John McArthur’s New Venture Blog

Shortly after I started working with StorMagic, I suggested they create a Facebook group.  One of the initial target markets for StorMagic is the education market, and given the number of college students on Facebook, it seemed like a logical fit. We’re only a few weeks into this, but I’m pleased to see that the number of members is up to 46 and includes some pretty well-known, well-connected analysts, venture capitalists, and potential partners and customers.  Facebook groups are a great way to notify interested people about changes, enhancements, new materials and upcoming events. 

That brings me to the Web 2.0 double-dip comment.  Facebook is one tool that can be leveraged for marketing and community-building.  Another is YouTube.  StorMagic just completed their first video and uploaded it to YouTube.  You can see it here.  But they also notified the 46 members of the StorMagic Facebook group about the video, by posting a notice on the group’s posted-items board.  We’ll see what kind of traffic it generates, but having created the video, YouTube is a low-cost way of beginning to circulate it.  I just watched it, and it does a pretty good job of demonstrating the simplicity of implementing a StorMagic iSCSI storage area network.

I’d really like to hear your opinion on two things:

1. Using Facebook as a community building and marketing tool
2. Using YouTube to cost-effectively demonstrate key features of a solution

I’d also like your suggestions for other Web 2.0 tools that are effective in raising awareness and building communities for a supplier’s customers, partners, and prospects.

One last thing.  Can you give us some feedback on the video?

When I was growing up, my family would occasionally take what we called “Penny Walks.”  We lived in western Colorado, where the towns were mostly laid out on a North-South, East-West grid.  A penny walk involved taking a walk, penny in hand, and every time you got to a corner, you flipped the coin. Heads you go right. Tails you go left.  You never knew where you were going to go, but you knew you weren’t going to get caught in a familiar routine.  With penny walks, you ran into different people or different things. You had variety. Penny walks don’t work as well in Massachusetts, where I live now, because the streets are laid out in the rough equivalent of a meandering cow.

My random walks these days are as likely to occur on the World Wide Web, as they are to occur in my town.  Did I mention we have almost no sidewalks? So here on the internet, thanks to a link from Jason Rakowski, I was lead on a random walk through his blog, to another blog by someone named Dejra to a service called Pingomatic.  The service helps writers/bloggers raise the visibility of their sites by updating search engines.  I’m trying it out today.  I’ll let you know how it goes. 

Given Dejra’s focus on affiliate marketing, I’m wondering if she knows my brother, Ken?

Dejra? Ken?

As a follow on to my earlier posts regarding GoldMail, Bruce over at Iron Mountain sent me this note through Plaxo.

This is one of the typical Brainshark presentations we use. You can also embed other objects like videos, etc. in the presentations.

www.brainshark.com/ironmtndigital/vu?pi=5687813

Another interesting marketing company that uses word of mouth/viral marketing is called bzzagent out of Boston.
Regards,
Bruce

Iron Mountain uses Brainshark for some email marketing campaigns, and I asked Bruce to send me a sample one that they use to market their desktop backup service.  So here it is, and none to soon, since my Outlook application keeps crashing and I’ll probably lose my data soon.  Tell me again, why I don’t just use Gmail?

Don’t ever challenge my mother to a game of Jeopardy.  She answers every question correctly almost before you can get the question out.  You’ll leave the game having lost all confidence in your ability to remember highly-specific details or the picayune.  She’s pretty good at ping-pong (sorry, table tennis), too.  At least for an 81 year old. The people that Myndnet has recruited to answer questions for clients are a bit like my mother.  At least that’s my recent experience.  They seem to be able to answer anything.

StorMagic recently used Myndnet to identify IT directors at K-12 schools, at colleges, and universities. The question went live on February 15th and by Tuesday, four days later, they had fulfilled the 200 or so budgeted responses.  If you go to Myndnet, you’ll notice that the question is still up and you can still respond.  StorMagic has the right to reject leads that don’t fit the criteria, and StorMagic might want to acquire additional names, if the first ones work out well.  So why not keep it open for a few days? (more…)

Howard Perlstein, founder of HOW, a  management consulting services company based in Brookline, Massachusetts, just became my 1000th connection on LinkedIn.  We were introduced by a mutual friend and met for coffee. He talked about his business, and I talked about mine.  We also talked about ways that we might be able to help each other.   I have no idea, yet, whether I or he will reap any financial reward, but, as I said to Howard, if you don’t take the occasional random walk, you’ll wear out your path.

Someone asked me recently, if I actually know all of the people in my LinkedIn network.  The answer is “yes.”  And I wish that I had started using LinkedIn sooner, because I’m missing the other 5000 people I’ve met during the past 10 years. OK, 5000 is a guess, but I’m not far off.   And somewhere in those 5000 is someone I can help. Sometimes for fun and sometimes for profit.  And while I can’t help everyone, as a good friend, Barba Hickman, founder of Applied Clarity, said to me, “If I start off each day thinking about how I can help someone, the business pretty much takes care of itself.”

A recent blog entry by Denise Shiffman on Viral Voice referenced an article in InsideCRM entitled The Facebook Marketing Toolbox.   I’ve only been using Facebook for a few months, so this article was a great find, with links to tons of resources and recommendations.  Thanks Denise.  This article is required reading for my new client, StorMagic, and my nephews who continue to grow their restaurant, Black and Brew, down in Lakeland, Florida.  Keeping getting the word out!  For all others, reading is optional, but highly recommended.

I posted the following question on LinkedIn about five days ago:

What’s the best strategy for creating end-user awareness of an innovative product through social networking?

Here’s the dig.  At least I think it was a dig:

Try and be a bit more simple and straightforward in your communications than you are in your questions. (more…)

 

As a fellow baby boomer, Denise Shiffman’s recent blog post really hit home.  She said, “Facebook is the new email.”  She wasn’t the first to make the connection.  In fact, the Scobleizer has a whole running debate here from October, 2007.  But because I know Denise, and implicitly trust her, she gets credit for getting my attention. 

As a boomer, I live on email, but as my blog readers know, I’m on Facebook now, too.  In fact, it’s about the only way that I communicate with Steve Zivanic, who created this viral campaign for very-traditional Hitachi Data Systems (HDS).  I just checked one YouTube posting of his video that reports 320,000+ downloads.  Good job Steve.  Steve’s left HDS and found a fitting home at myndnet.  He tells me they understand the value of viral marketing. (more…)

Mike Worhach, President and CEO of Sepaton, walked into the Starbuck’s where I was meeting  Paul Gillin this morning, and said, “Every time I see you, you’re taking notes.” Confirming once again that it’s important to surround yourself with people smarter than yourself, I was having a follow-on to my meeting with Paul last week.  Paul has been amazingly generous with his time, given that he has started writing another book.  I’m eight chapters into his book from last year (2007, for those of you who are keeping track), The New Influencers, and I wanted to pick his brain on how he might be able to help one of our clients.  But I also got an added bonus, which was getting a few quick tips that could make a big difference for anyone.  Here’s one. (more…)

For those of you who are watching closely, you will notice that I added a new entry to my blog roll.  I recently got reconnected with Denise Shiffman, former marketing executive at Sun Microsystems, through another former client who has found her way to Mimosa Systems.  Denise has a new book coming out in the fall, which I hear is on Enterprise 2.0.

I met with an investor last week at a hotel in Boston.  He was in town to attend the Enterprise 2.0 conference.  The basic goal of his attendance was to get a better handle on when, or if, money was going to start changing hands for his Enterprise 2.0 company.  Let’s face it.  It takes time for some things to develop.  As one storage-industry watcher reported, a lot more money has been invested in storage companies than will be returned in profit.  I suspect the same may be true for Enterprise 2.0, though I haven’t done the math. (more…)