Breaking Up with Facebook: Where Are Brands and Young Users Going? “We’d love to say ‘It’s not you, it’s us’ but it’s totally you. Not to be rude, but you aren’t the smart, funny social network we fell in love with several years back. You’ve changed. A lot,” wrote delivery service Eat24 in its breakup letter with Facebook. Eat24 is one of the many brands reevaluating its relationship with Facebook as the site continues to make changes to the algorithm that affects organic reach. That means that even if your brand page has a million fans, only around two percent of those fans will see anything you post… unless you pay for it, of course. Shifting Facebook to a fully paid platform will most likely also shift the types of content you’ll see on Facebook from brands. In short, we’re about to see a whole lot of ads. Of course, paying to boost Facebook posts is not in every company’s budget, especially for smaller business or non-profits. Young users are looking to other platforms via iStrategy Labs So where are all the young people going?
How to Create a $4,000 Per Month Muse in 5 Days (Plus: How to Get Me As Your Mentor) Photo: Stuck in Customs Preface by Tim This post is a follow-up to “How to Create a Million-Dollar Business This Weekend (Examples: AppSumo, Mint, Chihuahuas).” The purpose of this guest post — written by Noah Kagan — is to show you exactly how a postal worker created a $4,000 per month muse. Included are all the tests, e-mail templates, and details you’d need to replicate his success. Noah was employee #30 at Facebook, #4 at Mint, had previously worked for Intel (where he frequently took naps under his desk), and had turned down a six-figure offer from Yahoo. For those interested in mentorship, don’t miss the end of this post. There’s a time-sensitive chance to visit San Francisco for a week… to be mentored in-person by Noah and yours truly. Enter Noah The journey of Daniel Bliss is a telling one. Our goal was to take his hobby — he was a full-time postal worker — and turn it into a real business making $4,000 a month so he could quit his day job. He was solving his own problem. 1. 2. 3. 1.
7 Steps To Get Press Coverage For Your Startup The following post is a summary of How To Get Media Coverage For Your Startup: A Complete Guide, a guestpost I wrote for Dharmesh Shah on Onstartups. Getting stories written up for your startup isn’t easy. Nonetheless, it’s one of the most important things, especially during your early days I found. The below tips have helped us to get Buffer written up, well over 40 times on Mashable, TechCrunch, GigaOm and co. in the last 9 months. 1.) One thing I’ve found is, if you start publishing regularly on your own startup blog, two things will happen: You will understand a writer’s point of view. 2.) “Mashable doesn’t cover you a writer does!” This is one of the most valuable lessons I have learnt in over 40 stories that Mashable, TechCrunch and co. have written about Buffer. Become genuinely interested and understand what they like. 3.) These people are seriously busy. 4.) Only now would I suggest you get onto the email pitch, do steps 1-3 before that. 5.) Here are 7 steps to follow: 7.)
WORDOID - Creative Naming Service Free Online Keywording Tool, IPTC editor, suggestions for photo tags New keywording tool Try the new FREE iStock keywording tool with cloud backup - offering AI keyword suggesting, auto categories and bulk-edit features. This is a must for all serious stock-contributors - go to qhero.com This tool will suggest keywords based on similar images, and it lets you compare keyword popularity. How does it work? First you type in several basic keywords that describe the image you want to keyword. About using this site: Please respect that you are not allowed to use this site for providing a service that you sell to another person or company.
Why only fools write code first | Kareem Mayan's Blog Who this is for: hackers who have an idea. Why you should read it: so you don’t waste your life by building something nobody wants. I have a confession to make: I’m 35, and until last year, I started building companies by creating a product. Last year, when starting SocialWOD, my biz partner Ryan refused to write code without first talking to 20+ customers and getting commitments to pay us money for a solution to a well-defined problem of theirs. Having gone down the “build first” path enough without significant success, I was up for trying a new approach. To boot, we decided not to build until we had verbal financial commitments from customers for our proposed solution. The result? Read on for some of the hard-earned lessons that’ll help you grow your biz. Don’t build first Building first puts you at a disadvantage. Your job as an entrepreneur is to increase the odds that your business will succeed. There are several types of risk that can kill your company. Why people start with code
The Fast Track to Start-Up Life Suppose you're sitting around your hometown, whether it's Poughkeepsie or Pensacola, with big dreams of start-up life in Silicon Valley but only a modest amount of tech know-how and absolutely no idea of how to get where you want to go. Do you head to university or sign up for a graduate course to gain the skills you need? Do you pack your bags for the Bay Area and pray you land on your feet? Both paths are risky. Lachy Groom suggests there may be a better way. Already a veteran of several start-ups at the tender age of 17, Groom desperately wanted a life of entrepreneurship in America's tech hub but being from Perth, Australia, he was, well, as far away from the action as you can get geographically. Groom signed up and never looked back. How intense? The payoffs for the hard work can be substantial, though. "We were ready for entry-level programming positions," by the end of the bootcamp Groom reports. So who is right for Dev Bootcamp? "You need tech context.
The Ultimate Guide to Using Tags and Hashtags Effectively Denis Duvauchelle is the CEO and co-founder of Twoodo, the ultimate online collaborative tool. Why does researching [hash]tags matter? Whether it’s blog articles, publications, videos, images, podcasts, infographics or simply the text of your website, your content wants to be found. Your content needs to be found. The main difficulty is that there are so many of these being published every day that yours is becoming increasingly hard to find. 2014 will be the year of the content marketing deluge. Researching the right keywords, expressions, tags and hashtags is more essential than ever. Here, we will explain how tag research is related to your core keywords, and how it is an essential growth hack. But first a little fact. FacebookTwitterFlickrGoogle+SquidooYouTubeInstagramKickstarterTumblrFriendfeedWaywireDiasporaToutVineApp.net What do keywords, tags and hashtags do? The keyword or keyphrase is the key information that your content is about. Image credit: Larry Kim ut what can you do?
Slide Templates: How to Talk to Investors about Marketing and Growth This post is part of the ongoing Distribution Tuesday series. Every week the 500 Distribution Team highlights actionable resources for marketing your startup. Get even more tips by following @500Distribution on Twitter and subscribing to our email newsletter. When you’re fundraising, it can be really daunting trying to navigate the always changing market conditions, new platforms like AngelList and the typically brutal funding cycles. Previously we covered some of the main DO’s and DONT’s in “How to Talk to Investors about Marketing and Growth“. Covering your Acquisition Sources You’ve been testing a lot of different acquisition sources like a good founder, right? Talking Paid Acquisition For startups that grow through a CPL (cost per lead) model a table like the below is typically helpful. Getting Social Social channels for most statups don’t really move the needle. Paid Acquisition for Subscription Models Showing Off Your Peeps What’s Next and Use of Proceeds (PowerPoint Version)