Over the last 6-7 years Social Media became a part of our life. Weather it's Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, G+, Instagram, Pinterest or just older places like Digg everybody is on social media nowadays.
But how important is social media in a software development business?
I'd say results highly depend on the platform.
Here I will discuss things from my personal experience. I am not saying it will be like this for everybody. But there are definitely some trends.
1. Facebook
This platform is clearly oriented to the consumer. It is less business to business. While there are more recent solutions to target businesses in your geography my experience is that Facebook is not the ideal place to acquire new customers for a software development business. People are generally there to socialize / entertain themselves and not to conduct business.
There are two aspects I was able to identify where Facebook can be helpful though:
- social media back links and likes: more recently Google started to take those into account when they organically rank your site
- retaining and re-engaging your current customer base
We are not big on Facebook but we keep consistent with our company's general message across different platforms and so far we have good feed-back.
2. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a great business-to-business platform to be on. People are on to do business, to look for jobs, to work on gigs, to refer contracts etc.
Historically we did a lot of business on LinkedIn and there is definitely more to do.
Keep in mind that LinkedIn is generally "slower" in responses than other social media networks. Being a professionals network obviously people don't have a lot of time to be on it but when they are, they are a great audience to send your message to.
So do not get discouraged if you do not see immediate feed-back when posting a picture, a blog or a video: they will come.
LinkedIn is also a great place to build reputation for your company through clients and professional peers referrals and testimonials. As opposed to other social media networks- which are more open- here you have the ability to moderate what is posted about you or your company which is normal for business and a very good way to do things.
There are also many online marketing tools that tie into LinkedIn to build prospects lists, enlarge your networks, gather more testimonials etc. While I tend to stick with the classic tools LinkedIn themselves offer + my standard Constant Contact account, I recently started to look into some of these tools as well.
Projects showcase section is great as well as it allows your company to show product they built.
3. Twitter
Twitter is a good fast tool to recruit software developers.
I've tried many things on Twitter including some paid / ppc advertising but that's about the only thing that worked well for my business.
There are many developers on Twitter and many of them know other people. If you have an immediate project to start interviewing for, it is a great place to attract talent without paying a recruiter.
You can also build some reputation / followers / back-links even though pretty much everything that's posted on Twitter tends to have a short period of life.
4. Instagram
It is not a social media platform suitable for the software development business.
5. Pinterest
It is not a social media platform suitable for the software development business.
6. Google+
I use G+ in conjunction with by blog. In about 8 month I was able to build a list of about 120 subscribers to the blog. It's a start.
G+ is not bad for a business- especially a software development business- you can moderate your comments, post articles, create back links for yourself and showcase expertise in your blogs.
A lot of the professionals I work with are on G+ as well (rather than being on FB) so it is a good way to build and enlarge your community.
In terms of attracting new business, I have not had much luck with G+.
How about you guys? What's your social media experience?
Make it a great day!
Adrian
http://wittywebnow.com
Witty Web Solutions (http://wittywebnow.com) is a Miami Beach based software development company. Our code is lean, small foot print, easy to read, reliable and fast. We have excellent tech support. We save development costs by implementing agile project management techniques.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Monday, February 16, 2015
Back to agility
This week we are back to agility and agile software development. It is so important and it saves you as a developer so many headaches and your client so much money that it's almost like a must to talk a little bit more about it.
Today I would like to focus on two items: technologies that help agility and results driven behavior.
(1) There are actually technologies that help an agile process
I've been trying to discuss this topic during some agile events in town. I got little feed-back to it and I believe the reason is that most of the attendance is not technical- they are mainly projects managers.
I'll make a case there are actually technologies that help, if not even drive, agility.
Some of the them are Object Oriented Databases as opposed to tabular databases. By definition inserting a new field in an OO database will be more agile and easier to pivot with than when using a tabular database. OO databases, such as Mongo DB or Postgres, embrace late requirements changes, eliminate read locks and ensure atomicity and consistency in an efficient manner.
I won't assess for example that Ruby is "more agile" than Java or .NET because that won't make sense. But I will say that architect-ing a solution the right way can tremendously help your agile process. An example is building a framework that generates full stack marketing websites. Instead of writing each individual site as a separate solution (let's say on a Microsoft stack) you can make an xml that will define the behavior of each site in different market verticals. Such a framework will be much easier to maintain, adjust, change and re-test even with late / unforeseen requirements changes.
That is why I always say that the greatest agile teams I worked with are usually the greatest programmers too. Because they can write things in a smart way.
(2) Do results really drive behavior?
There is a lot of talk in the community about the business results that are supposed to drive an agile behavior. In other words if an agile teams shows better results in an Organization, other teams who are not doing agile are going to adopt that. Hence an agile culture will spread around your Organization.
I tend to disagree. My experience with agile teams is that they are either agile or not. They either have an agile culture / approach as part of their internal human structure or not. Of course you can educate people, you can train and draw guidelines but it just happens that most of the time "people who write code from right to left" are the most agile ones too.
So in my Organization I stress on recruiting the right people: the ones who kind of see agility as a natural, self driven behavior in software development rather than as a process or a set of rules.
I agree it is harder in larger Organizations where you have all kinds of teams and you have to deal with all kinds of people: many of them who you did not recruit to begin with. Showing some of them the carrot may not work. Showing some of them the stick may or may not work.
But what do you do when the customer is not interested in being agile? Then you are really stuck. Because you cannot impose it on your customer. Educating the customer many times works but financial analysis and bottom lines with $ signs will get you better results. Some customers just need to understand that working agile is in their own interest as well.
Make it a great day!
Adrian
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittywebnow.com
Today I would like to focus on two items: technologies that help agility and results driven behavior.
(1) There are actually technologies that help an agile process
I've been trying to discuss this topic during some agile events in town. I got little feed-back to it and I believe the reason is that most of the attendance is not technical- they are mainly projects managers.
I'll make a case there are actually technologies that help, if not even drive, agility.
Some of the them are Object Oriented Databases as opposed to tabular databases. By definition inserting a new field in an OO database will be more agile and easier to pivot with than when using a tabular database. OO databases, such as Mongo DB or Postgres, embrace late requirements changes, eliminate read locks and ensure atomicity and consistency in an efficient manner.
I won't assess for example that Ruby is "more agile" than Java or .NET because that won't make sense. But I will say that architect-ing a solution the right way can tremendously help your agile process. An example is building a framework that generates full stack marketing websites. Instead of writing each individual site as a separate solution (let's say on a Microsoft stack) you can make an xml that will define the behavior of each site in different market verticals. Such a framework will be much easier to maintain, adjust, change and re-test even with late / unforeseen requirements changes.
That is why I always say that the greatest agile teams I worked with are usually the greatest programmers too. Because they can write things in a smart way.
(2) Do results really drive behavior?
There is a lot of talk in the community about the business results that are supposed to drive an agile behavior. In other words if an agile teams shows better results in an Organization, other teams who are not doing agile are going to adopt that. Hence an agile culture will spread around your Organization.
I tend to disagree. My experience with agile teams is that they are either agile or not. They either have an agile culture / approach as part of their internal human structure or not. Of course you can educate people, you can train and draw guidelines but it just happens that most of the time "people who write code from right to left" are the most agile ones too.
So in my Organization I stress on recruiting the right people: the ones who kind of see agility as a natural, self driven behavior in software development rather than as a process or a set of rules.
I agree it is harder in larger Organizations where you have all kinds of teams and you have to deal with all kinds of people: many of them who you did not recruit to begin with. Showing some of them the carrot may not work. Showing some of them the stick may or may not work.
But what do you do when the customer is not interested in being agile? Then you are really stuck. Because you cannot impose it on your customer. Educating the customer many times works but financial analysis and bottom lines with $ signs will get you better results. Some customers just need to understand that working agile is in their own interest as well.
Make it a great day!
Adrian
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittywebnow.com
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
10 trendy statements in tech start-ups
When you work with the shakers and doers, with the entrepreneurs and with the tech community, it is always fun and exciting. You also periodically run into a series of stereotypes that make you smile.
1. Our app is part of the "ecosystem"
I hear that a lot stated in the context of mobile applications seen like some sort of "living system" as opposed to a network of digital assets- which is really what they are. While I have nothing against the marketing verbiage and it really sounds cool, I can't stop thinking like the science guy that I am.
And when it comes to science an ecosystem means only one thing and I quote from Wikipedia "a community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil) interacting as a system."
I think that, whoever chose to abuse this term, really only looked at the end of this sentence ... "interacting as a system".
2. I "uber"
It is new fancy way of traveling by car in busy cities. It is supposed to be cheaper and better than a cab and faster than a bike. Plus it's cool: it has a mobile app as well and everybody talks about it.
I don't know: I don't use that service. I drive my own car and it works pretty good for me.
3. We've been selected for an "accelerator" in San Francisco
Going back to Wikipedia: "Seed accelerators are fixed-term, cohort-based programs, that include mentorship and educational components and culminate in a public pitch event or demo day. While traditional business incubators are often government-funded, generally take no equity, and focus on biotech, medical technology, clean tech or product-centric companies, accelerators can be either privately or publicly funded and focus on a wide range of industries."
Everything is nice and dandy with these accelerators however what we find in the real world is that many of them are neither seed-funded nor mentored for success.
4. Our idea / concept is unique: nobody has that right now
If your idea is really unique you should worry. It usually means one of these two things: you either did not do enough research to see what other ideas are out there or there is no market for your idea. Yes, I know, I know. Henry Ford invented the automobile at the beginning of the century.
5. I like "affinity" social media
There is a trend that shapes up towards niche or affinities based social media as a opposed to more generic social media. I happen to like the trend however I think that people like Facebook had a strong marketing and technical concept and, more important, they were industry pioneers. That is actually the reason they were so successful: they kind of played very well all the aspects of the business from concept to execution.
So my humble advice for social media entrepreneurs is for them to focus on execution of their concept: you need a great reliable and super sexy site, you need users involvement, you need to give people reasons to stick around and, very important, you need to be able to reach to a lot of people. Just the fact that their concept is niche will not make their business successful.
6. He/she is a bad-a** coder
This one I can't even spell out. Apparently it's a big plus to be that kind of a coder these days.
7. We are seed-funded
That in Miami usually means they have somewhere around $25,000 and $50,000. Sometimes less than that. Not really that much money if you think in terms of developing a product, getting an office space and starting some initial form of marketing. On the other hand what we see is a lot of great concepts / prototypes and sometimes even MVPs with a lot of potential. And quite a few experienced teams. Should those businesses be well funded, they would have a way better shot at becoming successful.
Lack of appropriate funding is currently one of Miami's biggest issues. It steps a lot on the break.
8. We are in an "incubator" in Miami
And here we are back to Wikipedia. "Business incubators differ from research and technology parks in their dedication to start-up and early-stage companies." Some of the things listed here are "help with business basics", "networking activities", "marketing assistance", "help with accounting/financial management", "access to bank loans, loan funds and guarantee programs", "help with presentation skills", "access to angel investors or venture capital".
And again all these things would be great if they were seriously implemented. But we run into businesses that do not have their act together with their marketing, they do not have a business structure (let aside they don't have an accountant), they don't even know how to make a presentation. And angel investors are rare and very conservative ... Many times they want to see finished products and signed up paying customers to invest ...
We network and market more than most of these start-ups: and based on their cash flow they should do double than what we do.
9. Our company's "valuation" is astonishing
How can you even dream to have a realistic company valuation when you are a start-up with a team of three, some seed funding and no product or market study? I suggest we get back to the basics of economics and do real studies / valuations. Then we will be looked at more seriously by seasoned investors.
10. I am a "serial entrepreneur"
You are a serial entrepreneur if your name is Elon Musk. Or Steve Jobs. Or Mark Cuban. Everybody else does what we are all doing: trying & re-trying things hard until we find something that works. So let's see things in prospective and remain objective: pivots are fun but they don't make you a serial entrepreneur.
Make it a great day!
Adrian Corbuleanu
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittywebnow.com
1. Our app is part of the "ecosystem"
I hear that a lot stated in the context of mobile applications seen like some sort of "living system" as opposed to a network of digital assets- which is really what they are. While I have nothing against the marketing verbiage and it really sounds cool, I can't stop thinking like the science guy that I am.
And when it comes to science an ecosystem means only one thing and I quote from Wikipedia "a community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil) interacting as a system."
I think that, whoever chose to abuse this term, really only looked at the end of this sentence ... "interacting as a system".
2. I "uber"
It is new fancy way of traveling by car in busy cities. It is supposed to be cheaper and better than a cab and faster than a bike. Plus it's cool: it has a mobile app as well and everybody talks about it.
I don't know: I don't use that service. I drive my own car and it works pretty good for me.
3. We've been selected for an "accelerator" in San Francisco
Going back to Wikipedia: "Seed accelerators are fixed-term, cohort-based programs, that include mentorship and educational components and culminate in a public pitch event or demo day. While traditional business incubators are often government-funded, generally take no equity, and focus on biotech, medical technology, clean tech or product-centric companies, accelerators can be either privately or publicly funded and focus on a wide range of industries."
Everything is nice and dandy with these accelerators however what we find in the real world is that many of them are neither seed-funded nor mentored for success.
4. Our idea / concept is unique: nobody has that right now
If your idea is really unique you should worry. It usually means one of these two things: you either did not do enough research to see what other ideas are out there or there is no market for your idea. Yes, I know, I know. Henry Ford invented the automobile at the beginning of the century.
5. I like "affinity" social media
There is a trend that shapes up towards niche or affinities based social media as a opposed to more generic social media. I happen to like the trend however I think that people like Facebook had a strong marketing and technical concept and, more important, they were industry pioneers. That is actually the reason they were so successful: they kind of played very well all the aspects of the business from concept to execution.
So my humble advice for social media entrepreneurs is for them to focus on execution of their concept: you need a great reliable and super sexy site, you need users involvement, you need to give people reasons to stick around and, very important, you need to be able to reach to a lot of people. Just the fact that their concept is niche will not make their business successful.
6. He/she is a bad-a** coder
This one I can't even spell out. Apparently it's a big plus to be that kind of a coder these days.
7. We are seed-funded
That in Miami usually means they have somewhere around $25,000 and $50,000. Sometimes less than that. Not really that much money if you think in terms of developing a product, getting an office space and starting some initial form of marketing. On the other hand what we see is a lot of great concepts / prototypes and sometimes even MVPs with a lot of potential. And quite a few experienced teams. Should those businesses be well funded, they would have a way better shot at becoming successful.
Lack of appropriate funding is currently one of Miami's biggest issues. It steps a lot on the break.
8. We are in an "incubator" in Miami
And here we are back to Wikipedia. "Business incubators differ from research and technology parks in their dedication to start-up and early-stage companies." Some of the things listed here are "help with business basics", "networking activities", "marketing assistance", "help with accounting/financial management", "access to bank loans, loan funds and guarantee programs", "help with presentation skills", "access to angel investors or venture capital".
And again all these things would be great if they were seriously implemented. But we run into businesses that do not have their act together with their marketing, they do not have a business structure (let aside they don't have an accountant), they don't even know how to make a presentation. And angel investors are rare and very conservative ... Many times they want to see finished products and signed up paying customers to invest ...
We network and market more than most of these start-ups: and based on their cash flow they should do double than what we do.
9. Our company's "valuation" is astonishing
How can you even dream to have a realistic company valuation when you are a start-up with a team of three, some seed funding and no product or market study? I suggest we get back to the basics of economics and do real studies / valuations. Then we will be looked at more seriously by seasoned investors.
10. I am a "serial entrepreneur"
You are a serial entrepreneur if your name is Elon Musk. Or Steve Jobs. Or Mark Cuban. Everybody else does what we are all doing: trying & re-trying things hard until we find something that works. So let's see things in prospective and remain objective: pivots are fun but they don't make you a serial entrepreneur.
Make it a great day!
Adrian Corbuleanu
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittywebnow.com
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