Instigator Blog

With the popularity of blogs as the new “online community driver” one might think that forums are a thing of the past. And indeed, you see much less discussion about forums these days than you might have a few years ago. (Although some more detailed research shows that there are tons of thriving communities out there, and people making money with forums; there’s just less buzz about it.) But, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some great forums out there, with thriving communities, that can be of immense benefit. Here’s two that I’ve just started participating on, and hope to become more involved with in the future:

1. StartupNation Forums: The StartupNation site has more than just forums (including blogs, podcasts, articles, etc.) but the forums are a great place for entrepreneurs, with topics covering marketing, websites, financing, etc.
2. EarnersForum: I found this one through Shoemoney. It’s relatively new but the community is already bustling like crazy. The huge contest EarnersForum has going on might have something to do with it. They’re giving away something in the range of $20,000 worth of cash and prizes. The focus of EarnersForum is on making money online, which is extremely appropriate for a lot of entrepreneurs and bloggers.

Unlike blogs, forums do tend to create more communication (or they’ll fade, since forums can’t succeed on one-way communication alone) and you can find yourself meeting a lot of interesting and worthwhile people very quickly once you start participating. Enjoy!

Anyone who says, “we’re prepared for anything” is a big, fat liar. In business and in life, it’s impossible to be prepared for anything or everything that might happen. But, there are ways you can be more prepared than not.

5 Steps to Being Better Prepared

1. Learn from your mistakes/failures. We all make mistakes, we all fail. When it comes to being an entrepreneur, many will say that you need to fail in order to succeed.
2. Write a well-organized, ever-evolving to-do list. Keeping simple track of what you need to do is important; we’re cramming more and more into our brains every day and it becomes harder to keep track of all the minutae. The list will change frequently as you complete tasks, and as you re-prioritize items.
3. Anticipate roadblocks and possible failures. While you’re learning from your mistakes/failures to avoid being a repeat offender, you also need to spend time anticipating other roadblocks and failures that might arise. Very few people do this. It feels negative, but good risk assessment can save your tush.
4. Allot time for planning. Being prepared is about good planning. But in the hustle and bustle of life we often spend more time “putting out fires” than we do making progress. Allotting specific time per day for planning and getting prepared will help. I prefer early in the morning when I look at the day’s goals, and briefly at the end of the day, so I’m prepared the following morning.
5. Conserve Cash. In any business, and particularly in an early venture (and when you’re bootstrapping a startup) conserving cash is key. Even if VCs have given you millions, save some for a rainy day. Why? Simple: it eventually rains. Anyone that tells you there are no rainy days ahead is a liar or delusional (or both.) I’m no market expert but I’ve been through the bubble burst and seen my fair share of tight times; enough to know that if you don’t save cash when the going is good you’ll sink when the going gets tough.

You’ll never be prepared for anything and everything; it’s just not possible. But you can be better prepared, both individually and for your business on a whole. Work on your preparedness but don’t get obsessed with it. Sometimes you have to jump in with both feet and see what happens. Good luck!

At the beginning of June, I found GoodSearch. It’s a search engine that donates approximately 1 penny to the charity of your choice each time you run a search. The results are powered by Yahoo.

I said I would use it for awhile to try it out and I’ve done that intermittently. It’s hard to stop going to Google though.

I’m going to keep using it (when I remember) and I still love the idea behind it, even if it has its naysayers. The results are as good as any (it’s powered by Yahoo not some backwater search engine company) and you also won’t get any contextual ads on the results page (makes for a slightly cleaner interface.)

In the meantime, just yesterday I was made aware of Blingo (from Steve Poland’s blog: Ideas are Worthless Unless Acted Upon. Note: While I disagree with the sentiment that ideas are worthless, he’s got a great blog that’s worth reading.)

Blingo is a search engine that occasionally selects a random winner who has just performed a search. Prizes include movie tickets, Visa gift cards, iTunes gift certificates, etc. So the prizes are definitely worthwhile for just searching.

Blingo is tied to Publishers Clearing House (although that wasn’t always the case.)

The search is powered by Google (so like GoodSearch there’s no problem with respect to the results being crappy.) Unlike GoodSearch there are sponsored ads that appear (which is how they make their money.)

Note: You can only win if you live in the United States, so for me Blingo doesn’t hold much appeal, except for the basis of this question:

Which is better? Winning prizes or donating to charity?

What do I mean by better? You tell me. But here’s some questions to spur discussion:

1. Which one would you be more interested in using? Search for charity or search for prizes?

2. Which holds more “buzz-potential” or more “viral-potential”?

3. Which model (winning prizes/contests/sweepstakes or donating money to a good cause) could be more effective for your business?

4. How might you implement either approach?

Please, let me know what you think.

[tags]goodsearch, search engines, yahoo, google, donating money, buzz marketing, charity, viral marketing[/tags]

If you don’t think great customer service is important for the success of your business you’re missing out. And that’s a polite way of saying it.

The dryer in our home isn’t working very well. It hasn’t for quite some time. (Note: If you’re interested in buying my house don’t worry, the problem will be fixed. I promise.)

It takes 2, sometimes 3 runs of the dryer to dry a load. And that’s not even a big load. I suppose this should irritate me more than it does, but I do have bigger problems. Anyway, my wife takes the initiative (she also has a couple days off work which helps) and calls a dryer repair company. She picked them out of the Yellow Pages (I don’t know how she made the choice; it doesn’t matter.)

She arranged an appointment with the company for yesterday. During her conversation with the lady who answered the phone, my wife asks: “What time will they come?”

Click to continue →

During Tuesday’s open mic night at Successful Blog I got into a brief discussion with Christine Kane about creativity, blogging and BIC (Butt-in-Chair).

It made me think about something CHOM - a Montreal classic rock radio station - does, which is to play full album sides without interruption. When they do it, they say say something along the lines of, “The way it was meant to be played.”

This makes a lot of sense. “Back in the day” when the likes of the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, etc. were making music we didn’t have the technology to jump between songs like we do now, there was no digital downloads, you didn’t even have “mixed tapes.” And while I’m not a music expert in any way (people in the record industry feel free to jump in any time), I do know that bands in those days put a lot of thought into the sequence of songs. They were creating an entire experience for an album or per side, not just individual songs mashed together. I’m sure that still goes on today, but I would bet it’s less important with the way singles are emphasized, and with digital technology allowing us to download whatever we want, and CD players that can skip around and listen to things out of order.

In the good days of music, album sides were important.

Thinking about this in terms of blogging, I can’t help but think that most bloggers write what comes to them on any given day. Yes, they might have planned a few posts in advance, or more likely they’ve got a backlog of a few posts they can use when they have nothing else to day (which is a good thing), but how many of us plan out our posts in a bigger sense?

“Theme posts” (for lack of a better term) are fairly common - I do it here with Monday Morning Musings - where you’ll post on some theme/topic or in a certain style on a regular basis. Darren Rowse at problogger has his group writing projects, and Toby Bloomberg has Blogger Stories as two examples.

But what I’m talking about is writing X number of posts in order, where the posts are designed to work together even if they’re not on the same topic or in the same style or theme — like an album side. Artists take us on a journey, maybe they start hard and fast, and then they move into a softer ballad, only to bring us back into a rock anthem at the end.

It strikes me that few bloggers do this, but that it could be extremely effective and interesting for readers. And, it probably would have a positive impact on the community aspect of blogging - create an “album side” of blogging and you’re taking people on a journey, you’re not just tossing ‘em one post at a time.

I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on the analogy, and how they might go ahead and creating “blogging album sides.”