The Millennium Marketer

(Picture source: Women 2.0 website)

Some time ago, when I went to Girl Geeks dinner, which Angi Chang organized in January for Women 2.0. You’ll remember this from a previous post. Well, unfortunately for everyone, I got your attention and did not offer a follow up on the Girl Geeks dinner, so here’s to making up to a super ADD audience. (fingers crossed)

This is what I wanted to know:

How do you deal with fear when you know you’re about to do something huge (like start your own company)?

All the ladies had some really great answers: you just have to get over your fears, use it as motivation and go forward. Well, after a few months, I put my fear aside to get what I really wanted and pressed Leah Culver with a few extra Q&A. Leah Culver is pretty cool. While entrepreneurs can seem superhuman, Leah is real, and transparency is important in social media.

If you’re curious about her thoughts on being a young company founder, look inside. Also, as I often ask, she’s got some good advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

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Wednesdays is my usual Toastmasters meeting at Adobe. I mentioned to a few in my Twitter community this morning that I would be posting on this later and I received a nice, very intriguing, and challenging reply:

Ah…good question Elliott. First, to the contents of my speech, and then a little bit on how that is related to Elliott’s question.
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I’m placing here a laundry list of things that I’ve found at the Web 2.0 Expo as well as some interesting quotes. The most interesting thing that was said this morning was from Mitchell Baker of Mozilla in mention of internet related devices: “It’s the mental, human constraints” not the actual possibilities…we have trouble understanding metaphors for how to use the internet in the ways are more intuitive to everyone. “It shouldn’t matter what the device is and where I am, I should be able to use the information I want when I want.”

Sounds like a huge problem to solve, and some of these companies are making attempts towards “changing the metaphor” that in different ways. (more…)

In the interest of web transparency, and because this is in essence a Start-Up Blog, I should probably mention that this blog is still going through some growing pains at the moment. The characteristics of start-ups are often connected to their owners, so I will admit that the changes on this blog are probably because I’m going through a few growing pains myself.

I’ve been a writer and poet all my life and now as a marketing communications specialist/consultant, the challenge to revamp is really huge, especially in the Web 2.0 Era. The question often comes up: “How do I start a blog?” Sippey agreed with me at a SVAMA panel last year (I was an attendee to this panel) that in the end it’s about experimenting with these technologies. Of course, it definitely helps, too, to do the research and learn from other bloggers.

My decision to revamp came from the fact that I did an ego search on myself a couple of days ago. In the 90s, it used to be that if you do a Google search on yourself, it’s just a silly thing to do. Web 2.0 is a totally different ball game.

Most people will believe your Google search (or for trivia facts, usually they believe Wikipedia) rather than believe you first. So I have a LinkedIn profile, my blog and some other minor results. This is just as much as I can manage at the moment in addition to all my other projects with a number of different organizations.

In short, the Millennium Marketer is going to go through some changes, and I will post more on this process, hopefully to offer some firsthand insight into blog development.

Necessary Elements of Blogs:
1) Good graphic design that draws the eye in. See Graphic Design: A List Apart Blog
2) Clear topics and days that readers can expect to pick up that information they want and most important content towards the top. Most blog posts are scanned for an average of 1 to 3 minutes.
3) A focused, but wide enough audience (Silicon Valley, Entrepreneurship, Social Media, Marketing)
4) A clear goal as to what you want your blog to do (Share information? Create a community? A place to put your findings?)
5) Transparency with your readers about who you are and what you stand for.
6) Your own URL…I am going to transfer this blog over when I can figure out the best and easiest way to do it.

Props to the blogger who wrote this article on Business Pundit. It’s true. Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur, so it’s best to think twice. Some of the interesting points on this list are “long working hours” and “sacrificing quality time.” A lot of people think that you become an entrepreneur and you work less hours and have more time to play, but the reality is you while you do have more flexibility, you have an obligation towards yourself and your business. Check out the article and let me know what you think!

Top 15 Reasons
15. Long Working Hours
14. Sacrificing Quality Time
13. Hard Work
12. Difficulty Finding Investment
11. Uncertainty
10. Dealing With The Problem Of Inconsistent Income
9. Risk Of Failure
8. Lack Of Reward Begats Lower Motivation
7. Personality Problems
6. Finding Good Staff Is A Challenge
5. Dealing With The Possibility Of Failure
4. Working With A Tight Budget
3. Managing Cashflow Is Tricky
2. The Lack of Benefits
1. Dealing With Negative Feedback