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12.14.09
 By Robert ScobleOn Tuesday I joined up with the Traveling Geeks (a band of journalists/bloggers/influentials who visit startups around the world, picture of them above in a Paris subway station) in Paris and we saw a ton of startups. Some of them, like Stribe, were very good. But overall they just didn't measure up. In fact, they even got me to be rude to them, which caught everyone off guard. I've been thinking about why they got me so angry ever since, and that's what this post is about. First, if you meet with journalists, influentials, and bloggers who are coming from outside your country I assume you want to build a world brand. After all, if you only want to be big in France then why waste your time meeting with USA journalists? So, since you were meeting with us and since we've spent precious resources getting there and had sizeable opportunity costs, I figure entrepreneurs should be better prepared. In this case you get to learn from their mistakes. 1. Don't be on Twitter. This was a HUGE mistake many French CEOs made. Four CEOs told me their companies weren't on Twitter and that they didn't have enough time to join Twitter. That got me quite angry. Why? Because in the room were people with hundreds of thousands of followers (and not just me). If you aren't on Twitter I can't follow you, I can't pimp you after the event, and I can't follow up with questions. IT IS A MAJOR TURN OFF. But it's worse than that. The world's tech press is on Twitter, so if you say you don't have time to join Twitter you are telling 500 tech journalists who ARE on Twitter that you don't have time for them. Well, then they'll say back they don't have time for you. But worse than that, I have a list of 500 tech startups and a separate list of 400 older tech companies (I will soon be making a new list of startups, because Twitter limits us to 500 accounts per list and I already know of lots of other startups). These are companies you should be watching and partnering with. If you watch them you'll get tips of how other companies are working with influentials and also creating buzz (and you'll be first to see when other companies are getting news, so that helps you talk with journalists). Luckily I've found 500 tech company founders who ARE clued in and found Twitter to be important. Why is Twitter important? Well, it might have to do with the 422 venture capitalists and angel investors who are on Twitter or the hundreds of tech company executives (these are your exit possibilities!!!) who also are on Twitter. If you know of people who should be on this list that I don't know about, please leave a comment here. By the way, when I told off the entrepreneurs sitting next to me a CEO whispered in my ear "I agree." Who was that CEO? Kamel Zeroual, CEO of Stribe. Who is Stribe? The French company that won best of show at LeWeb, the world's biggest independent web conference. He and his company are one of the few that were on Twitter. 2. Make lame and anemic marketing materials. First of all, if you really want to look lame with a group of bleeding edge tech journalists, please use PowerPoint. It puts us to sleep.It was amazing how poorly some of the entrepreneurs did at this. But, if you need to share information with us, please use Google's Docs. Do NOT send around Word Documents or PPTs. Why? Some of us don't have Word loaded anymore and some of us have limited email space (I know tech journalists that already have filled up their Gmail account, for instance). Also, some of us do all of our journalism on mobile phones now and it's better to have documentation available on the cloud. It also marks you as "with it." It also is more likely to get through my spam filters for some reason. Finally, the documents should include a link to your Web site, a link to your key Twitter accounts (you ARE on Twitter, right?), a link to your Facebook Pages (you turning down interactions with 350 million people? What, are you NUTS?), screen shots of your best features, your company logo in many different sizes (so we can copy and paste it into blogs), and contact information for ALL of your top corporate executives. Continue reading this article. About the Author: Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net's Vice President of Media Development. Go to Scobleizer ... |
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