The sessions will be held on Monday (12/14), Monday (12/21), and Mondays in January from 6-7:30pm at 444 Townsend Street, Suite 3 – San Francisco, CA.

We’ll be providing everyone who participates:

• One year free subscription to the product
• A free consultation on improving your online business/marketing
• Refreshments at the sessions

Interested in participating? Fill out this form and we’ll follow up to confirm. Thanks!

Red Flags to Avoid:

• If it’s marketed as a “Networking Event,” don’t waste your time. Of course you’re going to network at the event, that’s the whole point – this is usually a sign that the event’s actual content/programming is lacking.
• Similarly, I avoid general “mixers,” unless it’s hosted by a company or individual who you know to be reputable. Knowing who’s behind the event is key – that will tell you a lot about what to expect, so do some research on the producer before deciding to go.
• Watch out for free events. You can find out about some awesome events that happen to be free, but generally I’ve found that free events are usually free for a reason – and paying for good quality events, with great speakers, presentations, attendees, and which are held at a nice venue, are usually well worth the nominal entry fee.
• If promotional materials for the event try too hard to convince you of its merit using superfluous claims (i.e. “the top global marketing gurus will be there, you can’t miss this event!!!”), it’s probably safe to say it’s not worth it.
• Location is another thing to be wary of. Good events should be close and accessible to the closest metropolitan area. For example, if there’s an entrepreneurship/startup event held somewhere in the Bay Area more than an 45-60 from San Francisco, Berkeley, or Palo Alto, something is probably amiss.

Before The Event:

• Check out the website for the event, and see if there’s an attendee list. If so, find the people you want to meet and do a quick Google/LinkedIn search on them so you know the names, faces, and a little background info. This can save you time at events so you’re not starting from scratch with every person you meet, and you can make sure you talk to the right people.
• Also do some research on the speakers and sponsors – this will help you have more knowledgeable conversations about the content of the event, and enable you to have something immediately relevant to talk about with these folks when you meet them.
• Try to contact the event organizer – request an attendee list or at least find out what kind of people will be there, clarify any other questions you might have, and if the event is promising ask if they need any help (offer relevant services that you/your company can possibly provide pro-bono). If you form a rapport with the organizer before the event, she/he will likely introduce you to other key attendees, presenters, and sponsors.
• Make sure your business cards are up to date and that you have enough to hand out.
• Know what you’re looking to accomplish, know what you’re going to say, and dress appropriately.

Credit: Harvey Nash via Flickr.com

At The Event:

• Abandon the idea that handing out as many business cards as possible is the main goal. Giving your contact info. out is key, of course, but people’s eyes glaze over if you go from person to person giving a thirty-second elevator pitch, jamming your business card in their face, and moving to the next warm body – don’t be that guy/gal. Ask what their business is about, find out what they’re looking for, and offer a connection. You should be focusing on how you can help people, because they will probably help you back and this makes networking a much less intimidating and sterile endeavor.
• Hang out near the bar – this is the place that gets the most foot traffic, and it’s usually an ideal location for mingling without having to awkwardly pace around.
• Know when to politely close a conversation if there’s obviously not much you and the other person have to discuss, and move on – at larger events, you really have to make the most of your time there, and you’ll never connect with the right people if you kill 15 minutes talking to every person you meet.
• If there’s an audience Q & A, come up with some cogent questions and points to raise for the presenters (ideally which are relevant to your business) – this will put the spotlight on you, give you the opportunity to introduce yourself to everyone, and position you as an intelligent person others will want to meet.
• When you meet really important contacts, after your conversation either jot down some notes on what you discussed (on the back of their card if possible) or do a quick audio memo on your phone – very important when you meet a ton of people, because it’s easy to forget what was discussed.

After The Event:

• Make sure you follow up with everyone you met at the event within a week (the sooner the better). For people I’ve met who I don’t see immediate opportunities to work together with on some level, I just send a brief “Nice to meet you” message as a LinkedIn invite, and offer any help I may be able to provide. You never know when that person or someone in their network will become an important contact for you.
• For contacts who you see a direct opportunity with (and the opportunity is mutual), take the time to do a bit more research on them, their company, and whatever project they’re working on. Follow up with an email or call, and ask for a meeting to discuss in more detail x, y, and z that you chatted about at the event.
• If the event was really good, write a blog post about it, and try to tie in the relevance it had for your business, products, or services. Update your LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter networks notifying them of the post, as well as the event organizer and attendees. A well written post will often get re-tweeted by attendees, and/or placed in the “Press” section of the event website.

Main post image credit: Kate Libby via Flickr.com

Developer Tools

• Web Developer Toolbar
  This toolbar sits below the bookmarks toolbar and has options for viewing different parts of a given web page’s code construction. Lets you outline elements as you hover over them and see their CSS selector, edit HTML/CSS on the fly, resize the page to a given dimension, disable images, javascript, CSS, etc. This is a must-have.
• Firebug
  This addon expands from the bottom of your browser window, and allows you to view and debug CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live on any web page, and see the changes you make instantly. There’s also Firebug Lite for testing in Explorer, Opera, and Safari =D

Design Tools

• ColorZilla
  ColorZilla is an eyedropper tool that allows you to click on any color you see in your browser, adjust the color, and paste the color code into other applications. Very helpful when you need to grab colors you see on the web to use in designs.
• ScreenGrab
  ScreenGrab is a screenshot tool that allows you to create an image from any selected area of your browser window, or the entire window you’re viewing, eliminating the need to stitch together multiple screenshots to show a whole web page.
• MeasureIt
  Very simple ruler that measures anything on the web. The icon sits on the bottom left of your window, and clicking on it brings up a tiny crosshair cursor which allows you to make a selection and then gives you the dimensions of your selection in pixels.
• IE Tab
  There are a few versions of IE Tab, but the original is still only compatible with Windows. This is a quick way to test a page in IE without having to do a full download of IE.

Generally, cross browser testing is a huge pain for all parties concerned, because of the variability involved in testing a website to ensure clean compatibility among innumerable browser and operating system configurations. Making a site IE6 compatible is every developer’s ultimate adversary, but luckily Google has released Chrome Frame to handily solve that annoying problem while IE6 market share slowly dwindles before becoming completely irrelevant in the near future.

Basic and free services like BrowserShots are a great starting point, as they cover a wide variety of different versions of web browsers and are very easy to use. This preview of Browsershots shows versions of all browsers they will test, with the most popular versions highlighted automatically.

More sophisticated testing apps are needed in most cases for larger site/applications, and Litmus is one of the best services available.  It’s free option offers fifty tests per month with tiered individual memberships and options for team memberships that are paid beyond that.  Litmus tests email formats in various email desktop and web based clients, which is a great way to test newsletter sends without having to create separate email accounts to test each client. Web page testing is more in depth in Litmus than most other options – it includes options for testing different versions of operating systems in addition to every working version of virtually any web browser.  One of the more unique things about Litmus is its bug catcher.  Litmus identifies and lists bugs alongside screenshots of a preview of your website in whatever browser/OS/version the bug is present in.

Here are a few other good tools to check out, in addition to Litmus:

• Crossbrowsertesting.com
• BrowserCam
• Browser Sandbox

No matter how big your project, it’s probably best to use a combination of the above services to cover all your website’s bases. Do you use other browser testing tools? Please comment below and share with everyone!

The internet has an overwhelmingly large selection of applications that vary in utility, cost, usability, rate of upkeep, and compatibility, and it’s cumbersome to navigate through all the options to find what’s best for you.  The sheer number of results that appear when you search for an accounting software, for example, are ridiculously mixed with few resources to show you which app is the best fit for your needs. This leads to paying for software that has a solid free counterpart, or worse using a tool that doesn’t actually meet your needs.

It is very valuable for each member of your company to use as many of the same applications as possible in order to streamline communication and avoid technical stumbling blocks. At Freshout, we tend to lean more towards Mac applications, we Firefox or Safari as our main web browsers, and as much of the Google Suite as is relevant. We use a collection of more task-specific apps as well. Here are some of the best tools we use to collaborate, communicate, and get things done:

Skitch

Skitch is a free desktop app for Mac that takes screen shots, lets you easily add notes,  and uploads/hosts them on random, unique urls which you can share in a snap. This is extremely helpful if you frequently need to explain something from a web page, application, or anything  else you see on your screen. The introduction video is very informative and answers any questions you might have about Skitch:

Jing

We also use an app called Jing, which is a Mac and PC compatible desktop application that allows you to take up to 5 minute long screencasts very easily, and upload them to the web to share via a unique url.  Once you install Jing, it subtly resides at the top center or left corner of your screen, where you can start a screencast from in a click.  The tool allows you to record your voice along with a demonstration of everything you do on your desktop. This is super useful when you need to explain a multi-step process which can’t be easily summed up in an annotated screenshot or written description. Jing’s help center has a collection of instructional videos and articles to help you get started, and you can check out their promo video on their homepage which explains the feature set in more detail.

Google Docs/Sites

For collaborative documentation, we use Google Docs and Google Sites to keep a host of different documents organized and accessible to be viewed and/or edited by multiple people.  If your company is exchanging documents back and forth, emailing notes for edits, and storing important documents on either someone’s PC or on an intranet where the files need to be downloaded in order to be viewed/edited, you’re losing a ton of valuable time and need to get on-board with Google Docs/Sites immediately. With Google Docs, you can create an unlimited number of word documents and spreadsheets which almost identically offer the same formatting tools you’re already accustomed to using with MS Word & Excel. These documents are privately stored online, however you can grant access to anyone you like and set whether they can only view the documents or have editing capabilities. Google Docs can then be easily organized into a Google Site, containing multiple docs and other information you add. Another awesome feature is that with every single edit, no matter how minute, a backup of that version is stored, and you can at any time see the full revision history of the document.

Dropbox

Google Docs is a great way to share documents, but a program like DropBox is a great tool to have to share any file or folder not covered by Docs (like audio, images, video). It installs a folder on your desktop that can be linked to all of your other computers/devices, and files/folders you drop into it are also updated and hosted on DropBox’s website on your user account.  This is a great tool for sharing iteratively changing files across a dispersed team. For a more detailed explanation and overview of features, be sure to check out DB’s tour section (https://www.dropbox.com/tour), and you can view the demo video below.  DropBox is free for storing up to two GB, and there are various price levels beyond that for a monthly subscription.

Basecamp

For more advanced and organized project management, we use a service called Basecamp, which is a great way to keep all of your company’s projects in one place. The main features of the system include milestone tracking, task management, centralized communication, and time and file management. The interface is highly customizable in terms of color and personalization, with no distracting frills, and the system on a whole is dead simple to use. It is not free, but there’s a 30-day trial period, and the minimal subscription fees are well worth it. You can see our full case study on the Basecamp product blog here.

Freshbooks

Managing invoicing/accounting has the potential to be an absolute nightmare and a real time drain, and there is plenty of horrible software on the market that will only complicate things for you. We use a great web app called FreshBooks, and it’s made our lives so much easier.  You can create and manage customer accounts, send invoices, track receivables, and generate reports, among a host of other highly useful features offered by FreshBooks.  It also has a handy iPhone app, and can integrate with other systems like SalesForce, Basecamp, PayPal, Authorize.Net, and MailChimp. FreshBooks has a free option for managing a small number of accounts, but the paid subscription accounts are well worth it if you manage a higher number of accounts.  FreshBooks’ tour (http://www.freshbooks.com/tour.php) page has in depth articles and instructional videos about every aspect of the program.

MailChimp

Hands-down, MailChimp is the best email marketing tool available. You can easily integrate MailChimp into your website for newsletter sign-ups, and some of the key features it offers are segmented lists, the ability to custom design html email campaigns, run A/B tests to see what’s most effective, and there are very detailed analytics that are presented in a clean, digestible interface. This short tour explains the value and features of MailChimp.
]]> http://freshout.us/notebook/cost-effective-tools-we-use-to-get-things-done/feed/ 0 http://freshout.us/notebook/failure-happens-prepare-wisely/ http://freshout.us/notebook/failure-happens-prepare-wisely/#comments Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:15:56 +0000 Chris Anderson http://freshout.us/?p=1076 Earlier this week I attended a great conference, FailCon, which solely focused on showcasing failure stories and advice on bouncing back from now successful web start-up founders. The likes of Max Levchin (co-founder of PayPal; founder and CEO of Slide),  Phil Libin (CEO of Evernote), Seth Sternberg (co-founder and CEO of Meebo), and several other great speakers each told stories of past failures, and how they were able to take from failure the seed of a future success.

This got me thinking about the plethora of silicon valley start-ups that eventually run out of cash and sink in the deadpool. What’s most striking to me about web start-up failures is not so much the volume of them, but the sheer amount of time and money that goes down the drain, when it doesn’t necessarily have to. Too many entrepreneurs are overly certain of the success potential for their new product or service, without seeing viable market data justifying that belief. They draft the business plan, assemble the initial team, secure funding, and start blowing through money before eventually getting the alpha or beta version of the product in front of real, live customers. Way more often than not, they continue injecting capital until there’s none left, and without a revenue-generating business model, they fail.

Several investors and entrepreneurs I’ve spoken to espouse a philosophy that sharply contrasts this approach – build a quick and dirty alpha version on the cheap, get it in front of users, gather user data, and assess the success potential at this point to determine whether or not to continue pursuing the venture with additional funding. The typical target budget for the “Quick & Dirty” approach for the beta build-out is $25-50k. Although I believe this approach has some merit depending on the complexity of the product and available technical resources, it has a lot of pitfalls assuming the venture grows wings. I think there’s a much better middle ground strategy between “Spend Crazy” and “Quick & Dirty” – “Sound & Simple”.

The main problem with Quick & Dirty is that you’ll typically rush through building an alpha version using inexpensive design and development resources (which generally brings myriad technical and project management setbacks), without establishing a stable system architecture that can seamlessly enable future expansion, assuming the market data yields justifiable evidence to forge ahead with the venture. This can often mean having to scrap the alpha version to rebuild from scratch, in turn defeating the cost-saving purpose behind Quick & Dirty. The other problem with this approach is that it’s difficult to gather good, reliable user feedback if the representation of the product is shoddy in design and/functionality (the latter having much greater importance).

With Sound & Simple, the main idea is that you strip away all of the ancillary and superfluous features and functionality to just the core, fundamental feature set, but still build a sound architecture whereby all of the “wish list” features can be integrated later on without having to do excessive code re-factoring. The key here is careful technical development planning, and leveraging the best and most mature open source technologies available. Planning a logical, extensible, and scalable technical system architecture early on to accommodate the core feature set, as well as account for the “wish list” features, will add cost to the Quick & Dirty approach, but its value will pay for itself multiple times over and save everyone lots of time in the long run. Also important to Sound & Simple is creating a simple, yet elegant, UI experience without going over the top, allowing users to evaluate the product on its functional capabilities primarily, without stumbling over usability issues.

The fact is you’ll never know if your product will fly until it’s out in the wild in front of real live users, and the risk for failure exists no matter what. But for prudent entrepreneurs who’ve done their own due diligence and feel strongly about their product concept, the Sound & Simple route is the way to go.

Photo courtesy of Chris Daniel

Here are a few of the best management tools available at the moment:

Tweetie (Mac desktop and iPhone)

If you’re a Mac user and only need to use Twitter for the basics, Tweetie offers a solid desktop and iPhone app. Here’s a summary of its main features:

Seesmic (Mac & PC desktop and web-based)

Seesmic’s desktop client was built with Adobe AIR, so as long as you’re comfortable with first installing AIR, this is a great tool for updating your Twitter and Facebook accounts (there’s also a web-based version, but the desktop version is recommended). Here’s what Seesmic has to offer:

Tweetdeck (Mac & PC desktop and web-based)

Very solid desktop client which allows you to update multiple Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace accounts. The feature set is mainly centered around Twitter’s capabilities, so if you mainly use Twitter but also need to stay on top of your presence on Facebook and/or Myspace, this is a good solution. I didn’t think the Tweetdeck explainer videos were that great, but here’s a screenshot of the interface (click for info. on the feature set):

Click image above for more info.

Digsby (PC desktop)

My main beef with Digsby is that it’s not available for Mac or Linux yet (coming soon), but if you’re a PC user this is definitely a solid, very comprehensive solution. In addition to managing your social media accounts, you can also manage chat and email using Digsby. Check out more info. on Digsby here:

Hootsuite (web-based)

This is definitely one of the best Twitter clients for business use, which also allows you to update Facebook and multiple other accounts via integration with Ping.fm (a great social media management tool unto itself, by the way). With a very feature-rich interface, it’s more ideal for advanced Twitter users – there are a lot of simpler tools available for more casual users who only need to perform the basic functionality (sending and reading tweets). Here are some of the coolest features:

Do you use a different service not listed above? Let me know and tell why you think it rocks!

Community managers can go a long way, but when your community reaches a tipping point it becomes difficult to effectively stay involved in all of the conversations to make sure they’re remaining relevant and progressive. It’s easy for controversial discussions to devolve into shallow mud-slinging, which in turn can leave your more timid users feeling voiceless and disinterested in contributing.

(cc) Kenneth Yeung - www.thelettertwo.com

Here are some tips to attract and incentivize influencers:

1. Reach Out

   Find the leading thinkers that are relevant to your community, and contact them to invite them to join in the discussions. Tell them their input would be greatly valued, and offer them ways that you can return the favor – it will be worth it.

2. Reputation Points

   Offer an easy way that users can rank other user’s posts or comments. A simple point-rating system or “like”/”dislike” feature would do, but getting creative would definitely be best. Once users acquire a certain amount of recognition, they should be automatically promoted to a higher tier where their status as a preferred user is visually communicated – this will signal to the community who the influencers are, and give your best users something to pique their interest and boost their ego.

3. Offer Offline Appreciation

   If possible, treat your influencers to exclusive opportunities that can take place offline. Maybe it’s a weekend get-away where you demo a new version of the website, and include networking events over cocktails and music. Maybe it’s as simple as a complimentary movie night, where you buy your influencers tickets to the opening night of a new film. Whatever it is, find creative ways to reward the people who are the engines of content and discussion on your community.

I was prompted to write this post after attending an awesome event called Lunch for Good last week, which was hosted by Lunch.com (see clip of what I shared below). A diverse group of folks gathered over lunch, who were in some way active in web 2.0/social media, to discuss ways to increase critical thinking among various online social communities (i.e. blog commenting, social sharing communities, forums, Twitter, Facebook, etc.). Lots of great ideas were generated and discussed, and I’d love to hear your feedback on my opinions here – do you agree, disagree, or have anything to add? Thanks!

Chris Anderson – Lunch For Good #2: Sparking Critical Thought from Lunch For Good on Vimeo.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/viggum/

Snap! is an interactive photo lounge that will transform customers’ shopping experience for any number of different retailers, although it’s most fitting (no pun intended) for apparel companies. The best way to explain the concept is through a hypothetical example.

Imagine Jane. Jane is shopping at Old Navy, and heads off to the fitting room. Jane puts on the cutest new ensemble, and emerges from the fitting room into the Old Navy Snap! lounge. Jane signs in with her friend and starts taking pictures – they have a blast! Jane can print the photos, and shares them by uploading them directly to her personal online closet – a gallery where she can add the photos to Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, and any other social network she uses. Jane can also post the photos to OldNavy.com, and when she gets home she receives an e-mailed link to the product galleries, showing her photos and those of shoppers around the world who used Old Navy Snap! sporting the same digs. Jane sends her photos to friends and family, and notices a coupon on the back of the printed photo strip offering a discount on her next purchase. She returns to Old Navy the following weekend, this time bringing Molly and Becka along for the fun.

Snap! will expand the intimacy of the physical shopping experience and leverage the power of social media. Customers and their vast networks of family and friends can view and purchase items directly, without hesitation or confusion. Purchases can be made from the social networking sites, or from your website. Snap! will also let you analyze trends, providing insight into what products customers are trying on, which ones they’re buying, which clothes shoppers are matching for outfits, and even help identify potential models.

Like the idea and think it could work well at your retail locations? Give us a call so we can discuss – we’d love to execute this project with you! SF Office: 415-669-4306

1. Sponsored Areas

   Unlike one-way advertising, sponsorships can be established to have real live people from sponsoring companies directly engage with users through discussions about the company’s products and/or services, as well as broader discussions about the industry or effected audiences. This is assuming direct participation from company reps. is normally discouraged through the sites terms and conditions and community managers.

   For example, let’s say you have a community of environmental activists with content covering all things “green”. Naturally, there will be plenty of discussions on the merit of green products and services, and the companies behind them. Within the “Green Living” section, you can open sponsorship opportunities to the likes of Home Depot, Lowe’s, and other companies vying for greater market share within this niche segment. This way, sponsoring companies can have a genuine personal voice and ear in the conversations, rather than just a lifeless banner ad that gets ignored. Each sponsored profile can be distinguished with a slightly different design, and inclusion of the sponsoring company’s logo by the person’s avatar – in the interest of full disclosure to the community, and as a sponsorship benefit. This will open up direct communication between your users and the companies, products, and services their discussing; provide advertisers a more meaningful and impactful way of engaging with your audience; and most importantly open a new stream of revenue.

2. Product Feedback Data

   Imagine how valuable it would be to aggregate all of the discussions about companies, products, and services within your community, and use this data to develop customized reports for companies seeking exactly this kind of direct market insight? For example, let’s say Proctor and Gamble products are regularly discussed by users. On a quarterly basis, you can generate a report that organizes all of the community’s feedback about P&G and its products, anonymously of course, as well as all of the information gathered on its key competitors. Now, to do this correctly and efficiently, you’ll need the help from your development team to quickly parse all of the data and generate clean reports, but this cost would be nominal compared to the revenue generated from licensing fees.

3. Market Research Reports

   The same general concept of gathering user feedback and licensing the anonymous content can also become a service for market research firms and trade organizations. The only difference would be the regular inclusion of polls to gain feedback on specific topics of interest from your community. On a periodic basis you can extract all of the results from your polling data and generate customized market research reports for your various clients. The important element here is to provide the right incentives to your community to participate in polls, so as to offer a broad swath of results within your reports. What better incentives than free give-aways or discounts from your sponsors (which can also serve as an additional sponsorship benefit) – win-win!

The key to making any of these initiatives successful is building a large community of influential consumers; organically guiding the conversations towards topics that center around the companies, products, services, and industry trends of interest to your target clients; determining the right balance between publicly available content and private content only accessible to community members; streamlining these new systems through smart development modifications to your community site; and most importantly always maintaining 100% authenticity and transparency, and catalyzing content that’s valuable to your number one stakeholders – the community itself.

Attribution: These ideas were influenced by “The Social Networking Business Plan” by David Silver, a recommended read indeed!