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Tristan Walker wanted to work at the hottest startup in Silicon Valley which at the time was Foursquare. He applied for a job on Foursquare’s website and didn’t get a response. He found the CEOs email address and sent him a note. He got no response. He emailed him again and again and again, each time with no response. So then he emailed him three more times, eight times in all, still no response.

So what did Tristan do? He started working for them. He wanted a job in business development so he started doing business development for them. He contacted companies, told them he was a student and asked them if they would be interested in advertising on Foursquare.

It is important to remember that not only did he not work for Foursquare, they had no idea he was doing this. A number of companies said yes so he emailed the foursquare CEO a ninth time and told him he had some advertisers for them. Tristan was hired and went on to run business development at Foursquare.

Last week I said that every once in a while someone puts themselves out there. Makes the leap. Faces rejection or failure or worse. And comes out the other side. Better. Changed.

Most people won’t. This means that those that do change everything.

I love that story; it just shows what you can do if you take the initiative.

One thing that happened a week or so ago is that Everpix went out of business. In just two years EverPix it went from a dream to one of the world’s best solutions for managing a large library of photos.  It seamlessly found and uploaded photos from your desktop and from online services and then organized them using algorithms to highlight the best ones.  It attracted 55,000 users and was generating good revenue. But Everpix made a mistake that many startups make by obsessing over the look and features of the product. This meant it took them over one and a half years to have a full-featured product. This is a huge amount of time for a start up and discouraged investors. The company had focused all their resources on product development and almost nothing on marketing and advertising.

When they solicited funding they found that there are some investors who are willing to write a $100,000 check to see if the startup becomes an overnight success but it is extremely difficult to get a check for $1 million or more. The sheer explosion of opportunities has spooked the investment community. Strive Capital says investors have stepped back, they see this as a dramatic increase in risk. So despite having a rapidly increasing signup of users and receiving accolades for their technology, they could not raise the funding.  They then solicited an acquisition, but without success.  The lesson that the founders drew from their experience was that they spent too much time and money on the product, not enough time and money on marketing and distribution and they did not effectively position themselves.  Their conclusion was that having a great product and a growing number of subscribers is not enough to guarantee success.

Social media is highly effective and it isdriving business.   It is also important to realize that different social media platforms appeal to different demographics and different segments of the market. Some platforms are preferred by young adults who are most active in the evenings, others by high income professionals who generally post during the day. It is very important to understand the demographics of social media audiences for targeted marketing and messaging. For example, Facebook still skews young, but the 45 to 54-year-old age group has seen a 45% growth in the last 12 months. Among US users 73% with incomes above $75,000 are on Facebook. Compare this 73% with just 17% who are on Twitter.   Another important fact is that 86% of Facebook’s users are outside the United States

When it comes to Instagram, 68% of Instagram uses are women.   Not surprisingly, without has a young user population. 27% of 18 to 29-year-olds use twitter, compared with only 16% of people above 30. On the other hand, LinkedIn is truly international, skewed males and has heavy usage with the over 3) age bracket.

Google plus is the most male oriented of the major social networks with 70% of its users being male. Pinterest on the other hand is 84% women users and is dominated by tablet users. Finally, Tumblr is strong with teens and young adults but only 8% of US Internet users in with incomes above $75,000 use Tumblr.

Understanding these statistics will certainly help you to communicate with your target audience and create an effective strategy.

We love hearing stories about successful entrepreneurs, particularly young entrepreneurs.  It is not easy to be a successful entrepreneur with around 97% of all startup businesses failing, so those who succeed deserve to have their names shouted from the rooftops.  Just three years ago when she was 14 years old, Bella Weems was saving up every penny she could to buy a used car.  Instead of buying the used car, Bella began the Origami Owl jewelry company and used this money, and all the money she made from babysitting, to make lockets and sell them to her friends. At age15 the company went into a wholesale model and revenue began to explode.  In 2012, Origami Owl turned over $24 million in revenue and now at 17, she expects to hit $250 million in revenue this year.  The company provides jewelry to independent Associates who buy items at discount and then sell them to customers at private parties.  Last year, Bella bought a white Jeep which she named Alice. Go girl!  You are our champion entrepreneur of the week.

There are essentially two types of videos, one where you become the presenter and inject your personality and enthusiasm into the video, and the second one where you get an animated video and it becomes like a third person endorsement. Either one runs between $3000 and $3500. Of course, there is a lot of work before you begin to get the video produced in determining exactly what it is that you’re going to sell and how you’re going to do it. This message needs to be crafted extremely carefully. I am leaning towards the animated video as I think it is more entertaining and you are less likely to come across in a manner that some people don’t like.

I think the good thing about video promotion is that if it’s interesting, educational or unique, then you can put it on YouTube, and similar channels, use it on your website, embedded in your e-mail signature, you can even show it at presentations. So it is extremely versatile. The other good thing is that it runs probably 3 to 4 min in contrast to maybe 30 sec ads on the screen at the movies or on the radio and a once off printing in a newspaper. Even compared with flyers, by the time you take into account not only the printing but the delivery they are a far better investment. We also know that digital advertising and promotion is far more effective than traditional media and people can watch it, or open it at their own choosing. The results from mobile media are currently infinitely more successful, both in terms of impact and cost than any other media, so I would strongly recommend it.

I have two excellent contacts who produce these videos, not only for promotion but also for helping your crowd funding campaign, for example, on kickstarter. It is almost essential if you want to raise funds through crowd funding that you have a video. So if you’re looking for someone drop me an e-mail at Bob@BobPritchard.com and I will refer you to one of my friends who I guarantee will look after you.