I’m getting a group of savvy, smart fun people in tech/media together Thursday night in Santa Monica.
Here are the details…
What: Savvy Folks Meetup Where: Bar Chloe 1449 2nd St. Santa Monica, CA When: Thursday 11/5 at 7:45pm
I bring this group together because I like connecting with smart people who are also interesting good people, and sharing in return. It’s not very formal- more an opportunity to hang with smart folks doing great things at a cool place for the evening.
Focus on technology, marketing, media and startup entrepreneurs.
Networking, helping other people and talking about big ideas highly encouraged.
Our last meetup at the Hotel Erwin rooftop was a great group, and some great connections and friendships were made.
The group I’ve invited so far for this event are smart, successful and generous in spirit… and I want my friends to meet and hang with other good people like them. If you’d like to come and you’ll bring value to the group with what you’re doing, then come by.
Please RSVP so I know how many we’ll have. I have tables already reserved. RSVP by Commenting here on my Blog, or if you’re a FB’er, on the Facebook Event Page.
I spoke on a panel the other night at Jason Nazar and DocStoc’s Startups Uncensored event in SM and met Dan Bliss who was on the panel as well. Dan’s the guy who’s brought this amazing event together.
At this event will be some of the top people to know in for Venture Capital, Angel investors, as well as other startups and entrepreneurs who are making things happen.
If that wasn’t enough, the Keynote for the event will be given by Sir Richard Branson.
It’s at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina Del Rey on October 26th.
Some of the speakers and people to meet at the event include:
Hey- a quick update on the http://gig.fm startup and the progress we’re making…
GiG.FM Private Beta Launched
We’ve rolled out our private beta and have been getting some great responses and feedback. We’ve driven our first ticket sales and we’re making some improvements to keep testing/optimizing for subscriber and ticket sales conversation, as well as viral sharing of shows.
If you’re not part of the private beta and want in, please Follow @gigfm and I’ll send you an invite as soon as we release more invites. (By the way- it’s best to sign up on whatever computer you keep your iTunes library on so we can read it for you.)
Below is a sneak peak at what GiG.FM looks like at your user Home.
This is your Personalized Concert App that GiG becomes once we’ve read your iTunes to know the Artists you like, and we have your Location from reading your IP or getting your Zip.
From here you see all the upcoming shows in your area by your favorite (iTunes) artists. Each show has simple links where you can buy tickets, “tag” the show to let your friends know you’re going or dig it, or Tweet the show or email it to a friend with a short gig.fm url.
Twitter Integration & Engagement
We’ve done a pretty nice Twitter integration so users can create GiG.FM accounts via the Twitter OAuth and instantly share shows with a short gig url (http://gig.fm/~3VI). It’s part of our strategy to brand GiG as the social tool for sharing and organizing concert going. We’ll also be integrating in Facebook Connect in the future, as we want to include/cater to Facebook users and drive sharing of GiG concerts/urls into Facebook.
Here’s a quick example of how GiG users who’ve logged in with their Twitter profile can instantly Tweet shows via GiG and it will post a short gig.fm url for that show where their friends can go and get tickets or say if they want to go too…
GiG.FM - Tweet A GiG
And here’s what it looks like when a concert is posted to Twitter via GiG…
The gig.fm short url for that show is used. This makes it easy to drive a GiG users Twitter Followers back to GiG to check out the show details, sign up for GiG and get tickets if they want to go.
Data & Multiple Ticketing Sources
GiG has nearly 500,000 artists in it’s artists database now. We’re covering all of North America and our content on our site/pages cover 75,000 cities and neighborhoods in the U.S. and Canada, as well as roughly 3,500 venues. This content and data is part of our content strategy for SEO and driving traffic/subscribers, as well as providing a personalized and targeted service for our users.
GiG pulls in concerts information from it’s partnerships with several leading ticketing companies. This puts us at roughly 20,000 concerts on sale via GiG in a given month. Lots of ticket sale revenue opportunities.
Email Follow Up
GiG automatically emails you when new shows by your favorite artists are booked at a venue near you. That way you don’t have to be searching the web hoping you don’t miss great shows or tickets before they sell out. These are the automated Concert Alerts GiG sends to you based on your iTunes/favorite artists.
Here’s an example of an automated email alert letting me know 2 of my artists have an upcoming show…
Social Interaction Around Shows
Users can invite their friends to GiG, and Follow them, and be Followed. GiG users can also “tag” shows they are going to as “I’m Going”, and shows they’re interested in as “I Dig It.” Their Followers on GiG see the shows they’ve tagged, and soon this activity can automatically be posted out to Facebook or Twitter so their friends can know about the show and know about the show and join in.
In the future we’ll be doing some really cool stuff as we aggregate all the users talking about shows in your area, of your favorite artists, and let you follow what’s going on at a given concert or be a part of the conversation around it.
Next Near Term Milestone
Our next major milestone will be getting out for our public opening/launch, and beyond that we’ve got some biz dev opportunities in the works that could drive our subscriber base growth quickly. We’ve got some development to finish first though, including upgrading our infrastructure and shoring up our data handling. And even though we love the Twitter API and how it lends itself so well to real-time stuff like concerts, we’ll be integrating Facebook Connect as well to encourage signup and sharing via Facebook.
Beyond that, the rest of our strategy we’re keeping under wraps.
Hope you enjoy GiG and find some great shows to go to.
Hey- just wanted to let you know that I’ll be interviewed by Andrew Warner at Mixergy and sharing over an hour of my best stuff on marketing and developing content that attracts and converts.
Andrew asked me to do this interview and I decided to make it my goal to share with viewers how to move from a site that “chases traffic” to a thriving business that consistently drives engagement (email, social, subscriptions) and repeat sales.
The secrets I share are all about honing your ability to understand your visitors/prospects, deliver real value that engages them in the form of on page written and designed content, and create a system that allows your results to happen repeatedly and to be improved and optimized over time.
Do you have a system and a way to automate some portion of your business/work? Then how to do plan on getting out of the “trading your time for money” conundrum?
In this video interview I’m going to share some of my best tips for marketing online and creating automated systems that will allow you to scale your success and results.
I’ll share why most successful entrepreneurs fail at attracting and converting paying customers… and what your business or idea needs for people to both find you, engage with you, and buy from you.
If you’re not 100% sure how to start with your online business or idea, and you don’t have tested and proven experience writing and designing marketing that works… then watch my video interview Mixergy.
Let me put it to you bluntly, in case you didn’t already know…
The days of the destination site are over.
The days of thinking about indiscriminately scaling traffic, and then working to “monetize” are over. (were a long time ago)
And the days of finding a model “after the fact” are over too.
And for you and I that’s all a good thing… if we’re able to adapt.
Will you adapt?
There’s been a shift over the last year or more driven by fundamentals of the internet environment, the sheer mass of content out there, the collective evolution of competition in niches, and the realities of the economics of marketing and advertising online.
It used to be that online companies could find traffic sources, buy it, and hope that it converted.
For every company that didn’t have a clear strategy on Where traffic would come from, What the traffic cost, and How Much they’d make back over X amount of days… there was still a funny way of hanging in there for a while and fumbling their way through to enough customers and revenue (unprofitable) that an exit or additional financing could materialize.
But it certainly wasn’t sustainable. Just hustling and hype. Short term faux-sustainability.
The real numbers of these traffic and destination businesses told a grim story that the founders tried to reframe with misleading charts and press releases. They didn’t want you to see and understand the numbers, because the fundamentals were flawed.
This was what was going on during The Age Of Traffic.
That age is over.
Next came a wave of smarter businesses marketers that understood the value of targeted Quality Traffic over traffic for traffics sake.
These people knew how to spot and identify market niches online, they knew how to read the tea leaves of keyword research, and they knew how to create compelling content or products to meet the desires or needs of real individuals that made up a niche of targeted traffic.
Hundreds and thousands of businesses have prospered and jumped to the ranks of a 2, 3, 20 or 30 million dollar a year businesses in this way, and they did it through a relatively simple formula-
Create a service or product of real value that solves a real and existing need
Find your real target market through testing
Invest the time and effort it takes to create real value in content and products for this real target market
Find a way to convert your real target market in some way (subscribe, buy, use)
Follow up, often, and don’t be afraid to market and ask people to come back, try and buy
This formula was some of the focus of The Age of Conversion.
That age is largely over too, but the fundamentals of the Conversion formula are still as important now as they were then.
By the way, I talked about some of those old conversion fundamentals for internet marketing as they relate to the very first impression people have of you and your site/service on this quick ditty about Landing Pages. (*Hint- note the more “social” elements I’m testing and thinking about)
So, what’s happening now? Where are we going?
I see that we’re moving into a time I think of as The Age of Attention.
For most companies starting today online, the Conversion Age is over because of the rising cost of marketing and advertising online, and the added challenges of standing out in the crowd of existing products and businesses in most markets and niches makes competing very hard.
Building a large email list isn’t as straightforward as it used to be.
Driving traffic and getting it to convert at or above the minimum you need it to isn’t as easy as it used to be.
And prices are still generally rising in online ads, even with the downturn in the economy. (although Google Adwords hasn’t grown the same 5-8% this year in average CPC that it has steadily risen other years, from what I can tell across lots of different areas)
We’re now moving into a different time where existing companies who already have significant brands and audiences have a real advantage over companies that don’t and are starting out.
The barrier to entry for real online success has grown significantly over the last 5 years- both because of the Price of trying to compete, and because of the challenge in trying to grow your audience and the amount of Attention you can get.
Attention here meaning Qualified Traffic or Views of your message that were either referred, posted or bought.
Here’s a quick example of a barrier to entry for new companies, and the challenges in gaining Attention…
Google’s algorithm looks to favor bigger existing brands in a variety of search categories and keywords, where they didn’t before. The simple existence of Site Age in obtaining ranking in search results shows this… although age and audience awareness/attention/links can often go hand in hand.
Sites that alread have more Attention will be getting more Attention. And Attention seems to lead to more Attention.
Here’s an interesting article related to the value of links that older sites and businesses build up online. I found this quote particularly insightful:
“[There is...] the law of “preferential attachment” as it is also known, wherein new links on the web are more likely to go to sites that already have many links, proves that the scheme is inherently biased against new and unknown pages.”
Now, considering this, and consider the fact that even some of the more well-funded, experienced, web savvy people who used to be of the Conversion crowd are now changing or augmenting their methods of communicating, promoting, and growing their businesses.
Traffic and Conversion aren’t the game anymore. Everyone, even the Internet Marketing crowd, now wants a Brand, a Community, and an SEO strategy.
I found this article about the Two Tribes by Sonia Simone on Copyblogger a great insight into those still Traffic Age-minded, and those still Conversion Age-minded.
Here are some things I’m seeing as important and true in the new Age of Attention:
Brands used to be a bad word to Internet Marketers. Now they’re essential.
Great content alone, now matter how great, won’t win you enough Natural Search traffic to make it
People online are starting to want and trust “in network” information, not interruptive ads and marketing
Google is changing, can make or break you in a day, and can’t be depended on
There are starting to be some cool ways to build attention directly in social media. Especially Twitter
What changes are you seeing?
What’s stopped working that used to work for you and your business?
How has social media, and thinking about Brand and Attention become more important to you, and changed your approach?
