Starbucks Corp. spent just $95 million on advertising last year, 49 percent less than Google did. Like Google, Starbucks made a name for itself by developing a distinctive product that quickly resonated with consumers whose enthusiasm became infectious.
For the Internet, email was the killer app — a program so useful that it transformed the platform into a massive communications tool. There’s no killer app for Facebook yet. But if someone can develop one, they will be sitting on a gold mine.
Zuckerberg saw that if he could successfully map the social graph, he’d create a powerful new model of communication — a giant word-of-mouth engine.
Know your biggest ROI tasks. Which are the tasks that will really make you money, that will make a name for you, that will give you the most bang for your buck? Find those truly valuable Most Important Tasks (MITs) each week and each day, and you will know what you need to concentrate on. Eliminate as much of the rest of your tasks (and distractions) as possible, and cut your work down to these MITs. Be brutal. If it’s not going to make you a lot of money, or pay off big time for you in the long term, eliminate it.
The online virtual world Second Life, where people play using avatars (graphic representations of themselves), is starting to become a real workplace, at least for a few telesales agents at 1-800-Flowers.com Inc.
By sharing my experience openly on the show, potential clients not only realise I know my stuff but also get to understand our working practices. That means by the time they come to us they are already pretty much convinced they want to work with us.
Most of what makes people great at something is not raw talent but how hard they work at it, according to research by Steven Levitt, economist at University of Chicago and author of the book Freakonomics. So choose to do something you are excited enough about to work very hard at it, and keep testing things until something grabs you.
Domain names are becoming 21st century real estate
Blogging is about experimenting, discovering what works for you and your audience. That might be a slew of one-line insights, or it might be a book-full of 40,000 word essays.
