, of course!).
Pro Tip: Try not to use Twitter as a purely broadcast medium; whether one person or several posts to your official account, make sure your company is listening and interacting as well as simply posting. Strive for authenticity in your company’s tweets and try to think of it as taking part in a conversation, not just another soapbox platform.
4. Facebook
Facebook is the other social networking giant you’ll want to be sure your business has a presence on. It’s another powerful tool for building relationships, raising visibility for your brand, and targeting your customer niche.
With a robust and relatively low-cost advertising platform, you can connect directly to the potential customers or clients who might want to know about you. Optimization tools help you fine-tune and target your ads more intelligently, and get detailed insight into who is responding to your ads.
Pro Tip: Authenticity is key here too for maximum impact. With changes that made Facebook Pages more like personal pages, your brand’s home on Facebook is no longer relegated to fairly static profile information. Since the Wall Feed is usually the main point of entry for your fans and visitors, think of it as an opportunity to provide some sort of utility to your visitors, whether it be information, entertainment, or relevant expressions of your company’s culture and mission.
3. Basecamp
If you’re like most startups, you’ve got a heck of a lot going on. You need to keep on top of your projects and open loops, not just internally but with your clients, partners, and customers as well. That’s where a good project management tool comes in.
Basecamp from 37signals is a great and cost-effective web-based tool for project management and collaboration. Featuring to-do lists, milestones for important due-dates, file sharing, blog-style messaging, wiki-style writeboards, time tracking, and integration with the excellent group chat product Campfire, basic plans for small businesses start at $24 a month.
Pro Tip: Add extra functionality to your Basecamp environment or integrate it with your existing systems in the extras and add-ons department. For example if you use Freshbooks, you can even invoice your Basecamp projects via Freshbooks.
2. LinkedIn
From hiring to networking with cohorts and potential clients to participating in groups and question threads, LinkedIn is a powerful social network for entrepreneurs and business professionals of all stripes. It’s a great place to both discover and research potential job candidates (with a reported 75% of hiring managers using it over Facebook and Twitter), as well as both keeping up with and extending your network.
Pro Tip: Although it’s not an overnight success solution, positioning yourself as an expert in the LinkedIn Answers domain(s) relevant to your business can be a great way to increase your authority and drive new interest to your business. Don’t underestimate the power of asking for advice here as well.
1. Google Apps for Domains
Startup costs for outfitting an office with networking and computing equipment are staggering enough as it is without even taking into account the software and maintenance components. One area for adventurous entrepreneurs to cut costs in the latter department lies in the realm of typical office staples: email, calendaring and the office suites businesses typically need to use to prepare documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
Instead of paying an IT staff to set up, host and maintain your own mail servers, Google Apps for Domains can handle custom email addresses at your own[…]
Business_Lists
Lists
Startup
Startups_Lists
Web_Apps
business
basecamp
entrepreneurs
facebook
google_apps
google_docs
linkedin
monitter
Skype
small_business
social_media
startups
twitter
uservoice
youtube
from google
Whether your company is just starting out, just starting to turn a profit or already on the verge of an acquisition, as an entrepreneur you’ll be constantly evaluating the tools that will help get your business to the next stage.
Even if the ink on the business plan isn’t dry yet, you want to be armed with the social media tools that will play an important role in company communication, product and brand promotions, and business development for your startup. Some of the tools in this list will be familiar, but it’s worth taking a moment to reframe how they might become power tools in a business context.
10. Monitter
As an entrepreneur, you need to know what people are saying about your company as well as your competitors. Enter Monitter, a service that monitors Twitter mentions in real-time in a multi-column interface reminiscent of TweetDeck. Simply input a search term into a column, add or remove columns as desired, and get an automatically-refreshing picture of what people are saying about your brand or competing brands in your space.
Pro Tip: By default, the Monitter interface is gray on black, which can be hard on the eyes. You can switch to a more typical color scheme by selecting the “light” theme in the menu at the upper right.
9. YouTube
You already know about YouTube, but have you thought about how it could help your business? Could your product benefit from an awesome video walkthrough? Could your marketing strategy include a viral video strategy that gets you lots of exposure at relatively low cost?
And now with Promoted Videos getting placement in AdSense units around the web, there’s even more incentive to think about leveraging social video as a brand exposure tool. If you can create interesting content that’s relevant to your brand or products, a positive visual association with your company can attract new interest, build company culture, turn inquiries into sales, and give back significant brand dividends over time.
Pro Tip: The most obvious and frequent business use of YouTube is for marketing and advertising, but don’t overlook other ways in which your company can leverage YouTube. Visual walkthroughs and FAQs can be a great boon to customer service. Videos of you and your team giving public presentations, speaking at conferences or engaging with the media can establish and enhance your company’s reputation as a thought leader. And don’t forget the utility of private videos for use in executive and new employee trainings and recording company events; access can be shared with only the people who should be able to see each item.
8. UserVoice
As a small business, it’s hard to juggle building and improving your products with supporting what’s already out there. That’s where UserVoice can help.
From bug reports to feature requests, UserVoice can help track and manage the feedback of your users and customers. Not only does it assure your userbase that you care about what they have to say, but it can potentially leverage the best suggestions from the people who are actually using your tool or service. Since users can vote on the ideas of other users, you can start to get a picture of the most-requested features and fixes for your app or service to feed back into your products’ lifecycles.
Pro Tip: You can also use UserVoice to get feedback on a limited release or beta version of a product by setting up a private forum or forums. You can send invites to specific email addresses, or limit your feedback to company-wide participants by restricting access by email domain.
7. MailChimp
Most reports and punditry on the death of email are a bit premature. The good old fashioned mailing list is still a good way to maintain relationships with customers, especially when done well.
The web-based mailing list manager MailChimp offers list management, tracking and analysis, and custom HTML templates for up to 500 subscribers and 3000 emails a month for free. Paid plans kick in at larger subscriber numbers. Featuring integration with WordPress, Twitter, Salesforce and more, MailChimp is the list manager of choice for an impressive list of heavyweights including Mozilla, Intel, Canon, Fujitsu, Staples and more.
Pro Tip: MailChimp has a well-documented API that allows you to integrate the service with your own existing applications, tools, content management system or CRM solution. There’s a growing list of plug-ins already created for a number of platforms.
[Disclosure: Mailchimp is a sponsor of Mashable]
6. Get Satisfaction
Great customer support is important, but it can also be time-consuming and costly. Get Satisfaction aims to help by leveraging the strength of your user community and cutting down on repetitive support costs.
Get Satisfaction provides a forum where your customers can get answers to questions, solutions to problems, and submit feature and new product requests. Those answers and solutions are stored and searchable over time, cutting down on support costs and building trust with your userbase.
Used by small businesses and large popular brands alike, Get Satisfaction gets rave reviews for human customer service and helping to build communities around brands and products.
Pro Tip: Embeddable widgets allow you to bring the conversation back to your own company’s site or even within your products themselves. Drop a searchable FAQ or a feedback tab or page right into your website or service to integrate the customer service experience right where your users need it.
5. Twitter
What would this list be without our favorite microblogging service? From best practices for brands to tips for executives to using Twitter for customer service, there’s no shortage of creative ideas for leveraging Twitter for your business.
Even if you’re not in a technically-oriented industry, you’ll want to know which influencers in your domain are on Twitter and which of your potential clients and customers are there (hint: probably a bunch). You’ll want to wrap your head around hashtags for business, and more certainly check out Twitter’s own guidebook for businesses (as well as our own guidebook, of course!).
Pro Tip: Try not to use Twitter as a purely broadcast medium; whether one person or several posts to your official account, make sure your company is listening and interacting as well as simply posting. Strive for authenticity in your company’s tweets and try to think of it as taking part in a conversation, not just another soapbox platform.
4. Facebook
Facebook is the other social networking giant you’ll want to be sure your business has a presence on. It’s another powerful tool for building relationships, raising visibility for your brand, and targeting your customer niche.
With a robust and relatively low-cost advertising platform, you can connect directly to the potential customers or clients who might want to know about you. Optimization tools help you fine-tune and target your ads more intelligently, and get detailed insight into who is responding to your ads.
Pro Tip: Authenticity is key here too for maximum impact. With changes that made Facebook Pages more like personal pages, your brand’s home on Facebook is no longer relegated to fairly static profile information. Since the Wall Feed is usually the main point of entry for your fans and visitors, think of it as an opportunity to provide some sort of utility to your visitors, whether it be information, entertainment, or relevant expressions of your company’s culture and mission.
3. Basecamp
If you’re like most startups, you’ve got a heck of a lot going on. You need to keep on top of your projects and open loops, not just internally but with your clients, partners, and customers as well. That’s where a good project management tool comes in.
Basecamp from 37signals is a great and cost-effective web-based tool for project management and collaboration. Featuring to-do lists, milestones for important due-dates, file sharing, blog-style messaging, wiki-style writeboards, time tracking, and integration with the excellent group chat product Campfire, basic plans for small businesses start at $24 a month.
Pro Tip: Add extra functionality to your Basecamp environment or integrate it with your existing systems in the extras and add-ons department. For example if you use Freshbooks, you can even invoice your Basecamp projects via Freshbooks.
2. LinkedIn
From hiring to networking with cohorts and potential clients to participating in groups and question threads, LinkedIn is a powerful social network for entrepreneurs and business professionals of all stripes. It’s a great place to both discover and research potential job candidates (with a reported 75% of hiring managers using it over Facebook and Twitter), as well as both keeping up with and extending your network.
Pro Tip: Although it’s not an overnight success solution, positioning yourself as an expert in the LinkedIn Answers domain(s) relevant to your business can be a great way to increase your authority and drive new interest to your business. Don’t underestimate the power of asking for advice here as well.
1. Google Apps for Domains
Startup costs for outfitting an office with networking and computing equipment are staggering enough as it is without even taking into account the software and maintenance components. One area for adventurous entrepreneurs to cut costs in the latter department lies in the realm of typical office staples: email, calendaring and the office suites businesses typically need to use to prepare documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
Instead of paying an IT staff to set up, host and maintain your own mail servers, Google Apps for Domains can handle custom email addresses at your own[…]
october 2009 by wenxin
Futuristic Play by Andrew Chen: Why BitTorrent Inc. is no sure bet!
december 2006 by wenxin
BitTorrent Raises $25 million, Bram Cohen is History.
bittorrent
vc
investment
business
technology
startup
distribution
december 2006 by wenxin
In Web World, Rich Now Envy the Superrich - New York Times
november 2006 by wenxin
James Hong, a co-founder of the dating site Hotornot.com, said that for him, the site’s success meant “freedom money.” He is making a symbolic switch in cars, from a Porsche Boxster, right, to a Toyota Prius.
business
interview
people
startup
november 2006 by wenxin
The Dealmaker » Blog Archive » How Much Is too Much?
november 2006 by wenxin
One of the most frequently asked questions I hear is “how much money should I raise?” Given the relatively large amount of capital available from angels and VCs, many people would assume the correct answer is “as much as you can.” The answer you s
article
funding
startup
tips
november 2006 by wenxin
Valley Boys - BW
august 2006 by wenxin
BW's cover story of kevin Rose - founder of Digg.com
digg
interview
technology
startup
web2.0
august 2006 by wenxin
SiliconBeat: Kleiner, Sequoia go podcasting...with Podshow
august 2005 by wenxin
Podshow - the latest venture backed by Silicon Valley powerhouse venture firms, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital.
podcasting
vc
startup
august 2005 by wenxin
Garrett Dimon / About Going Solo
august 2005 by wenxin
how to be a freelance
freelance
business
startup
august 2005 by wenxin
MySpace: WhoseSpace?
july 2005 by wenxin
News Corp.'s acquisition of the social networking site has unsettled some members. But the founders, and a Fox exec, say don't worr
socialnetwork
business
startup
july 2005 by wenxin
WebKEW - Web Knowledge Equals Wealth
june 2005 by wenxin
Founder of HowStuffWorks
business
entrepreneur
marketing
startup
web
june 2005 by wenxin
Seth's Blog: Small is the new big
june 2005 by wenxin
Small is the new big only when the person running the small thinks big.
articles
business
entrepreneur
ideas
philosophy
startup
management
june 2005 by wenxin
related tags
advertising ⊕ article ⊕ articles ⊕ awards ⊕ basecamp ⊕ bittorrent ⊕ blog ⊕ blogchina ⊕ blogger ⊕ blogging ⊕ business ⊕ business:profile ⊕ businesscard ⊕ businessplan ⊕ Business_Lists ⊕ career ⊕ cars ⊕ china ⊕ chinese ⊕ community ⊕ creativity ⊕ customerservice ⊕ dating ⊕ del.icio.us ⊕ design ⊕ development ⊕ digg ⊕ directory ⊕ distribution ⊕ ecommerce ⊕ economy ⊕ entrepreneur ⊕ entrepreneurs ⊕ entrepreneurship ⊕ essay ⊕ facebook ⊕ finance ⊕ flickr ⊕ folksonomy ⊕ freelance ⊕ fun ⊕ funding ⊕ game ⊕ google ⊕ google_apps ⊕ google_docs ⊕ gtd ⊕ howto ⊕ ideas ⊕ innovation ⊕ inspiration ⊕ interesting ⊕ interview ⊕ investment ⊕ kawasaki ⊕ leadership ⊕ learning ⊕ lifehacks ⊕ linkedin ⊕ Lists ⊕ logo ⊕ longtail ⊕ management ⊕ marketing ⊕ microsoft ⊕ mobile ⊕ monitter ⊕ odeo ⊕ opensource ⊕ paulgraham ⊕ people ⊕ perspective ⊕ philosophy ⊕ podcasting ⊕ productivity ⊕ product_development ⊕ qiming ⊕ recruiting ⊕ reference ⊕ research ⊕ resources ⊕ rss ⊕ searchengine ⊕ services ⊕ Skype ⊕ small_business ⊕ socialmedia ⊕ socialnetwork ⊕ socialsoftware ⊕ social_media ⊕ startup ⊖ startups ⊕ Startups_Lists ⊕ stock ⊕ story ⊕ strategy ⊕ tagging ⊕ tags ⊕ technology ⊕ tips ⊕ toread ⊕ travel ⊕ trends ⊕ twitter ⊕ uservoice ⊕ vc ⊕ web ⊕ web2.0 ⊕ web2.0:videosharing ⊕ webdesign ⊕ webdev ⊕ webservice ⊕ Web_Apps ⊕ wholesale ⊕ xuxiaoping ⊕ youtube ⊕Copy this bookmark: