bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

Not a bad quote, it’s from a great post I read over at the Do Blog – Dealing with haters.

Very valuable advice, we often forget when we respond to criticism that we’re really talking to everyone else, not the recipient.

Give it a read.

An elevator pitch helps investors. But what about your customers?

A quick technical paragraph might sum it up.

But do I understand it? When you look at a group of people conversations are going to ensure understanding. Not a one size fits all solution.

The “I have a dream” foundation says exactly that. By treating everyone as individuals their individual understanding and increase dramatically.

Running early for a client meeting a fortnight ago I pondered Twitter business models, so here are the results of that brain storm.

Models seen in action:

• Simple sales channel:  Push special twitter sales via twitter, coupons, don’t dilute keep them timely, relevant
• Customer Service:  Answer questions via twitter, talk to clients
• New Product Development:  Get ideas from your market, market research, watch the conversation.  Sure you can run focus groups but how relevant are they really, get unbiased reviews from real users of your product whilst they use it.  Fast & real time
• Networking & relationship building:  Using the networking model to meet people on a local or global scale, help draw people to your website, ensure that you can convert on your website.
• Building a niche audience:  To pour qualified prospects into your sales channel.

Potential Models I have yet to see utilised:

• Sell subscription to your network:  Have a free network of tweets, then charge for private access which includes coaching, marketing help, health etc.  (Used by the protect updates feature).
• Provide free data:  Users can take a new action to generate some dollars (ie free weather, txt for hourly forecast or traffic reports).
• Extra service layer:  Provide dm reminders of appointments, or account balances, notifications of specials.  Perfect for service based industries like mobile, banking, auction sites.
• Sponsorship:  Sponsor some twitterers to join in their conversation, or to mention your account, or to generate a conversation with them.  Like endorsement good to be seen with the right people.
• Gaming:  Provide a text like game, interacts with your brand, charge for upgrades.

The loose platform for conversations has huge huge potential, it is just narrowing down the kind of conversations you can build or extend a business off.

Today is as some of you may know BlogActionDay.

Blogs all around the world are going to talk about Poverty.

Their take on it.

Objective: stimulate conversations around poverty.

Many of you will know i’m a huge advocate of Kiva, discussing it here Giving something back.

However.

We all know Poverty exists. It is just out of touch.  We can’t touch it, or feel it, or have it affect our daily lives.

It is easier to let it exist, somewhere over there, out of sight out of mind.

To be frank, it’s bullshit but it’s a fact. 

So how could we change that?

How can we make Poverty real.  To everyone.  

If we expose it, people will just block it out.

Stop looking at the bad.

Start looking at the good.

And no i don’t mean, the upsides of poverty.

Share the good times, the experience, the world through which people in poverty live in.

Take Mara Triangle for example, a wild life game reserve in Kenya.  They brought it direct to us via their blog and twitter.  Raising both money and their profile.

Or 

EnglishRussia.com, something cool happens daily on 1/6 of the earth.

Take one or both of these models.  

Bring the experience direct to us.  Give us stories to discuss, give us a conversation to tell our families, give us a connection.  Give us meaning!

That’s how marketing can help Poverty.

Thoughts? 

First off.

They’re free.  

Which establishes low value. So we’re not actually likely to wear them at all.

Given the cost I suspect that getting you to wear them is not the key part, they want you to discuss their product as you received a freebie.

Let’s change this.

How about, you hire a designer off threadless to make an awesome t-shirt that may or may not feature your brand and give it away.  

You then provide two opportunities for conversation.

1) X company gave me freebies.

2) Hey I like your t-shirt where did you get it from?

3) You will actually desire to wear the t-shirt vs throw it out. (and thus allowing greater opportunities for discussion everytime it’s worn)

Give it a shot, why not? We all know everyone throws those t-shirts out anyway.