Content Management Food Groups

A slight twist on Rick Burns’ “Blogging Food Groups” originally posted on Hubspot.

Wow, does GoDaddy SUCK or what!

It has been a LONG time since I have been so utterly frustrated by a website like I was with Go Daddy. To put it bluntly, their website SUCKS!
Some of the ridiculous things that happened to me in the process of trying to give them money:

• I have a current and active “auto renew” credit card on file with GoDaddy for my existing domains yet I got a mail saying the site reg had expired anyway
• When I clicked on the mail to renew, I was exposed to the most bizarre, complex screens and offers just to try and renew my sites
• The GoDaddy site kept auto checking multi-year options and cryptic add-ons like private vs deluxe reg and SmartSpace with no proper explanation on what these add-ons were
• When I filled my shopping cart and tried to check out I was told I had duplicate items in my checkout cart even though I had definitely chosen separate, non-repeat items
• Even though I checked one year renew, my shopping cart showed 2 years for one of my domains. BUT the shop cart has no option to edit existing items sooo …
• I had to start whole process over but was now exposed to completely different option screens/UI and a different price(lower!) for my domain renewals
• When I clicked on checkout I was unable to check the “use existing CC on file with GoDaddy” option even though my account has a valid credit card associated
• When I entered all my credit card info and hit complete transaction the website totally froze and I got no “completion” screen BUT
• Even though the website did not give me a closing/success screen, I received an email thanking me for the transactions
• When I clicked on contact customer service via phone or email I received a “server error” message and no info on phone numbers. No attempt to refresh allowed me to get to the customer service info

WTF GoDaddy? Are they using ecommerce software that Amazon discarded in 1999 and they bought off Craigs List? I’m honestly scared that they have my credit card and domain info? Who knows what other problems their software has beyond what I saw! I will definitely be exploring how to transition my domain registration to a more competent company and site very soon.

Oh and get this … Their CEO has a blog to mimic the successful “customer first” activities of Zappos and Amazon. But it’s painfully obvious that this blog is slickly produced by anyone BUT Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons. And there is no way to comment on the blog or respond to Bob Parsons. LAME!

Hilarious video about the demise of MySpace

This video cracked me up but is also a sobering reminder how websites can come and go. http://www.cracked.com/video_16271_internet-party-2-intervention-myspace.html

20 Things Not to Do When Starting a Business

I thought this was an interesting list with some good caveats in the form of comments on the bottom of the page. The basic theme is minimize frills/costs and focus on getting to things that will provide revenue quickly. http://www.business-opportunities.biz/2007/04/11/20-things-not-to-do-before-starting-a-business/

So little time …

I am a juggler. I, like 99.99% of people, simultaneously maintain multiple balls in the air.

Ball 1: Continue work with consulting clients.
Ball 2: Help parents’ business out.
Ball 3: Look for a job.
Ball 4: Enjoy life.
Ball 5: Be an entrepreneur.

Like most others who have entrepreneurial ambitions, I cannot currently dedicate 100% of my time to my business ideas. So how much time is enough? Not so much that I have all my proverbial eggs in a risky basket. Not so little that the ideas never germinate or the window of opportunity vanishes. I don’t think there is one answer for all, but I do think one must commit some minimum amount of time each week to this endeavor. At this time, I have decided about 8 hours a week is appropriate. Why 8? Round #, good feng shui, but mostly an easy commitment to remember – about one work-day a week.

One other area of commitment I’ve pondered is money. Most business ideas take some capital. And given that I’m not ready to pitch my idea to venture capitalists quite yet, this capital investment will have to come from me. How much to invest? Again, there is no one right answer, but my friend Pete made the analogy to betting on a risky stock. The reward maybe great if all goes well, but bet what you’d feel comfortable losing if it doesn’t work out. At this stage, I have decided that I am willing to expend approximately $10,000 towards this stage of my “bet,” – turning my idea into a functioning entity.

A great virgin experience

I’m often asked what brands I truly admire. For me, a great brand must consistently surprise and delight their customers, to the point that they become the company’s greatest marketing asset. Some brands that make the grade for me … Apple, Blackberry, HBO, ING, and Nordstrom. Yesterday I experienced two lesser known brands that show great promise.

The first was Virgin America Airlines. I had to make a last minute switch to a Virgin flight from LA to San Francisco after finding out at the airport that my American Airlines flight would be two hours delayed (Side note: Why can’t airlines send a text message to your phone when a flight is delayed?). Boy, did Virgin surprise and delight me. Everything from a check in area stylishly designed with gleaming flat screens to hipper-than your-average-airport-employee agents, even the simple, smaller boarding pass card, made you feel like this was not your typical airline. Enter the plane and you are greeted by more cool “Virgin-ness” — laid back, fun flight attendants, a clean, modern interior design, and of course a pilot with a Richard Branson-esque English accent. You sit down in the not-just-for-first-class leather seats. Turn on the touch-screen, in-seat monitors and you can watch live TV, create an i-pod like music playlist from a large selection of albums, purchase a movie, or even order drinks and food. And my favorite part — the normally boring safety speech was transformed into an entertainment experience through a clever, well created video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyygn8HFTCo) that had the whole plane engaged and laughing. The plane took off on time, touched down early, and I made my meeting with a bit of time to spare. Now that’s my way to fly.

The second good experience I had yesterday was with Kimpton Hotels, a boutique chain I have used several times in the past few months. To me Kimpton is W-ish coolness without the extra attitude and price. Each location is unique so you don’t feel like you are staying at a chain. The staff is extremely welcoming. Lobby areas are homey and the rooms are neatly and efficiently designed. Beds are very comfy. Little extras like free wi-fi, wine receptions, morning coffee and paper, and local gym usage if one is not in the hotel, make me feel like they are not trying to nickel and dime you.

In the world of airlines charging you for a 2nd bag(!!) and $500+/night hotel rooms, Virgin America and Kimpton are breaths of fresh air.

What the %$@k dot com

So, in addition to my own business aspirations, I’m also down in Orange County currently helping my parents’ business out. They have a printing business they’ve run for about 20 years, but no pun intended, it’s the definitive mom and pop shop. A few loyal customers, the potential to make some money, but stuck in the last millennium as far as operational practices and management. One of my objectives is to publish a decent website informing potential customers of their services. Well that project has given me a quick 101 into the seedy underworld of Domain name registration. It is unbelievable to me how much squatting of domain URLs is going on out there. Go on GoDaddy or Register.com and try and land any single English word as a URL and it’s taken, although many are non-functioning sites. Figure you can land a multi word phrase like “fineprint.com?” — nope most anything you can think of is gone. Okay, maybe I’ll succumb and use my parents’ rather cryptic business name(DWJC — it’s a combination of initials) — surely DWJC.com is available! No that one’s held by some company in Illinois named Nextnet(apparently no connection to the DWJC name) who politely informed me that I could have the URL for $1200. I somewhat less politely said, “no thank you.” So the website will be dwjcprinters.com. Not catchy, and lord help us if my parents decide to change the name of the company, but it’ll do for now. It’ll do.

A Moscone Mash-Up

Last week I was in San Francisco to attend the Web 2.0 Expo at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. For two days I surrounded myself with people who regularly use lingo like “mash-up” and “open source” and perceive “Ajax” as something other than an abrasive kitchen cleanser. Some interesting did-you-knows I came away with … Did you know that Facebook generates over 10 billion impressions a month and has over 100,000 applications on it? Did you know that there are over 100 million blogs like this one with over 175,000 new ones each day.

Beyond the 5 free t-shirts I added to my wardrobe (I’ve pictured the Ts here so that the companies can feel more justified in their $5 marketing expense), my big takeaway as a marketer and budding entrepreneur is that Web 2.0 is both scary and exciting for its immense potential. The scary part: Web 2.0 puts a ton of power in the hands of each and every customer you have. A patron has a bad dining experience at your restaurant and his/her negative review on Yelp can be immediately read by thousands of people. A customer has a bad experience at Wal-Mart, and they can create a blog dedicated to blasting the retail empire that is linked to hundreds of other anti Wal-Mart sites and blogs. A business must both monitor and proactively engage their consumers to ensure that a Web 2.0 PR nightmare is not looming. The exciting part: By properly integrating the Web 2.0 tactics in their overall marketing strategy, an entrepreneur or business has the ability to engage, accelerate, and monetize in ways that did not exist even 5 years ago. An author can research and write his manuscript through the clever use of Wikis, publish his book on a personal blog, market the text through Google ad words, and sell thousands of copies with credit card transactions through PayPal. Take that Simon and Schuster.

Props to ‘Groundswell’

So like a good student embarking on a new project, I checked out some books from the “library” aka Amazon. So far I’m very impressed with Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research. It’s tagline describes it well: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies. The book does a great job of breaking down the brave new world of the social web — blogs, forums, social networks, RSS, wikis and much more — into understandable categories. It presents a global perspective on the people that make up the social Web evolution. Case studies and examples are interesting, relevant, and most important with such a fast moving subject, current. Probably the coolest feature of the book is that it practices what it preaches — The book was co-authored and fact-checked using a Wiki(a site used for sharing and organizing content from multiple contributors) — After publishing, the authors maintain an ongoing blog(http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/) that cross references content from the book with relevant current events. And the writing style is straightforward and quick to digest. I recommend it for anyone who has even a slight interest in harnessing the power of the Internet in their profession or hobbies.

Lets get it started!

“It’s time to shit or get off the pot.” A favorite quote by my dad and, I figured, a good start for this blog experiment. Experiment: “An act or operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown or of testing a principle.”

I dedicate the start of this blog to my friend, Amy, who recently attended a web marketing seminar and became quite excited about the idea of merging my entrepreneurial initiatives with the collaborative possibilities of blogging. So here we go, Amy. 1-2-3 … Launch!