If you don’t have a strategy, your business cannot succeed. A good product or service isn’t enough. A good brand isn’t enough. Neither is being the best at what you do. In the end, the question is, do you have a strategy to get, keep and build upon the customer base you need and will that strategy work. We don’t know what your business strategy is, but we’ve got some ideas we think will help. Enjoy.
Leadership
Enforce vacations. Strange but true. Some companies are realizing the importance of downtime for company success letting especially hard working employees who tend not to take off to do just that. It’s the equivalent of recharging your business’s batteries, and, hey, the boss should be included! WSJ
Stop selling to yourself? It’s too bad but some small businesses spend so much time shoving their own ideas on customers that they never bother seeing the customer for who he or she is, an individual with unique goals and needs. Stop projecting your own expectation on your customer. Listen to them instead. Bloomberg BusinessWeek
Strategy
Stand out in the online world. Let’s face it, these days getting your message out about your product brand or service requires using the Internet. The only problem is that, while the barriers for entry are low, so are the chances that anyone will find your content ever. Unless… Copyblogger
Study your taxi driver. The guy who drove Chris from his hotel to the PayPal campus at Ebay’s headquarters near San Jose, Cal. recently can teach you a lot about small business, Chris says. Read the post and learn some basic principals every small business should operate by. Chris Brogan
Marketing
Learn the basics of bootstrapping. In marketing especially, bootstrapping can be huge. Who needs a gigantic marketing budget. Creativity is better. Learn the basic principles of getting your brand known. It is the first step in successfully creating a business model that endures. Youngentrepreneur
Don’t just create a brand! Seth believes you should reach higher. And even if you don’t care for his choice of words—Brand as mythology?—you can clearly see it’s better than being just another product on the shelf or another Website on the Web. How important is mythology to your brand? Seth Godin’s Blog
Communication
Create a powerful message. As if in answer to Seth’s post, here’s how you create something memorable. But creating a message that resonates requires asking a lot of questions first, questions about who you really want to reach and how to go about reaching them. Answer the questions and you will be heard. Liz Strauss
Deal with picky customers. No matter what kind of work you do, it won’t be good enough for some clients. Dealing with the picky ones is as much a part of running a small business as any other part of what you do. Do your best with all your clients and customers and remember the picky ones are just your greatest challenge. You’re The Boss
Branding
Make yourself more trusted. Perhaps you can’t get more customers without first gaining more trust. How many people know who you are and what you stand for? Increasing your trust factor may not increase sales…initially. But in the long run, being a trusted leader has its benefits. Duct Tape Marketing
From Small Business TrendsYour Small Business Strategy Guide
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Film
5 Famous Directors Who Are Changing Filmmaking and Distribution
2:30 pm Wednesday Jul 13, 2011 by Tom Hawking
The ever-cheerful Jean-Luc Godard gave a rare interview to The Guardian this week, wherein, among other things, he held forth on the state of the film industry. “Film is over,” he proclaimed. “It’s sad nobody is really exploring it. But what to do? And anyway, with mobile phones and everything, everyone is now an auteur.” It’s certainly an interesting time for film — while Hollywood is trying to keep people in cinemas by (re-)embracing 3D and avoiding anything that looks remotely like a new idea, indie filmmakers are exploring the possibilities of web-based distribution and new methods of filmmaking. And it’s not just indie directors doing so, either. Join us as we have a brief look at five prominent directors who’ve been pushing the technological envelope in direction, marketing, and/or distribution.
Jean-Luc Godard
Ever the innovator, Godard himself is exploring the idea of working outside traditional film distribution channels, putting up a hyper-speed version of his new project Film Socialisme on YouTube the day before its release. He was also in the news last year for speaking out in support of a man accused of copyright violation for downloading songs via a file-sharing site — Godard donated €1,000 to the man’s defense fund, and told French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, “There is no such thing as intellectual property… Copyright really isn’t feasible. An author has no rights. I have no rights. I have only duties.”
David Lynch
Flavorpill favorite David Lynch was one of the first prominent directors to see the possibilities of the internet, launching his subscription-based website in the early 2000s and using it to release a series of internet-only projects, including a series of characteristically weird animations and a sitcom called Rabbits (which is about a dysfunctional family of, yes, rabbits). He’s also embraced digital film-making, shooting Inland Empire entirely on DV (“The quality is pretty terrible, but I like that”) and telling Wired back in 2006 that “film is heavy… it’s gone, just gone.”
Michael Moore
Moore released his docu-polemic Slacker Uprising as a free download in 2008, making him one of the first prominent directors to release a feature-length project online. Moore noted on the film’s website that given that it was designed to encourage people to get out and vote in the 2008 presidential election, he wanted it to be distributed as widely as possible. He also made it clear that viewers “have my blanket permission to share the movie with your friends, to set up screenings in your communities or theaters, to show it on your campuses — all at no charge.”
Kevin Smith
After the Weinstein brothers declined to support a horror film inspired by the Westboro Baptist Church, Smith decided to distribute Red State himself. Unfortunately, he came to this decision after he’d already announced to the world via Twitter that he’d be selling off the rights to the highest bidder via a public auction at the Sundance Festival. His about-face didn’t amuse everyone who’d bought into what looks in retrospect awfully like one big publicity stunt — the whole business was thoroughly confusing and rather unedifying, and wasn’t really helped by Smith’s constant tweets about what was or wasn’t going to happen. Sometimes, internet marketing can blow up in your face.
Luc Besson
Late last year, the director behind Léon and The Fifth Element launched a website called We Are Producteurs. The idea was to turn the decisions behind his next project over to the denizens of the web — users get to vote on the script that’ll be shot, then on casting, direction and various other aspects of the film. (It’s currently at the casting stage, and users are debating who’s going to play the role of a character called Dominique.) Apparently the first 10,000 subscribers also get their name in the credits of the film. If your French is up to the task, head over to the site and check it out.
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