Internet Tech Boston

Tech Innovation is New England’s Greatest Resource

September 26th, 2009 No Comments

As chronicled by local author & columnist Scott Kirsner, New England’s Innovation Economy attracts some of the best technology companies, most succesful venture capitalists, and smartest technology workers in the nation. I’m lucky enough to have been born, raised, and schooled here, and my professional career has been shaped by almost exclusively by some of the greatest, forward thinking minds in the nation. Yeah – I’ve got hometown pride. Don’t even get me started on the Red Sox.

One of the natural by products of having all these smart, innovative, hard working people within close proximity is that there are a lot of great, recurring meetups and events to go to, meet foks, grab mindshare, and make connections. To attempt to enumerate a complete list here would be doing a disservice, as they are too many and varied by subject matter and topic. I’ll leave that to the good folks at Boston TweetUp who do their best to keep us all up to date with all the tech networking events around town. But, organizations like MITX, Mass Innovation Nights, and especially Web Innovator’s Group routinely impress me with caliber of events they host at no or next-to-nothing cost to me.

This Tuesday, September 29th, WebInno23 will kick off with a slate of 3 main dish presentations by local Tech companies, as well as a gallery of 6 companies demo’ing their technology throughout the evening. As an extra special added bonus, Mike Troiano will lead a breakout discussion titled “An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Bootstrapping PR” with local talent including Scott Kirsner. I’ve had the pleasure of being able to speak one on one with both Mike and Scott to learn about their thoughts on technology marketing, social media, and engagement in the online world. I know from personal experience that this will be one great breakout session in an already impressive event.

If you haven’t already done so, take a moment to register for WebInno23. For those attending the event, drop me a note on Twitter now, and I’ll be sure to introduce myself this Tuesday.

Also, be sure to checkout videos and my feedback on past WebInno events.

Watch Some Video of PCB4

August 14th, 2009 No Comments

Pod Camp Boston 4 Unconference

Last Saturday I attended Pod Camp Boston 4 in the Campus Center of UMass Boston – a great facility to have an unconference like PCB4. There were many folks there that I have grown to know and respect in the local social media and online technology community and it was great to catch up with them. I was also fortunate enough to be part of a panel discussion with Steve Garfield, Bob Collins, Skip Bensley, and Joselin Mane titled “Web Video: Where is it going and where will it end.”

I went to PCB4 armed with my FlipCam Ultra HD video recorder and captured some video of a couple of the sessions I attended, as well as the entire session on Online Video.

Enjoy!

Oops! We tried to show you a video, but something went wrong. Please make sure you have the latest version of Adobe Flash installed, and are viewing this in a Flash-enabled browser.

Want more? Well, being a session on Online Video, there were plenty of video cameras. Here’s some video of the presenters doing their thing. Or, if you’d like some quiet time, below are the slides from our presentation as well.

View more presentations from Skip Bensley.

FB and FF – The AOL/Time Warner of Web 2.0?

August 10th, 2009 No Comments

As I sit here and watch the breaking news of Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed light up the Twitter-verse, a thought occurs to me. Facebook is the epitome of the Web 2.0 world – having grown from the brainchild of a college dropout to one of the largest online communities on the internet. You know you’re not just a cool web startup when you’re interviewed for 60 Minutes. FriendFeed has not had nearly as much media focus as Facebook or other social media darlings like Twitter and LinkedIn, but with the all-knowing, yet hard to define super-powers of the “ex-Google” founders, it’s had more than its fair share of media attention. Robert Scoble, I’m looking in your direction.

Here’s a news flash – these companies don’t really make any money. While the terms of the deal have not yet fully been disclosed (or even made official), I wonder if this is worth it. When two companies making no profit merge, they must be doing it for the hope of a future realization of revenue and profit. In other words, there are “synergies” here. Sounds a lot like the fateful merger of the Web 1.0 media giants – AOL and Time Warner. We all know how that ended up.

I don’t have enough knowledge or experience to be able to effectively (or even professionally) compare these 2 blockbuster deals. But, what I know about the first one is this. The merger of AOL/Time Warner marked the end of the Dot Com / Web 1.0 hype. It was all down hill after that. Many people have been discussing and speculating that Web 2.0 is already jumped the shark, and that we’re now in Web 2.5 or even approaching Web 3.0 – The Semantic Web. There’s a big part of me that thinks all this talk about Web 2.5 is just a fancy way of hitting the snooze alarm and prolonging the inevitable. Maybe we’ll look back at this latest big time merger and see it also marked the end of an era.

Then again, maybe not. What do you think? Please leave a comment below.

Time to Think Sales 2.0

August 5th, 2009 4 Comments

The founder of Hubspot, Dharmesh Shah, recently wrote a blog post about hiring a startup sales team. Dharmesh is a really smart guy, and Hubspot’s success is well chronicled. His contributions to the local internet technology and startup culture through activities like his blog are invaluable.

But, as I read his top tips for building startup sales teams, I saw descriptions of marketing folks, project managers, consultants, and tech-type folks – but no sales people in there. At least, not the type of sales people that you and I know. You remember those guys – they have big titles and big smiles. They don’t work very well as a team. They don’t really understand your product very well. All they care about is . . themselves. Up until recently, a company’s sales team was comprised almost exclusively with these alpha-male-hunters. The bad ones used pressure tactics and fast talking to trick customers in buying stuff they didn’t want, and promised them things your product couldn’t do. The good ones were characterized by such descriptors as “Well, he’s an arrogant jerk that couldn’t care less about anyone but himself, but he at least he’s selling a lot of the right product.”

Let’s face it – selling is something you do to someone else. You sell a person in the same way you invade a country or drive to the hoop. Your success in these endeavors is almost 100% predicated on how bad you want it. And what do the recipients of all these actions do in return? They put up their best defenses to keep you out. Only the fastest, strongest, and smartest are successful.

But these days, buyers are in control. They weren’t found by the sales team in a phone list. They found your company through a web search. They didn’t listen to your sales team’s pitch about how great your product is. They watched your webinars and read your whitepapers and educated themselves. Your sales team didn’t sell them. They purchased you. These are all hallmarks of what is now being referred to as Sales 2.0.

Still out playing the Sales 1.0 game with a core cadre of sales heroes? You’ll probably find that it’s getting harder and harder to be successful, even if you have an All-Star lineup. It just may be that you’re playing the wrong game now.

Hashtags need to be short, unique, descriptive

July 31st, 2009 No Comments

Here’s another great post that came out of an email conversation. This one was between myself and Mike Lewis, VP Marketing at Awareness, social media guru, and all around great guy.

We were discussing the creation of a hashtag. For those of you who may not be familiar, a hashtag is a simple way to classify information posted on the internet. The reason why this is done, according to Wikipedia, is that “Labeling and tagging are carried out to perform functions such as aiding in classification, marking ownership, noting boundaries, and indicating identity.” They’re most commonly used on Twitter, because there’s no other way to group tweets from different people together. As with anything that involves Twitter, it’s pretty simple. You simply put a pound sign (#) in front of a word, and you have searchable hashtag. No brainer, right?

Well, at the risk of overcomplicating it, I think there might actually be a real formula for making a good hashtag. Your hashtag should be:

Unique. The purpose of a hashtag is so that people can search for, and find additionally content, related to your topic or event. When people search for your hash tag, you don’t want to get mixed up in other people’s content. Good: #dowant – Simply, stuff that people would want. Has taken off as a little meme of it’s own. Bad: #ims. All due respect to Chris Brogan and the team leading the Inbound Marketing Summit, but #ims content is usually about Indy Motor Sports.
Short. Hashtags are used all over the internet – from blogs like Wordpress, to picture sharing sites like Flickr, to video sharing sites like YouTube, to file sharing sites like Slideshare. But, they are used most heavily on Twitter. We’ve only got 140 characters to play with on Twitter, so we don’t want a huge hashtag. It will prevent people from being able to effectively Retweet your content. Or, they’ll Retweet your content and just drop out your hashtag to save room. Good: #nyt – everyone knows the New York Times. Bad: #p2/liberal/progressive – It’s a hashtag, not a map to a directory on your computer, folks.
Descriptive. It’s gotta make some sense that the hashtag describes the type of content or event or location that you’re writing/tweeting/shooting video of. That way, you can actually work it into the content of your post, rather than just appending it to the end of your tweet like a footnote. Good: #followfriday – On Friday, people share the names of people worth following. Bad: #073109 – huh?

In conclusion, before you settle on a hashtag that may have to live with for awhile, do some simple searches on Google or on Twitter’s Search page, to see what other content is out there, and do some tests in a Twitter client to see much your tweets will have to be shortened, in order to include the hashtag. You’ll be glad you did. You may also want to check out hashtags.org – the definitive directory of hashtags.

What about you? Share your Good and Bad examples of hashtags in the comments!

Web Innovator’s Group 22 Video

July 29th, 2009 No Comments

For those who follow the local, Boston Interent Technology scene, there is no better place to network, learn about upcoming pre-funded ventures, and meet really smart people than the Web Innovator’s Group. If you haven’t been to one of the quarterly gatherings yet, you definitely should put it on your list. Unfortunately for me, the summer event fell smack dab in the middle of my vacation week. As much as I like Web Inno (and I really do), I was hard pressed to leave the sun, sand, and surf of Cape Cod and venture up to Cambridge. Luckily, my colleagues at PermissionTV were there recorded the entire night’s events. Enjoy!

Unable to load video player. This is likely because the player is outside a Flash-enabled browser or the necessary version of Flash is not installed.

Boston-area Startup Marketing Meetup – Recap

July 23rd, 2009 2 Comments

Last night I ventured out to the Boston-area Startup Marketing Meetup organized by Nathan Burke and hosted by the folks at Aprigo in Waltham. I gave a 15 minute talk on the subject of using video to strengthen your online marketing efforts. There were about 15 or so people from the local startup community – some folks looking for work, some looking for marketing ideas (like me), and some brave souls starting their company of 1 and needing some moral support. In other words – it was a great crowd with people who could really share their unique perspectives and help each other out.

Phillip Zannini

I particularly enjoyed listening to Phillip Zannini talk about his experiences and “lessons learned” from his time working at 2 startups that he either founded or co-founded. Phillip gave some good, honest, and actionable advice that may seem simple, but if not followed can lead to really disastrous results. For example, he advised that co-founders should form a team of complementary but different skill sets. By nature, entrepenuers and co-founders are hands-on. If the members of your startup team have similar skills, it will result in everyone trying to do everyone else’s job – not good in the already-hectic culture of a startup.

If you’re interested in learning more about my talk, I’ve posted my presentation slides below. Also, be on the lookout for Nathan’s video recording of both presentations on his blog.

Use video to strengthen online marketing

View more presentations from permissiontv.

Has this ever happened to you?

July 22nd, 2009 1 Comment

As one of two marketing professionals in a startup video marketing company I am responsible for producing a lot of video, and for helping other digital marketing professionals understand and see why video is the preferred way to educate, engage, and drive conversions on your site. There’s no doubt about it – video marketing is becoming a very hot topic. New tools arrive almost every day that make it easier and easier for non-video professionals (like me) to do it.

As with any new trend or marketing tactic, there is some trepidation to getting started. When I’m talking to someone who is interested in starting a video marketing strategy for the first time, the conversation invariably turns to the question, “Yeah, but how do I get a video to go viral on YouTube?” Every profession has that one or two questions that just keep coming up over and over and you have to understand the impetus behind it, and address it with care and respect. This is just one of the common misconceptions that is specific to my industry – online video marketing is all about creating whacky videos for mass distribution on YouTube. After explaining that there is no set formula for viral videos, and that as a B2B Marketer you probably don’t even need one anyway, for a few hundred times, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I asked the supremely creative team at PermissionTV to answer this question once and for all – How do we do YouTube? Here is their reply. Sometimes, it’s just best to give people what they think they want – or is it?

Oops! We tried to show you a video, but something went wrong. Please make sure you have the latest version of Adobe Flash installed, and are viewing this in a Flash-enabled browser.

There are no more websites – just content

July 20th, 2009 5 Comments

I saw this great website today that wasn’t even a website. Instead of creating the standard company website that we’ve all grown to know and love, the agency BooneOakley created their entire website out of a series of connected YouTube videos. Check it out:

This is a pretty ingenious idea that’s more than just an agency gimmick. With over 78 million unique visitors in June of 09, YouTube gets a ton of traffic. There’s plenty of eyeballs there. The content stands on it’s own, but being video you also get the added benefit of not just sight, but sound and motion too.

I’ve seen other approaches like this. Boston area agency Modernista once redesigned their entire website to be a series of Delicious links. Now’s it a collection of links to content sites like Flickr, Wikipedia, and social media sites like Facebook. A small frame-like overlay instructs you:

Do not be alarmed.
You are viewing Modernista! through the eyes of the Web.
The menu on the left is our homepage. The blog is ours. Everything else is beyond our control.

At the end of the day, people are visiting your company or product website to get information – pure and simple. Who says your company or product website needs to be hand-crafted, self-hosted, unique combination of art, utility, and technology? As digital marketers, we should be focused, instead, on creating the content that visitors find useful and create conversion paths that engage visitors and get them to raise their hand in interest.

Tell me what YOU think. Leave a comment below – will the traditional online home evolve into a situation where there are no more websites – just content?