We all know by now that you can’t test something without inadvertently influencing the outcome. The same can be said for marketing to a niche. A niche is an ecosystem unto itself and unless you’re already a part of that niche, your participation will impact the health and wellbeing of the ecosystem. Here are some things I’ve seen that will help you navigate those sacred waters...
I talk quite a bit about targeting niches when it comes to building your business. I’ve also asked the question of whether or not you should market a business if you’re not in the target market. If you find yourself in the midst of marketing to a niche that you don’t belong to you, you’re going to need a trusted “mini-network”. Why more than one person? Because...
If you live in Colorado you’ve seen them. They have: Short hair and long beards. Both ears pierced with heavy gauge earrings. At least 4 real tattoos; no barbed wire across the upper arm nonsense. Listen to bands like Lamb of God, Led Zeppelin and Johnny Cash. Spend most of their money on the best mountain bikes (usually Yetis) and snowboards (or God forbid; skis). They live in the...
This is a ENORMOUS post. If I weren’t summarizing a presentation I gave last night, I would have broken it into a small miniseries with many guest stars including Betty White. So make sure you go to the bathroom before you start. Last night I got the chance to speak to a class at DU that focuses on creating business plans. Social media is perfect for the startup due to the low barriers of...
Thursday we started off with several of my students asking if my Twitter account had been hacked. And yes, it had. Someone got in and sent out the following message: ‘hi, i’m 24/female/horny… i have to get off here but message me on my windows live messenger name *****@hotmail.com’. They had direct messaged a large number of my followers. (I was also alerted by someone who...
I saw a tweet this morning from @kim about a search engine for Twitter lists. It’s aptly named List Browser and was created by Dave Winer. For those of you that haven’t heard of Twitter lists yet, they’re a way of organizing the people that you follow. The hopes is that you will categorize your contacts into categories, thus allowing others to follow the list all with one click...
Well . . . since the Internet has swung into the collective consciousness, it has primarily been a cost free medium, except for the price to access it. (This is what happens when academics run the world. Not complaining. All of the online growth would not have been possible if businesses would have charged for content initially.) This is about to change. Several media magnates have recently...
For those of you living under a very heavy rock, buried deep underground, there is this service called Twitter which has recently garnered a lot of attention. It uses what is called “micro-blogging” (140 characters or less) to tell others that follow you, what you’re up to. A personal RSS feed. Very simple idea and even though we are just at the beginning of this phenomenon...
I’ve been SCUBA certified for 21 years and it’s safe to say that I love the Ocean. (Yes there are SCUBA divers in Colorado and as a matter of fact Colorado used to have the 3rd highest certification rate in the United States. Not sure if that’s still true.) Divers are an interesting breed. I’ve been fortunate enough to have traveled to many different places and dove in...
Social objects. You can stop here if you want but I promise there’s more to say. Several months ago, I showed a video of Chris Anderson on Charlie Rose where he explained that he believes we are at the beginning of the social networking movement and that Facebook/MySpace are the online version of Target/Walmart. I share this belief and think that over the next 5 – 10 years there is...