Thank you for being with us for the third month of our new blog. Although a bit late, here is a recap of our posts from April in case you missed them, beginning with, in chronological order, the latest installments in our ongoing series on getting technology to market, The Commercialization Ecosystem, which covered a great swath of topics including lean startups, cultures of risk, the right stuff entrepreneurs need to succeed and other pearls of wisdom.
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By Alexandra Reid
I see, time and time again, in professional articles and blog posts and hear in every day conversations the misuse of the terms marketing and public relations, and it annoys me.
But I admit I am not entirely innocent either. It’s really easy to mix up these two terms because they are complementary fields that share so many similarities. They are both public facing, require many of the same skill sets and share some methods of media and public engagement. However, it is important to understand that their goals and processes for reaching these goals are distinct.
Boiled down to its bare bones, the answer is quite simple. The goal of marketing is to determine the customers that a company should sell to and to devise a strategy on how to reach them. PR involves creating a purpose-driven, active dialogue with a target audience, whether it’s potential customers, employees or stakeholders, with the goal of developing visibility and a positive corporate image and reputation by relating it to its interest groups.
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By Alexandra Reid
Startup entrepreneurs have a lot on their plate already without having to decide on a fabulous name. And who cares about the name anyway? You can always change it later. Surely angel investors don’t care about it. All they care about a business model that will turn them a profit. And even if they hate the name, you can change it once you’ve received their investment to keep them happy, right?
Sure, this works, but it isn’t in your startups’ best interest. Settling on a bad name can damage your brand, jeopardize investment opportunities and discourage customer support. Author, speaker and CEO of Buyosphere, Tara Hunt, went through this rather chagrining experience last year when her company’s original name, Shwowp, was dubbed the Worst Brand Name of 2010.
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By Alexandra Reid
The Canadian startup community rang in another win this week as RIM, the maker of BlackBerry phones and the new PlayBook tablet, acquired calendar and scheduling application Tungle.me.
RIM’s move to incorporate this new tool, as a continuation of its “development by acquisition” strategy, was essential because of the criticism RIM received for releasing its PlayBook prematurely, without native email, calendar and contact applications. While there is no official word that RIM will integrate Tungle into its tablet, industry experts expect it as a necessary move to compete with Apple.
I used the tool for the first time yesterday to schedule this interview with its CEO and founder Marc Gingras. Having never met Marc before, and having never used the tool before, my first impression was that it was a rather impersonal move, so I tried him first through Twitter as a (in my view) more personable engagement before also trying him on Tungle.
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By Alexandra Reid
Earlier this week, we explained that so many startups fail because they adopt a “build it and they will come” mentality and neglect to define the market opportunity for their products. In an even earlier post, we looked at the findings of two studies into the factors that contributed to the demise of 50 startups. In both studies, issues related to market research and customer engagement ranked high among the reasons for startup failure.
As a community manager, I can’t help but draw parallels between these reasons for startup failure and the reasons they also fail at social media. I’ve seen and read about many startups that build social media accounts and then sit back and wait for their communities to build themselves. Sure, this method may work for well-established brands like Coca Cola and Disney that have developed loyal communities outside their online accounts. But for developing startups, waiting for a community to build itself is, quite frankly, wishful thinking and a waste of valuable time and opportunity.
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Thank you for being with us for the third month of our new blog. Although a bit late, here is a recap of our posts from April in case you missed them, beginning with, in chronological order, the latest installments in our ongoing series on getting technology to market, The Commercialization Ecosystem, which covered a great swath of topics including lean startups, cultures of risk, the right stuff entrepreneurs need to succeed and other pearls of wisdom.
