Posted by Tom Blue on January 29, 2009 under Companies, Marketing, Uncategorized | 
BuzzGain is a cool a new service that just launched. The site was founded by Brian Solis who is one of the most well known PR guys in Silicon Valley so I wasn’t surprised to see a TechCrunch post. On first glance it looks quite nice…
BuzzGain allows you to do a few different things. First it allows you to track who is talking about you or your company across the web. It gives you a screen that shows who has mentioned your keyword in their blog, micro-blog (aka twitter etc), and via news sites. Second, in the Learn tab, you are able to learn about which popular blogs are mentioning certain keywords. That way you know to follow them. Finally, there is a metrics option to notice your growth or decline. I like that is so easy to use, but it does need some enhancements. For example, I would like to search for the phrase “Tom Blue” but it doesn’t allow you to do phrases.
I believe this site does have potential, but if I were Brian I would keep the service free for quite awhile. He should know the marketing value of keeping things free.
Posted by Tom Blue on January 26, 2009 under Uncategorized |
What do you do?
Direct Marketing Agency – direct mail printing and mailing, mailing lists, imprinted promotional items.
2. Who are your competitors?
Ad agencies, Direct mail printers, promotional products companies
3. What makes you different than your competitors?
Experience in all channels of direct marketing vs. just one channel
4. What are your or your ceo’s biggest challenges?
Finding time to prospect for new business while maintaining the level of attention we promise our current customers.5. What does your founder spend his/her days doing?
Talking to customers and trying to talk to prospects.
6. How long have you been in business?
10 Months
7. How many employees do you have?
2 Total (myself and other founder)
8. What are your revenue estimates for 2009?
We are projecting gross revenue of $450K this year.
9. Are you profitable?
Yes
10. When were you founded?
April 2008
Posted by Tom Blue on January 22, 2009 under Marketing |
There is a story on Mashable about how Monty Python has been able to drastically increase their dvd sales by providing free clips on YouTube. I think this concept works out very well if you give just part of your information, but not all. We, Lead411, have been using this same strategy with our information. The band, the Grateful Dead, did this for ages. They allowed people to tape their shows which ended up increasing the awareness of the band and its music. John Perry Barlow, a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, wrote an article about this concept in Wired over 10 years ago.
I do agree conceptually that it would be nice if information were “not possessed” as Barlow mentions, but I don’t know if that is possible or fair. Just because I feel that information should be free does not mean that the creators feel their information should be free. And I don’t believe I am in a place to tell them it shouldn’t be.
Posted by Tom Blue on January 21, 2009 under Uncategorized |
I read about OneSeason on TechCrunch. They have gotten $3.5M in funding from Charles River Ventures. I don’t understand this investment. It seems like they are just throwing money down the toilet. The idea is fine, but do they really expect the government to assume this is legal because it is loosely linked to fantasy sports? That is highly optimistic. I went on the site to check it out for educational purposes. The site appeared extremely slow and not very intuitive. I wouldn’t use the site even if it was legal…. Hats off for getting funding though!
Posted by Tom Blue on January 16, 2009 under Uncategorized |
There are multiple sites that have sprung up in which you can find friends, etc on twitter…
http://twitterholic.com – This is a list of the most followed tweeple.
http://www.twellow.com – This is my favorite site out of the list. It is a directory. People are sorted by group and categories. I believe if you haven’t joined, they automatically put you in categories from your twitter interests. If you join you can choose the categories you like.
http://www.chrisfinke.com/twitslikeme – This one didn’t work well. I have no idea how it finds people. It says it is based on your interests, but i found no one interesting to me!
http://www.twitterlocal.net – Like it says. Find the twitter people close to you. This is a great app. You can see who is tweeting right near you. I put in Manhattan, NY as well as the East Village…
http://mrtweet.net – Mr Tweet is cool as well. After you start following him he suggests people that you should follow. I believe it just comes from the people you are following. If they follow someone then they are suggesting you might want to as well.
http://twitter.grader.com/search – Search by keyword. They also have something on there that has a Grade for each Twerson based on their own criteria. The search by city worked well on this site as well. I have to say that I like the UI on this site better than the rest of the sites.
