Benefit from helping others

Recently I was approached by a friend of mine on Skype. He asked me to drop a tweet about his new cool Windows app ( http://www.ia-kar.com/en/laptop-battery.php if you’re interested ). I’ve composed a quick tweet about it and shared it on Twitter.

This happened at a time I’m usually not checking my Twitter. After I’ve published the tweet my eyes caught on the trending twitter hashes and found one which fits our recently launched startup (AppStream: http://www.goappstream.com/) so I’ve dropped some tips there too.

Almost immediately we’ve got a new follower for our Twitter account.

So today’s startup advise of mine is whenever you’re asked to help somebody which doesn’t take much time don’t hesitate, do it!

It may even help you and of course useful networking is always a good thing to spend time with.

Use Quora for user survey / support?

Lately developers tend to move technical support to StackOverflow instead of providing an own solution. Brands and startups use more and more Facebook and Twitter for support and it seems like a trend to abandon custom solutions for FAQ and Support.

I’m a long time Quora user, registered my account when Quora was invitation-only. Recently I noticed that some services started to use Quora for user survey and for Q&A/Support purposes.

What’s great about moving away from a dedicated / custom Support or Q&A service to a more social one?

It holds a lot of advantage compared to a custom, in-site solution.

First of all you don’t have to implement it, just register the appropriate accounts/pages and give permission for your team to use it. It may not seem as a big win but still, especially for startups every work you can ‘outsource’ is a win. Your team don’t have to work with it, don’t have to support it or improve it. It’s quick and tested.

The second one is even more important: it’s more social, more engaging. I guess all of you familiar with Facebook and have a great perception why it’s a great tool for user engagement (compared to a simple in-site blog or static FAQ pages). Every time your customers interact with your brand’s/service’s Facebook page or Twitter account his/her friends and followers may get noticed about it. It’s viral and one of the most cost efficient marketing tools (of course it requires really great content which can motivate your followers to interact with it).

So what’s the story with Quora?
Today I checked my Quora feed/stream and noticed an interesting question:

Evernote: What would be an ideal integration between Evernote and a project management software for you? - Quora http://buff.ly/UI68Hl

It’s a customer survey, publicly available on Quora and it appeared on my feed. Quora now seems to be mature enough to host survey / customer Q&A s, at least for a big name like Evernote it is.

The advantage of Quora compared to Facebook or Twitter is that it fits better this type of interaction, because Quora is designed for Q&A and the users of Quora use the system to browse interesting Q&A topics and it’s not just a post in their crowded Facebook wall / Twitter stream. It fits Quora better in structure and users are more likely to click on it as well.

It’s a great time for startups / small teams. There’re more and more widely adopted services which can serve your business and can be more engaging than an own solution. Less work on non product related services, more time for your product/service and at the same time more engaging as well.

Have you moved your support to a social service or do you plan to do it? We’ll definitely use them for our soon-to-be-released service AppStream and I have great hope for outsourcing support and Q&A efficiently. What about you?

You can reach me at Twitter: @ViktorBenei

For decades the unwritten manifesto for Silicon Valley VC’s has been: We choose to invest in ideas, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.

Here’s hoping that one day they will do it again.

http://entrepreneur.com/article/223602

Startup lessons

How To Get Media Coverage For Your Startup: A Complete Guide - by Leo Widrich, co-founder of Buffer: http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/80121/How-To-Get-Media-Coverage-For-Your-Startup-A-Complete-Guide.aspx

About the importance of creating prototypes of your idea and proof that it works (or realize it doesn’t): http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669246/a-small-businessmans-guide-to-innovating-like-the-pros

Importance of being #1 in search engines

There’s a new trend (well, not so new but it’s growing). Many people don’t know the URL of the sites they use. They just search for it.

I cannot find the recent post about it, but these (older) posts are explain this:

We experienced the same while asking volunteers to test the AppWhirr system. Even some of our long-term testers don’t know the URL of AppWhirr (appwhirr.com).

Also you should definitely search for your startup on every major search engines to see what your users may see.

For example Google’s (current) second result for ‘appwhirr’ is our official Twitter account - and it was #1 for a long time, and on Bing and Yahoo the second result is our Facebook page followed by Wakoopa and Quora (on Google it’s followed by our official Google+ page).

The key thing here is: you have to prepare these sites as well to welcome new users, make a great first impression, introduce your startup and provide an easily achievable link to point to the startup’s real home.

Additionally you should check the results for mistyped searches as well, but as a first step prepare your correct search result.