October 2009

Don’t Forget Your Revenue Engine

October 29, 2009

If you’d like to increase your chances of secur­ing financ­ing from angels, make sure you take the time before­hand to have good answers to the ques­tions you can expect to hear from poten­tial investors. No mat­ter which angel group you pitch, they’re all likely to ask sim­i­lar ques­tions. Here are some of the burn­ing ques­tions that they will have for you.

Tagged as: angels, early stage companies, revenue strategies, start-ups

Moving Up to Windows 7

October 23, 2009

I’ve been using Win­dows 7 release can­di­date on a Mac­Book Pro for sev­eral months, and would like to upgrade a work­horse PC from Vista to Win­dows 7. Before upgrad­ing the PC, I wanted to iden­tify poten­tial issues with my pri­mary soft­ware appli­ca­tions. Good thing I took this pre­cau­tion. Here’s why.

Tagged as: Bootcamp, MacBook Pro, Windows 7 compatibility

Revised on November 13, 2009

A Marketer’s Nightmare

October 14, 2009

This must be a painful time to be a mar­keter at Dell Com­puter. Dell has just intro­duced a svelte, feature-packed pre­mium lap­top aimed at execs, sta­tus seek­ers and “impres­sion mak­ers.” Thanks to their PR team (or influ­encer rela­tions), Dell secured a high vis­i­bil­ity blog post­ing at the NY Times dis­cussing the prod­uct and its aspi­ra­tional posi­tion­ing. Unfor­tu­nately, it backfired.

Tagged as: Apple, brand positioning, Dell

Revised on March 28, 2011

FTC Clarifies Disclosure Guidelines for Bloggers

October 8, 2009

In a con­ver­sa­tion spon­sored by Fast Com­pany, FTC assis­tant direc­tor Richard Cle­land clar­i­fied that blog­gers won’t be fined $11,000 for a first offense. It’s more likely to take mul­ti­ple infrac­tions and a refusal to com­ply with prior warn­ings before the FTC levies any finan­cial penal­ties on blog­gers who fail to dis­close that they have received cash or pay­ment in kind from an advertiser.

Tagged as: disclosure guidelines on blogging

Thinking about a Kindle DX

October 7, 2009

I’ve been think­ing about buy­ing a Kin­dle DX ebook reader, given my addic­tion to books, both busi­ness and per­sonal. On a recent flight from Boston I finally saw the larger DX model being used by my seat­mate.  A devel­op­ment man­ager for Microsoft, she uses hers on long flights to catch up on pro­fes­sional read­ing (long tech­ni­cal white papers, inter­nal reports, etc.) and then relax with a favorite book. Her enthu­si­asm reawak­ened my inter­est in Kindle.

Tagged as: Kindle DX

Your Endorsements Must Be Transparent

October 5, 2009

Today the FTC pub­lished new guide­lines requir­ing adver­tis­ers and mar­keters to be trans­par­ent when using endorse­ments as a mar­ket­ing tac­tic. In a new twist the revised guide­lines also apply to the peo­ple who act as the endorser. Who Is Affected The revised FTC guide­lines apply to: celebri­ties who endorse prod­ucts or brands; blog­gers or word-of-mouth brand […]

Tagged as: word-of-mouth marketing