Feature Product Review:An Engineer from the University Institute of Engineering & Technology (UIET) in Chandigarh, Ritoban Chakrabarti is a real-time Internet marketer from India. He did his engineering in computer science and he firmly believes that his college life has changed the way he looked at the world. Though he is from computer science (programming)
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Your bottom line is bottoming out. Your customers are looking elsewhere. Your well of new ideas has run dry. What can you do? You could turn to your accountant for money-saving schemes, or hire a lawyer to re-structure your business. You could bring in a salesperson to drum up customers. I’ll bet you wouldn’t think a technique used by designers could help you out of a bad spot. The technique I’ll outline here is the secret to creating products and services your customers will buy. It’s a powerful way to keep your well of ideas overflowing. It’s a three-step process anyone can do. And when it’s done right, you can expect impressive results. The fountain of youth for your business When your well of new ideas runs dry, design thinking will get it bubbling up again. Design thinking is a technique that turns your business challenges on their heads, allowing you to see them from a different angle. It helps you discover new products and service that meet the needs of your market. And when your ideas meet a need, they sell. The secret to creating stuff your customers will buy Tim Brown of IDEO gave a lecture on design thinking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and explained design thinking with a great analogy. Brown said that most new business ideas come in through one of three doors: The technical door , which is led by research and development thinking. The business door , which is led by standard value-oriented thinking like return on investment. The people door , which is led by design thinking. Design thinking is a human-centered process. If you focus on your customers when you’re developing new ideas, you’ll create products and services catered to them, and dramatically increase your chances of success. Inspiration: Design thinking starts here The first phase of the design thinking process is inspiration , and that comes from your customers. Find out what their struggles are, and discover what their daily lives are like. You can gather inspiration through: Observation: What can you see your customers struggling with? What do they complain about on Twitter and Facebook? What questions do you hear again and again? Interviews: Whether face-to-face or on the phone, speaking directly to your customers and asking for candid information about their challenges is invaluable. Speak to users on either extreme: power users and beginners. Your most valuable observations will come from the far ends of the spectrum. Role Play: Ask a friend to “mystery shop” your business, going through every interaction as a customer would. What’s their first contact like? How do they perceive the process? What would improve their experience? Surveys: Online surveys are easy and fast. Your goal in this phase is to understand the cognitive, emotional, and physical world your customers live in. Gather this information, and use it in the next step. Ideation: Brainstorming gone wild In this phase, Brainstorming Rule Number One applies: no idea is too outlandish to consider. Use a white board, large paper, or a computer file to field ideas. If you’re a solo entrepreneur, gather colleagues for this process. Feed them the initial data you gathered in the inspiration phase, and set them loose. Narrow down your ideas and pick the strongest one by prototyping. I know what you’re thinking: prototyping doesn’t sound like something a small business can afford to do, right? Prototyping your best ideas can be as simple as: Videotaping someone going through the motions of using your idea for a new product or service. Building quick models of physical products using cardboard boxes and tape. Create your product to size and see how it might feel in use. Build a mini-product that gives a taste of the benefits of the full thing. If you’re thinking of creating a membership site, build out a tiny sliver into a teleseminar or a $7 ebook to test the waters. Writing down stories about the journey your customer takes from the moment they realize they have a need, to the moment they discover your new product or service, to their interaction with it, and their post-purchase experience. Prototyping allows you to visualize what your idea would be like in use. It makes it “real,” and will give you strong clues about whether or not an idea is viable. Implementation: Make it so You’ve been inspired by your customers, and you’ve developed a new idea they will love. The last phase of the design thinking process is about implementation . This is where you will nail down your costs, determine your production needs, and figure out how to execute your best idea. As you set up a system to deliver your idea, think back on those customer stories you gathered, and the prototyping exercises you did. Use these experiences to develop a marketing story around your product or service that will tap into your customer’s needs. And of course, always focus your marketing around the benefits your customer will experience after purchasing. A three-part technique that helps businesses soar Gaining inspiration from your customers, developing ideas based on their needs, and making those ideas a reality are the three phases of design thinking that every business can implement. Harnessing this creative force will keep your well of ideas overflowing with products and services that connect with your customers needs, and help your business grow. About the author: Pamela Wilson helps small businesses grow with great design and marketing tips. Learn the basics with her free Design 101 e-course at Big Brand System.
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How to Develop an Endless Source of Ideas that Sell
We have the technology. We have the business skills. We have virtual ink by the barrel . The writer runs this show. We’re the ones who command the attention. We’re the ones who create the engagement. We’re the ones who influence what people think and do. The writer runs this show. We won’t toil in obscurity waiting for a green-light . We won’t submit to “creativity” by committee. We won’t accept meager pay while others cash in our copyright. The writer runs this show. If you won’t read until your eyes blur. If you won’t write more to write well . If you won’t invest the blood, sweat, and tears . . . Then you’ll have to work with real writers. And pay those writers exceptionally well. If they have the time, that is. Because the writer runs this show. About the Author : Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of Thesis , Scribe , Premise , Third Tribe , Lateral Action and Teaching Sells .
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The Writer Runs This Show
Let’s say you thought it would be pretty neat to climb Mount Everest. You find two “how-to” web sites that explain what’s involved. One details a tough training regimen, spells out all of the financial costs, has a serious conversation with you about the risks, and gives you a complete list of the gear you’ll need to maximize your chances of a successful ascent. Another tells you that since you go for a 20-minute run every day, you’ll be totally fine. Nah, don’t buy a bunch of fancy equipment. Just wear your flip-flops and a sweater. Who’s doing you the favor? There are plenty of people out there who’ll tell you that if you want to promote something — anything — you need to start a blog. Don’t be intimidated, just jump right in. Start with a free account on Blogger, do a bunch of Google searches for good content, rewrite it with some cheesy automated blogging tool, and that juicy search engine traffic will just start rolling in. Think that person is doing you a favor? Or might they be sending you to the blogging equivalent of eternal rest as part of Everest’s permafrost? Here’s the really good news Publishing a successful blog that supports your business goals? So much easier than climbing Mount Everest. Also, much, much less chance of dying or losing your nose to frostbite. But there are times when you start out when it doesn’t feel easier than climbing Everest. Maybe you’ve been wrestling with installing *$%#^ self-hosted WordPress for a month and every time you think about it you burst into tears. Or you’ve been stuck at 22 readers for a month and you’ve already nagged everyone you know until they refuse to take your calls any more. Or maybe you haven’t posted in a month because everything you write looks kind of stupid to you. Does this mean you’ll never figure out how to run a decent blog? Not at all. It just means you haven’t done your training. And that well-meaning person who said, “It’s really not that hard” was either full of baloney or forgot that when you’re starting out, damned right it’s hard. So here are some ways to get over three of the toughest hurdles bloggers face. The sooner you get these out of the way, the sooner you can get to the fun part. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. But it’s also not as hard as it looks right now. If the technology is killing you I’ll admit it, I’m not a technology moron. I’m worse. I’m almost a technology moron. Because I have mastered formatting a bulleted list in HTML, I believe that I can do anything. This belief is incorrect. I have been known to spend days trying to fix technical problems that a well-trained chimp could code up in 20 minutes. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all learnable. Apply a little stubbornness and some focused attention and you will figure it out. But is that actually what you should spend your time doing? If you’re pounding your head against the technology and trying to make stuff work, allow me to suggest that you forgo your favorite treat for a few weeks (Starbucks, cute shoes, that iPad that’s been calling to you so sweetly) and hire someone to help you get this thing done. There are plenty of people who will set you up with a WordPress blog for an impressively reasonable price. And there are thousands of other very capable folks who can help with the related stuff. Eat ramen for a month if you have to, but get some help. Then take the time you’ve saved and develop a simple, inexpensive product . Get it onto your now-functioning blog and pay yourself back. If your reader numbers aren’t budging The hardest, loneliest part of your ascent is right at the beginning, when you’re writing and posting and you’re not at all sure there’s anyone there to hear you. The first training tip is to spend that time making your blog someplace worthy of all that traffic you want to attract. If you got 10,000 visitors today, what would they see? Three posts about your cat, one about how you can’t figure out Twitter, and the “Hello, world” post that you never bothered to delete when you installed WordPress? So while you still have some privacy and the utter freedom of anonymity, write some good cornerstone content . While you’re at it, get an email autoresponder up and running. Make your blog someplace worth going to. Once you’ve got the place presentable, it’s time to get out there and do some guest posts. Make friends with people who blog about the same topics you do. Make intelligent comments on their posts. Follow the people they follow on Twitter. Be interesting and helpful. Then offer to write some guest posts. Start with smaller blogs at first, then work your way to medium and then larger blogs. Guest posts are still the best way to build your audience, find new loyal fans, and grow your subscriber numbers. If you’ve run out of things to say This is an interesting moment. One possibility is that you’re midway up the ascent and you realize, “Oh crap, I actually never did want to climb Everest. I’d much rather swim the English Channel.” The difference between climbing Everest and running a blog is that your attempt at the summit takes a day. (It needs to, because if you stay on the mountain overnight you die.) Your blog is something you’ll think about every single day until the day you shut it down or sell it. So if it’s not where you want to be, the right answer may be to shut it down now, or to radically change direction until it’s something you actually want to spend this much time on. That’s why the experts all tell you that passion matters. Trying to write on a topic you don’t care about is really, really hard over the long run. On the other hand, you may just be chickening out. You may need to deal with your own fear of failure, fear of success, or fear of mediocrity . If it’s not one of those, it might be something very, very simple. Just write. Write every damn day . Write when you don’t feel like it. Write when it’s stupid. Write when it’s not coming out right. Write when you think that no one in his right mind would read what you have to say. You don’t have to be an amazing writer to be an amazing blogger. But you do have to write. A lot. (Even if you’re a podcaster or a video blogger, you need a smart, sharp script or outline.) The more you write, the more ideas will come. Sounds weird, I know, but it works. So get off on your backside and do it. If you’re looking for someone who will tell you the truth about marketing your business, and will give you the step-by-step training to make it a lot less overwhelming, you may want to look into my Remarkable Marketing Blueprint. It’s open for new members, but only until 5:00 pm Mountain Time today (Monday, May 24). Check out the details now , because tonight, the opportunity goes away. About the Author : Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of The Remarkable Marketing Blueprint .
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How to Overcome Your Three Greatest Blogging Challenges
This is a quick reminder that the Scribe introductory offer, where you get our most advanced plan for the Starter price, ends tomorrow, Friday, February 26, 2010, at 6:00 pm Central. But I also wanted to share a video with you. It was created for current Scribe customers to let them know what’s coming next month, but I’m going to hook you up too. It’s a preview of the Scribe web-based application. So while you can use Scribe right in your WordPress interface, you will also be able to use this web-based version to analyze any content before posting it online on any platform. Or analyze and optimize older content for any platform. Total freedom. This is especially useful for professional web writers who create content for clients. The Scribe web version even generates an SEO analysis report that you can deliver to your clients along with the content. This video preview was made by Sean Jackson (one of the technology ninjas behind Scribe) for our current customers. So trust me, it’s not a sales pitch. But it’s very useful for getting an idea how the Scribe web-based application works. And if you decide to hop on board tomorrow with our great introductory offer, you’ll get Scribe Web during your very first month as a customer at no extra charge. You’ll also get every other version of Scribe we develop, all inclusive. Check out the video preview of the Scribe web-based version here . Take the Scribe for WordPress tour Frequently Asked Questions Take Scribe WP on a Free Test Drive About the Author : Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and wants you to know that Thesis + Scribe = SEO Made Simple. Get more from Brian on Twitter .
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Check out this preview of the Scribe SEO web-based application