thoughts on social media, new marketing and web startups through the eyes of greg isenberg.

The more I learn about user experience, task completion, conversion rates, web design and digital marketing as whole, the more I find that web analytics plays a commanding role in improving these areas. I’ve always recognized the importance of seeing page views, unique visitors, bounce rates and traffic sources, but recently I have realized that this figures give you much more than the paths users take on your website. Most webmasters look at their Google Analytics data, and say “hey, that’s cool, we have 12% more traffic this month than last month”. The most important thing to do when your staring at your analytics dashboard is to ask questions. Why is my bounce rate so high on this page? How come Google is such a low % of my referring sites? How come we got some many visitors this month?

A confused user that bounces off your website in the shopping cart process because he is lost, may never come back again, so it is important to continually improve your website based on your analytics data and continually analyze your analytics data.

Web analytics gives you an idea of what is wrong and its up to you to fix it. Think of web analytics like you are driving on a trip to the mall with an oil leak . Perhaps you take a few wrong turns, but then get back on track and ultimately arrive at the mall. With this information, the owner of the mall might say “hey, its cool that it took you 12 minutes to get here and that you were driving a toyota prius”. But if the owner started to ask questions like, why did you make wrong turns on those particular streets? Are the street signs too small? Should we add signs saying the mall is straight ahead? Is the road optimized for Toyotas? How many cars are there versus bicycles? With this information, you will see that you can improve the experience to drive to the mall which will give you a more positive experience.

Do not take your Google Analytics for granted. Keep checking and keep asking questions, because don’t forget, your website is not for you, it is for the user. So it makes sense to optimize your website not the way you think it should look and feel, but based on how to make it a good experience for the majority of your users. That way,the web will be a much happier place.

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No longer is the corporate bio acceptable. Business is personal. Since the rise of social media, marketing has shifted from capturing the attention of as many people as possible to engaging customers and having meaningful conversations with them. Take a look at 90% of accounting or law firms, and you’ll see that they have not embraced this concept.

They acknowledge that these platforms exist, that their clients use it and may even have these web 2.0 profiles setup for themselves but fail to actively use social media as a tool to make connections, obtain relevant information, get more clients and improve on personal and firm branding. The most common excuse for these professionals is they simply do not have the time managing the profiles. They should consider this time as PR/marketing time . The great thing about social media for lawyers/accountants is that social media gives them the opportunity to create more connections faster than has ever been possible before. Any lawyer/accountant will tell you that the clients that they make are based on the number of personal connections they have. So if the number of clients is equal to a fraction times the number of connections made, why are these professionals so hesitant to start making connections?

A big concern has to do with the firms being afraid of the idea of their lawyers/accountants getting a bad reputation when some of their clients say negative comments on these profiles. If they are providing a good service, then the positive will outweigh the negative everytime. The transparency aspect of a firm using social media will be recognized by the potential client and will be appreciated. Conversations about a company are always been talked about, here is your chance to engage people talking about your company. If these firms don’t do this, these customers or potential customers will be left unengaged, so less feedback, less networking, less marketing and less branding.

Businesses that are afraid of social media marketing, will begin to lose market share to companies establishing themselves at the forefront. Hundreds of millions of people are actively contributing to social media websites and the companies that are recognizing the potential of this, will be the ones most relevant as they will be the ones with the best products/services because they are conversating with the customer and are able to have a product/service with the customer in mind. The pros of social media as a marketing tool outweigh the cons heavily, so lawyers and accountants should wake up and stop looking at social media as threat but rather as an opportunity for low cost marketing, higher visibility and a chance to become transparent.

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The other day I was meeting with Nick Timmins, an extremely bright entrepreneurial-spirited business student who is the VP of operations at Orderin.ca, an online platform that is trying to change the order-in business from phone-focused to online. They have a simple step-by-step website that works flawlessly and really does improve the customer’s order-in experience. I had heard about Nick’s attempts, and I contacted him to learn more about the company and how they were trying to achieve their goals. I learned some lessons.

Lesson #1: Contact people that interest you, even if you don’t know them, you’d be surprised how many are willing to sit down for a cup of coffee, and you’d be even more surprised how valuable these contacts can be in the future. Never stop expanding your network. Reach out to people of not just your field, but of all backgrounds.

Nick Explained to me the approach that Orderin.ca was taking, which was putting most of their resources to expand there 150 restaurant affiliates. Yet, they were struggling to get enough orders to meet expenses.

Lesson #2: Expanding your customer base is vital, especially when money is tight. Even though your product may not be perfect (i.e: not the majority restaurants are signed up with orderin.ca), focus on the customer in order to increase cash flow, build traction and generate feedback to further improve product for quick iterations.

I asked Nick about the marketing strategies that they were using to attract customers, in which, immediately, he pulled out beautiful flyers and pamphlets used for flyer distribution.

Lesson #3: Find out your customer, and market appropriately. Here, Orderin.ca’s customer base is tech-savvy people , who frequently order-in and are early-adopters. Also, Orderin.ca’s marketing should be primarily on the web so its just a click away to order-in and that makes it just one more reason why its easier.

Orderin.ca has no social media strategies.

Lesson #4: If you are a company, especially a web company and you dont use social media, you are losing out on an opportunity to build a brand, generate revenue, improve customer relations, get feedback, increase your brand’s online presence, find employees that are believe in your mission and drive traffic to your website for FREE.

Nick told me how he enjoyed working for Orderin.ca because he had the chance to work with an entrepreneur with a proven track record building successful companies and was able to learn about the thought processes and the lifestyle of such a person.

Lesson #5: When you surround yourself with remarkable people, you become remarkable. Try to always play tennis with people better than you, that way, you will get better.

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I was looking at the list of top 30 CEO’s in the world. What I was more interested in though, was which CEOs were new to the list . What was a common trend in these people besides an obvious innovative approach to business?

Jeff bezos (Amazon.com)- computer science & electrical engineering

Chase Carey (Direct TV) – BS Mathematics and Economics, MBA

Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase) – BA economics/psychology, MBA

Jose Sergio Gabriell (Petroleio Brasileiro) – BA economics

Howard Levine (Family Dollar) – undergraduate dropout

Art Levinson (Genentech) – BS astronomy, molecular biology/genetics

Jean-Bernard Levy (Vivendi)- telecommunications

Ma Huateng (Tencent) – BS computer science

Jim Skinner (McDonald’s) – no higher education

Rex W. Tillerson (Exxon Corporation) – B.Eng civil engineering

Rick Tsai (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company )- BA physics, engineering and material science

Miles White ( Abott Labs) – BS, MBA

Not one of these 12 CEO’s have an undergrad degree in business. In fact, only 1/4 of them had any formal business education at all, in this case, MBAs.

I am not surprised. I see the use of a business degree, especially an undergraduate one increasingly irrelevant. You major in Marketing? Okay, did they teach you SEO? Did they teach you how to leverage social media? So let me get this straight, you have not learned the most fundamental ways of marketing your company, on the medium most prevalent, the internet. I sense a disconnect between commerce in the academic world and commerce in the actual world.

A degree like one in civil engineering, physics or even astronomy usually sharpens critical thinking and analysis skills. The best problem solvers are people from fields like engineering, and when these grads come into the real world and want to build companies they apply this problem-solving mentality to solving business problems. If you study something related to the company you own ( ie: study molecular biology, CEO of pharmeceutical company), you are much more valuable than a B. Com grad. You will be an expert in your field, be more innovative, be able to understand your employees better ( by understanding which tasks need to be completed and the best way to do them)  and thus be a more efficient and effective manager. The best managers are not bred from the academic field of management, but are increasingly from the sciences. This is natural as our economy has shifted to be more scientific and technological focused.

Would Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com have been able to popularize online shopping and do 19.1 billion dollars of revenue in 2008, if he had not studied computer science and electrical engineering? Was it not his studies, that gave him the tools to build Amazon.com in his garage and the foresight to see the potential of the internet in 1994. Sure, his business plan may not have included the Porter five forces analysis but, it had the main business goals and how to achieve them.

Now, I’m not saying a business degree is as good as toilet paper. However, I do feel that in this new economy, scientific knowledge and technical skills make you more marketable, and could make you a better CEO. The U.S. Department of Labor found that of the 20 fastest growing occupations projected for 2014, 15 of them require significant science or mathematics preparation . So if the United States (and Canada) want to have a competitive edge, they need to ensure the future students have these skills. If you want to be the CEO of the next Google, think twice about which skills will help you better prepare to do it.

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It never ceases to amaze me how the web has evolved into such a wonderful entity. I think about what the internet is comprised of, and its useful applications with its seemingly infinite potential to educate and to entertain. I think about Google, its wealth of information as the blueprint of the web. I think about Wikipedia and its ability to answer any question I have about anything I could ever dream of asking. I think about blogs as a platform to give people a voice to express whatever they desire to the entire world. I think about Facebook, a social phenomenon with its power to connect people and let them share their lives with each other. I think about Twitter, and am amazed at how people give their time to share knowledge with strangers. Then finally, I think about how this is all free, and it feels good to tell my parents and grandparents that the saying ‘nothing in life is free’ is not true anymore.

We wake up every morning and take for granted the internet even though it has indeed changed all of our lives ( and I would argue improved it greatly). The way we interact, the way we learn, the way we shop has changed due to the web and has made knowledge borderless and without prejudice against our race, religion or social-status. All of this innovation in only 20 years. I . If this has happened in less than 20 years, what will happen in the next 20 years?

I want to be apart of it. It’s what gives me the strength to get up every morning, learn about computer science. It’s what fuels me to read blogs about startups, programming, social media until my eyes bleed ( not literally!). I am proud to do what passion has led me to do. Are you?

I dedicate this post to the internet and to the people who made it what is today, and the people who dream of surprising us each day with new and more useful websites and applications to improve our lives.

Has the internet changed your life for the better?

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Note: some websites I mentioned:
E-180
TechStars
DreamIt
Capital Factory

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If you’re a tech entrepreneur ( or want to be one), you know how important it is to stay cutting-edge. This list is meant for you.

5.  Duct Tape Marketing

If you’re working for a tech startup, you know how important marketing is. Duct tape offers effective internet marketing strategies that easy to implement along with a library of resources such as articles from topics like outsourcing to personal branding.

4.  The Long Tail

Chris Anderson’s blog the editor of by far the most mainstream geeky magazine Wired. Here, Chris blogs about the concept of the Long Tail which as he puts it:

“The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.”

The blog gives practical examples of tech entrepreneurs exploiting this idea as well as other tech entreprenurship news and  business models.

3. Six Pixels of Seperation by Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel is the guru of digital marketing in Canada. By the way he writes and the quality of his posts ( and podcasts), you can see he is passionate about what he does.  He provides his views about digital marketing and delivers it in way thats enjoyable to read.

2. Seth Godin

As tech entrepeneurs, we want to change the world. Seth Godin’s blog posts will be that daily reminder that we are ought to change the world and that justifies our dedication and determination. Seth Godin is a 10 time business best selling author.

1.  Mashable

Stay on the top of every interesting web or social media startup that pops up with Mashable. You’ll wonder how you were doing without it. They provide you with resources for entreprenurs and reviews of the newest startups that will keep you up to date with the freshest ideas. Be the first to know whats happening on the web!

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“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

- Mark Twain

It’s amazing how many people I see that are afraid to set sail, afraid to learn about themselves and find and pursue their passions. I don’t blame them.  It is easy and comfortable to be at the ’safe harbor’. It is failure, and the risks of being different that makes people reluctant to explore. The seas can be calm, or they can be tumultuous torrents and you don’t know until you sail. To explore, is not easy. It requires you to walk in unknown territory, but it’s worth it.

The most interesting people, the people you read about in Business weekly or the people who give talks at TED, are people who have made more mistakes in their lives than most regular people.  As a young adult, I am trying to make as many mistakes as I can,  actively learning about as much as I can and satisfying my intellectual curiosity even though I may not be good at everything I learn about. Even dropping a coffee on your lap is a mistake that will teach you to hold your coffee with a  firmer grip and in turn, make you a more successful person in a way.  A great way to learn is through experiences so I want to make my mistakes now, so when I will be older, I will have built up the experience I need to really succeed. I am finally getting to a point where my experiences. I am starting to feel that the mistakes and the knowledge I have accumulated is really started to define me as person.

These learning experiences that are a result of exploring are closely tied into the concept of luck. I don’t like using clichés, I find they lose their meanings but one I really like; you make your own luck. But the cliché fails to qualify the meaning of how you make it, its through experiences. Luck is a function of the amount you learn and experience, not a complete random phenomenon.

So learn, explore and reach your potential. The riskiest thing to be is to be conservative.

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
- Niels Bohr

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