marketing « propulsion

April 4, 2012

Punchkeeper wants to skinny up your wallet

How many customer loyalty cards are you currently carrying in your wallet? Punch or plastic cards for the local grocery store, casino, bookstore and coffee shop are bulking up consumer wallets across the country…and a Seattle startup, Punchkeeper, has created an alternative to the fat wallet syndrome using a smartphone application and QR codes. In just a few months, co-founder Val Trask and her team have enticed numerous local businesses to ditch paper and plastic in favor of digital. As part of our continuing series of interviews with entrepreneurs, we asked Val to share some of her startup experiences.

Question: Tell us a little about Punchkeeper. How did you get the idea for this startup, and who are your current mentors (if any)? What’s your timeline for expansion — will you be seeking investors?

Answer: Punchkeeper was born from lunch hour banter between my co-founders Matty Mitchell, designer and Jon Ohrt, developer. They loved loyalty programs but hated carrying punch cards and it wasn’t long before they realized that, with their powers combined, they could do something about it. At the time I was finishing my MBA and they brought me on to turn the idea into a business.

We spent our first year bootstrapping. We were as scrappy as possible while conducting market research, making the app, beta testing, building a team, and getting into our first stores. Our next phase will require funding to scale and add more features. We’re polishing our pitch deck at the moment.

Question: Once Google acquired Punchd, we figured Google Wallet would eventually include a digital loyalty card function. When you have a potential competitor as large as Google, how does this figure into your marketing strategy? How do you plan to differentiate Punchkeeper from similar alternatives?

Answer: Nobody likes to hear that their new competitor is Google. It’s a young and large industry though, and there’s no shortage of potential. Punchkeeper differentiates by offering customization of digital cards so that businesses can actually have their cards reflect their own branding; many business owners liked that about paper cards and we didn’t want to lose that personalization. Also, not every small business owner wants to work with a big company, many are fond of greater human contact and small businesses helping small businesses.

Question: You’ve got quite a roster of local area small businesses that have signed on to use Punchkeeper. How did you reach out to them? As a startup, we’d assume that your sales staff is minimal, so can you share your successful strategies for building a merchant network with other entrepreneurs? What has been your best promotional tactic to date? Do you plan to extend out from the Seattle area by the end of the year?

Answer: We’ve worked hard to get in front of as many business owners as possible. It’s tough when there’s a small staff but the app isn’t worth much without locations for people to use it. The only advice that I can give to similar businesses trying to gain initial traction with a limited budget and bandwidth is to just keep at it – like so many things, it’s a numbers game.

In terms of promotions, we’ve tried a lot of grassroots approaches. The best so far has been word of mouth, or first-hand experiences from happy business owners and the customers that visit their shops. A lot of the success of adoption at a business is the extent to which staff is trained and promotional materials are visible. We dedicate substantial effort into understanding how to best help a business reach out to its audience effectively.

We’re already in a few locations outside of Seattle and we plan to use funding to help support more growth nationally. One of the beauties of a business like this is that you could be a business owner in a town that I’ve never even heard of and be up-and-running with our app within a matter of minutes.

March 28, 2012

Semantic Search: Google Takes the Next Step in Eliminating SEO for SEO’s Sake

You’re hungry. It’s Sunday. What’s open? You open your laptop, turn to trusty Google, and type in “restaurant open sunday [your town's name].” Ah, the top result is for best restaurants in town! You click on it. One of them has to be open in order for it to rank, right? None are them are open on Sundays. You go back and click on a result for a Yelp rating of a new place down the street, hoping that Google led you in the right direction. Nope, not open either. You go back one more time and click on a result that claims to have open and close times for businesses in your area. Oh no – you weren’t looking for a spam page with instructions on sending a text for $9.99 to find your one true love’s astrological sign. Your mood worsens, your stomach growls louder, and you bail, doomed to a night of stale cereal and the chunky bottom of the soy milk container.

Sound familiar? Frustrated searchers, artificial intelligence is here to save the day. Google recently announced semantic search, a new kind of search that will interpret meaning of search terms and the ability to detect intention when phrases are constructed. Currently when you type a phrase into Google, the search engine ranks sites based on what most accurately will satisfy the combination of search terms. With semantic search, Google’s artificial intelligence will calculate meaning of each word typed into the search box, analyze possible interpretations of the words stringed together, and produce (in less than a second!) results for you based not on combinations of words, but meaning.

Here is an example of new semantic search in Google:

While Google has been able to answer questions like measurement conversion and translating simple words into foreign languages in this format, this example is remarkable. The search engine now knows tall means height, interpret Empire State Building as one object, derive from sentence structure that the searcher is looking for a specific fact and pull the same accurate answer from four fairly credible sources.

For the searcher, this clearly will reduce search time, improve user experience, and decrease any chance of frustrated searchers turning to Bing, Yahoo or any other competitor. This change is reminiscent of what Ask Jeeves worked towards in the 1990′s: search engines acting as quick-thinking personal research assistants, ready to understand and serve anytime on a silver platter. This change is a huge step in Google’s overall goal of providing the most accurate results possible to the searcher and eliminating SEO for SEO’s sake.

What does this mean for SEOs? Blatant honesty in all SEO initiatives. While Google already penalizes sites with clearly deceptive SEO, this eliminates the common practice of including umbrella terms in backend SEO like title tags and meta tags. Keywords, meta tags, title tags, link titles, and content must be entirely accurate and reflective of what pages actually have to offer if sites want their pages to rank and be viewed as resources. My gut tells me this is the first step in Google’s next major algorithm change that will penalize sites with even slightly misleading SEO.

While I can see how this works with objective facts, I’ve yet to find anything or even begin to imagine how this will work with subjective searches. Any ideas?

October 26, 2011

DuckDuckGo gooses Google

What do you do when you think you can build a better mousetrap — or in this case, a search engine — than Google or Microsoft? It was a dilemma Gabriel Weinberg faced…but as a serial entrepreneur, he knew the answer was to move forward with a new startup, DuckDuckGo. The Valley Forge, PA-based company’s offering has been described as a hybrid search engine; basically, it uses information from crowd-sourced sites such as Wikipedia to improve relevance. Perhaps more importantly, it emphasizes user privacy and does not record user information.

DuckDuckGo just successfully completed a round of funding. In our continuing series of interviews with entrepreneurs, we asked Gabriel to share a little of his experience in the startup world and any advice he might offer to others entering a competitive marketplace.

Question: Talk about David taking on Goliath — what’s your marketing strategy for DuckDuckGo, since you’re having to go head-to-head with Microsoft’s Bing and Google? Are you counting on users’ privacy concerns being a deciding factor in their choice of search engine, or does DuckDuckGo have other market differentiators that you feel are important? (BTW, we really liked the search suggestion bar.)

Answer: Thanks! We’ve been focusing on areas that the bigger search engines have trouble copying for various non-technical reasons (e.g. business, legal, cultural). Privacy is one of those focus areas and we offer real privacy; the other three big ones are way more curated instant answers (our box above the traditional search results), way less spam (we aggressively ban useless and irrelevant sites), and a less cluttered, more fun user interface. We believe this focus yields an overall different and compelling search experience.

Question: You just successfully completed a $3 million angel/VC round of funding, which should last for some time…but when additional funding becomes necessary, how will you go about raising DuckDuckGo’s visibility outside of your area? Or is your intention to bootstrap DuckDuckGo until it is either profitable or sold? One final question on this: with VC money now involved in DuckDuckGo, do you anticipate the need to incorporate advertising in order to show revenue generation?

Answer: We actually already have some advertising and were already making money prior to this investment. We plan to stay lean and we hope that this fundraising round will take us to profitability, assuming we want to keep operating in this lean manner. If we can continue to execute I don’t think it will be a problem to raise additional funds if and when we want to.

Question: How difficult is it to nurture a startup based in Pennsylvania? We know about the rich startup ecosystem in places such as Silicon Valley and Seattle — who do you turn to for moral support? Do you have company advisors that provide a sense of business community? What advice could you share with other entrepreneurs located in areas of the country not necessarily known for startups?

Answer: I really enjoy being part of the Philadelphia startup community. It has become much more vibrant over the past few years, as I suspect is replicated in other cities across the world. There are just so many more startups and it is easier to start good companies than ever before. I do suggest people get integrated into their communities and find people who have been there, done that. Outside of my uncle, I really didn’t do that much in my past companies, and I regret it. In other words, I don’t think it is that difficult to nurture a startup in Pennsylvania. Access to capital is certainly less, but it is easier to stand out and it is cheaper in general to start up.

August 23, 2011

Thinkspace: so much more than space to think…and going global

Entrepreneurs are a hardy lot. While it’s exciting to be the captain of your destiny, it can also be lonely…but not if you’re located in the Seattle area, because thinkspace is out to change that concept. Located near the Microsoft campus in Redmond, thinkspace is transforming the startup and small business experience from one that can be solitary into one that gives each member a sense of a community sharing similar core values. Thinkspace is passionate about becoming each member company’s personal cheering squad, contributing to their sustainable growth, and creating an environment that inspires them.

It’s such an unusual business concept that, as part of our continuing series of interviews with entrepreneurs, we asked thinkspace’s community marketing manager, Kristin Eide, to share a few thoughts about the company, its mission and what we can look forward to in the future.

Question: Thinkspace seems to be so much more than a shared office and conference facility; in some respects, it’s almost an incubator minus the financial backing. Tell us a little about it. What was the inspiration behind thinkspace? How many companies are currently in residence? We keep thinking about what happens when roommates have little spats, so what kind of screening process (if any) do companies need to go through before they can utilize thinkspace?

Answer: Definitely. If thinkspace were only office space, I would have a really boring job. Thinkspace is a community of entrepreneurs, small businesses, startups and non-profits. We recognize that starting a business is scary, and we want to support our members by providing services to make their experience easier. We also offer virtual services for business that want to look bigger without blowing up their overhead expenses.

Our CEO and founder, Peter Chee, started thinkspace in May 2008. Peter was working from home and really missed the innovative startup vibe that he once experienced when working from an office with coworkers. With thinkspace, he wanted to build a community of “ridiculously smart people.” Our member companies are just that.

We have over 80 companies physically located inside thinkspace. However, we have around 200 thinkspace member companies using thinkspace as their part-time office or virtual location. To name a handful of the companies inside of our building, we have Newline Software, Puzzazz, Parnassus Group, Mobisante, and Heinz Marketing.

In terms of a screening process, we haven’t run into any issues with unruly members so far! From the moment we meet with potential thinkspace members to the day they move in, we’ve usually gotten to know the company really well and have determined that they will be a great cultural fit for the building!

Kristin Eide, thinkspace

Question: With so much office space available, how are you promoting thinkspace against the more traditional competition? You’ve got a large audience following you on Twitter, and we’re always looking for tips. How are you continuing to build your base? Are you running any promotions, or simply encouraging thinkspace tenants to either hashmark you or send out re-tweets? Are you using your blog as part of your self-promotion efforts and, if so, how do you encourage regular contributions to it? How important a factor does Facebook play in your overall communications strategy?

Answer: You’re right, there is a ton of office space out there. However, that’s exactly what it is…office space. Thinkspace is a community with more of a warm friendly vibe compared to what you would find elsewhere. In terms of marketing, word of mouth has been the main source of our success so far. As thinkspace’s Community Marketing Manager, it’s my job (and passion) to meet anyone and everyone connected to the Seattle startup community. As you mentioned, we are very active on Twitter. Often times, I am attending events alone so Twitter is a great resource for breaking the ice ahead of time. We use Twitter as a channel for connecting with potential thinkspace members, industry thought leaders, and just all around cool people.

Our entire team contributes to the thinkspace blog. We also have several guest authors (usually thinkspace members) who contribute articles. We like to write about our member companies, general insights for starting a business, tech industry news, upcoming events, and personal development. Blogging is a great conversation starter, and it’s a lot of fun. Self-promotion has a time and a place. We try to do very little of it on our blog and social accounts. We would rather promote our members who are up to way cooler things than providing office space!

Question: What’s ahead for thinkspace? Any thoughts about expanding to other areas? Any upcoming events?

Answer: We are definitely looking to expand! Seattle is first on our list. We are hoping to secure a Seattle location very soon. Next we will be looking at expanding internationally in Vancouver, BC and Shanghai. Eventually we will be growing to other US cities (and the rest of the world!).

Events are one of the best things about working in thinkspace! There’s always something going on each month. This month we hosted Seattle Mind Camp 7 on August 20-21, a 24-hour self-organized unconference. In September, we will be hosting our monthly Wine Wednesday event on September 14 and a Tech Tuesday event on September 20. For Tech Tuesday, we will be talking about “Sales for Startups” with Matt Heinz from Heinz Marketing. You can follow us on Twitter or subscribe to our newsletter to hear about any future events!

August 15, 2011

Getting international press coverage (without leaving home)

Many technology products and services have global appeal — yet it’s often difficult for U.S.-based companies to reach international audiences on a limited marketing budget. Ideally, it takes local representation and an understanding of language and customs to effectively reach out to potential customers in a country outside of North America.

Despite these challenges, a press release announcing a new product or other relevant international news can be used to generate media coverage overseas. All that’s needed is a little time, effort and a good search engine to create an editorial target list that meets your requirements. To avoid language problems, find publications that have English editions or that cater to international audiences.

Here’s an example. For more than 30 years, EE Times has been the electronics industry’s newspaper of record for design and development engineers and technical managers. It is a member publication of UBM Electronics, a division if United Business Media. The EE Times network has specialized editions that target readers in China, India, Europe, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. If you’re promoting anything from semiconductors to new devices, this is a publication you should target. Bonus: you can find a complete list of editorial contacts on the magazine’s website.

In the daily newspaper category, you might explore reaching an editor at the International Herald Tribune. IHT is the global edition of the New York Times. Headquartered in Paris with regional offces in London, Hong Kong and New York, it’s one of a handful of major international publications printed in English read by both locals and expatriates living abroad. There are editors assigned to each bureau; however, with the publishing world in flux, your best bet is to contact the main office in Paris by email at iht@iht.com. (NOTE: email is still the preferred contact method by most editors.)

Looking to reach the Hispanic audience? You might try a blog such as Tek Lado. It’s one of the new breed of digital publications appealing to a young, tech-savvy audience. Originally developed to meet the needs of the Hispanic audience in the U.S., Tek Lado now enjoys an international readership and even has a Japanese edition – yet it is still based in Philadelphia. Founders Mel Gomez and the über-hot Liz Spikol, who has dozens of journalism awards to her credit, continue to be the main contacts for news. Reach them at mgomez (at) tek-lado (dot) com and lspikol (at) tek-lado (dot) com.

If you’d like to receive a few more international publicity tips, grab a copy of our newest white paper. “Going Global: How to Get Technology Press Coverage Without Leaving Home” is available free via our website.

July 26, 2011

Local award competitions: get your game on

Award competitions are often an important component in a company’s campaign to raise its visibility with its constituency. It might make sense for your company to take a look at entering local competitions; even if you don’t win, it gives you some idea of what you’ll need to do to compete on a national level down the road. And if you are fortunate enough to win or even place, it’s great publicity… and it’s good to support the organizations in your backyard.

In the Seattle area, here are a couple upcoming competitions you might consider:

The U.S. Small Business Administration sponsors Small Business of the Year competitions across the nation. Any individual or organization can make a nomination, and there are multiple categories to consider; for example, last year, the Washington State winner for the family-owned business of the year was Tate Technology in Spokane). In Seattle, the deadline for this year’s competition is November 29. You can get more information here.

Seattle Business Magazine sponsors several award competitions. Currently, the magazine is accepting nominations for its first Washington IT Awards competition (deadline is July 20) and the Washington Family Business Awards (deadline is August 15).

The Puget Sound Business Journal also sponsors recognized competitions, such as its popular 40 Under 40 and Women of Influence (deadline is August 19).

There are other competitions throughout the year, sponsored by organizations such as WTIA — a little digging on the Internet will help you formulate a list. So get your game on…and good luck.

July 11, 2011

Opiniator captures “moment of truth” customer feedback on the fly

We all know it’s far easier to get more business from an existing, happy customer than it is to make a new sale. It hurts when a customer chooses to take his or her business elsewhere. So how can a business owner truly know if a recent customer has had a good experience? Portland-based startup Opiniator has come up with a solution that invites customers to immediately use their mobile devices to give their feedback (scores, comparisons, benchmarks, ideas) about a business while they are still in the restaurant, store or utilizing the service.

Opiniator’s goal is to become the leading “moment of truth” feedback and performance management system using mobile and internet surveys. As part of our continuing series of interviews with entrepreneurs, we asked Opiniator founder Matt Selbie to share a little insight on the startup’s game-changing methodology for collecting customer feedback.

Question: Tell us a little about Opiniator.

Answer: Opiniator is customer feedback technology, delivered as SaaS, that helps prevent customers defecting from any business. This means the business can grow its cash flow and protect its reputation by ALWAYS delivering what its customers want. Opiniator does this by delivering real-time, actionable, point of experience customer feedback with analysis and alerts, using the customers’ personal cell phones. The company is two years old and based in Portland.

Matt Selbie

Question: What gave you the idea to tie mobile technology with customer feedback and target it at hospitality/retail venues?

Answer: Most customer feedback methods are flawed. They deliver too little data, too late after the event, that’s too complex or too expensive. The greatest problem is that the generated feedback is not actionable, i.e., it’s not immediately leading to corrective action – so why collect feedback in the first place? We decided that the mobile device was the only way real customers could use something they are familiar with to give feedback at the point of experience. The cell phone is the ideal input device as it offers a choice of feedback methods – voice, text and web – so it’s highly convenient and can reach 100 percent of the customer base.

Hospitality/retail was the main focus when Opiniator was launched, as these industries seemed the most overt in their desire for customer feedback. We now serve healthcare and other professional services markets.

Question: Is the startup operating solely in the Portland area?

Answer: No. We have clients in many states.

Question: What are your plans for expansion – and will you seek outside funding for this?

Answer: We have realized that the Opiniator platform has wider utility in several industries, so now we are working to raise money to develop a world class sales and marketing organization to complement what we think is a special technology that solves a really big problem most businesses suffer from.

Question: In the highly competitive field of restaurant dining, having an edge – in this case, immediate customer feedback via Opiniator – would seem to be vital. Yet, we all know that many food & beverage establishments run on such a tight profit margin that new technology tools are often at the bottom of the purchasing list. What’s the most effective sales pitch for countering this problem? Are you expanding your target markets to help grow Opiniator?

Answer: The pitch is straightforward and revolves around the existing defection rates of the business and/or the market. For example, in the restaurant business, annual defection can be over 30 percent; that is, 30 percent of customers try it once , never to return. The reason and correction could be delivered via appropriate customer feedback, but this rarely happens. So the pitch is that Opiniator can help solve customer defection, which always provides a higher economic payoff than any customer acquisition tactic — it’s much more profitable to retain your base than to spend money on acquiring new customers.

As stated earlier, our target markets now include healthcare, field services, professional services, retail and events.

Question: We noted that you’ve got an outreach campaign to potential clients running on Twitter. Are you finding Twitter an effective way to reach new business targets?

Answer: Twitter is a developing tactic for us – we have not yet figured out its full potential. We use it as an awareness generating mechanism BUT also search for certain keywords…in our case, “comment cards,” “customer feedback,” “mystery shopper,” etc. We’re not engaging potential customers at this point, but rather use it as a way to identify, then pursue through other means.

July 8, 2011

Gone Postal: an entrepreneur’s foray into self-publishing

By their nature, entrepreneurs like to experiment and to push themselves. Not surprisingly, many have considered writing books…and the revolution taking place within the publishing industry makes that goal even more attainable. The advent of the e-book and self-publishing portals such as Booktrope and Amazon.com mean that budding authors no longer need to wait for New York book editors or agents to take notice.

Bainbridge Island’s Jeff Wenker recently self-published Gone Postal on Amazon.com. As part of our continuing series of interviews with entrepreneurs, we asked him to tell us a little about the book, and to share his publishing experiences.

Question: Tell us a little about Gone Postal. What was your “aha!” moment that was the inspiration behind the book? How long was the creative process from just the germ of a concept to a full-fledged book?

Answer: Set in Seattle, Vancouver, Seoul and San Francisco, Gone Postal is the story of Johnny Boston, an out-of-work software salesman who joins a group of disgruntled mailmen (like there’s another kind) stealing junk mail they’re supposed to deliver (skipping a step) and taking it directly to recycling for beer money. A local crime boss (not to mention the SDMA) discovers they’ve corrupted the US Mail and corrupts them, blackmailing the crew into running guns and drugs. To extricate themselves from his oily grasp, the mailmen turn to a cabal of mercenaries and political schemers plotting the Revolution of the Western States of America. Hilarity ensues.

I initially wrote the story set on the Kitsap Peninsula. In fact, I’m thinking about publishing The Moon-Shakes as a sort of sequel to Gone Postal, although that would not be entirely accurate as the stories run in parallel. Billy Shakes acts as a hapless PR flak for the Revolution (with mixed results). As far as an “a-ha!” moment, that came in 1985 with the Norwegian band’s seminal hit “Take On Me.” I digress.

Urgency led to a sort of inspiration, as a buddy talked me into attending a screenwriting conference in L.A. in 2008. To have something “in the can” when I was pitching industry execs, I ripped out Gone Postal as a tale of political intrigue and high-explosives. At the conference itself, no one was particularly interested, so I made up a different story based on real circumstances. Another buddy was getting married and had planned an elaborate road trip/bachelor party for some of his Australian friends, including a winemaker (Kym Jenke of Jenke Vineyards, where I won the coveted Golden Shovel Award during both the 1990 and 1994 vintages).

Through a strange harmonic convergence, my parents’ house in L.A. was vacant and this group of roustabouts needed a place to stay. Arrangements were made, cases of wine were shipped, and a good time was had by all. As I’d paid good money to attend the Screenwriting Expo, I was, of course, moderate in my consumption of said wine and remained sharp for my morning meetings. However, they proved fruitless. On a whim, on the last day of the expo, I set up another meeting with someone from Gunn Films (they did Adam Sandler’s “Bedtime Stories“) and pieced together a tale I now call “The Magic Circus,” which I pitched as a Bachelor Party-Road Trip-Wedding movie without a bachelor party, road trip or wedding. The woman from Gunn liked the premise and asked to see pages. I immediately set out to write some. Alas, by the time I was done she’d left Gunn and I was left with a crazy screenplay.

Frustrated, I returned to Gone Postal, rewrote it and then contacted a “publisher” in Portland. Things soured as it appeared he really wanted me for my marketing and PR skills to help him move the other books under his imprint. We went our separate ways and I started researching self-publishing options. There’s a host of them out there. I won’t go into detail as details exists elsewhere (try a great group on Linkedn: Ebooks, Ebook Readers, Digital Books and Digital Content Publishing). Also, anyone interested in publishing should get Publishers Lunch, an email with the latest industry news (lunch@publisherslunchdaily.com).

Question: The publishing market continues to rapidly change, and we’re curious about publishing on Amazon.com. Why did you choose this route, and how easy was the process? Did you use any outside assistance, such as an editor or cover designer? Now that Gone Postal is on Amazon, are you precluded from publishing it elsewhere?

Answer: I ended up with Createspace, an Amazon company that offers an intuitive user interface and relatively good margins. One thing to note, you get a bigger cut if you send people to your createspace page than if people actually buy through Amazon, the thinking being you’ve done more marketing in the former than the latter. We’re not talking big numbers here. I always viewed Gone Postal as a trial balloon, a kind of proof of concept as I worked to find an agent and a real publisher (Hello, real agents and publishers! You can reach me at jeff.wenker@gmail.com). I can get hard copies for three bucks. I recently ordered another hundred, so, plus shipping, my cost came to about $3.75 a book. It wasn’t until recently that I started to get creative with the marketing. Problems arose due to the graphic designer I’d roped into doing the cover. He did a kickass job, but the art needs to be at 300dpi for hard copy. It took too long for him to do this free work, so I had my wife do the plain brown wrapper you see here. Larry’s work is now on the ebook here.

I am not precluded from publishing Gone Postal elsewhere. I got an ISBN number, but plan on putting out a second edition, at which point I’ll buy a block of numbers ($500 for 500, roughly. Yes, I have a lot of other books). I’ve set up my own imprint, Talking Pig Publishing, and can publish other authors, as well. The devil’s in the details. Printing costs, marketing costs, time and skill will all factor into the overall success of how this venture plays out. An independent author in this quickly transforming industry has tools at his disposal simply unthinkable a quarter century ago.

Question: What lessons did you learn in this process that you could share with other would-be authors?

Answer: My closing thought, one thing I think will determine whether or not I can make a living at this, revolves around relationships. Authors still need to distribute their work and there are people who specialize in this. Booksellers, publishing reps, agents and association execs know things and they know each other. An author needs to figure out how he or she can help those people do their jobs and make money off crazy ideas of questionable quality. Anyone willing to put the time and energy into doing so has a chance at finding an audience. User-generated content is a catchy phrase; the catch comes in transforming yourself from a User to an Author.

May 23, 2011

MeMeTales uses technology to make reading fun for kids and families

The VOXUS team loves to read…and so we’re pleased to see the birth of a Seattle-area startup that is creating a new and fun way for young children and their families to discover the world of books. MeMeTales, founded by Maya Bisineer (the Social Media Club-Seattle chapter’s director of education) and Pree Kolari, looks to “democratize the creation, sharing and marketing of children’s picture books.” It’s an innovative publishing platform that gets the best children’s stories to children in the most engaging ways, while making it viable and profitable for the creative individuals who create the stories.

MeMeTales’ new iPhone app with 20 free stories launched over the weekend. As part of our continuing series of interviews with entrepreneurs, we asked Maya to share her thoughts on MeMeTales, her first book Being Thankful, monetizing a mobile application and what’s ahead for the startup.

Question: Tell us a little about MeMeTales. What was the impetus for it? The site appeals to a broad audience: readers, writers, designers, casual crafters, children, etc. Were you trying to address the need for an entry platform for writers and illustrators who wanted to tackle the mobile media market, or were you looking for a way to give younger folks an opportunity to read and share via digital media? From a business standpoint, which market will prove to be the most lucrative for you (i.e., parents who want to purchase books for children or publishing royalties from writers)?

Answer: I have always had a writer in me. When my kids were born, I was inspired to write more and to write more children’s stories. That was the real beginning of MeMeTales – it started as a collaborative space for children’s writers. Over time, it evolved into more of a publishing platform with a mobile reader and that is what we have today. We listened to what authors and illustrators said – they wanted a richer platform to publish children’s stories.

In the end, we are obsessed with making children read. We believe that if we create a fun enough experience for kids, then kids will read. And if we create a space where kids and parents want to hang out and read, publishers will want to use our super simple publishing platform to make books available for the kids.
(We do not get publishing royalties from writers – so no comment there.)

Question: Being Thankful must have been one of your first books available to the public. How have you marketed it to the general public? What kind of response have you received? What social media outlets have proven to be the most successful for promotional purposes?

Answer: Being Thankful was created as an opportunity to be collectively creative. We love to do things with kids and get them to have fun – the more fun they have the more self esteem they build and more they achieve. It was a great process – we received lots of entries from enthusiastic kids. We have done very little marketing in the past year since we have been working on our mobile app for the iPhone and iPad.

We use Twitter and Facebook more than anything else. But I am out speaking at conferences and have built relationships over the last year and a half. Honest relationships and true focus on our mission is what really makes this work.

Question: MeMeTales is still in startup mode. How do you plan to grow the company, and do you plan to expand via angel funding? Do you aspire to affiliate with a larger entity, such as a make-on-demand publishing house or even an e-tailer such as Amazon? How will you position memetales against other startups such as StoryJumper?

Answer: We are looking to raise money this year. We will do whatever it takes to get kids to read and to make reading the “funnest experience ever.” That is our biggest aspiration. We have a number of plans as to how exactly we will do that…and we continue to learn along the way.

MeMeTales is a reading/publishing platform and less of a content creation platform like StoryJumper. Websites like StoryJumper can use our site to publish their stories instantly onto the mobile platforms.

Don’t forget to check out the MeMeTales app for the iPhone and iPod Touch (iPad coming soon!). We have 20 free books for all downloads in the first month.

April 25, 2011

Do this, not that: pitching your company around events

Publicity pros are masters at finding ways to utilize holidays and world events as a launching pad for a company announcement. Sometimes it works – a good example is Bellevue, WA-based PSP, Inc. with its campaign to raise money for the American Red Cross Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami Disaster Relief Fund. But the number of bad concepts that are created to tie in with current events far outweigh the good.

Take last week’s Earth Day as an example. The editors of GreenBiz.com picked the seven worst story pitches it received and published them (a nightmare for any PR pro)…but for those of us who skipped tagging company news to this holiday, it makes for illuminating reading. My personal favorite on the list was a pitch from the International Bottled Water Association to promote the growth of its PET plastic recycling. Unfortunately, Greenbiz.com editors paid attention to the actual growth rate — a paltry 0.1 percent — and then compared it to the fact that 69 percent of empty water bottles are still making it into landfills. Perhaps this story would have been better left untold.

The moral: no matter how hard you try, not every holiday or event will present a good opportunity to promote your company. Make sure your story is not just creative and fun; it needs to have a reasonably compelling and solid angle.

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