Strategy Blog: Post

Brian Wynne Williams - CEO & Co-Founder :

One of the sessions I enjoyed at SXSW this year was Jason Fried‘s talk on Stuff We’ve Learned at 37signals.  As expected, Jason stressed simplicity, efficiency, and sustainability (in the form of fee-based software).  He talked about not planning too far ahead, and being flexible as your business evolves.  It reminded me of a challenge a lot of entrepreneurs seem to have: maintaining a rigid focus on a clear vision for their business while at the same time being nimble enough to react to the market and course-correct as needed.

Continue reading "Mixing a Clear Vision with Agility"

Brian Wynne Williams - CEO & Co-Founder :

In August of 2005, Seth called me and asked if we’d help build Squidoo, which we were proud to do.  More than two years after the beta launch, the site continues to grow, and now has over 300,000 pages of user-generated content, with 1,000 more being added every day.  In last week’s SquidUpdate, Seth noted that Squidoo gets nearly 6 million unique visitors per month, and roughly 12 million unique visits.  Raising money for charity was one of original goals of the site, and they’ve done that to the tune of more than $100,000.

My favorite line from the post:

“And here’s a neat tidbit: We’re profitable. We haven’t raised any VC money, and now we shouldn’t ever have to.”

By not raising venture capital, he goes on to say, Squidoo can remain attentive to their users instead of worrying about “meeting quarterly earnings targets.” It’s also forced them to run lean and stay focused.  Squidoo pulled together enough funding early-on to hire a small dedicated team and some outside experts (like Viget) to quickly launch the business.  The focus was always to get to a point of profitablity so that the business could sustain itself—not to just grow for the sake of growth.

Seth’s approach is different than a lot entrepreneurs take in the web space, especially given the renewed excitement about funding web start-ups.  Venture capital is sometimes necessary, but for many web-bases businesses, it’s just not needed.

Raising VC can often help businesses compete more effectively in a competitive space.  When Squidoo got started, there was no real competition, and they’re now “three to five times bigger” than any others.  Google’s announcement of Knol, as Seth points out, is a sincere form of flattery (though Mike thinks Knol is more Wikipedia than Squidoo).  Will Google’s participation in the space really be a boost for everyone, including Squidoo?  Or, will there be a sense in the long-run be that had Squidoo raised VC, they could be been better positioned to compete with the likes of Knol?

Only time will tell.  In the meantime, it’s refreshing to see (and be a part of) a business that’s bucking two trends in the online world: growing without VC, and turning a profit in a relatively short period of time with user-generated content.  Congrats to Seth and the team.

Brian Wynne Williams - CEO & Co-Founder :

The New Year is here, so here are some thoughts on how you can improve your site in 2007.  Some are quick things you can implement right away and some are things to keep in mind if you’re in the planning stages.  Whether your web site is a marketing channel for your offline business or it is your business, these tips are relevant (in no particular order).

• Study your web analytics reports regularly. Knowledge is power.  Know what your users are doing (daily), and then do something about it (often).  We recommend HBX for advanced needs; but, even if you don’t have in-depth analytics requirements, just plug in Google’s code.  It’s free and easy to do.


• Optimize your site / app for search engine indexing. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been around for a long time, so if you haven’t been focused on SEO you’re already behind.  There’s a lot you should do; but, the basics are straightforward: (1) select the right target search terms; (2) optimize your code, design, and content; and (3) earn inbound links.


• Keep accessibility in mind. There’s a balance here, as Kara describes, but awareness of the major issues is half the battle.


• Blog at least twice per week—or not at all. Should you even have a blog? Keeping up one the right way is time-consuming; but, if you do it right, it can be a big boost to your organization.  Blogs aren’t just under-featured content management systems anymore.  It’s not the publishing technology that matters, it’s the tone, content, and discussion.


• Focus on usability. Technologies like Flash and Ajax can help tremendously; but, they can hurt if used poorly.  Whether you’re trying to attract new users, earn regular readers, or convert customers, it’s all about making a user experience that’s intuitive and enjoyable.


• Think mobile, but only a little bit. The web is about information.  People want to get that information whenever, wherever.  That means mobile.  Build for the desktop browser, but keep the mobile option in mind with just a subset of your content and functionality.


• Go open-source, for the right reasons. “The technology is free” is nice; but, you can’t build a successful online business by making every decision based on cost.  For most businesses, open-source tools like Ruby on Rails offer more flexibility, extensibility, and scalability than their closed counterparts.


• Make your content available via RSS. Why not?  It’s easy to do and while the masses still want content pushed at them via email, your RSS subscribers will grow over time.  Don’t know what RSS is?  Ask Stephanie.  Then, use a tool like FeedBurner to manager your feeds and track your audience.


• Widgetize. Whether you’re building the next great Web 2.0 app or just want to push your content onto other sites, you have to be thinking about widgets.  A simple example: make that RSS feed available on other sites.


• Understand social media. Sites like MySpace and YouTube are dominating the online audience, and sites that understand how to tap into these networks will have a big advantage.  Don’t spam or trick people, just participate.


• Really engage your visitors. We talk a lot about visitor conversion here—ways to persuade your visitors to take action.  Be thorough in your thinking about what actions users should take because a single action isn’t good enough.  It makes your users binary—they’re either in or out, a customer or not, and then they’re gone.  Engage visitors with comments on blog posts, email subscriptions, or RSS feeds—anything that will entice them to come back.  By building communities and allowing visitors to engage with each other, you’ll find maintaining an active audience to be much more sustainable.

There’s plenty more you can do and each bullet here could be a blog post (or a white paper ... or a conference ...) in itself.  The point is progress.  Perpetual improvement.  Will the web boom continue in 2007?  That depends on whether you do your part.

Kara Davis - Project Manager :

The new Internet is all about sharing, and nonprofits are just the types of organizations that should be shared. You have messages that people want to associate themselves with. You have missions that people want to support. There are a lot of organizations out there competing for donor funding; but, the more visible you are, the more likely you’ll come to mind when people are making their giving decisions.

The old Internet was about broadcasting your message from your web site and sharing links with friendly organizations in the same field in hopes that your audience would find you. It was about providing information and content to people who had heard about you through your offline marketing efforts and wanted to learn more. The new Internet is about ubiquity. It’s about reaching new audiences through web sites that have little or nothing to do with your organization—web sites that anyone might use for their own personal networking, knowledge-finding, or media-sharing. The best part is that, particularly as a nonprofit, you can usually sign up just like anyone else and use these sites for free!

Check out this one-pager from NPower NY and Seth Godin for six quick ideas to get started.

Depending on your organization, you may also want to start a group on MySpace or post a photo library in Flickr. It’s necessary to relinquish some control over context,* but once you get past that, you can use it to draw people back to your site (where they can see your content in context). Better to have them see it somewhere else than not at all.

*Relinquishing control over context does not mean that you give up your copyright. Check the terms of service on any of these sites before you submit—but, most allow you to retain full copyright over your original materials.

Brian Wynne Williams - CEO & Co-Founder :

I was watching a little NBA on ESPN last night and hadn’t had a chance to store up some buffer on my DVR, so I was forced to watch the commercials (woe is me).  Uniroyal Tires had an ad running that I’d noticed before enough to remember the soccer mom running over a board of nails that just happens to be in the parking space she’s backing into, presumably to show how the tires aren’t phased by nail punctures.  (Side note: if my kids ever stand there making stupid faces while I run over a bunch of nails instead of telling me to stop long enough for them to move them, I’ll disown them.)

Most of the ad promotes some kind of giveaway that I tried to ignore but it ends with this line:

“It could be the best trip you take all summer!”

Which, since I was still recovering from my Thanksgiving excesses, made me laugh out loud.  Summer is long gone.  Then I noticed this fine print:

August 31, 2001?  Who is paying attention to the ads that run on TV anymore?

Online, your customers are, that’s who.  That’s why this wouldn’t happen on the web.  If you’re fostering the right kind of community and engaging your audience the right way, as soon as a problem like this gets out, they’ll let you know about it, and you can fix it quickly.  Encouraging this participation from your visitors is considered very Web 2.0, but it’s really been around as long as email and the Web—it’s all about making it easier for your customers to communicate with you effectively.

Reducing communication hurdles isn’t always easy, and for a lot of companies it creates new and unexpected challenges (what do we do with all that email?).  Remember, though, that every chance to communicate with a customer, regardless of what sparked it, is an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with that person and market your company.

The negative of this new reality is that some companies take advantage of their active audience by overvaluing speed-to-market and skimping on quality.  That, however, is a whole different blog post ...

Update: As you can see from the comment below, Jill from Uniroyal contacted me and I gave her the specifics she needed to give the local ad buyer a newer ad to run.  No word yet if Uniroyal plans to more actively engage their online audience (or send me a free set of tires as a ‘thank you’).