invaluable pitching advice

How To Demo Your Startup hey, a post that does what it says on the tin; very sound advice on pitching, well, frankly, anything - not just a startup.

Think of your audience, and help them through the pitch - you’re going to throw a huge amount of information at them in a very short space of time, so help them out! Point 3 - “Leave them wanting more” for example. You can’t say everything that’s you’d like, so don’t try. Leave stuff out. If you’re smart, leave out stuff that your audience will want to ask about - and that you have great (short) answers on.

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New word for old fashioned values

I *do* like Tara Hunt’s take on “helping out for free” - and since she’s making a thing of it, there’s a good chance that culture will shift a notch or two in that direction. You can’t eat Whuffie (but it’s getting harder to eat without it) | ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon

(Thanks to Hugh MacLeod & Twitter for the heads up)

Whuffle has been part of my web experience since the early days of Fast Company London in 97/98 (FC London was the vortex that drew me into this working life) - pitch in, share ideas, expecting only shared knowledge, thanks and companionship in return. But the network built a decade ago still pays back.

I hope that Project VRM may offer something similar - we’ve had the whuffle talk - and folk are involved because, well, because it’s a cause we believe in. I’ll be interested to see the reactions to 20 minute conference talk - with added VRM - in Delhi next week. It’s very interesting to see how readily the ‘old’ marketing economy is thinking about VRM - there’s an article by Doc Searls, Alan Mitchell & Iain Henderson in this month’s IDM Journal (text for members only, I’m afraid).

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Managing discussion board content

Bulletin board postings more likely slander than libel, says High Court | OUT-LAW.COM

Very, very useful to know.
(tho frankly not the most exciting news of the week ;-)

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More Melbourne style!

another piece of innovative communication from Melbourne (see car park signage below)
Craft Circle Fights The Power, Martha Stewart Style | PSFK - Trends, Ideas & Inspiration
I wonder what they’re putting in the water?

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metaphor for marketing…

Axel Peemoeller’s - Eureka Carpark Melbourne
has fantastic signage - which makes sense when seen from the right angle. And no sense at all when looked at from the wrong direction. How many times have you seen marketing campaigns that looked just like that - planned from the company’s perspective, they make perfect sense to the company, and none at all to the customer.

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Why communities fail /2

Business Technology : Why Most Online Communities Fail

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Why online communities fail

Collaborative Thinking: I know it’s Friday, but can I have an online community by Monday?
Very good upsum of the mismatch between expectations & reality

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breakthrough 2009: cultural shift in social marketing

Ze Frank on Breaking the Metaphor of the Web
There’s momentum building here, towards a watershed. In recent weeks we’ve seen VRMWorkshop, big forward steps from Dataportability, Facebook’s adoption of those principles… I’m sure there’s more - there’s certainly thinking about the problems created by social media

So is 2009 going to be the year in which we get a technical breakthrough, that changes Web 2.0 from being a technical achievement into being social & commercial?

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Most Bank Sites Are Insecure

Oh for goodness sake!
Banks ask their customers to jump through hoops… and then, it seems, can’t put their own house in oder. My guess (experience) is that legacy systems and organisation culture combine to stymie development at the pace needed to stay ahead of developments in security risks.

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Newspaper websites traffic gains

Guardian.co.uk becomes first UK newspaper site to break 20 million
Good to see the Guardian online getting the readers it deserves - more importantly, these traffic rises should be set against continuing decline in sales of print editions.

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