bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

That is the argument I want to be hearing.

How is your small team outpeforming the big clunky guys?

ReadWriteWeb queried over twitter what’s next after web 2.0? I responded:

“Startups powered by 1-4 people, ultra small niche to dominate in, started for under $20k” 

This has been requoted a few times as people have discussed the topic over and over again.

Web 2.0 was the term to describe the wave of internet businesses that have grown in the past few years (technical details aside).  Web 3.0 is the new wave.

Extending my initial thoughts Web 3.0 will be where the web connects with the real world and the distinctions between the two become blurred.  Are we really an online company? or offline? It will be hazy, it will be gray.

The power in this new wave will be in the ability of small teams; mainly collections of evangelists, working in unison to solve minute problems, on a global scale.

Growing these companies will not be about getting big, it will be about agility and efficient delivery.

Thus the argument 3 years from now will not be, mine is bigger than yours, it will be mine is smaller than yours!

I want to share a brief story from my uni days:

“I was heading back from the airport on the motorway, and a car in the lane beside us suddenly jerked to the left, forcing itself into our lane, nearly forcing us off the road.  Argh!! Five minutes later this same car missed the offramp so swerved across two lanes nearly missing us again.  I jotted down its number plate.  Later that day I wandered into uni, only to be very nearly swiped off the road by a lunatic driver.  The very same driver that had already just about wiped me out.  Three times, one day, same driver.”

The issue here is accountability.

Sure I can report the dangerous driving to the Police who may send a warning letter BUT what difference is that going to make.

Altering the general attitude on the road is almost a culture change.

Particularly in Auckland where I live.  Drivers are frequently rude, cut in, swerve, drive with no care for others.  As there is virtually zero accountability such people continue.  This continues on a downward spiral as it becomes more acceptable.

How could you solve this? Make everyone accountable to their number plate.  Register each number plate online where people can put feedback on your driving.  In fairness for each negative response you should have to upload a positive response for someone who was nice to you.

It would be a gold mine of activity, huge opportunity for novel stories to be shared and create accountability.

Benefits:

• Suddenly a cars value could depend on its driver.
• Accountability
• Dangerous drivers are quickly identified
• Culture change in driving attitudes

It would be nice to implement.  However could you really do this? I fear (like the recording industry) their would be a huge uproar and the dangerous few wouldn’t let it through.  

Thoughts? Do you think there is a better way? Or more importantly has a model been proven but in a different scenario?

Tonnes of businesses unlock the flesh in a market, Google Adsense unlocked the flesh in the online advertising market, Ebay in secondhand goods, Skype in phone calls.

By reducing the flesh consumers benefit from a competitive marketplace.

Although there is a lot of competition in online advertising I still think there is a lot more flesh that can be unlocked.

Companies like Google Adsense, Kontera, Commission Junction will have millions on their books from the earnings of users who do not reach the payment threshold (which is a reasonably common occurrence).  

Their terms usually dictate they hold onto the cash till you cash out or your forfeit it within a certain amount of time.  You are never likely to recover those earnings.

My idea is for a charity or potentially Kiva to setup a programme whereby users donate their past earnings for these programmes.  

They then group these together and cash them out.  Alternativelly it could be a business opportunity, similar to the tax refund model, give us your account details we will get your earnings out and take a 25% cut, as hey if you didn’t do it you get nothing otherwise.

However I think companies are more likely to co-operate with a charity, great pr move for them, users feel great AND charity benefits. Win/Win/Win.

 I think much is to be gained by looking at particular business scenarios through a different lens.

The perception that businesses need to be using in the current market is answering this question: How can I help my customer in a way that delivers additional value to them?

Not in a fake way, a legitimate way that improves the life of your customer.

Some of you may say hang on I’m an employee this doesn’t apply.  Yes it does, act as if your employer is your customer, this is going to make you infinitely more valuable.

For example:

• Apartment Rentals, install an espresso machine & communicate the value, save your clients $40/week or $2000/year spent on espresso coffee, have many apartments? bundle all their utility accounts together and negotiate better discounting, give each new tenant a big hamper to welcome them in, follow up a bottle of wine after successful inspections.
• Daily Paper, offer a daily exclusive section on your website with the access code printed in the daily paper,  offer the paper dropped off at the office by first thing in the morning or by mid morning break.
• Knowledge  Worker/Employee? Take an extra hour a day for a week to figure ways to use technology to automate your office systems, upskill yourself, figure out tasks that do not add value and suggest you drop them, find out the key issues affecting your companies clients and ways you can help them, this will make yourself invaluable.
• Contractor? Offer a monthly newsletter delivering relevant information for your clients, write up some documents saying how you prefer to work and how they can help you work more efficiently for them, ask your clients what their problems are maybe you can help or know someone that can.
• Petrol Station, (see previous Monday Ideas post on petrol stations) offer $2 speed service, free espresso with fill up, lunch packs for the kids, paper, I could go on all day with this one.
• Cable Tv, offer a bundle pack with netflix (or equivalent dvd rental service) get both and save $10/month, better deal on a second decoder, you choose movies, that is offer options of blockbuster movies and viewers can vote.

What services are you considering cutting?

How do you think they could improve under this view?

What can you do to help your customers?

(I would love to heard your responses in the comments.)

Taking Monday off for a little R & R I listened to a few podcasts, one of which was Duct Tape Marketing  Podcast talking to Seth Godin which gave me inspiration for this Monday Ideas Post.

Discussing blogging, Seth had this to say:

“Start a blog even if no one reads it, and this is what people are missing on this whole blogging thing, there are people that are saying its too late, no ones goind to read my blog, Im afraid of writing.

My argument is if you force write yourself to one cogent, intelligent thing every single day that may or may not be written by the public, it will change you, it will make you more analytical, it will make you smarter, it will make you kinder, it will make you more transparent, because you will notice things all day long looking for something to write about next, you will understand the underpinnings of systems, you will be able to see what people are afraid of, because you know your going to write about it, and its hard for me to imagine me to imagine someone who is so busy that they don’t have eight minutes everyday to get those benefits.”

Start a Blog TODAY! 

Seth describes almost definitively what I have experienced since starting this blog so I can doubly vouch for the quote.

So go ahead, start it, see what happens.  I dare you to do so and come back in 6 months and say its hasn’t been for the best.

Complaint #1 of internet marketers: my clients don’t get it.

This weeks Monday Ideas post throws half a dozen or so ideas to help them get it.

So here are some ways to help them get it whilst delivering value to them.

• Send a monthly newsletter of your 10 favourite blog posts
• Highlight your own blog posts of relevance to your customers, make them into a small ebook and send them around.
• Put together a compilation of podcasts, chuck them on an ipod and gift.
• When you come across innovation in their field, forward them on. (Tip: use google alerts to be proactive). This makes you invaluable to them.
• Forward on some of the more popular videos on YouTube. Then follow up highlighting the success of it.
• Write an email in the style of this blog post with some ideas

Go ahead teach them by showing them.

I do this all the time and not surprisingly my clients now come to me with ideas.

The Best Ideas are Free we know that.

But often in a business scenario to stimulate the idea generation we need to part with some dollars.

A few crowdsourcing sites have popped up, the idea is to tap into a large crowd to generate ideas for marketing, business and general problems.

Fantastic model.

Yet for Marketing I think its slightly overengineered and appeals to a slightly lemon market.

That is those that have the time to invest in the site may not necessarily be that savvy (exception to the rule is those that commit time to invest in it strategically).  

Typically the target market are very time poor and do not have the time or resources to invest into yet another social resource.

I think a simple email list suffices.

Create a list of interested parties, email then occaisonally with a marketing problem, provide them with a bounty.

Keep it simple.

Online video provides a plethora of opportunities for any budding entrepreneur.

You can do it for virtually no cost, build a small community and monetise through sponsorship or ideally associated products (created by yourself or others).

Some I would like to see (as I think you could blow these wide open) would be:

• Lunchtime tv – tv show released every business time at lunch.  Grab the captive office audience in front of their computers.  (Integrate with thoof.com for monetisation)
• Daily Bible Reading – Read the bible each day, break it up over the year.  Provide discussion/interpretation.  (cds, books, associated products).
• Random Webcam – Tune into a random location via web cam and discuss interesting things about the place, ie an Amazon Web Cam? Monetise via travel books.
• Programming – teach an audience how to code and explain logic behind it, let them converse one another.  Monetise via programming books / services.
• Languages – bite size language instruction, same model as programming above.
• Weight Loss – take one of these ‘systems’ and prove it, everyday with a test subject, show the audience it works.  (Sell the system).  This would be a million dollar idea.

Are you passionate about any of these? If so run with it.  Go on.  

The new year is an opportunity to start afresh.

Twitter is a great platform for conversation. 

However how could you run a marketing campaign on it?

Criteria would be:

• Remarkable content
• Idea worth spreading
• Of actual benefit to those who consume it

If you were to fulfill these, how could you spread the word?

Same as any strategy, plan, line up your chess pieces and execute.

My strategy would be around:

• Have a series of tweets, to provide background information or arouse curiousity
• A follow up tweet with the actual subject
• Stimulate discussion tweets.

Then target 5 users in your niche to engage in it, with slightly different variations of the tweets.

An example would be:

1. bwagy: checking out this cool video @bwagy sent me
2. bwagy: hilarious, check out this video from @bwagy http://blog.local
3. bwagy: what did you think? watch it here http://blog.local retweets appreciated

Of course this only works for the criteria above and with people you have solid relationships with.

It’s more of an initiative to maximise coverage of your first and second tier networks of your offering.

The next step would be to do multiple timezones within a 24 hour period to ensure global coverage.

You can then directly measure through tracking webpage visits and tweets (using search.twitter.com).

That’s what I would do if I was to try and get a message out over twitter.

This information is worth thousands to the right person so help spread it for me as its free 🙂

Update: Tweet this to share:

Running a campaign on Twitter http://tr.im/2j8k by @bwagy [make sure to add your comments when you tweet]

We now have connectivity virtually 100% integrated into our lives.

Through wifi, 3g, broadband we can connect for the most part of our day.

We have seen the rise of I want Sandy, the personal assisant bot.

However I think this is just the start, how about:

• Sending a dm / txt of each item of food you consume, then get a weekly summary or calorie intake, spikes, drops, improvements.
• Same with exercise.
• Reminder services already exist (with Sandy) but how about people assistants, ie ‘can you ring me on the 30th to remind me to do my gst return’.
• Research, can you research Jesse James and give me a 2 minute rundown of him, in time for my meeting.  (Tremendously helpful for when meeting a new company or networking)
• Share all this with your friends / family.

This would be absolutely fantastic and be of huge huge value to small groups.

Project Management, running virtual organisations, charity groups.

This would be the step between basecamp and real life.

Absolute magic! Can we do it now? Yes we can.  Just need someone to do it for us…..

(btw is this the Twitter monetisation play? Possibly).

I was after parking on Sunday in the city.

Upon entry I was presented with:

Then as we turned to go up a floor,

On the wall there was also:

And so then with a smile on my face, I went off on my business.

Returning an hour or so later, I noticed this on the lift doors:

This is so well executed, once one person in the car had seen it, everyone else checked out the next one.

Finally upon exit there was another one on the barrier arm.

Great concept, it was interesting enough to make me smile and tell others.

Now that its been done once though, it’s become disposable…. 

(but still neat huh?)

How can you take what worked here for your own campaign? can you make that into a business? maybe.

What made this work?

• Located in high traffic area
• No dilution or prior ads in this space
• Target market, everyone that sees it is in a car (which is insurable)
• Stress situation, slight stress as you drive in a parking building to not hit anyone or anything
• Reinforcement: at the lift, upon exit
• Funny, interesting, remarkable, worth commenting about

Toying around with MySpace earlier today with someone else I noticed a couple of things.

1) I instantly knew which sections of the webpage contained relevant information and focused on those areas.

2) My friend did not, they read all the text.

3) They were logged into MySpace and have been using it for a long time.

A few things ticked into place.

If you have a user, and you know how they behave on your site and you wish them to invest heavily in it, why not invest in them?

Monitor users use of the site, complete A/B testing and figure out what users ‘capabilities’ are.

Then give them a slightly different experience, experienced users get the full html view, inexperienced get the easy to use editor with instructions.

We now have the data to do this, on a huge scale, why aren’t we doing it?

So my idea is to provide this as a service, conduct usability studies, suggest segments and build around them.  Migrate users over time.

This way you can give me everyone a more personalised service.

We already do it for Marketing Campaigns (based on keywords) why not the user experience?

With a start up how do you legitimise?

What makes this concept real? how can we communicate that? how do we convince people that in all likelihood we will never meet but conduct business with?

Quotes, press releases, buzz, real physical address, photos via flickr, blogging, techcrunch mention..

All different routes.

How about a standard, a brand, voted for by the industry, like the Intel Inside brand.

A brand that reinforces legitimacy and rewards action.

Certain actions provide points, and start ups are only admitted once they have met criteria set by the community.

A brand that says we are a real business and are here for the long haul.

Now I’ll be the first to say, this isn’t for everyone, and if you are facing legimacy problems maybe there’s something bigger wrong.

However there is a real market need.

I don’t think this is quite the answer, but it’s less wrong than no answer…..

Google is a multi billion dollar company by wrapping up two inefficiencies, search and advertising.

They shifted the market from an inefficient state to a much more efficient one.

Others would be Youtube, Ebay, iTunes.

First step is to identify ‘hidden inefficiencies’, in that they exist, yet a solution hasn’t been made yet.

Then to build a business around solving it.

We all hear about ideas that are so simple but the opportunity was missed as we aren’t involved in that niche industry.

So my idea is for a business to simply spend all its time aggregating these inefficiencies and present them to entrepreneurs to solve, thus taking the information market for these from inefficient to efficient.

Imagine though, being able to have access to 1000 industry wide problems in 1000 totally different industries.

I wonder how much overlay there are between them, so you could solve many issues at once.  

(and think about how much it would improve each of these industries)

Now that would be awesome! Don’t you think?

I think we are at a tipping point.

Where all these contextual factors, tip the scales, in favour of Micro Businesses.

Kind of like Small is the New Big.

So what am I talking about? I believe the future is in micro niches, dominated by micro businesses, run by 1 or maybe 2/3 people.

It fits in with a few other trends I have noticed:

• Desire of Gen Y to ‘do what you want‘
• Bootstrapping startups
• Lower technology costs, meaning you can start a business for nothing that can scale 
• Handys Doughnut Organisation discussions (shift to project work)
• Current financial crisis forcing all businesses to remain agile.
• Slashies trend, where people hold many roles teacher by day dj at night
• 12 Hour Startup (great way to stimulate innovation)

The idea of micro businesses;

• Small businesses designed to be agile
• Garner enough income to live off but big upside potential
• People will typically have at least 1, but be involved in 3-4.