An exciting new series of educational events is launching across the country in October and November. Kirtsy has joined forces with Microsoft Office Live to offer five Hands On Small Business (#HOSB) sessions to cites throughout the US and Canada, including here in Atlanta.
These sessions promise to be very “Hands On” and interactive. They are designed to offer practical advice, direct instruction, and application tips to help small businesses and entrepreneurs effectively use online and social media solutions. The events will be held at ATDC in midtown with Tessa Horehled as the facilitator. The sessions are free and open to the public. You can sign up for one of the Atlanta sessions here.
ATDC is looking forward to hosting the Hands On sessions.
Savannah ATDC member CommerceV3 (former Color Maria) announced last week that it will merge with Timberline Interactive located in Middlebury, VT. The combined company will unite a proven online store platform with a vast array of e-commerce marketing services. CommerceV3 is an on-demand e-commerce solution for creating and growing web storefronts and has been a member of the ATDC since 2004. Timberline is a web marketing service provider who customizes solutions for direct marketing companies and online retailers. The merger of these two companies creates a powerhouse of web marketing and online business opportunities.
CommerceV3 president Nathan Focht recognizes this as a new and unique opportunity for merchants. “The CV3 platform has always had a strong feature set to help customers grow their sales, but this merger puts us ahead of the curve. The team at Timberline is masters at tuning web stores for maximum growth. They have a huge playbook for making money online”.
“Our team was already working in the CommerceV3 environment to grow orders and sales for many of our clients,” says Bud Reed, founder of Timberline. “In many ways this merger was driven by our focus on the customers. It gives them even more technology options and streamlines website launch and development process”. Reed, who launched Timberline Interactive ten years ago, is retiring from day-today operational duties but will continue in an advisory role to provide strategic direction for the combined companies. Be on the look-out for further development of the new company.
As I head off to watch the finals of the GRA/TAG Business Launch 2009 this morning I wanted to share with you the tactics that Balaya used to be the leading vote getter in the People’s Choice Contest, and boy did they earn it. Balaya’s win was no accident, but a well thought out social media marketing plan. The tactics employed by Balaya are transferable to many different social media marketing situations and Seth Michalak was kind enough to share them.
- The customized TinyURL tinyurl.com/vote-for-number-16 was created as a reference URL to be used in many of their tactics. Nice.
- Using the Balaya blog they pointed out the contest not once, but twice and asked people to not only vote for them but to pass the message among friends.
- Through use of the multiple Twitter accounts members of the Balaya team regularly posted the TinyURL link to the voting page and encouraged individuals to vote and re-tweet.
- They sent an email to a large list of individuals who have supported Balaya, asking for their votes, as well as asking them to pass the info along to their address books. Many people did so. One individual passed the email to 300 people, another did an additional 150 and many who sent it to about 50 more people.
- Balaya did a lot on Facebook . Using status messages, members of the Balaya team posted the TinyURL and asked individuals to vote. They had many friends and supporters who followed suit, and used status messages to do the same. Balaya had a great supporter create a Facebook event group for the competition. Invites to this group probably exceeded 1,000 total users during the duration of the competition. You can see an image of the Facebook page below.
- Members of the Balaya team also used the “What are you working on?” field on LinkedIn to promote the TinyURL and encourage voting.
- Messages about the competition and the TinyURL were posted to many groups using Balaya’s primary product, tick-it, a desktop ticker style communication tool.
- Balaya posted a description of the competition and a link on their website.
- Balaya enlisted ‘The Creative Coast Alliance,’ an arm of the Savannah Economic Development Authority, to include a request for votes and a link to the contest in their monthly e-newsletter that is delivered to a large mailing list in the Savannah area.
- And finally good old world networking. Balaya asked people to vote in the different offices they were in and around during the course of the competition.
It’s a long list, but no one ever said this social media marketing stuff was easy. But hopefully, some of the tactics that Balaya used to win the People’s Choice Contest can be used by many startups to help grow their business down the road.
On Wednesday October 22, 2008 at 11:45 ATDC will resume its BrownBag series and for the first time we are systematically opening up this program to startups and entrepreneurs that are not a part of ATDC’s incubator program. For a little background, the BrownBag Series is designed to provide tangible educational
programming of interest to technology startups. These programs are led by subject matter
experts and cover early stage business topics that range from marketing,
sales and operations, to fund raising, hiring, legal and management.
We are kicking off the new format with a bang. The topic is "Establish, Enhance, & Grow your Web Presence." It is being presented by a trio of marketing mavens who will each offer a unique perspective on how to effectively improve the Web presence of your startup. Erika Jolly Brookes, VP of Marketing at EarthLink, Toby Bloomberg the self proclaimed Marketing Diva and head of Bloomberg Marketing, and Stacy Williams of Prominent Placement are all scheduled to present. It should be a good show.
It is free to attend and lunch will be provided to those that register.
Clearly articulating what your company does and why it is unique is a requirement for any successful startup company. One tool to achieve this objective is a positioning statement.
A positioning statement is a short claim that defines the benefits you offer to your customers while expressing the essence of your business in a way that is clear, concise, and compelling. It is an important instrument that helps you with your market placement and leads to:
- A strong differentiator between you and your competitors
- Consistent communication of your message
- Increased effectiveness of your fundraising, marketing, product development, and sales efforts
PeachSeedz recently opened a library which contains documents and templates of interest to startups. The Best Practices: Positioning Statement document can help you create a positioning statement for your company. You and your team can use this simple tool to guide you through the creative process and ensure a strong, effective message.
The last two days at the Omni Hotel in Downtown brought the who’s who of the wireless world to Atlanta. And, by who’s who, I mean a serious gathering of real global players at a conference that combined both big names and depth to an agenda.
Hosted by the GSM Association, this conference was the first of it’s kind in the America’s. The other two events organized by this group are in Barcelona and Mcau. The agenda included a plethora of executives from the likes of Yahoo!, MSFT, etc., to leading VC’s, to innovative start-ups (most having raised close to $100m or more in funding) and the largest global carriers on the planet.
These two days alone highlight the volume of activity in the mobile space and where the industry players see things moving. All this, in addition to some specific opportunities that lay ahead.
It’s a great thing for Atlanta to have this event in addition to having the GSMA’s US HQ right in our backyard.
Emcien has been recognized as one of Gartner’s Cool Vendors in SCM and ERP for 2008. According to Gartner Emcien is cool because "Optimization is no longer just being used for transportation, inventory and production planning; it can also be used in innovative ways, such as determining the best mix of options an enterprise should offer for a configured product."
Emcien’s innovation originated when Dr. Roy Marsten, leading computational optimization expert, solved a tough problem for a leading auto manufacturer when a professor at Georgia Tech in the 1990s. Emcien was founded a decade later in 2002. Today Emcien is dedicated to solving complexity problems in the discrete
manufacturing industry. Towards this end they offer a unique software solution to help leading manufacturing companies deal with unrelenting pressure to reduce costs in their manufacturing and supply chain operations, that yields significant bottom line savings to clients while giving them a competitive advantage with customers.
Radhika Subramanian and Dr. Marsten will also be honored when Emcien graduates from ATDC this Thursday during our Entrepreneurs Showcase. Please join us if you can.
Most investors don’t want to read a business plan. They want to read your executive summary to quickly determine if they want to learn more about your business. Your executive summary is the first (and sometimes only) thing seen by investors, advisors or others.
It’s important that your summary creates the right first impression. Garage Technology Ventures has written a how-to on creating a compelling executive summary (download the PDF here). The article covers the key components of a good summary:
- The Grab
- The Problem
- The Solution
- The Opportunity
- Your Competitive Advantage
- The Model
- The Team
- The Promise
- The Ask
Social media consultant Josh Hallett recently spoke at an ATDC brown bag lunch on awareness, discoverability, and approachability using social tools on the Internet. Here’s the video of the event:
ATDC has a little speaker series on a variety of subjects that are of interest every week on Wednesdays during lunch that we call "Brown bags". Typically anywhere from 10 to 35 people attend.
Next week Josh Hallett of Hyku is coming in to discuss how social media is changing the way people communicate, consume media, and interact with businesses. He is going to be providing an overview of the current social media landscape: blogs, podcasts, wikis, and then address how companies can effectively reach out to online communities by creating and implementing an engagement strategy.
Key takeaways from the session will include:
- How to use blog search tools along with RSS news readers to monitor current trends and issues within the blogosphere that are related to your organization.
- How to identify the key blogs and bloggers within your industry and how to put together an effective engagement strategy with them.
- How to develop effective strategies to publicize your blog and gain RSS feed subscribers.
Since Josh is a pretty accomplished speaker we are going to try something a little different. We are going to open up this session to the general entrepreneurial community. If you are interested in attending you need to contact me. lance at atdc dot org. Space is limited.
