Archive for December, 2008

Will There Be a Dot Com Bust 2.0?

The question of a potential dot com bust 2.0 has been on my mind for some time. Today you can’t throw a stone without hitting some type of new niche social network or start up SaaS. An example would be Artie Isaac’s SpeakerSite. This network recently launched and already almost 700 members who have bought into a platform to connect speakers with audiences at events. And if you’re so inclined, you can do even visit Ning and start your own niche community without too much trouble at all. Anyone can build groups on LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter. We can start blogs on any topic we choose. And what’s more? There’s enough people on the web today that you can find readers who will be interested in just about any fancy you choose to write on. All this is too cool. But I wonder – will web 2.0 come crashing down similar to the dot com bust almost a decade ago? In a conversation this week with @DanHarris, a tenured technology guru, I posed the question: So do you think we’ll see a dot com bust 2.0? Dan didn’t think so and commented that a major component in the dot com bust of the 90′s was related to a lack of infrastructure to support the boom. There simply was just not enough bandwidth to keep up the exponential growth of start web companies and the high demand drove the cost of starting up through the roof. The risk associated with failure was high and extremely costly. Today we’ve become much wiser and have more resources available at a fraction of the cost. Failure happens every day, and then new concepts are born again, and the ball keeps rolling. But Seth Godin writes an interesting perspective, warning us that the internet [...]

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Social Media Strategy: Business Development Prospecting

Over a cup of Starbucks with @heycrane this morning, we landed on the subject of discussing different methods that sales and business development gurus can employ on various forms of social media to connect with more people and subsequently, more opportunities to someday sell their stuff. Sure, not everyone sells products or services. But Just about everyone sells something – ideas, their personal brand, their knowledge and experience, etc. There are so many platforms and tactics and strategies that will help generate more relationships online. But will business transactions actually happen via social media? Probably not. That was never the intention of web 2.0 IMHO. This confusion regarding the objectives of the social media universe may be one of the reasons that a fair amount of C-level executives have trouble buying into social networking as a viable alternative to the more traditional approach of “smile and dial” cold calling. In reality, closing business happens in face to face or voice to voice interactions, not online. C-Levels who are weary of social media applications in business should consider the amount of time and resources that can be saved by having their sales force approach prospects on platforms where the prospects have “opted in” and are receptive to the messages coming their way. Older mediums, like phone and email for example, deliver messages to end users without the garnering their permission. It makes sense then that the mediums that are not in a sense permission-based, would yield lower conversion rates. You might try this Here is a snapshot of one approach I use that has allowed me to capitalize on the reach and and available data present on social platforms. Is this the only way to do it? Heck no. But does it help open doorways to relationship selling? Absolutely! Start on [...]

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