If I …Were in Alpha
I didn’t say If I was an Alpha, because if you know me, we already know that I’m an Alpha. And if there’s a greek letter they discover someday that comes before Alpha, I’m that too. If I had a company in Alpha mode, I’d take some steps to make tactical moves to ensure I didn’t have a near-certain death by moving into Beta before it’s ready.
So many companies, so little room in the market? Must.move.lighting.fast.always? Must throw it out there and fix it later? In the past several months I’ve seen companies go flying out the door before the products are fully baked. Ideas are never fully baked and online products are never done; as we all know, they simply evolve (if we’re lucky). But the belief in an ever-growing product isn’t the same as putting out a product to the public that isn’t ready.
If I were running product at a company that is in Alpha (even if it called itself in Beta), I would:
1. Withhold any and all traffic growing measures. If you’ve got a product that requires UGC in order to hammer out bugs, load test and populate pages then call your mother, your jobless cousins and your husband’s golf buddies. This isn’t the time to open up to random people. The web is simply too small now for that. Be clever about how to use the people you know. It’s old school, I know, but there’s a new reason: Real-Time Reporting. No longer do pages disappear. Everything now is available in real-time and opening up beta can produce half-completed pages, logins that spin, dead-end links or “this is where the ugly picture of yo baby goes” engineer placeholders. It’s just not worth it. Keep your content close and your content users closer.
2. Stop. Collaborate and Listen. Okay, fine, I’m stealing the line from Vanilla Ice and that’s just wrong. But he’s right. If you’re thinking of rolling into Beta do yourself a favor and stop everything. Take a breather. Take a weekend. Go back to your drawing board, away from the specs, away from the fancy UI corners and remember the product’s vision. Are you there? Are you there so strongly that you could push the product into Beta and go to sleep tonight not running MySql queries in your sleep? Have you listened to your team? Where’s the biggest worry? Is it valid? Is it a showstopper? Do you want to push to beta to get the Board off your back? To meet an arbitrary deadline? Take the moment. Stop. Collaborate. Listen.
3. Do not work any social media campaigns. No matter what. Sure, secure your FB fan page, get a Twitter account, play FourSquare, write a blog. But and this is a big but (not a big butt, which is a totally different rap song), do not waste the time or investment of a user when you are not yet ready to reciprocate. What can you offer users when you are not yet there yourself? Don’t tell me “Something Big is Coming!” because that’s not communicating with me. If you must engage social media into your pre-Beta plan, be completely transparent about your work. Tell a story of troubles and problems and issues and be fully prepared to offer the same kind of comfort in return to people you’re communicating with. The only thing I can honestly tell you to do in social media is LISTEN — comment on sites that matter to your business, pull in RSS feeds of sites that inspire your product and engage with them. Learn from them. But putting out a social media brand message takes dedication that Alpha products don’t have. Do you have it to give? If you don’t, save yourself the need of hiring me to fix the brand image and simply don’t engage until you are fully ready to put your best foot forward.
My bottom line is, don’t put up crap — your awesome idea is worth waiting a bit longer before taking it to Beta.
Note: Please give me some knuckles that I didn’t call out the names of the companies that led the inspiration for this post. <<good for me!>>
Read More
Three Products for 2010
As you all know by now, God help the company that has me write reviews. For the most part it works out great, but I can stick it to you if I think your product sucks eggs, is craphouse, full of false advertising or worse, inappropriate for children.
But in my attempt to see the glass half-full in 2010, I thought I’d end the year with my top favorite products to try in the new year. I received all of these products from events, PR agencies or the rad and unforgettable SVMOM preholiday event.
Marie Veronique Organics
1. Take your handbag. Pull out the credit card with the biggest limit and get ready to transform your face. I’m not even a little bit kidding. I’m a high-end face product user and this stuff is unreal. I’ve had decades of bad skin and tried everything known to man to try and curb it over the years. I only use very high quality products on my face and save the 99-cent stuff for the rest of my body parts. I have spent the past two weeks using Marie-Veronique Organics products and my face looks like a teenager girl with a Snickers fettish. But, and this is a big but: I’ve never been so happy to look like crap. I know the toxins are pouring out of my skin and I’m loving every minute of it. How’s that for a product review?
It’s clear that the Marie Veronique products do exactly what they say they do: they are pure to your skin, they smell like you just walked out of The Golden Door spa and, above all, it’s completely addictive. I was given samples of the Cleanse, Hydrate, Replenish and Repair products. Of the entire line, I found the hydrate spritz to be one of the greatest products of all time. It’s the mid/late afternoon sprirtz to the face that I swear to the spa gods makes me feel like I took a nap. The second unforgettable product from this line is the repair serum which, I’m sure the founders will love to hear, cures Le Hangover Face. Puffiness, redness, splotchiness all gone. This stuff is magic for a reason. It’s made from crazy free radicals (a synonym for Garza Girl) and all kinds of organics stuff I know nothing about. It’s expensive as all getout; really, nutso expensive. I’m savoring every drop of the samples I received and going to order the ones I can’t live without. This stuff is worth its weight in gold. No, it’s more expensive than gold, but it’s been a great treat.
2. Do not laugh at me. I am dead serious about these two products. First let me say, it’s only because of the horrible economy that I would even consider making coffee at home, muchless specialty coffee at home. I am a Peet’s Coffee kind of girl (Actually I’m a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf kind of girl but they don’t have one in San Jose). First product is the damn – ugh, I hate to admit it, even — the Starbucks instant coffee. The VIA line of coffee that came out this year isn’t cheap either. It’s about a buck each, so don’t spill the freezedrygroundbeans. But, the coffee is surprisingly good. I like the Italian Roast better than the Colombian. Oh wait, maybe the other way around? Whichever, it’s the darker roast one (and darker package). Cha-ching: in a swig of coffee, I’m saving at least $1 and closer to $1.15 each time I choose to use the VIA. The coffee doesn’t smell like coffee, which is the only downside, but on the upside, it doesn’t smell like dry ice either. Another plus: the VIA doesn’t need to be warm to dissolve, so you can put it in with milk/water combo and shake it up for an iced coffee. If you’re thinking of giving up your coffee habit to save money, this is the way to go. Alternatively, you can take the rest of the money you save ($1.15×365=$419.75 per year) and donate it to one of my three favorite charities: the George Mark Children’s House, Pro Mujer or Sacred Heart Community Center. Now that’s a good idea. Wheesh, I’m clever.
The second coffee product of the year is CoffeeMate French Vanilla creamer that I got at the SV Moms event in November. Ewww, creamer you say? That’s what I said. Until, the fated day when my eggnog *and* my regular coffee went bad on Christmas Day and curdled in my cup. On a day when nothing was open, I was left creamless in San Jose. After scrounging around the cupboards, I found the CoffeeMate freebees I’d gotten and promptly served them to my entire family without telling a soul. I can’t even tell you how good that dang thing tasted. The best part of it (besides pulling it off without a hitch), is the single-serve size. Sure, I felt sneaky and just slightly low-class, but it was worth it. I looked for the CoffeeMate singles at Safeway but didn’t see them. Will definitely use this as a go-to pantry item this year. I might be less classy than I thought (I have the Torani vanilla syrup in my pantry too), but it worked in a pinch.
3. My final product of the next year to work with is the line of Nubius Organics. Now, the lovely people at Nubius Organics better stop frigging spamming me with email before I call the blacklist people on them, but aside from the borderline spam, I have to say, their products are completely off-the-hook. Nubius sells my faved, beloved Nathan waterbottle for cheaper than you can find it on Amazon. The site touts green-friendly products, and although green isn’t on my major priority list, I really like the way they explain why something is green, why it’s important to them. The big purchase for 2010 is going to be converting our entire family to their Laptop Lunches, a bento box style of lunchbox that creates zero — that’s a big fat 0 — trash. I’m a huge fan of the idea and can’t wait to see how it rolls. I think Laptop Lunches also has a school program, so I’m waiting to make the purchase in case my kids’ school can benefit from it. Organic stuff is so damn expensive, but Nubius has some good deals in their sale section too. Kids are excited to have bento box lunches, my son says, because then everyone will think he is on the Green Team.
Read More
Side Gigs
