I am thrilled to share my knowledge in helping start-up companies launch and build powerful brands.
My recent conversation as a featured guest on The Silicon Valley Podcast, hosted by Shawn Flynn, offers great insights that are important for entrepreneurs to consider, when they embark on their journeys in launching and branding their companies.
Shawn did a great job in stitching together questions that many of his listeners have asked about how does a start-up launch and build a brand. We took the opportunity to discuss and address the various aspects in building a relatable and powerful brand. We covered topics ranging from product validation, public relations, social media, and when to invest big on advertising.
Also, we did a deep dive into personal branding for start-up executives and founders.
Click here to listen to the show. If you like it, please give me a great review on iTune!
You can also listen to it through individual podcast channels below:
These days, we all need a content marketing calendar, regardless of what you sell, or size of your business.
We need content to drive our marketing messages through promotions in various channels, from blogs and emails to social media and video production.
If you are a small business owner, you are probably the content owner, or may have a small team who can help you with posting, monitoring and analyzing your content distribution results.
How do you ensure everyone gets onto the same page? By creating a content marketing calendar could just be the answer.
Here’re a few nuggets to consider from my own experience: (or watch our clip for quick tips)
1. Align your content with product launches, major sales and marketing events
2. Identify themes for the year across your business
3. Assign content developers/owners
4. Plan content details a month or two in advance
5. Integrate those themes into your posts, support with varying content
6. Implement your content distribution consistently
7. Allow a few jet skis such as news and events to mix in with calendar
8. Monitor and review your Google analytics. Then modify
What else would you add to this list?
Stuck? Contact us if you need additional help in making your content marketing calendar better!
You need to know about Lean Canvas if you are an entrepreneur or a first-time business owner.
It’s a simple and strategic tool for all entrepreneurs who wish to put their ideas onto paper and bring them to fruition! It acts like a one-pager, mini business blueprint.
Why a Lean Canvas is Useful?
A lean canvas is best use when start-ups are in their early stages, and when they are developing products to address market fit. So you’ll know if you are building a viable business that has potentials to generate profits down the road.
Imagine if you spend thousands of dollars to build a product. Later, you learn that it has no traction because it’s not solving the problems in the way that your target audience find convenient, efficient, or easy.
Using a lean canvas earlier in your product development process allows you to learn fast and fail fast. You will learn quickly from research and know if you need to pivot and optimize for success. The goal is to help you build a better mouse trap earlier on, through an iterative process that has been proven. Once it’s proven, you can then scale for growth.
We’ve helped many start-up companies in unpacking their ideas, and turning those ideas into real businesses. We can help you too! Contact us and let’s work together to bring your idea into fruition.
Viral marketing is one of the strategies that start-up companies could consider to break through the clutter in social media content. It has proven to be a powerful way for a brand or a product to have its message spread quickly, from person to person, much like the same way that a virus (non-COVID, haha) spreads from one person to another.
Photo courtesy: USGS of Unsplash
Types of Viral Marketing
There are four different types: 1) viral video content, 2) viral social content, 3) organic viral content, and 4) viral email marketing.
Of these four, viral video has the most contagious content. Why? First, people’s behaviors through this pandemic has changed. There are more eyeballs watching videos than any other online content. Second, because viral video has more legs, if you put in the time and energy to get it done right.
What’s Considered “Viral?”
In 2020, to be considered viral, your video needs to have views more than in the thousands. It’s got to be in the millions. Five million is the benchmark to measure against, according to YouTube personality Kevin Nalty. When your video reaches 5 Million views within 3–7 days period after its launch, you have garnered a successful viral marketing campaign with contagious content.
Classic Viral Marketing Videos
Here are a few leading viral marketing videos with contagious content:
Apple’s Remote Working Ad: 26, 995, 436 views since July 13, 2020, in less than 1.5 months
2. Bill Gate’s Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS: 34, 512,817 views since August 2014
Although these videos are from celebrities or known brands, some smaller brands like DropBox had its moments with their “DropBox Explained” video.
DropBox has evolved. This video is no longer available on Dropbox.com. But sources indicated that it reached over 30 million views since its launch in 2009, making it one of the most-viewed product videos on the Internet.
If you like help in using viral marketing as one of your marketing arsenals, Let’s talk.
We all use data to make smart marketing investment strategy.
Increasing online usage due to the pandemic is putting more eyeballs on different media channels. The trick is to find out where and how your prospective customers are spending their time.
Data that tells you about customer behaviors and how they consume media is an important piece of information to have at your disposal. Good and relevant data helps you make good business decisions on where you would be investing in marketing.
The following snapshot tells you where customers will continue their behaviors online Post COVID19, 5 months into working remotely.
What does this data tell you? Eyeballs for this demographic ranging from ages 16-64 are being distributed over several channels. Most notably: online videos, streaming services, social media, messenger, music platforms, and online learning. Behavoirs before the pandemic such as gaming, mobile downloads are still there. But they are superceded by new behaviors shaped by the shifts in our information and entertainment consumption.
This means that you would need to decide on the media under these major categories to focus on. Then determine a media plan where you need to advertise your market assets and stories to get the most return on your investment. Set good objectives. Focus on engagement, trust and relationship building first before conversion.
When you get stuck and need help, our firm has the data-savvy intuition and caliber to help you lead your marketing efforts. No business is too small or too big for us.
We’d love to hear how we can help you maintain market presence during this challenging time.
This is part II of our content building educational moments. You can watch the clip here
Last time, we talked about building quality content that sticks. Now you have quality content built, what’s next?
I want to give you an example on how I distribute the content of my Business Matters column in the Los Altos Town Crier, featuring The Silicon Valley Podcast, a company whom I recently interviewed.
Think of content distribution like using the Spoke Wheel concept. You can distribute your core content piece by re-purposing or customizing it for various channels, reaching different target audience segments.
Treat your distribution like a campaign, start with teasers to stage the launch. In my case, I publish the article as a blog post first, then share with a small group of dedicated audience via email. Once the article is published in Los Altos Town Crier, I broadcast it out to all my core social media channels. Then stage my post release to create a momentum that lasts throughout the entire month.
This strategy has been effective for both my business as well as the company being featured. We both garnered “likes,” but most importantly, engagement from others. We use the engagement as a way to cement trust in our brands and let others know of expertise.
The anecdotes, combined with Google analytics, tell us a good story of the campaign results. It always turns out to be a win-win for all parties involved.
Let us help you design a content distribution campaign. We love to make it happened!
Courtesy of Shawn Flynn, Host of The Silicon Valley Podcast
In 2020, podcast’s regular weekly listenership is projected to reach over 68 million people, with an additional 20 million people to be added in the next 3 years. Podcast’s popularity has made it an emerging niche prime for distribution of quality content that young and educated listeners are tuned into. During these challenging times, it has become a relevant marketing mix that entrepreneurs and businesses of all sizes would love to adopt, because it gives us a captive audience that we can build our brand affinity with over time.
A Bridge that Connects People
Starting a podcast channel has been a dream for Shawn Flynn, current host of The Silicon Valley Podcast. Shawn has great passion for entrepreneurship and is an avid supporter of Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial community, where he works on a daily basis connecting with both local and international start-ups and building connections with them in all key aspects that contribute to their successes in the global economy. Following his stint in China where Shawn had started his business in the education sector that grew into a placement agency for foreigners to work with organizations located in various provinces in China, Shawn returned to the US and started his Silicon Valley Success TV show, in collaboration with a local TV station. He delivered over 48 episodes of interviews with top industry experts, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, who shared their vast knowledge, resources and experience to those who seek them and help take them to their next level of success. From there, Shawn joined the podcast platform, The Investor’s Podcast Network, where he produced 36 episodes with his distinguished guests, that gave his listeners an in-depth look into the workings of companies based in Silicon Valley.
Through his growing experience as a host, Shawn has found his voice and decided to branch out on his own and set up The Silicon Valley Podcast in April 2020, further strengthening his role as a podcast influencer and producing quality content that gives start-up as well as established companies a platform from which they can discuss a genre of rich topics, ranging from start-up funding to roles of investment banking in fundraising, smart cities, AI technology, and the competition in finding engineers. According to Shawn, the most challenging part in starting a new podcast channel is laying the foundation and deciding on the goal for his show. Once it’s set up, then finding the first few solid, elite guests to start things off in the right path are essential. Through his network, he managed to bring in prominent folks such as the Co-founder of Square, Jim McKelvey; CEO of Canva, Melanie Perkins; and Founder of Rotten Tomatoes, Patrick Lee, whom served as a launch pad for his show. “I found that working with more influential people is easier, because their time is locked in when I’ve reserved a specific time to talk to them,” said Shawn. “Making my guests feel special as a celebrity in my show makes them feel good, that builds good rapport for us, resulting in greater collaboration between us with relationships and friendships that last long after the show.”
Building a Trusted Brand Voice
Shawn’s bigger purpose for his Silicon Valley Podcast is to build a trusted brand voice for information, helping people and the world connect and get access to opportunities that they otherwise won’t have access to if they were to find them on their own. At this point, Shawn wants to focus on building his brand voice. “As a host, I not only have to interview guests, I also need to produce quality content that people like to listen to and drive growth for listenership,” said Shawn. “Equally important is driving growth through content distribution using various touch points, such as on my website, Spotify, Twitter, and content that can be transcribed easily later for e-book publication, as many of my listeners are not native English speakers.” He found that it was also helpful to have a content roadmap that gives him flexibility to focus on interview topics for the year, but not so rigid that he needs to focus on specifics each month. He also shared some good advice for new and upcoming podcast hosts in developing their brand voice. “Think of your end goals and focus on producing quality content. Spend more time researching the questions that you want to ask of your guests and provide the most beneficial content for your listeners,” said Shawn.
To date, his podcast channel has garnered over 3,000 downloads from his listeners. His growing popularity has elevated his brand to engage more with a diverse set of audience. Next step for the Silicon Valley Podcast is going global. Shawn is planning several events which he hopes to take off later this year in Cameroon, Kenya, and in Singapore, where he will moderate the events live as a podcast host. Listen to Shawn’s podcast, go to https://link.chtbl.com/TheSiliconValleyPodcast, or connect with him @https://shawnflynnsv.com/
*An edited version of this article will be published in my Business Matters Technology and Marketing column in the Los Altos Town Crier, July 22 Issue.
We are the biggest content consumers online these days. Building content for social media and other outlets may seem easy, but building quality content takes a bit of planning and discipline.
Here are five golden rules that I follow:
1) Develop content benefiting your target audience and showcasing your expertise. This can be content on work that you are passionate about, expertise that you love to offer help to others, or something that you are good at personally.
2) Build content with stories that come from your heart. There are content that I’ve read in the newspaper, blogs, social media posts and websites that are just fillers. Then there are content that I read which moves my heart; makes me think, laugh, or pause to ask a question. Those are the best ones.
3) Decide on your content source. Do you want to take content from a credible source and re-purpose it? Or you want to create your own content and have fun doing it? If you are crafty and resourceful person like me who loves storytelling, I would suggest that you create your own content because you can do so much with it.
4) What’s your content objective? Is it for building awareness for a new product? Or is it keeping your audience engaged with a project that you work on and they can benefit from hearing more about it?
5) Finally, re-purpose your original content and customize it for distribution in various channels. For example, you can take a long-version blog and chunk it out into smaller sound bytes and distribute it across social media in a video or static format that’s appropriate for a particular medium. And don’t forget to set a calendar on how you will stage your distribution to get the most out of your content.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these nuggets. My next piece will focus on content distribution; I will share out examples on what I did with some of my content pieces.
Like this, follow us on Instagram @brandgoddess. Or, watch it on our YouTube channel!
P.S. Don’t forget to check out our “Transform Your Online Presence” marketing special packages here!
COVID19 lock down has impacted many non-essential businesses from engaging in face time activities with their customers and conducting their services in a normal fashion. Not being able to serve your customers readily in person leads to a reduction in sales, hence affecting your marketing budget and everything else.
We understand that our natural response to instability in cashflow is to downsize and stop spending money on things that may deem unnecessary. From a marketer perspective, we think you should do the opposite. Instead of going dark, you want to step up and show what you can do to help your customers and the community during this challenging time. You cannot ignore your marketing and let it go to zero, and hope to ramp back up to its level before the lock down.
The reality is that there is a very high chance that you won’t, as your competition would have already gained your customers’ mindshare by being there consistently. This means you need to do what’s necessary to maintain your marketing momentum in the most creative ways possible.
Adopting the Best Marketing Strategy
We think that the best strategy is to keep a healthy level of visibility in front of your customers, by making a 10 to 20% shift in your business, you’d have improved your current situation with 5 to 10X results.
The 10-20% change could be focusing on your website, social media content and advertising where you can get the most access to your customers, as we are all working, searching, and spending time online than ever before.
With this in mind, we would love to offer two packages that work hand in hand with each other, to help keep your business top of mind with your existing and prospective customers.
Package A: Transforming Your Online Presence
Website Strategy and Content Tune-Up
Assess website improvement with focus on enhancing SEO organic search for your company to be found easily. Explore e-Commerce ability to enable business operations and payment online. Marketing strategy adjustment to cultivate short- and long-term client relationships and revenue generation. Content refresh to align with strategy shift.
This package includes:
A two-hour discovery meeting to determine your needs and identify scope of work. Fee: $450 to be paid upon when session is completed.
Marketing strategy consultation, customer engagement, messaging and content strategy development*. Fee: $200/month to be paid over a 10-month period.
Website strategy consultation and implementation, including: SEO, e-Commerce, and content refresh to be supplied from item 2. Fee: TBD based on outcome of discovery meeting.
*For website with no more than 10 pages of content.
Package B: Keeping Your Business Top of Mind
Social Media Campaign, Creative & Copy writing Development
With economic reliefs from Google and Facebook combined, you have access to Google’s COVID19 free ads if you are an existing advertiser since Jan 2019. Facebook offers ad credits combined with a grant for SMBs. Choose one(s) you qualify for so you can get funding to support your advertising efforts.
This package includes:
One-time consultation set up fee of $700+ to provide overall direction in these areas:
Social media advertising strategy and content focus
Creatives for testing and conversion, to be aligned with strategy and budget
Creation of landing pages as needed to facilitate sales conversion
Monthly advertising /creative/content development work will be developed after set up. Fees are additional to set-up fees, and vary depending on target audience, objective, # of creatives, duration, and budget for campaigns. Payment can be made over a 4-month period.
Left to Right: David Loker, CTO; Mayya Ackerman, CEO; Christopher Cassion, VP of Engineering. Courtesy of WAVE-AI
** An edited version is now published in my Los Altos Town Crier’s “Business Matters” Tech/Marketing Column **
Research has shown that music is heart healthy. It reduces stress, stimulates memories, eases pain, and soothes one’s soul. During this challenging time with COVID19, music has been one of the avenues that’s been effective in helping us cope with stress and anxiety that come with the lock down. For some of us, it’s becoming an essential, therapeutic tool in keeping us calm, activating the happy dopamine in our brains that bring reliefs to stressful moments in our lives.
From Research Project to Commercialization
WaveAI is a startup whose product, ALYSIA, integrates music into our lives and makes it easier for us to create our own music with lyrics, top-line melodies, and vocals, blending with audio background of our choosing, all using artificial and machine intelligence. ALYSIA originally began as a research project which was brought to life by Maya Ackerman, Co-Founder and CEO of WaveAI. Together, with her stellar team of artificial intelligence and machine learning researchers, who are also trained musicians themselves, they hatched ALYSIA in the consumer space.
Maya was first exposed to music through singing and playing piano at a young age. She is an accomplished artificial and machine intelligence expert; she is also an opera singer and a producer. During her Computer Science PhD studies, Maya first began studying voice and tried to create original songs. Because of her own struggles with songwriting, Maya saw the opportunity to create ALYSIA that would help not only herself, but also others who experience similar struggles could benefit from it. ALYSIA was launched 3 years ago. To date, it has generated over 30,000 songs by users mainly in the U.S. and U.K., with more California users than any other state, including users in Mountain View and across Santa Clara county.
A Game Changer in Songwriting
ALYSIA is currently the only platform providing assistance with the creation of vocal music through WaveAI’s one-of-a-kind AI technology, allowing everyone to express themselves through songs complete with lyrics, melodies, and vocals. This is a game changer both technologically and in the self-expression songwriting marketplace. Music is now more readily accessible to everyday people. Music lovers everywhere can express themselves through their own original songs, without needing years of musical and vocal training.
“When a user enters the type of song that he or she likes, the app provides suggested lyrics for users to choose from. The melodies are generated in real time, on demand, not from a database. Only background music is human-made,” said Ackerman. “Other software in the space focuses on creating backing tracks, with no lyrics or vocal components. No other songwriting software enables you to write lyrics with fitting melodies.”
Making Songwriting Simple and Easy
According to Ackerman, ALYSIA started out by catering to novice songwriters with no previous musical experience. The app made it easy for novice users to write lyrics and add the top-line melody to existing audio tracks. By definition, a top-line melody is the main melody of your song that rides above your chord progressions, creating a thru-line that helps connect all the various sections of your song together. The top-line melody is also the vehicle that carries your lyrics. You can either use ALYSIA’s auto voice or record your own voice to go with lyrics in the song. “Existing tools create music sheets without words. Our focus, creating music with words, is much more challenging,” said Ackerman. After users created their songs, they can socially share their songs on YouTube, Facebook or any other social media channel. In the future, ALYSIA hopes to partner with known entities and encourage contest participation to pick the best album of the year, for example.
“Recently, a song created with our technology was named “Song of the Day’’ by the French publication Liberation,” said Ackerman. “With a proven consumer version of ALYSIA, we have now released a Beta version of LyricStudio for professional songwriters. It will be available for free for a limited time.” For more information on ALYSIA and LyricStudio, visit www.wave-ai.net for more information.
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Special Note: As a columnist for Los Altos Town Crier (LATC), I’d love to get your support for LATC, who has been publishing my articles featuring topics ranging from personal branding to start-up companies who are game changers. LATC is experiencing a shortage in revenue due to cancellations from advertisers. Please lend your support for local news that benefit the greater community. Click here to donate.
According to Ackerman, ALYSIA started out by catering to novice songwriters with no previous musical experience. The app made it easy for novice users to write lyrics and add the top-line melody to existing audio tracks. By definition, a top-line melody is the main melody of your song that rides above your chord progressions, creating a thru-line that helps connect all the various sections of your song together. The top-line melody is also the vehicle that carries your lyrics. You can either use ALYSIA’s auto voice or record your own voice to go with lyrics in the song. “Existing tools create music sheets without words. Our focus, creating music with words, is much more challenging,” said Ackerman. After users created their songs, they can socially share their songs on YouTube, Facebook or any other social media channel. In the future, ALYSIA hopes to partner with known entities and encourage contest participation to pick the best album of the year, for example.
