I HATE networking. To me, it falls into the same category as speed dating - I just feel awkward when I’m put in a room with a bunch of people with the sole intent of chatting them up to close the deal (I’m talking about networking here, I’ve never done speed dating).

I’m quite an outgoing person, but I clam up at the prospect of walking into a room full of strangers and breaking in. I think most women are useless at it - case in point: every single women’s only networking event I have attended, people only seem to talk to people they know. Seeing as I know noone, I have to walk right up to people and try to start conversations that seem to only ever be met with one word answers.

What I’ve learned

Don’t network. Make friends

I’m never going to be a networker, but I am a friend-maker. I attend events now with the intention of meeting one cool person. I don’t care if they have anything to do with my business or if I never have the remotest possibility of working with them at all.

Somehow, that takes the pressure off. It’s amazing what snippets of gold you get or fun nights you have when this is your intent. Quite often, you do end up meeting people who can help you out business wise anyway.

Use your one liners

Man it’s tough. I try to have a stack of one liners (told you it was like speed dating) that can break me into a group. I have accumulated these by watching men do it. Seriously, guys get networking! Mine are fairly dumb (but I’m still learning) like ‘hey, have you been to one of these before?’ or if there is food somewhere, i wander over and grab some and make a joke of it - this clearly only works if they are snacks provided and not someones private meal.

The one thing I’ve noticed is that when you are alone, no one notices you. You know how you stand there feeling like every eye in the room is focused on you and wondering why such a loser bothered to turn up? Well it’s a total lie. Even if you break into a conversation, say something dumb and fail dismally… Chance are, no one will even notice. This means you get quite a few chances.

Let them talk

My biggest worry is that I will run out of things to say - which is weird, because in all my life, I don’t think I’ve ever had that happen. However, if you ease the pressure on yourself and spend a good portion of your chats ASKING the questions, you don’t have to spend as much time answering them. This way, if you are nervous, you have time to regroup your thoughts and come up with sparkling, witty comments that describe yourself in a way that makes people like you. This is something I find really beneficial.

I was told once that if you ask others questions and talk less about yourself, people walk away thinking you’re the most interesting person in the room. This is because you talked about them, which to them is the most interesting topic in the world. Simple but exceptionally good.

Be brave

It’s like when you go to a country where you know no one. You can be someone entirely different. Well, if you’re in a room, and you know no one, it’s like another country. So be the brave version of you. Take a chance that you wouldn’t take if you had your best friend standing beside you.

Sometimes, it takes me 5 pages of documentation and a lengthy chat to decipher what it is a particular business actually does. I figure if I don’t get it, then chances are the viewers of the website I build for them wont get it either.

Sometimes I feel thick because I have to ask a potential customer so many questions, part of me just wants to nod along and pretend I know what they’re up to so they’ll feel comfortable spending money with me. But another part of me figures that if a business is making me feel dumb and intimidated because I don’t get what they do, surely they aren’t marketing themselves very well.

Publish a five word summary puts in very concise words one of the biggest things I think we offer our customers and WHY we think it’s so important.

I realised this very early on after starting a blog - the 5 word summary of what the blog was about appeared in every review and directory listing people gave us. They just copied and pasted it. We made it so easy for them to spread the word about us, they just did it (I just realised that we’ve somehow deleted that summary, I’ll put it back up tomorrow)

I also notice it when talking to people about what we do. If I give the 5-15 minute explanation, people often get a polite but entirely bored look on their face. Most people just don’t care about the inner workings, they just want the 5 word summary. If they get your business in 5 words - especially if they know nothing about the industry - they feel smart. They like you AND they can tell their friends about you.

So, what’s your five word summary?

James has been super busy over the last few weeks helping a US startup Social Media get the new version of their website slick and beautiful. We were stoked to see this morning that Social Media has now been featured on both Tech Crunch and Venture Beat, looking absolutely amazing. And if PlanHQ’s time on Tech Crunch is anything to go by, it means thousands upon thousands of eyes on a Decisive Flow designed website, which is kind of really super cool.

Congrats to Social Media for raising $3.5 million in financing and I bet we’re sure to see more of them in the future (especially as our entire office is glued to Facebook), and go James for getting out yet another beautiful website, you’re a superstar!

Getting your message across quickly and clearly is something everyone who wants to go somewhere has to master, and getting your story and presentation pulled down to a few minutes is a valuable way of helping you simplify what the problem is you’re trying to solve, why other approaches aren’t working and how you do it in a way that does.

Refining your Pitch
I’m over here in the US right now taking PlanHQ around the market and in the last few weeks aside from pitching to around 10-25 people a day, have done 5 video interviews including:

• interview on lunchmeet
• another at techcrunch, then finally last week
• presented our 6 minute pitch with a live product Demo on stage in front of 700+ people including press and investors.
• By this point we were in pretty good form, so straight after that a TV show from Canada came and did an interview (doesn’t air until October 15), people like good clear stories if you tell yours well, more people will want to pass it on.

I think the whole team thinks we’ve done pretty well, the secret is to keep doing it, as often as possible, tweaking it, watching peoples re-actions, simplifying what you do, say and show, until people love it. See what you think of some of the videos above and how we progressed, and get working on your pitch.

It’s a very funny feeling, steeping outside the realm to the web and starting to market your business in the ‘real world’. However, I’ve taken the plunge.

How to get in the press without a PR company

Tim and I were fortunate enough to meet Sam Farrow from the NZPA who has been walking us through the ins and outs of writing and submitting a press release.

Most small businesses in New Zealand aren’t aware that you don’t need to hire a PR company or pay advertising fees to get into the press. What I like about the NZPA is, that with a little cunning, it lets you play the same game that the big boys do. When you submit a press release to the NZPA, you pay a fee to get it on ‘the wire’ (a constantly updated list of all press releases that gets sent to different newspapers and tv and radio stations depending on the deal you choose). Basically it lets you avoid having to find and schmooze particular journalists or pay a fortune for a PR company that has.

How to increase the odds of being published

While the press is a funny beast and you can’t guarantee being published - in fact it may take a while before anything you write gets published, there are things you can do to up the odds. I submitted out first press release a week or two ago, and have compiled a list of advice that Sam sent through with my own little tweaks :)

• Look at the news all the time! If you submit your press release at the same time as larger companies have big news, you will be forgotten. Slow news days are better than big news days. It’s also a good idea to stay on topic! Look at what’s making the news and fit in around it.
• Think about the business result you are trying to achieve. Is it to raise your local profile? Encourage local sales? Get speaking engagements?…
• Think strategically. You want to keep hitting the spot with your message so think about your key message and submit several news articles around the same theme. Think about everything that happens in the business and is newsworthy and how it fits into our strategy.
• Define your target audience. Who are you trying to connect to? Who are you trying to sell to? Is it the government or small business owners or consumers?
• Define your desired result. Is it to get them to want to buy or to make contact? Is it purely so they hear your name?

Next week… Writing your first press release

I have been a web designer long enough to know that behind even the ugliest of sites lies some very successful companies. A lot of people just don’t see the web as a marketing channel and have an ugly looking, amateur website as their only online representation. That’s like sending your five year old along to a sales meeting. Not only does it look unprofessional, it actively puts customers off!

I realised this fact with a bang when i was looking for a company to print tshirts for PlanHQ. I looked at quite a few websites and to be frank, they all looked like they were run out of some 12 year old’s garage and I had absolutely no faith that I would actually get anything for my money.

In the end, I actually went and visited the premises of a business BEFORE committing to purchase - this is someone who’s normally happy buying anything online. It struck me that t-shirt printing sites all had several things in common:

• They didn’t understand google. It is very hard to search for a t-shirt printing company, I had the nagging feeling there were a lot more out there but I would never be able to find them.
• T-shirt printing companies didn’t simplify their product. I just wanted a few t-shirts printed, I didn’t want it to feel like a very complicated, high risk task! I wanted an easy process (choose a t-shirt, submit your image in this format at this resolution, pay your money, wait 2 days, get your t-shirt couriered). That was, in the end how the process worked where I went, but honestly, you would never have guessed (the place I went to didn’t even have a website)
• T-shirt companies don’t understand the importance of beauty This is pretty frightening as I trust them to make my clothes look cool. Ugly sites put me off! Even though I know it’s psychological and a website is often no reflection on a company (!), I still was put off even calling most of the places I found.

T-shirt companies are not alone

A lot of other companies are in the same boat, but t-shirt companies are such an easy example of businesses that could totally take advantage of the web. If I was a t-shirt company that printed corporate tees, I’d ensure people could do it all online. Otherwise, every time someone wants a batch done it takes hours out of their day. They simply cannot afford to do it!

T-shirt companies could easily make my life easier by embracing the web. If I could find one half-decent site I would switch my business to them in a flash. Seriously.

I’ve recently subscribed to another email newsletter that I REALLY enjoy - gone are the days where these things are mainly spam, Get to The Point is ‘Small business secrets in 60 seconds’… One topic daily that gives you a little ‘ahh cool’ moment when you read it.

I have been buying a lot off stuff off Trademe recently. This uncovered an interesting phenomenon. Trademe works on a feedback system, when you make a trade, you offer feedback on the other party, the buyer or the seller. This raises or lowers their trust profile and affects future sales.

A fairer marketplace

The theory behind this is that it creates a far more honest marketplace… You have to be fair or else everyone knows about it. The thing is, now everyone is so worked up about their feedback, it’s actually created an environment of suspicion.

A weird side effect

I bought a phone for my flat, I sent an email to the seller requesting pick up details and got a reply. I then sent a further email requesting bank account details and trying to confirm a pick up time. They didn’t get it. The next thing I know, I’m being sent an email accusing me of being a ‘time waster’ and questioning if I ‘even want the phone’. Which I found fairly shocking. The issue was resolved with a fast phone call, but it seemed a weird reaction. When the truth was discovered, the opposite occurred and they obviously were a little afraid that I would turn on them!

My boyfriend had a similar issue when trying to buy glasses. After weeks of communication, the glasses never arrived. Eventually his money was returned and he wrote polite but firm piece of feedback which questioned if maybe the glasses were ever sent. The response was immediate and viscous. He is now the angry owner of feedback that claims he is a scammer.

Freakonomics

I’m quite new to buying on Trademe and I actually found myself AFRAID of not picking something up on time or not contacting the buyer immediately. It actually became surprising stressful.

I’m reading Freakonomics at the moment which is a book all about incentives, but also shows how everything has unintended side effects. This was one particular one I’d never considered arising from such a perfect sounding solution to trust int he marketplace.

I’ve been chatting to entrepreneur Patrick McPhee from Splurf about PlanHQ featuring in a startup TV series he’s getting going for New Zealand, due to start screening later this year.

The idea is to show everyone the reality of startups, and the startup culture here in New Zealand. Hopefully by opening our doors we’ll be assisting those in startups by showing our mistakes and successes and providing a little inspiration to those who aren’t in business for themselves to maybe get amongst. Patrick and crew have just released a 30 minute pilot video below, interested in any thoughts. (Note: The outcomes in the pilot are fictional and are for illustration only)

Startup TV Pilot

Online Videos by Veoh.com

The inspiration - Startup.com the Movie

In terms of the style of how the story is to be told, Patrick refers to Startup.com the Movie which follows an online startup govworks.com which goes from inception, to raising $US 60 milion and a couple of hundred staff to dead. Not an ideal outcome ofcourse, but failures are part of success, although in this case, and at this time of the web, was all too common.

Seeing your mistakes from others

I remember watching the movie startup.com in 2003 shortly after I’d helped raise $11 million for early stage energy management technology company Energy intellect. It was the first time I’d watched a movie that had things I could genuinely relate too, and it forced immediate learning. I saw the things that I/we had done wrong, watching someone else make mistakes and seeing them as mistakes certainly helps you.

CrazyEgg has been around a fair while, and like a lot of things, I looked at it and thought ‘wow, that would be cool to try… If only I could be bothered signing up for another Web 2.0 account’.

Well, I’m pleased to announce that yesterday I gave it a shot.

What is Crazyegg?

Crazyegg visually displays where your visitors click on your website, which helps you see the success of various buttons, menus and links (and find out what people think IS a link). You can look at four very nice graphics showing various views on the information, including the EXACT point where people click… And seriously it’s so amazing, you become obsessed with your website.

What’s I’ve learned in a day

People think PlanHQ is Powered by Silverstripe

While our website IS made using the Silverstripe CMS, PlanHQ itself is definitely built using Ruby on Rails. We suspected that some people wondered how we built an entire planning application on Silverstripe, and using Crazyegg, I saw that the link to Silverstripe was one of the most commonly clicked links… Which really supports our suspicion.

I have now updated the text.

People Think the images in our tour are links

That was a surprising but very interesting discovery. We’re still unsure of what to do :)

Why Crazyegg is so Awesome

Crazyegg pretty much makes every user of your website or application a tester. Every single user now provides you with valuable information about what they find confusing, easy and interesting… Without them having to do ANYTHING but use your site.
We’re hoping to embed Crazyegg in PlanHQ to see where people run into problems and what is most interesting to them. The information it provides is literally like sitting down with every single customer and finding out what they think.

That’s truly amazing.

And the smallest account is free.

What a bargain.

But I recommend (having experience with selling web products) signing up for a paid account. This tool is truly worth every penny you spend.