Twitter Tips
Twitter is the most powerful tool in the world for a new business.
Here’s some resources on how to use Twitter:
Checkout http://hootsuite.com – This will let you manage all of twitter, twitter search, your messages, stats on how many clicks your tweet links get and allows you to autofollow people who follow you. Within the search section you can set up a keyword, say “eventzi” (blatent plug for my site) and see who is talking about you, then you can follow them and get involved in a conversation with them. It is the most valuable tool i’ve used so far.
On the Iphone, the best app is TwitterFon. You get to see message replies (@eventzi…), direct messages (DM) and you can search for keywords too, on your mobile. And obviously you can send out tweets.
An awesome help site is called http://www.twitip.com If youwant to learn even more about twitter, check that out.
To get more followes, here’s a mega tip – Learn how to use the retweet (RT) function. Why? Well if you expose other people/buinesses/tools you are adding value to their business and theres more chance they will return the favour and give you some value back by promoting you. Its works and its powerful.
Dont just talk about yourself all day, its boring and nobody cares.
Check out my page at http://twitter.com/eventzi and see the different ways i use it,
Go on, get stuck in.
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Tags: Hootsuite, Twitip, Twitter, Twitterfon
I look at lots and lots of different web applications and pick little bits from them to create a new idea. I use go2web20.net mainly, its the best directory online and you can see lots of ideas.
However this is how i would build a new startup. Id pick out a tried and trusted business, improve on it and add features from another business.
So you might have an events listing site that can bring in information from blogs and twitter about that particularly event. Now you can see what people are saying about it. Wicked!!
New features that i will add to Eventzi are all based on proven ideas that can help event hosts sell more tickets!
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Tags: idea making, Ideas
Eventzi
We have officially launched Eventzi and I’m excited!! The last year has been insane but its all been worth it and i have some wonderful customers who the site will really help. We will build on this and launch some crazy features after we have a steady list of users. Eventzi already has customers from over Europe and the US, its amazing!
Web Start-up E-Book
I’m going to be writing an e-book that’s sort of – Getting Real / Boostrappers Bible / How To – all in one. Im going to insert all the great content that people need to know if they want to start a web business.
Startup Wiki
I will be creating a Wiki that includes links and some great tools to help you as well as listing tons of free tools and people to follow, all broken down so its all simple.
Why?
I was given shocking advice from people who didn’t know how to setup a web business, but there was nobody else, so I stopped working on what has become Eventzi in 2006.
I kept reading about how i should move fast or be last. I couldn’t move fast, i didn’t have anyone or anything really. How can you move fast when you don’t know what to do or people to help you build something online. My first quote for Eventzi was £40′000, i spent less than 10% of that.
Its about time someone did this and worked hard to encourage people to go for it. Especially in Scotland.
This e-book collection thing I’m working on should seriously help anyone who is in similar shoes,
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Tags: E-Book, Eventzi
Eventzi – Nearly Ready!!
My bootstrapped start up Eventzi is now in test mode. I have worked like a banger to get this going and it will help so many people its insane.
If you run events for anything you should sign up here and get an early look around before anyone else. It looks great and its going to look even better.
We are providing tools that let event holders get their event online, promote their event with new media, while being able to sell tickets and collect the money online.
The “awesomeness” comes from the simplicity of it all. It takes minutes to get the page online, if you have a PayPal account then you can receive ticket money instantly to your account. You can drag in your pictures from places like Facebook or Flickr and grab your videos from places like YouTube really quickly.
If you run a free event or dont want to take payment online, then we are free.
If you want to take payment online it costs £0.70 Sterling or $1 USD per ticket sold. PayPal charges an additonal 1.9% to 2.9% + $0.30 USD to process the payment of each ticket to an event holders PayPal account.
So if we sold a ticket for $5 USD, there would be a $1 USD Eventzi fee as well as $0.45 USD PayPal fee.
5 X 0.029 = 0.15 — 0.15+0.30 = 0.45 — 1+0.45 = TOTAL FEE of $1.45 per ticket.
There’s tools to edit your event, invite guests, create repeat events and there is also an analysis area!
The Event Page is super simple for attendees to use. There is a location box, ticket box and a promotion section to show off what your events about! You can also share it using the share button which means you dont have to update several Social Pages every time, this little tool helps!
To top it all off we have used GetSatisfaction quite heavily to offer the best support i possibly can. I’ll personally deal with customers as long as im a part of the business!!
I really hope this helps people kick on and create some great events!
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Tags: Eventzi
How To Persuade
I’m think I’m a good persuader, partly because I’m a story teller. If i hear a friend say something that i think isn’t bang on, i will tell stories from different angles so they can think about the situation a bit more.
More information about the topic doesn’t work very well. We relate to stories.
Stories work from the right side of the brain. When hearing a story, people will get that story into their head. They feel the experience. They identify with the successful person of the story. They become the successful person of the story in their own minds. Then, having lived the story, they start to see the the world in a different way. If the story is good, they will want to do that as well.”
The way to tell the best story is to find the way to success in the story. That may be a person or an outcome. For example, if someone was trying to over complicate their golf swing. I might tell them a story about a top pro golfer and take them through their simple swing.
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Tags: How to, Persuade
Creatively, Change The Rules
All i am hearing just now in the world is that the economy is taking a beating, that the world is nearly over and that the good days are gone forever. Its not really true. If it were then theres no point in being creative.
Be creative changes the rules and the assumptions, “we havent got enough money to advertise” is correct unless you rephrase the statement to be “we wont have any money to advertise if we do it this way”. The difference is huge.
Try to be creative and look at all the angles. If you give your creativity a chance, it might reward you, you might even change the rules every time theres a problem to be solved.
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Tags: Creativity
My Blog Is On Alltop
Alltop helps you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. They’ve grouped these collections — “aggregations” — into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, muslim, celebrity gossip, military, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and macintosh. At each Alltop site, they display the headlines of the latest stories from dozens of sites and blogs.
You can think of an Alltop site as a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points—they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that they are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed.
Filed under: Business, You Gotta See | 2 Comments
Creating Business Ideas
Over at the Open Forum, Guy Kawasaki has just posted about creativity.
It got me thinking about what ideas i came up with while at University. I think the 3rd point in his post is the most important for idea generation.
“Build on ideas that came before. The iPod isn’t a miracle that came out of the blue—it was built on the Sony Walkman’s concept of a shirt-pocket device coupled with early MP3 players from other companies and the online store of a company like Amazon. The concept that creativity is built on what came before has important ramifications: consume information voraciously, go outside your market niche, and don’t be too proud to steal inspiration.”
This took me about 2 years to really grasp, but the problem i had was that the lack of cash i had to make these ideas work. However the web has removed the barriers of building web tools and services. Its cheap now!!
Eventzi was born out of this mashup of ideas:
1. The mainstream began to use use Bebo and Facebook. This meant that people could connect together and share like never before.
2. Ticket selling sites drive me nuts. They do a job for large events but negotiating deals based on each tour or event is ridiculous, especially for small events where people are working their ass off to make it work.
3. So a Bebo/Facebook style event page with a ticket selling service sounded sweet.
4. I wanted to bring in the same tools that the big guys get, but really kick it on so we can let people share their photos, music and videos, which lets them promote at the time potential attendees are about to buy a ticket.
5. It has to be kept simple and clean so its dead easy to use. As you know, there’s a lot of clutter on web pages!
6. Pricing needed a refreshing change of direction, Traditional event services charged a % of the events ticket price, which is insane in my opinion, a £10 ticket has a 2.5% fee = 25 pence, but a £100 ticket x 2.5% fee = £2.50. Then payment processing fees are added. The hike for the same service fees, punishes event hosts.
- What Eventzi does is charge $1 per ticket sold. This means small inexpensive events aren’t killed before they get going. The more expensive events aren’t punished for charging more for their tickets.
- There is also a 1.9% to 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction for payment processing fees. This is what PayPal charge for keeping everyone safe.
7. Customer Service is our number one asset. I will personally deal with every question and problem. We have set up a brilliant community support area on GetSatisfaction.com where we can help you and you can chat to our other customers for advice or support. There is also a monthly newsletter delivered by the brilliant MailChimp.com to offer tips, tricks and promotions (signup here) . And if that wasn’t enough already we have a tour section with video tutorials to let you see how to you can use Eventzi. This also links to our Viddler page where all the videos live. You can also catch me on Twitter @scottpurdie and the business updates are on @eventzi.
So as you can see there are a some ideas thrown together but being supported by other great services.
I hope this helped, let me know.
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Tags: Creativity, Ideas
First of all Twitter is a weapon. But it looks like a really harmless teddy bear.
In local business. some relationships are not worth the effort, some are. I spent the day working on Eventzi, then had a little ideas about Twitter and local businesses.
Lets just say your local coffee shop had a Twitter account and encouraged you to follow them, maybe even giving away a coffee.
This could keep potential/loyal customers in touch with new ideas or promotions.
Now it might seem like its trivial and i can hear you saying, “do our customers even know about Twitter?”, “whats the point?”, “how different is this really compared to the bucketload of other ways to advertise?”
There is a momentum kicking along with Twitter and the recent celebrity adoption of the service. Businesses who get it are really nailing it and helping their customers to feel great and kick ass.
I think this will become mainstream:
- It’s opt in and easy to unsubscribe should you decide it’s not for you
- It can be personal but not intrusive.
- Its delivered in formats appropriate to the users – from SMS to Facebook and pretty much everything else in between and around the sides.
- There is very little friction – the benefits for the coffee shop and their customer is way in excess of the effort required to make and accept the offer.
- It’s open to the mainstream on their terms.
How it evolves is facsinating. There are so many different elements that can get in the way of so much open data. For example:
In what context are followers likely to read the offer? When is the optimal time to post a free am coffee special offer? How to measure conversion rates? Will these relationships be exploited somehow.
My favourite evolution is the geolocation. For example can coffee shops target their offers to people who are in the local area or when they enter it.
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Tags: Geolocation, Twitter
I have just downloaded a jam packed Google Analytics app for the iPhone called Analytics App and it’s the first ive seen or read of thats brilliant. It cost me just over £3. The application is well designed and packed with the features we need from Google Analytics.
With support for multiple accounts, 29 stat reports available, the ability to create your own custom stat reports, as well as cleanly designed graph analysis, it definitely has everything i need.
Analytics App will take some beating. Its easy to use, well designed and has enough features to keep me happy for now.
Checkout their site here or download the app here (itunes link)
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Tags: Iphone, Iphone Apps
Recent Entries
- Twitter Tips
- Idea Making and How I Create Ideas
- Eventzi has launched! Whats next?
- Eventzi – Nearly Ready!!
- How To Persuade
- Creatively, Change The Rules
- My Blog Is On Alltop
- Creating Business Ideas
- Local Twitter – Stickier and Less Complicated
- Analytics App – Iphone Analytics With Style
- Sometimes The Web Is Shocking
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