La era digital llegó (hace ya bastante tiempo, por cierto) y ya es hora de que los ejecutivos de medios de comunicación y demás productores de contenido se despierten y entiendan bien el nuevo panorama, los nuevos mercados y sus implicaciones para su negocio.

Aquí les traigo cinco cambios que todo ejecutivo de medios debe hacer:

1. La Batalla es Digital

ANTES: Vendemos publicidad en pantalla y ofrecemos espacios en Internet como una bonificación.

AHORA: Vendemos publicidad en Internet y ofrecemos espacios en pantalla como una bonificación.

Un poco drástico, lo se, pero es necesario comenzar a pensar de este modo para entender el sinfín de oportunidades que nos brinda el mundo digital. La distribución de contenido digital será muy pronto tu fuente de ingresos principal.

Necesitas comenzar a pensar digitalmente:

• Prepara todo tu contenido en formatos digitales, listo para distribuir vía descargas, podcasts, iTunes, streaming y celular.
• Convierte tus tarifas de publicidad a formato digital y entrena a tu fuerza de ventas a entender este nuevo idioma: calcula el costo de un minuto de publicidad por cada mil televidentes y usa esto como punto de partida.
• Piensa de una vez cómo vas a monetizar tus producciones online y planifica de una vez: pre-roll, mid-roll, banners, patrocinantes y suscripciones son todos modelos válidos.

2. El Compromiso es el Nuevo Rating

ANTES: Lo que importa es el tamaño de la audiencia.

AHORA: Lo que importa es el nivel de compromiso de la audience con nuestro contenido.

Estás acostumbrado a pensar en cuántos millones de personas ven tu programa. Necesitas comenzar a pensar de cuántas maneras intersecta tu contenido la vida de tus usuarios. Estudia el fenómeno de la serie Lost y fíjate cuántas comunidades online han surgido alrededor de este programa.

Deja que tu audiencia interactúe con tu contenido. Hazlo distribuible, compartible, de tal manera que puedas contabilizar cuánta gente vio tu contenido y su publicidad. Convierte tu producto en un marcador social. Haz:

• que sea parte de la conversación,
• que fomente la conversación, o
• que sea un punto de reunión para conversar.

Si estás creando contenido para cine o televisión, piensa de una vez cómo crear contenido adicional para aprovecharlo online: historias paralelas, juegos, vida de los personajes, escenas detrás de las cámaras. Es limitado lo que puedes mostrar en una hora de televisión; aprovecha la Internet para darle profundidad a tus proyectos.

No tengas miedo de escuchar a tu audiencia, ni de hablarles.

3. Las Ganancias Vendrán de Otro Lado

ANTES: ¿Cómo vamos a obtener ganancias online?

AHORA: ¿Cómo vamos a obtener ganancias si no vamos online?

Por supuesto que necesitas ganacias. Ya bastante gente ha perdido la camisa online, como para seguir sus pasos tan de cerca. Necesitas ver el mundo digital como cualquier otra inversión de negocios, al igual que invertiste en Beta SP, High-Def, reportes de Nielsen y nuevos estudios: haz un plan de negocios, traza una estrategia, contrata un consultor, empieza poco a poco, piensa en grande… o no. Tu sabes hacerlo, usa tu experiencia. Pero recuerda, tu mercado actual se está encogiendo, ya es hora de buscar algo más.

4. Hay Mas de 24 Horas en un Día y Mas de Un Canal de Distribución

ANTES: Distribuimos contenido 24 horas al día a través de un canal.

AHORA: Distribuimos contenido ilimitado a través de canales ilimitados.

Olvídate del día de 24 horas. Ahora tienes acceso a audiencias ilimitadas dispuestas a ver cualquier tipo de programación a cualquier hora. Muchos incluso están dispuestos a consumir varios tipos de contenido a la vez. La grilla de programación es algo del pasado, pero todavía necesitas ofrecer contenido de calidad. Cuando siempre son las 5 en algún lugar del mundo, el significado de prime-time cambia.

5. Todo lo que Sabes Sobre tu Audience, Ya No Aplica

ANTES: Debemos adaptar nuestro contenido a nuestra audiencia.

AHORA: Podemos distribuir cualquier contenido a cualquier número de audiencias.

¿Quieres crear un canal de noticias? ¿Qué tal uno de deportes o de cocina? ¿Por qué no todos a la vez? Si tienes una televisora de contenido general, piensa en nichos. Si eres un productor de contenidos específicos, piensa en más nichos. Ya tienes la capacidad y el conocimiento para producir contenido de calidad… no tienes por qué limitarte a una sola audiencia. Experimenta con contenido nuevo, contenido viejo, nuevas versiones de contenido viejo, antiguas versiones de contenido nuevo… es la Internet, hay audiencia para todo.

¿Qué opinas?

(English Version of this post available at RED66:Digital Media Strategy)

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business-strategy, digital-media-strategy, estrategia, innovación, innovation, mainstream-media, medios, msm, networks-sociales, redes sociales, redes+sociales, social-networks, socnets

What is Founderitis? It is been called “Founders Syndrome” and it is not some type of medical disease but rather a disease that can infect your business if you are not careful.

The Wikipedia definition of “Founderitis” is stated as follows:

“The term “founderitis” or “founder’s syndrome” refers to the unhealthy condition that afflicts many companies whose founders maintain a stranglehold on organizational leadership. While many companies owe their success — and in fact their very existence — to their founders, those same individuals can create chaos that ultimately leads to the organization’s collapse. The challenge to founding CEOs and boards of directors is to take steps to change conflict and chaos into opportunities for growth.”

Diagnosing Founderitis

I came across this funny diagnosis from Infoshackle.com and it comes complete with a 12 step program.

“When Founderitis strikes, the Founder’s drive, energy and vision, characteristics crucial to the startup’s initial success, become a hindrance to the company’s maturation into a self-sustaining entity. To assess yourself or a loved one for Founderitis, determine if any of the following symptoms are present:

• Inability to delegate
• Anger when not included in every decision
• Paranoia derived from a sense that the venture is “slipping out of their control”
• Ignoring input from subject-matter experts
• Expressing prescient knowledge, even when lacking subject-matter expertise
• Lack of respect for formalized planning
• Subterfuge of efforts to institute procedures, processes and controls

Founderitis is akin to an active, engaged parent who is a wonderful caregiver until the child reaches adolescence. As the child enters its teens and requires an increasing level of independence to properly mature and prosper, the Founderitis parent futilely attempts to restrict the influence of outside factors and limit the child’s ability to act autonomously. The result is usually a fractured parent / child relationship or an ‘adult child’ that never develops the life-skills necessary to succeed on their own.

One of the most insidious aspects of Founderitis is that the more profound the case, the deeper the denial on the part of the carrier. The afflicted Founder will honestly believe that all of his actions are in the company’s best interest, though their definition of ‘best interest’ is actually whatever is in their own ‘self-interest’.

Like any startup executive, the Founder must honestly separate his self-interest from the company’s interest. For instance, it might be in his self-interest to lead the sales efforts, as well as a great learning experience and a heck of a lot of fun. However, it may not be in the company’s best interest to lose precious time to market while an inexperienced sales novice attempts to learn on the job.”

5 Ways to Avoid Founderitis

I have personally experience this running my own business. I have found some ways to avoid it:

1. Respect the need for planning activities, staff meetings, and administrative policies;
2. Realize that as the company grows circumstances may dictate new approaches;
3. Institute new systems with approval of your board;
4. Seek and accept input from others in making decisions;
5. Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

Don’t worry if you can’t over come this there is a simple solution. The route many take is to get your board to hire a professional CEO and take a long vacation.

So how many of you have had problems with founderitis? What is your story? Have a great example to share? Let the comments be the conversation.

We are early adopters. We use. We try. We evangelize. We bury. We filter.

That’s what we think anyway.

In reality, we are pretty useless.

Late last year, Amazon released the Kindle to the joy and enthusiasm of many early adopters. Robert Scoble, the poster child for early adopters, gleefully got his Kindle on the first day and wrote about how beautiful it was and how it brought him great pleasure. One week later, he hated the Kindle listing a laundry list of problems from usability to the inability to send gifts to other Kindle owners.

Increasingly, I’m seeing common people (read: non-tech early adopters) who own and love the Kindle. And the numbers bear that out, if we’re to believe TechCrunch’s statement that by 2010, Amazon will have sold $750M in Kindles or 1-3% of the company’s total revenue. (Update: For clarity, the TechCrunch article cites a CitiGroup analyst and is not the authoritative assessment of TechCrunch. My point is, that’s where I heard the number in the first place - regardless of the original source.)

Brad Feld, a few years ago, wrote an amazing article titled The First 25,000 Users are Irrelevant which talks about the effect of early adopters on companies and products. As the oh-too-typical scenario goes, TechCrunch or Mashable covers a new product, there is a surge of traffic, registration or sign-ups for private beta invites from early adopters, or “tire kickers” then they go away. Some remain and become “evangelists” for the company or product, but most people don’t even care. Later on, if the company has mainstream staying power, the real buy-in will happen organically and without the say-so of the early adopters who largely came and went.

See, we like to tell people we are filters. We like to think we are influencers and powerful. We like to think we have an inside angle on what works and what doesn’t work, but we are just small insignificant people in the grand scheme of things, and largely irrelevant.

Amazon knows this. They don’t really care about us. And that’s why they might hit the $750M mark by 2010 and completely bypass the early adopters, placing their Kindle directly in the hands of mainstream commuters and book lovers.

Update: Corvida at SheGeeks thinks this is generational and writes a thoughtful and intelligent argument about this. However, I’m not convinced that everything is generational. I think early adoption is also a result of personalities.

Over the last 9 years and two startups I have learned many things and screwed up royally in some cases. This ongoing series is about providing you best practices of lessons learned and avoiding the mistakes I have already made.

In the past, I have had good years and bad years. When you have employees, they expect to be paid and when you mess with payroll (and payroll taxes, but that is a post for another time) you create such a negative culture that nothing will get done.

With that said, when you are starting your business regardless if it is a service or product company, you will have startup costs and probably forgo paying yourself for 6-12 months to keep growing the business. That is fine and to be expected. What you should not do (and what I did) is keep adding staff and sacrifice your own salary in the name of growth. If you keep going like that and have a bad quarter you will have nothing saved for a rainy day and if the business fails you will probably be in immense debt and got nothing out of the business.

Granted, the balance between growth and cash flow is a tenuous one but it is one thing you should never defer to someone else in beginning. Plus, there is a difference between creating a lifestyle business and an enterprise. A lifestyle business is really making enough money for yourself and having some contractors or 1-2 people that gives you a good salary but is more about freedom. An enterprise is a business that scales and gets big over time but you will be working intense amounts in the beginning but will need to hire those smarter than you with the intention that you are looking for an exit and will have time for freedom when you cash out.

So when you are growing the business you should work the first 6-12 months paying off the initial capital expenses and getting about 6 months of cashflow for yourself before you hire anyone else. Once you have that done, start paying yourself something, even if it is small and will ramp up over six months, pay yourself first. This will get you in the habit of being committed to making the business pay for itself and you so you are not worrying about living month to month and let you find some resources to help you deliver while you continue to sell and grow the business.

Once you are looking at hiring someone use these two rules as a starting basis:

- Have six months of payroll for that person in the bank on top of your salary

- Have 90 days of projects or sales committed for that person to deliver so they not only have something to do but are earning their keep.

So I hope I got my point across on this one. You might have to be conservative at first in your growth but in the end you will scale better and create a business that is focused on delivery and customer service without putting you and your employees on a cash flow roller coaster.

What have been your experiences in starting up? When did you start paying yourself? Do you agree with my conservative approach? Did you do something different?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Since the Business Plan series came to a close I thought of the next logical step in what you have to do in your business to support the business plan and its operations.

This next step is the marketing plan.

Logically, your CMO or VP of Marketing would be in charge of this effort but in many startups you don’t have someone in that position so it is probably you with the ultimate responsibility. So my dear reader, I am here to the rescue to guide you through very important part of executing your overall business plan. Each one of these headings will generate one or more posts so here is an overview of what you can expect.

SUMMARY

Describe product or service. Emphasize unique or innovative features and/or protection by patent,
copyright or other legal means.

SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS

Situational Analysis lays out the overall marketplace you are competing in and the various environments your business will have to address.

The Market

The market is a description of your total potential market (your potential customers). It will also address how your product/service satisfies the needs of this market. You will also need to describe the particular customers that you will target. This includes the size of (1) total potential market (number of potential customers), and (2) your target market. Here you will have to support your estimates with factual data. It must also discuss the growth potential of (1) total potential market, and (2) your target market. You will have to look at local, national and international markets. Support estimates with factual data. Lastly will be the market share you expect to garner.

The Competitive Environment

Here is where you will identify major competitors: name, location, and market share. You will also compare your product/service with that of your major competitors (brand name, quality, image, price, etc.). This leads to you having to compare your firm with that of your major competitors (reputation, size, distribution channels, location, etc.). You must address how easy is it for new competition to enter this market and what have you learned from watching your competition. Some important elements to include are how competitors’ sales are increasing, decreasing, steady and why.

The Technological Environment

Since every company these days incorporates some type of technology to be competitive, how is technology affecting this product/service? How soon can it be expected to become obsolete? And is your company equipped to adapt quickly to changes?

The Socio-Political Environment

One area that many marketing plans forget to address is the outer social-political environment that may impact your market potential and competitive edge. You will have to describe changing attitudes and trends plus how flexible and responsive is your firm. This will also include a list new laws and regulations that may affect your business an what might the financial impact might be.

Other

This section is open for other situational factors that will affect your marketing plan.

PROBLEMS AND OPPORTUNITIES

This is a wide open field and specific to each business. Here you will have state each problem or opportunity and what you will do about them.

OBJECTIVES

The objectives section are the milestones that you will achieve as you execute your business on a daily basis. You must state objectives in precise, quantifiable terms. (e.g. “To obtain a sales volume of 3000 units by the end of the fiscal year.”)

STRATEGY

At the high level, the strategy section addresses wow will you reach your objective? (New market penetration, expansion of market share, entrenchment, etc.). This will also address how you have taken into account the previously mentioned problems and opportunities, and the potential reactions of your competitors.

ACTION PLAN

With all goals in sight, there must be an action plan to meet those goals and objectives. How will you implement the above strategy? What is the quality, branding, packaging, modification, location of service, etc? How will you price your product/service so that it will be competitive, yet profitable? What will you do for promotion/advertising? What are your selling and distribution methods? How will you service the product?

FINANCIAL DATA

All of your plans must be supported by financial data that ties into the overall business plan financials. This includes sales projections for the next five years (optimistic, pessimistic, realistic), a Breakeven Analysis (See Appendix B), and monthly cash flow for Year 1, quarterly for Years 2 and 3.

APPENDICES

As in the business plan, the appendices are the data that would bulk up the core plan too much but are important to support your information.

Appendix A - Market Share

This includes market share data tables and more detailed competitive analysis data.

Appendix B - Breakeven Analysis

This is in support of the financial data section and shows how with your objectives met, when you will breakeven with the revenue goals and expenses detailed out and tied with the various parts of the action plan.

Appendix C - Cash Flow

As important as when you will break even, you must be able to show how, on a monthly basis, you will manage the cash flow to support the business and not sink it from an overly ambitious strategy and action plan.

Do you have any experience writing a marketing plan?

If any of you have experience writing a market plan, I would like to know what elements I might have missed and any war stories that will help other entrepreneurs learn from your experiences. Please use the comments and let’s get this conversation going.