From Beards to Business

So you’ve got a business.  And your business has a product.  Your product is great.  But nobody knows it yet.  That’s a problem.  Let’s do something about it.

You’ve probably heard of big-name companies using sites like Facebook to launch ‘social media marketing campaigns’, but you might never have actually tried to pitch your company/product on this platform.  Well, to get you started, let’s cover some general tips, strategies, and things to keep in mind when launching your online marketing presence.

Beardowear is a great example of a small company successfully marketing its products using social media, so I’ll be referencing them throughout the post.

Social media is all about posting content to your followers/subscribers.  A successful social marketing program will generate not only a large number of followers, but also a large amount of follower activity and engagement.  The way you achieve this is by posting regular content that isn’t spammy or convoluted.

If every one of your posts are little more than ‘buy our product’, there’s no real reason for anyone subscribe to your feed of spam.  At the other end of the spectrum, if your posts are too technical and obfuscated, you’re going to end up boring or confusing your customers which will hurt your social presence as well.  You need to find the middle ground.  Your regular updates don’t necessarily have to contain ‘useful’ information, but it should always be both relevant to your product, and to your audience.

In terms of product presentation; play to the strengths of your product when making your social media posts.  For example, consider The Beardo.  The most obvious factor contributing to the popularity of the product itself is the aesthetic appeal of its namesake.  Nearly every post the company makes on their Facebook page is accompanied by an image of someone wearing the clever and humorous headgear.  The physical imagery of the project is the most recognizable selling point, and they feature it prominently in their posts.  In fact it’s so important to the product that the company even has an Instagram account for its fans to follow.

One of the most important keys to building a strong community of subscribers and customers is to engage with your audience directly.  And social media services make this incredibly easy!  Create polls, engage directly in conversation with your community, and present relevant topics and opinions for discussion.  By forming a relationship, this direct interaction is a great way for a business to build trust and loyalty with its customers.

Listen to what your followers have to say about you and your product, and consider the community’s response to your updates.  This can give you valuable insight into who is using your product, where, and for what, what they like about it, what they don’t like about it, and whether or not they’re sharing your content with others.

Hearing your followers’ comments on your product is also a fantastic way for you to improve it over time.  Not only that, taking into consideration the response from the community as a whole can help businesses to design new products that are of interest to their market, or to come up with modifications for existing products that better suit the needs of the audience.  Adding new products like this to your inventory is very ambitious, but for rapidly expanding businesses it can be a great way to improve customer loyalty, and expand market reach.  Beardowear’s target audience is comprised mainly of skiers and snowboarders (and other wintersport enthusiasts).  People love to drink and party on ski trips; keeping this audience in mind, Beardowear introduced the Beermo Bottle Moustache, a largely useless but nonetheless entertaining accessory which has shown very positive feedback from their community.

Analyzing the Indie Game Phenomenon

When you stop and think of the video games industry, you probably think of big-budget companies like Rockstar, Square Enix, or Activision.  Or do you?  A few years ago this was probably true, but what about now?  In the past few years, there has been a veritable explosion around the world of popularity in independently produced games. Let’s take a look at some of the things leading up to it.

Click the images to check out some indie games I liked from the past decade.

The evolution of internet technology over the past decade or so is easily the single greatest factor in the recent surge of the indie games scene.  To start with, when high-speed internet technology came around, it made the distribution of much larger files viable.  Using the internet, developers were also able to send game updates and patches directly to their customers at any point.  Realizing the potential of the online platform for game distribution, dedicated services like ‘Steam’ and ‘Desura’ were created as central marketplaces for both game developers and consumers.

The boom in online marketing systems also presented an unprecedented opportunity to aspiring game developers; by marketing and distributing their games entirely online, they could effectively be their own publishers.  Few commercial publishers wanted to commit to the risk of supporting a game outside of the formula established by the AAA game companies.  By removing the need for a publisher, online distribution platforms greatly reduced many of the risks faced by small developers in putting the time and effort into making their games.  The independent game was born.

Since most independently produced games aren’t produced on a formal budget or time-constraint, many developers produce games over very long periods of time.  For example, the indie sensation game ‘Minecraft’ (arguably the game that started the indie boom) was first released in 2009, but remained in development until the ‘official release’ in 2011.  What this means is that indie developers aren’t usually under pressure to meet deadlines, so they’re free to spend as much time as they like perfecting all aspects of their game.  With so much time to tweak the smallest details, indies can be extremely expressive and immersive experiences.  And because many developers try to push the boundaries of the previously established game formula, many successful indie games have one particularly strong or experimental area, for example the art, story, audio, gameplay, etc.

However, indie games didn’t really begin to get a lot of attention until the late 2000’s.  The majority of gamers were still focused on AAA games and either weren’t aware of indies, or weren’t interested.  But that started to change with the advent of more powerful mobile phones.  You’ve probably heard of a little game called ‘Angry Birds’ by now, right?  This game is a prime example of how the mobile market can get a great game in front of millions of people, including non-gamers.  Mobile game development is big business right now, and it’s also one of the things that really helped get independent games into the mainstream.  It’s also an attractive platform to develop for (particularly for newcomers), since mobile games don’t usually need to be as long or complex as other games; the platform is better suited towards casual games which even non-gamers can enjoy, which means development time is often much lower.

Mobile devices aren’t the only market though; PC and console-based indies have become hugely popular in a past few years.  I think a large part of this is because of all of the promotion that has been going on.  There are numerous websites that offer regular ‘bundles’ of independent games.  The first of these was ‘The Humble Indie Bundle’, which was so popular during its first event that other bundle sites started popping up all over the place.  These bundles offer groups of indie games for a very low price, often with bonuses for people who choose to pay more.  The recent Indie bundles have been a massive source of exposure for many developers.  Better still, large portions of bundles’ profits often go to support charity, as well as supporting the developers directly.

So there we have it.  The indie game phenomenon.  One of the fastest growing ‘industries’ in the world, and also one of the most creative.  I sincerely hope the scene continues to expand and evolve.

How Online Tools Can Make You More Productive

The internet is a wonderful place.  Social media services like Facebook and Twitter allow you to stay in touch with everyone you care about from anywhere you want.  Video sharing/hosting sites like YouTube enable you to watch people falling down, or hilarious foreign pop videos for as long as you like.  And a simple Google search will give you access to more pictures of cats than you could ever hope to look at.  But the internet isn’t just for fun.  Believe it or not, you can actually use it to make yourself more productive!

File sharing/storage:

There are a number of great tools that allow you to upload and store documents, images, and other files, so that you can access them from anywhere.  Using one of these services frequently means that if you have an internet connection, you’ll always have access to your files when you need them.  These tools are also great for teams, as they provide a central hub where all of the members can store their work, and see the work of others in the group.

My suggestions: Dropbox, Droplr, Ge.tt, Google Drive, Microsoft Skydrive, Yandex.Disk, Noteshares

Project Managment

These services can be lifesavers.  A dedicated online project management tool is a really accessible way to track your progress and tasks when working on a lengthy project.  Users of these tools have access to their tasks, notes, progress, and more from anywhere.  Sites and services for this lend themselves extremely well to project teams as well, as many of the more recent ones include features like team instant messaging, comments/feedback, file uploading, and event tracking.

My suggestions: HiTask, Moovia, Teambox, Trello, Spaaze, Springpad

Student vs. Social Media

Social media networks are great tools for keep in touch with your friends.  Millions of people use them every day to post about what they had for breakfast, or to let everyone know that they have a toothache.  But if you take a different approach to how you use them, these services can suddenly become extremely useful academic tools for students as well.

You should start thinking about treating these tools differently than you have been up until now.

One of the most important and beneficial things you can do with social media as a student is to start building professional networks as early as possible.  Try things like sharing and replying to content from industry professionals, or engaging in relevant public discussions.  Be friendly with as many (professional) people as you can.  Start making a name for yourself.  Create your online presence.

Here are some things you may not have tried with your Facebook or Twitter accounts.

Twitter:

Twitter isn’t just a place you can post all of the profanity you don’t want your mother to see on Facebook; it’s your gateway to a flood of news and information about almost any topic you can think of.  I highly recommend that students follow some influential people and companies from their area of interest on Twitter.  This is a great way to have updates, trends, news, and relevant opinions delivered directly to you 24 hours a day, even if you don’t want to participate directly yourself!  If you DO want to make your own posts, Twitter is a great starting point for putting your name and opinions out into the professional community, 140 characters at a time.

Facebook:

Facebook can be quite a useful tool for managing your interactions with people you work closely with on a regular basis.  Facebook ‘groups’ are quick and easy ways to set up accessible and private communications between you and whoever you want to include in the group.  Some suggested uses are for project teams, study groups, or classes.  You can also store documents in these groups (although you can’t really organize them).  You should also make a point of ‘liking’ any official Facebook pages maintained by your school as they’ll usually provide regular information about events and services they’re offering.

The Joys of SoundCloud

Let me just start by saying that I love Soundcloud.  I use it daily, when my connection permits it.

It’s just such a great service for any person interested in any aspect of any sort of music whatsoever.

You can be an artist, fan, promoter, publisher, whatever, and still get something out of it.

Soundcloud is a truly great social music network.  It’s a great way to share new tracks and albums; Soundcloud has a feature called ‘sets’ which allows you to upload multiple tracks in sequence, so your listeners can listen to them all in one go.  It’s great for uploading albums!  Here’s my own soundtrack/mini album.

The great thing about being an artist on Soundcloud, is that you can see what your fans think of your work, and read all of their feedback directly on your track.  Comments are even timecoded so that a comment can be placed at a particular moment in a track.  What a great way to listen to your fans analyzing your entire track; it’s free information you can use to improve on areas that need work!

Using Soundcloud, artists or labels can share new tracks with the world, fans can like, share, and comment on them, promoters can get in touch with artists, the list goes on.  It’s simply brilliant.

The Importance of Social Media

Processors might be getting smaller, but the world just keeps getting bigger.  With so many unprecedented new technologies popping up over the past few decades, ‘World News’ just isn’t as simple a concept as it used to be.  Today, if you want to keep in the loop on news from any specialized topic (e.g. the media industry, Hollywood, or a particular music scene) you’ll have a hard time getting your fix from the TV or radio.  There’re just so many things to do these days, and not all of them are going to be relevant to the interests of the mainstream population.

The great thing about the internet is that it gives people access to information on any topic, from anywhere in the world.  Now people can instantly read about whatever they’re interested in, and even specify their searches down to the smallest detail.  Cool!

The other great thing about the internet is that you’re not the only one using it!  In fact, you’re not the only one interested in video games, or photography, or circular saws either!  Social networking services like Twitter or Facebook allow people with common interests all over the world to share their passion with one another, and engage in meaningful conversations with like-minded people.  large online communities also generate arguably the best possible method of keeping up-to-the-minute with new developments about a topic; with thousands of people posting every second, it can become almost impossible to miss anything!

Social media networks are a fantastic way to share and collect information about anything under the Sun.  And if we look at them from a few steps back, they’re a brilliant demonstration of how communication technologies are constantly adapting to suit the needs of the ever-changing global community.