Archive for June, 2010
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
A few days ago, Gary Vaynerchuk and I exchanged a few thoughts on Twitter about customer service. Gary wrote the following:
There’s much truth to Gary’s statement. Real relationships are nearly always better (and more important) than customer service.
But what is a “real relationship”? Some think that real relationships are possible only offline, with your closest friends. Others believe that you can have real relationships online or offline.
Moreover, there’s a big difference between great customer service and poor customer service. As we all know, some companies excel in providing great customer service while others prefer to spend as little time and money as possible on customer service. In fact, a poor reputation for customer service has even forced large companies to completely change their branding. The difference between great and poor customer service is not unimportant.
Here’s how I responded to Gary:
I believe that you can create real relationships through great customer service. In fact, I’m happy to count among my friends people whom I met through crowdSPRING.
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Tags: crowdspring, customer service, small business, smallbiz, startup
Posted in business, How To, inspiration, marketing, start-up tips, Strategy | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
It’s very tempting to promote a product, service or company by using popular buzzwords. The formula is simple: select popular buzzwords, string them together in a few sentences, and voila!
Buzzwords can be appropriate and convenient. Even Apple uses buzzwords – calling the iPad “magical and revolutionary”. But 90% of the time, buzzwords are misused. And they often make us sound less credible.
Think back to PowerPoint or Keynote presentations you’ve seen over the past year. How many buzzwords were used in the presentations that you thought were most successful?
Think about your favorite companies and websites and study how they describe their products and services. You’re not likely to find many that string together buzzwords to describe their products or services.
I am personally increasingly sensitive to how I use buzzwords, because I notice that I react negatively when others use buzzwords in written and verbal communications. When I start hearing a string of buzzwords, I conclude that the person isn’t really communicating with me – they’re just stringing together a bunch of words for effect.
There’s even a Buzzword Bingo game created to help pass time at corporate meetings!
Do you react negatively or tune out the conversations when you hear many buzzwords? That’s the rub with buzzwords – if everyone uses them, they are no longer unique. Who cares if you have a ground-breaking or viral product if every single other company claims to have a ground-breaking or viral product?
If your audience is tuning you out, your marketing or fundraising message will fall on deaf ears.
There’s an easy solution. Talk with people.
Cut the buzzwords. They are not necessary.
image credit: Zach Inglis
Tags: buzzwords, marketing, pr, public relations, small business, smallbiz, startup
Posted in business, marketing, social media, start-up tips, Strategy | 4 Comments »
Monday, June 28th, 2010
Give Back is the crowdSPRING community’s way of helping worthy non-profit and charity causes in need. Creatives in the crowdSPRING community have agreed that for these special projects, no monetary awards will be given. crowdSPRING will waive all fees and will assist the organizations with posting their project. We will collaborate together to help those less fortunate. You can read more about the origins of Give Back here.
We’re thrilled that the crowdSPRING community’s next Give Back project is for Reverb’s Campus Consciousness Tour.
Reverb (www.Reverb.org) is an environmental nonprofit in the music industry that helps musicians green tours and make it easy for music fans everywhere to take environmental action. The organization is based in Portland, Maine. Reverb was founded in 2004 by environmentalist Lauren Sullivan and her musician husband, Adam Gardner of the band Guster.
Half music tour, half environmental campaign, the Campus Consciousness Tour aims to inspire and activate students in an electric atmosphere while leaving a positive impact on each community the tour visits. The Tour includes many greening elements and is run to have a minimal environmental footprint.
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Tags: charitable, charity, creatives, crowdspring, designer, give back, non profit, not for profit
Posted in Awesomeness, community, crowdsourcing, design, inspiration, social media | No Comments »
Monday, June 28th, 2010
Finding your company’s voice in your marketing efforts and written content is a rich way to connect with your customers, engage potential customers, and develop a loyal audience base. Voice is one of the imponderable elements of good writing, and unlike punctuation and spelling it can not be taught with a swift rap from a strong wooden ruler. Strunk and White did get a few things right, including their emphasis on this art; voice should be the driving force behind marketing and message and you should take the time to develop and apply your own.
Businesses (like people) have distinct personas, and instead of hiding that persona behind flat, uninteresting writing, it should be allowed to shine through the darkness of the content world. It took us many months of effort to establish our own voice at crowdSPRING (thanks to the hard work and talent of our own Marketing Director, Pete Burgeson) and it has earned us countless compliments, deep good will, and even an award or two.
1. Learn how to use it to the greatest effect.
To do so you’ll have to practice like mad. Develop your voice through repeated application and revision. Also, be sure to read lots of other writer’s and marketer’s works and learn to identify voice when you see it.
2. Establish a style of your own.
Your tone and technique should be unique and original – make it your own, whether passive, active, funny, quirky, informed, or whatever adjective best fits.
3. Write a LOT.
Practice as much as you can, and apply your voice wherever you can. The more prolific you become, the better developed your voice will become.
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Tags: branding, creativity, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, language, small biz, small business, smallbiz, start-up, startup, startups, style, voice, writing
Posted in business, How To, inspiration, marketing, start-up tips, Strategy, writing | 1 Comment »
Friday, June 25th, 2010
BP has spent $2.35 billion dollars to date to clean-up, contain and pay claims for the largest oil spill in U.S. history. They’ve established a $20 billion dollar reserve to deal with ongoing obligations and liabilities from the oil spill.
Despite BP’s efforts to stop the oil from continuing to pollute the environment, 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil continue to spill from the well. Each day.
What would you do if you were BP and received potential solutions to deal with the oil spill? Would you at the very least examine those ideas to see if some could help?
BP refused to even examine nearly one thousand potential solutions offered by the technical experts at InnoCentive, an online crowdsourcing community.
Since 2001, InnocCentive has helped companies, the public sector, non-profits, and academic institutions find innovative solutions to challenging technical problems. Innocentive has a global network of more than 200,000 engineers, scientists, inventors, and business people who are experts in physics, chemistry, math, life sciences, computer science, and many other fields.
InnoCentive started a project to help find solutions to the BP oil spill. From the project:
Recently, an explosion on an offshore oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico caused both loss of life and a sizable and ongoing oil spill. We are asking Solvers worldwide to respond quickly with ideas and approaches to react to this very serious environmental threat.
This is an Emergency Situation Challenge and will be quite different than any other Challenge we have run on the InnoCentive website. No one has requested us to do this and InnoCentive is not getting paid to run this Challenge. We are doing it because we believe our Solver base can and will help and we will do everything we can to get solutions into the hands of the appropriate responders. This is an experiment and we believe our Solvers will answer this call for help. We believe trying to mitigate this international disaster is the right thing to do.
InnoCentive offered the proposed solutions to BP for free. Remarkably, BP refused to even look at the proposed solutions.
BP’s arrogance should be a wake-up call to all companies who refuse to embrace new technologies and new approaches to find innovative solutions to problems.
image credit: etiennecoutu
Tags: bp, crowdsourcing, innocentive, oil spill
Posted in business, crowdsourcing | 8 Comments »
Friday, June 25th, 2010
Ever wonder where the pros get their guitars? I’ll give you a hint it’s in California and they have a project on our site…
Give up? Ok, it’s a little store called Norman’s Rare Guitars and they have been providing vintage guitars since 1975. They are looking for a new website design to accompany their ever growing inventory… I think we can help with that!
On any given day you can walk into Norman’s and see artists from Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters to Robert Pattinson from the Twilight series; if that doesn’t make you scream I don’t know what will. Their store is jam-packed with vintage guitars from wall to wall and, aside from offering an incomparable selection, Norman’s offers trade-ins, repairs, appraisals, lessons, and even workshops from award-winning artists.
I got a chance to talk to Sarah Harris, the buyer on this amazing project, and ask her a few questions about the store and what it’s like to build an empire such as this one. Listen up!
1. How did you get things designed before crowdSPRING?
Before crowdSPRING the designer we worked with on our original site handled our graphic design work. To be honest, we were looking at crowdSPRING and a few of their competitors such as 99designs, HatchWise, and DesignContest but crowdSPRING really stuck out, and it was pretty much a no-brainer to move forward with them.
2. Why in the world did you decide to use crowdSPRING?!
We decided to use crowdSPRING for a multitude of reasons. First of all, you (the business owner) have the cream of the crop in the design world submitting to your contest. If you’re working with one designer or one design team, you’re pretty much confined to that isolated vision. With crowdSPRING, you get to see so many interpretations from talented artists across the globe. You also get the piece of mind that if you aren’t 100% satisfied with the work, you don’t have to move forward. With all of the great entries, I don’t see how that could be a possibility but it’s still nice to know that if you don’t get the results you’re looking for, you’re not stuck.
3. What’s the single best small biz resource that you’ve found (magazine, website, blog, etc.)?
The best small business resource for us has been the internet. We use sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to reach a global audience. There are celebrities, high profile musicians, and bands like Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Incubus, Robert Pattinson, and Dave Grohl that walk into our store on a daily basis. We have a lot of fans on social networking sites and they get a chance to see the caliber of players that walk into our store. The great thing about this small business resource is that these sites are free! Innovative sites like crowdSPRING also make our lives easier by taking the guesswork out of everything. Rather than having to get recommendations, scour the internet, and hire someone that MIGHT do a good job, we know that we can sign up on a site like crowdSPRING and get high quality work done with minimal effort on our part.
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Tags: crowdspring, interview, normans rare guitars, small biz, small business spotlight, starting a small business
Posted in Awesomeness, business, community, crowdsourcing, design, How To, inspiration, Interviews, marketing, Reviews, social media, start-up tips, Strategy, Technology | No Comments »
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
10 Tips for Startups and Small Businesses on Naming Your Company - http://bit.ly/d7DPXv
Small business or self-employed: finding the courage to trade - http://bit.ly/a5XpSZ
6 Reasons Why People Are Afraid to Start a Business - http://bit.ly/dAwdDS
@crowdSPRING Small Biz Newsletter. This issue focuses on starting a business - http://bit.ly/cP2zSe
@IncMagazine writes on importance of a good biz name - http://bit.ly/dBbVQi (expand) | 10 tips to get one - http://bit.ly/d7DPXv
crowdSPRING’s Small Business Spotlight of the Week: Swiftrank – http://bit.ly/c74FKK
10 Tips for Startups and Small Businesses on Naming Your Company - http://bit.ly/d7DPXv
6 Reasons Why People Are Afraid to Start a Business - http://bit.ly/dAwdDS
New York Times interview with Twitter VC @fredwilson – http://nyti.ms/a1cuga
Small business or self-employed: finding the courage to trade - http://bit.ly/a5XpSZ
The 12 Dysfunctions of an Entrepreneur - http://bit.ly/aD8aQg
@crowdSPRING Small Biz Newsletter. This issue focuses on starting a business - http://bit.ly/cP2zSe
@IncMagazine writes on importance of a good biz name -http://bit.ly/dBbVQi (expand) | 10 tips to get one - http://bit.ly/d7DPXv
The Art of Failure: The Point transforms into Groupon - http://bit.ly/abucu9
Great quote for entrepreneurs from Theodore Roosevelt – http://bestc.am/E3Eo
7 Steps to Creating and Cultivating a Brand in Social Media - http://bit.ly/9g277a
New study says most companies use social media w/o strategy - http://bit.ly/dyNymo
30 of the Best Infographics that Effectively Showcase Data - http://bit.ly/dux7vQ
50+ Great Examples of Creative Print Advertisement Design - http://bit.ly/bLgXhQ
Mega Collection Of Cheatsheets for Designers And Developers - http://bit.ly/b1bCzL
Dealing with trademark, copyright and Legal issues - http://bit.ly/bmcYdP
Collection of Beautiful Magazine Covers for Inspiration -http://bit.ly/cCXPLf
27 Spicy Event Flyer Design Samples - http://bit.ly/d44Z04
(more…)
Tags: copywriting, crowdspring, design, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, facebook, leadership, marketing, pr, public relations, small business, smallbiz, social media, startup, twitter, writing
Posted in Awesomeness, business, community, crowdsourcing, design, How To, inspiration, Interviews, marketing, Reviews, Site Updates, social media, start-up tips, Strategy, Technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010
Naming your company can be challenging and time consuming. If you need help or simply don’t have the time (it took us nearly 50 hours to name “crowdSPRING”), you can leverage crowdSPRING’s community of more than 64,000 designers and writers to come up with your company name or a product name.
Whether you leverage crowdSPRING’s community to help name your startup or small business or find a name on your own, you might find the following 10 tips useful:
1. Think about what you want your company name to convey.
Your company name is an important part of your company’s identity. The name will appear on your business cards, letterhead, website, promotional materials, products, and pretty much everywhere in print to identify your company or your company’s products and/or services.
Service oriented businesses should consider whether it will be easy for their prospective customers to recognize what services the business provides, based on the name of the company (example: Friendly Dog Walkers or Bright Accounting).
Businesses located in rural areas and serving rural communities may want to project a smaller, hometown feel with their name. However, businesses planning to focus on bigger markets or bigger customers might want to project a larger, more corporate image with their name.
2. Brainstorm to identify name possibilities.
Once you understand what you want your company name to convey, you should set aside some time to brainstorm. Think about words that describe your industry or the products/services you offer. Think about words that describe your competitors and words that describe the differences between your products and services and those of your competitors. Consider too words that describe the benefits of using your products or services. Finally, think about words (and phrases) that evoke the feelings you want your customers to feel when they see your company name.
While brainstorming, look up Greek and Latin translations of your words – you might find new ideas from doing that exercise. Look at foreign words too (we spent some time with a Swahili dictionary looking for strong names).
Expect this process to take some time (it took us about 40+ hours to brainstorm and then another 10 to finalize names – we went through MANY possible names). Don’t forget to leverage resources, including a dictionary, thesaurus, and any other resources that you think may help.
3. Keep the name short, simple, and easy to write and remember. Also – consider acronyms of the name.
Think about the names of companies you admire. They typically have a few things in common: their names are short, simple, easy to write and easy to remember. (Examples: Apple, Google, Virgin, Southwest).
Obscure business names are often difficult to write and even more difficult to remember. This is a problem because for most startups and small businesses, word-of-mouth advertising is the most successful form of marketing. If your customers can’t remember your name or can’t spell it for others, it will make it difficult for them to help promote your business.
While it might be tempting, avoid using a “K” in place of a “Q” or a “Ph” in place of an “F” when coming up with your company name. Such letter substitutions makes spelling the name very difficult.
Also, don’t forget to consider the acronym of your company name (an acronym is composed of the first letter of each word in a phrase). You might not use an acronym, but your customers might refer to your business by an acronym. A name such as Apple Support Services can result in an unfavorable acronym – ASS.
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Tags: business name, company name, crowdspring, naming, product name
Posted in business, crowdsourcing, How To, start-up tips, Strategy | 15 Comments »
Monday, June 21st, 2010
If there is anything I have learned in my life as an adult (as arguable as that second half of that statement may be), it is that everything is about the tradeoff. We swap our personal independence for love and comfort when we marry; we barter away more of that autonomy when we have children; and we make a zillion tradeoffs every single day of our professional lives. Some of these transactions (because that’s what they really are) happen naturally and organically as we mature and the requisites of our lives evolve, but others are truly arrangements of choice, the results of serious internal negotiation.
This is typically the case when a worker becomes an entrepreneur, when an employee becomes self-employed, or when a subordinate takes the leap and buys the business from the boss. The courage to make this transition in life is common to entrepreneurs, small business owners, and self-employed workers whether the decision is tempered by choice, necessity, or circumstance.
Many of us fantasize for years about what it would be like to control our own destiny, but what holds most folks back is the simple fear of the unknown mixed with the toxic dread of failure. Motivations are key – sometimes an entrepreneur is created in the aftermath of a layoff. Driven by necessity, some find themselves with no better option than to hang out their shingle and get to work hustling to find clients or customers. Others are driven by their own pure passion for what they want to do. The courage required is the same, whether the decision is driven by ardor or by hardship.
The common elements tend to be the same across a range of entrepreneurs: they have identified a need in the market and envisioned how they can meet that need. A problem defined, a solution concocted, and a business born. What is certain is uncertainty. Long hours, loneliness, and the ever-present threat of failure. The statistic we hear over and over: half of all startups fail. Half. Half. Half. Shut up already and let us work; whatever the risk of failure, whatever the inevitability of collapse, whatever your relatives say to warn them, entrepreneurs are driven by something greater than the peril: they cling to their conviction that they can make their business work.
Image: Sun Wukong (the magical monkey and main character) from the traditional Chinese tale, “Journey to the West” Credit: Nod Young
Tags: bravery, courage, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, leadership, small biz, small business, smallbiz, start-up, startup, startups, trade, tradeoff
Posted in business, inspiration, start-up tips, Strategy | 18 Comments »
Friday, June 18th, 2010
With summer finally here I have one thing and one thing only on my mind… vacation. So, naturally, when I saw a project titled “LasVegasHotels.com New Logo” I was drawn to it. I can hear the slot machines calling my name…
Okay, back to reality, sorry! I was intrigued to find a well-established website for a city like Las Vegas up for a logo re-design on crowdSPRING so I emailed Sue Heilbronner, the CMO of Swiftrank Global and President of Swiftrank North America, the buyer for the project. Swiftrank, the largest online global travel network, has recently acquired LasVegasHotels.com and is in the process of reinventing it.
Swiftrank manages more than 12,000 optimized travel websites across the globe. With Swiftrank’s headquarters in Singapore, and offices in the US and the UK, this company sure is cultured!
I was shocked to find out that Sue has actually used crowdSPRING for projects before for her sig other’s company www.ontimeairfilters.com, a website where you can set up automatic delivery for air filters straight to your home with free shipping to keep your house greener and cleaner.
For someone with so much experience in business and on cS I would be a fool not to ask Sue to give some advice to anyone looking to start a business so here you guys go!
1. How did you get things designed before crowdSPRING?
I’ve used crowdSPRING at two different companies over the last couple years, including my current project for the new, reinvigorated www.LasVegasHotels.com. My company, Swiftrank recently acquired the site, and we’re making it a centerpiece of what we think is the largest online global travel network. I have used it selectively as a strategic complement to my small “bench” of outside creative talent in cases where my go-to people just were’t quite nailing it. I continue to tap a range of resources, but crowdSPRING more often comes to mind with challenging or really wide open design challenges that benefit from completely new approaches to problems or opportunities.
2. Why in the world did you decide to use crowdSPRING?!
I first used crowdSPRING to drive the creative direction for the side business my sig other and I started, On Time Air Filters. We were bootstrapping this home delivery air filter business, and we felt crowdSPRING would provide a cost-effective, peak creative approach to logo design, and then our website design. We were thrilled with the results, all of which still live on the site today. I have sinced used it in my full-time roles at larger companies, and my colleagues have seen the value quickly. I think crowdSPRING provides the most value on projects where the creative brief is scant because you are looking to the creative community to help you provide solutions to your business opportunity, but you lack a preconceived notion of what that actually “looks” like. crowdSPRING is crowdsourced brainstorming, and by actively participating in the linear thinking (as shown in submissions to my projects), the results and submissions have improved every day and helped me frame the direction through the process. How cool is that?
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Tags: crowdspring, lasvegashotels.com, ontimeairfilters.com, small biz, small business spotlight, startup, swiftrank
Posted in Awesomeness, business, community, crowdsourcing, design, How To, inspiration, Interviews, marketing, Reviews, social media, start-up tips, Strategy, Technology | 2 Comments »
