This is a guest post, provided by Robert Durango.
When most start-up companies begin to build their web presence, they focus on their blogs, websites, and social networking pages such as those found on Facebook and Twitter. Although all of these are effective at increasing a company’s online visibility, there is one important online resource that many business owners overlook: online video.
The rise of YouTube has made video creation ever more important for start-up businesses wishing to gain web presence. Through YouTube, companies can provide online tutorials, commercials, and other promotional video to a large scale public. In addition to offering video to a broader public, YouTube videos have the potential of going viral which for business owners means that they have the potential of reaching millions of potential clients for free.
Embedding videos on your own company’s website that may be linked to other social networking sites are also a great way to reach potential clients and raise your web presence. With the rise of technology, the common public is more interested in being entertained and engaged online and videos provide that needed stimuli.
However, for the common business owner, managing and publishing videos online may not be easy. But before you hire a team of web designers and programmers, consider purchasing online video publisher software. An online video publisher helps business owners publish and share their video across multiple platforms through one easy-to-use administrative page, and also provides streaming video hosting.
By using these types of software, business owners are able to constantly provide social networking sites, clients, and partners with up-to-date videos. Money doesn’t have to be made strictly though product sales for today’s business either. By using video, start-up businesses can increase their profits by further monetizing their site. Online video publisher software are also able to help business owners determine how far their brand is expanding, inform their target audience, and increase their user engagement all of which are needed to create a strong foundation for success.
This is a guest post, provided by Robert Durango.
Image Credit: Racum, on Flickr
Is the honeymoon over? You betcha.
Guy Kawasaki, who runs a VC blog that changes names often enough that I want to just brand it with a symbol like “the artist formerly known as prince”, put a post up the other day about “After the honeymoon.” In it, he lists 9 common problems that startup companies encounter after they get their funding and begin operations. Since I have a little bit of experience in this realm with DOTM, I thought I’d go through them each and give my two cents.
I think that this problem is numbered 1 because it is probably the most common. We’ve had partial issues that entailed this problem. In our case, it hasn’t necessarily been pinned on any one of the founders, but alternating amongst the founders. So far, the remaining founders have been able to get the one that isn’t delivering a kick in the butt and get him going. Perhaps, one day that won’t work anymore. What would we do about it? Kindly ask the founder to leave. If that fails, we vote him off the island.
We actually ran into this problem our very first shipment. It happens. In our case, we didn’t have body but ourselves and our customers to apologize to. We did. Nobody asked for a refund. Will it happen again? Maybe. What will we do then? Apologize again. Never underestimate the power of a sincere apology.
Unless you have a uber product, everybody is going to run into this. We did. We got over it and made adjustments to the way that we were doing things to help out the bottom line. We survived. Will it happen again? You Betcha.
Our team is our founders. If we don’t get along, we have issues. Does it happen? Yes. But more often than not, we make a compromise and get along with business.
We haven’t really had too big of a problem with this one. Of course part of that could be that we’re the oposite of Norm from cheers. Nobody knows our name.
I’m lumping 6 and 7 together because we do not have any VC’s and as a result, 6 & 7 do no apply.
We do not have a PR/Ad Agency/Consultant. We fulfill those things ourselves. Of course, that could be the reason behind the “nobody knows our name” problem. We have done some PR and advertising, but really, none of us has any true experience and have exhausted most of our resources.
Last, but not least. This is a lot like #1. Most everybody is going to feel the crunch at some point. We are in that crunch now. Our subscriber base isn’t growing as fast as we would like and we’ve cut corners where we can, but we most certainly are out of money. Anything more comes from our pockets. Ouch!
I hope that this little foray into another list by Guy has been as meaningful and incitefull as it was for me. I know that when we began DOTM, we had “visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads”, but now we are faced with some hard realities that are expressed by these nine items along with some items that aren’t included. That’s fodder for another post however.
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