Web 2.0 & Social Media

The Web 2.0 Internet economy has resulted in countless new innovative businesses and solutions. It’s never been easier to bring a product or solution to market. This sudden spike in new business development has made the market exceedingly competitive. Not because your competition is under pricing you or other typical market challenges; but more because its so challenging to get the right person at the right time to understand your value proposition so you can make a deal. I can’t tell you how many great companies I’ve met with, that after finally getting their one hour face-to-face meeting; left me wondering how I could work with them, what it will cost, how I can share the message with someone that may be able to use them. Honestly I can’t keep track of them all and I don’t try.

I understand that there are many special cases where you may be invited to a direct opportunity or have a inside connection; but for the majority of us the audience could be ice cold. Anything we can do to turn-up the impact and get a slight edge could mean the difference between a big payday and a big waist of time. Here’s a few points to help providers reach customers in the digital space:

1. The customer doesn’t care: The customer or audience, for the most part, doesn’t care if you succeed or fail - they have their own problems. They are interested in how you can help them succeed. The customer isn’t going to put all kinds of energy into making sure your message is heard across the company. The most important thing is to respect their time and their challenges. Don’t be that vendor that flops in to do ‘another demo’ with some lame PPT, spending half the meeting futzing around with cables, handouts and asking lame questions like; “so what do you folks do?” Skip the background story, thanking everyone for their time, your experience finding parking that morning and get right into it. Be prepared, ask the background questions by email in advance, arrive early, know your audience (Google them if you have names), get your own mobile Internet access card, charge your laptop, end early (I could go on and on) and follow the following tips!
2. Make it easy: You aren’t talking to Digitas or Microsoft you are talking to Fred Smith and the 5 people out of the 10 that were invited to see your presentation. The likelihood that one of these folks will need what your offering at that time is slim. These people are on an information overload diet so the likelihood they will retain the characteristics of your offering effectively is also slim and even more slim is the chance they will convince their colleagues that they should contact you. If you are talking to a large agency or brand you have an opportunity to make a deal; you need to make sure your message is easy to share. I suggest entrepreneurs create a vanity URL that is easy to remember. “Do you see this of value? Is this something your clients/colleagues may benefit from? Visit www.greatnewsoftware.com for a quick demo and links to more information. Consider printing a link to the demo on your business card.
3. 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint*: Guy Kawasaki is one of the most famous Web 2.0 venture capitalist and listens to hundreds of people trying to pitch potential products to him. In this article Guy evangelizes the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint which predicates that each presentation is less than 10 slides and not more than 20 minutes and a font size of at least 30. Guy is referring to presentations aimed at Venture Capitalists. The most valuable thing to a VC is time. You need to be able to quickly and effectively communicate your business value and respect their time. This rule applies to customers too; especially brand managers and agency professionals. If you need to communicate lots of details in the PPT have a second copy that you can hand out on branded thumb drives or better yet refer to #2 and have a vanity URL on the back of your business card. *This is a challenge and break the rule consistently.
4. The ‘enhanced’ elevator pitch: An elevator pitch is your 30 second delivery so you can wow and inspire some would-be investor or potential client in the time it takes to ride the elevator. The enhanced pitch a longer version; a five-minute presentation. Here we distill the 20 minute PowerPoint down to the core, toss the PowerPoint and tell your story. If you can’t make your audience ‘get-it’ in five minutes its too complicated. DEMO is a technology launch conference held twice a year. The best thing about DEMO is that they introduce some of the world’s best new companies and products in a compelling format. All presentations must be exactly 6 minutes long and no PowerPoint allowed. These entrepreneurs practice their presentations to a science, some enlist consultants to help them tailor their pitch. Here’s an example of a great demo that is very easy for me to send to colleagues and partners that encapsulates a great business effectively.
5. Get the word out: Once you’ve perfected the five minute demo you need to get it out there. You will have much more influence with customers and/or investors if they heard about you first, especially if they discovered you from  a well known trust source. To maximize the potential you need to participate in the social web and make your demo easy to share and blog about. I won’t cover all the intricacies of PR 2.0 or Social Public Relations in this tip (here’s a great article on Techcrunch) but let’s just say if you don’t have a strategy - you need a strategy. One component of that will be to publish your demo to a social video site such at YouTube, Blip.tv or Flickr. You can then embed your video on your site, blog and/or vanity URL page. This way you will have sharing links built in for viewers to bookmark your video, post your video to other sites such as Facebook, MySpace, blogs etc., get the embed code, email the video and so on. You can also create a widget that includes your video and other content using SproutBuilder, this can be very simple using the provided templates or completely customized to match your brand. Check out this example: Sprout Intro. Blogging is a lot of work and when the business makes it easy for me to communicate the message I’m more likely to write about them or send a link to someone I think may be interested.

Conclusion: Most important is to have a great solution. I can tell you by experience that the solutions that most often are passed around amounst influencers isn’t always the best one but is often the only one they are aware of. It could be that they’ve worked with the vendor or knows someone that has. The fact that someone they know recommended the solution gives it lots of points. With a compelling, high-impact presentation that is easy to share, blog about, and embed you will have a great advantage. Whether you are pitching a business, investment opportunity or a non-profit you need to cut through information overload and leverage the tools of Web 2.0.