What are the two greatest Angel and VC lies?

“The check is in the mail,” and “We are early stage investors.”

The reality of funding for startups these days is very different then the old days, like last year. “Early Stage” now means after you are generating revenue.

Without social proof, user adoption, and a meaty viral coefficient and the supporting evidence of traction you won’t get a nickel.

Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) is a tech icon, a notorious gadfly, and a nice guy. After chatting at a Silicon Valley event hosted by Eastwick Communications I asked him to look forward into 2012 and share what he sees as the big startup funding trends. So, what do startups need to bring to the table to get money this year? Here is what Robert said.

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Interviewed:
Robert Scoble
Blogger, technical evangelist, and author
Scobleizer

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About Steve Farnsworth @Steveology

Social media and content marketing. Strategy and implementation that generate leads, builds customer loyalty and word-of-mouth buzz. Contact 650-331-0594 to see if working together could increase your market position and sales.

Mark recently released his new book The Tao Of Twitter. His book has been getting a boatload of 5 star reviews by readers on Amazon. You can buy The Tao Of Twitter here. Here is what he had to say on this question.

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About Steve Farnsworth @Steveology

Social media and content marketing strategy and implementation that generate leads, builds customer loyalty, and word-of-mouth marketing. Contact 650-331-0594 to see if working together could increase your market position and sales.

Marketers should all think about innovation the same way R&D does and the same way Silicon Valley thinks about it. Accepting failure, demonstrating patience, tolerance for risk and unrivaled persistence.

Wikipedia is like a wonderful piece of furniture that comes with a big piece of paper “some assembly required.” You know, the one. It comes with instructions 20 pages long that are written in some strange form of English. To many, Wikipedia is a hostile place. Your Wikis were rejected, the community accused you of things you don’t understand, you don’t appreciate what they’re saying about you.

It’s because you didn’t follow the instructions. Really? Aren’t we lucky the Wikipedia community has created so   many   instructions. Mountains and mountains and mountains of instructions. What? You haven’t read them?

Wikipedia has been rated as the most influential website on the planet, beating out Twitter. Yup, Wikipedia is more important than Twitter. Wikis on Wikipedia show up in the top ten of 95% of all searches. Have you read Twitter’s instructions?  You probably didn’t need to. I guess that’s why you’re on it – no assembly required.

Some of the largest PR agencies in the world don’t know how to work with Wikipedia. They have hands-off policies, have to explain to their clients it’s not what they do, or get embarrassed when they do it only to get pulled aside to Wikipedia’s COI noticeboard where they’re publicly lambasted.

Every single time someone tells me Wikipedia isn’t important, within five minutes I can pull up the username or IP address they used to make edits unsuccessfully. In some cases, their story of public humiliation on Wikipedia, where every edit is transparent, is astounding. It’s ok, I was there too about three years ago.

When did it become ok to give up? To forgo learning new things because they are too hard? To not tackle a problem because the instructions are too long? When did it become ok to put our heads in the sand on the world’s most important website?

The answer is because it’s too hard.

When did dubious and seedy shortcuts become commonplace? Why does the unethical behavior of organizations like Bell Pottinger drive fear into the hearts of honest organizations? And why does the news of their atrocious behavior not surprise me? I suppose I might as well ask why human nature isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.

I shouldn’t have a beef. The utter lack of expertise is why I get to do work that I love. Every client I have, I have because they went to their PR agency first and didn’t get the answer or result they wanted. It’s good for me they haven’t figured it out. That I can partner instead of compete with them.

I’m frustrated because we gave up.  We gave up so damn easily.

-End Rant

About The Author David King @David44357

David is a seasoned communications professional, a social media marketer, and an expert in Wikipedia  marketing. He consults with legal, governance and risk professionals on Wikipedia, writes corporate Wikis, codes in Wikipedia’s HTML-style language, collaborates with the community and follows Wikipedia’s complex community policies for verification, neutrality, encyclopedic tone and conflict of interest. Also, he regularly speaks, blogs, trains and educates others to raise awareness on the importance of Wikipedia and how corporations can make safe, welcomed contributions. You can download his Wikipedia for Marketing Whitepaper. To contact him call (919) 605-2115.

Mark Schaefer has used Twitter effectively to build his business and grow a very successful blog. If there is such a thing as a Twitter expert, Mark is it. It’s not hard for anyone to apply his strategy for their personal or business success, but it takes a focused approach. In this video he shares insights on Twitter for business that you can start using today.

Mark recently released his new book The Tao Of Twitter. His book has been getting a boatload of 5 star reviews by readers on Amazon. You can buy The Tao Of Twitter here.

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About Steve Farnsworth @Steveology

Social media and content marketing strategy and implementation that generate leads, builds customer loyalty, and word-of-mouth marketing. Contact 650-331-0594 to see if working together could increase your market position and sales.

Compelling content is like porn. It is difficult to define, but the reader knows it when she see’s it. However, we can make a few educated guesses as to what kind of content might rise to that level.

Tap Your Own Data

Website analytics is a great place to start for that.

• What search terms found your website, and what pages did the visitors view when they got there?
• How and in what order did they consume solution subject matter or product information?
• What can you deduce about the problems they have and the solutions they are seeking?

Knowing those answers can provide a big clue to the next question. Review your high-traffic web pages that focus on your domain expertise (the deep industry knowledge your company has) and ask: what other digital assets can you create that provides similar but even better content?

Steal From The Competition, But Do It A Lot Better

Industry blogs, yours and other industries, is another great source for ideas, too. Set up an RSS Reader with Google Alerts for important keywords. (Learn how to easily make your own Social Media Listening Dashboard. )

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People who download your white papers, eBooks, or read your blog are looking for information that helps them do their job better. They read and share information they feel is relatively unbiased and insightful. So, chuck out the self applauding marketing crap speak. Tap those smart brains in your organization to talk about what they know. If you do that, you will build your street cred and get virtual face time with prospects before they ever hit the sale’s funnel.

Wiretap Your Internal Experts

Prospects want what you know. Here is the opportunity to bring knowledge experts from your company into your content marketing program. If your co-workers are willing to write, that’s great. However, most co-workers have other things to do, and put off writing until it just falls off their radar.

Did you know that people do like to talk about what they do? If you have ever been to a party you know it’s true. You can use that to your advantage. Make it easy for them by interviewing them, and recording that conversation. Spend 20 minutes having them tell you what they are working on, or about an area they like to talk about related to their work.

That interview can be transcribed. Do yourself a favor and have that outsourced. There are lots of services who do that for a very reasonable fee. Now you can look at the transcript and decide what you have. A blog post, a series of blog posts, an eBook, or a white paper. Ideally, you can do several of those with the content. Like a blog post series that you then make into an eBook.

You can watch a video with Matt Ceniceros of Applied Materials talk about how he does this very effectively.

Talk About What You Know. Not About What You Sell

Repeat with me: The key is to talk about what you know, not about what you sell. At least for content that early stage buyers are looking for, and you really want to target this group. This is where opinions get formed. Here is where you have the greatest opportunity to frame the discussion and define the product category, as long as you provide good faith council. Everyone knows BS when they read it. This is not rocket science. Trusted, forthcoming advice is compelling content.

Compelling content educates the buyer about smart practices. Everyone wants to make smart purchases. Regardless if it is for their company, or for their personal use. When you give a reader an informational advantage on how to knowledgeably move forward with their purchase, with minimal risk, to the next sales phase, they will trust you more than a competitor.

Disclosure: An earlier version of this appeared as a response I gave on Focus.

About Steve Farnsworth @Steveology

Social media and content marketing strategy and implementation that generate leads, builds customer loyalty, and word-of-mouth marketing. Contact 650-331-0594 to see if working together could increase your market position and sales.

Howard Sewell is one of the best demand generation specialists in the country, and he focuses on B2B companies, and this is a question he gets a lot. Here is what he said.

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About Steve Farnsworth @Steveology

Social media and content marketing strategy and implementation that generate leads, builds customer loyalty, and word-of-mouth marketing. Contact 650-331-0594 to see if working together could increase your market position and sales.

Criss Marshall was presenting a case study that day, and after hearing his story she wanted to add a few of her reflections on Rod’s insight, and the benefits marketers can receive by getting out of their ivory towers. I’m glad she did!

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This video was shot at the Silicon Valley Brand Forum’s “Brand Implementation Across All Touchpoints” event in Spring 2011. The event host was Applied Materials, and it was sponsored by Siegel+Gale and Jolt Social Media.

Interviewed:

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About Steve Farnsworth @Steveology

Marketing Strategy Development And Implementation That Generate Leads, Creates Brand Preference, And Builds Community For Smart Tech Companies. Contact 650-331-0594 to see if working together makes sense.

Disclosure: I’m a Director at The Silicon Valley Brand Forum.

I strongly suspect that no person other than Tom has the ability to bring such a diverse group of smarties together in one place. Tom clearly curates his colleagues. He named this aggregation The SF Curators Salon, and it has had several gatherings since.

Apparently, no one double checked the guest list because I was lucky enough to get an invitation to the inaugural meeting at Specs’, the infamous bar where many a member of the Beat Generation use to imbibe in North Beach.

A fellow founding member, and one of the original people working with Tom to make the curation salon a reality, is Oliver Starr. As the Chief Evangelist at Pearltrees he is passionate about the future of curation.

At the last meeting he and I talked about the impact of curated content on how people are now finding information on the Internet. I asked him to share a few of his thoughts on the role of curation in search.

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Interviewed:

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New here? Get great social media marketing tips newsletter every month by Email Subscribe Here (* Zero SPAM Privacy Policy). Want the RSS feed? Grab the RSS Feed Here.

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About Steve Farnsworth @Steveology

Marketing Strategy Development And Implementation That Generate Leads, Creates Brand Preference, And Builds Community For Smart Tech Companies. Contact 650-331-0594 to see if working together makes sense.

Watch The Video Here

This video was shot at the Silicon Valley Brand Forum’s “Brand Implementation Across All Touchpoints” event in April 2011. The event host was Applied Materials, and it was sponsored by Siegel+Gale and Jolt Social Media.

Interviewed:

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New here? Get great social media marketing tips newsletter every month by Email Subscribe Here (* Zero SPAM Privacy Policy). Want the RSS feed? Grab the RSS Feed Here.

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About Steve Farnsworth @Steveology
Steve Farnsworth provides strategy, training, and implementation for integrated digital/social media, online marketing, brand journalism, content marketing, and lead generation for technology-based companies. His client hire Steve to increase customer preference for their brand, shorten their sales cycles, and generate better qualified leads. Contact 650-331-0594 to see if working together makes sense.

It’s been going on for years. It was how I learned. It was how everyone learned. At first I told myself that it was just my job, and that it was the only style the bosses would let me write. It was what they wanted. It was the only the copy they would approve.

The empty suits who reviewed my writing added “edits” or “suggestions” that made the copy even more stunningly crappy. Their deft ability to suck the life out of any writing was breath taking.

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No one else said anything. After “reviewing” it many said they thought it was good, or even great. Maybe, I thought, it was just me, and everyone else knew better. Maybe it was okay. Maybe I wasn’t REALLY hurting anyone else. After awhile I almost believed it.

However, in my heart of hearts I always knew better, but I was afraid to speak up. That stops here.

I will no longer stand quietly by and allow my silence to condone such a barbarous practice on the innocent.

I refuse to write marketing crap speak and pretend that other people ever actually read the self-indulgent, insipid, corporate jargon infused crap marketing copy the bosses love.

Today I take a stand. Today I take the pledge to stop killing unicorns. I will tell my boss I will not kill another unicorn by writing marketing crap speak. Today the slaughter stops. Today no more unicorn blood on my hands.

Join me. Take the pledge. Only you can stop the killing.

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Download The Stop Killing Unicorns Infographic Here

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About Steve Farnsworth @Steveology

Steve Farnsworth provides strategy, training, and implementation for integrated digital/social media, online marketing, brand journalism, content marketing, and lead generation for technology-based companies. His client hire Steve to increase customer preference for their brand, shorten their sales cycles, and generate better qualified leads. Contact 650-331-0594 to see if working together makes sense.