Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category
In the Interest of Disclosure
As a company, we haven’t been shy about sharing our opinions on topics of interest, linking to interesting blogs online, or recommending books to read or software development tools to use.
But we have been hesitant to make money from our website or from blogging in any other way than by selling our software product, also called Infovark.
Many other start-ups sell books or seminars or advertise related products on their websites — it’s a matter of survival in this tough economy — but we’ve always felt that it would somehow dilute our message and our company focus.
We’re also a bit worried that our reviews and recommendations would seem less honest if we joined any partner or affiliate programs. I think it’s a healthy trend that more and more bloggers are disclosing these relationships, and that readers are becoming more comfortable with them.
So, in an effort to help subsidize our coding (and reading) habits, we’ve signed up for the Amazon affiliate program, and we’ll be linking our book reviews through Amazon from now on. If you buy a book from via one of these links or from the Infovark bookstore, you’ll send a nice bonus our way. We’d sure appreciate it.
And we’ve had a CafePress account for some time. We use it to make some of the swag we take to conferences. Buying a button, sticker or T-shirt from our Infovark shop will also help us continue our Infovark experiment, by giving us some free advertising and a small percentage of the item’s price.
I’ll add both these disclaimers to our about page, and I’ll also describe our participation in the Microsoft Partner Program.
And now, back to our irregularly scheduled varkiness.
Spreading the Word
Now that we have the 1.0 release of Infovark under our belt, and after a much-needed vacation, we’re ready for the next step in our Infovark adventure: Marketing.
Marketing doesn’t come naturally to introverted, burrow-dwelling tech geeks like me and Gordon. We’d much rather spend our time and energy tinkering with Infovark instead. But we have to support our coding habit somehow, and that means finding people that need a good personal information management tool and introducing them to our product.
Yikes. I’m scared already.
What’s in a slogan?
Marketing is tough for geeks, and strangely, it has been really hard for Dean and Me, too. One of the most enduring problems we’ve had in our virtual marketing department has been figuring out a slogan.
The word slogan originates from an ancient Gaelic word sluagh-ghairm, which roughly translates as “Battle Cry” — it’s kind of weird to think of the most enduring slogans as battle cries, with a bunch of business guys storming into battle in suits, throwing business cards and yelling “Just Do It!” or “Things Go Better with Coke!” as they tear across the misty moors of the Scottish Highlands towards a horde of rampaging barbarians…
With Infovark, we have churned through a few of them, and some of them have stuck, and some of them have not.
The Enterprise Wiki that builds itself!
This was our original slogan, that we used for all our internal previews — I still kind of like it, because it shows an important feature of Infovark (auto content generation), it’s short, and it has an exclamation mark in it. (I really like them!) In the end though, we decided that it contained too much misinformation. After all, Infovark isn’t an enterprise Wiki like Confluence or Social Text, and while it does have a few wiki features, we felt that people would get the wrong impression. So that was the end of that.
Our next brainstorming session produced:
Your Personal, Portable, Connected Information Engine
This one had its charms, but ultimately we felt that it was too long and complex, and perhaps too geeky. The only real feature it highlights is portability, which is fairly obvious since most of the content that Infovark collects is on your local machine anyway. And while developers and IT guys are fine with the notion of an “engine” lots of people just think of cars.
The portable connected Information Assistant for People on the Go
We flirted with this one for our entry into the Enterprise 2.0 Launch Pad. To be frank, I hate this one. I really like the notion of Infovark as an assistant, but the word has been ruined by talking paper-clips, and “People On the Go” sounds like some kind of cheesy advert for a laxative. This one didn’t last very long.
And then, in the middle of yet another difficult marketing brainstorm session, Dean came out with this gem:
Share all your work, without all of the work
Well, I said it over and over, and liked it more and more. It tells you exactly what Infovark does best (share) and tells you that it can be done with no effort (auto content generation). It highlights what I think is the coolest feature of Infovark, that it’s a “contribution engine” (oops — again with the engines) and that it can overcome the biggest barrier to user adoption — forcing people to change the way that they work.
So, that’s the new Infovark slogan. (For now, anyway.)
Now, off into battle! (Where did I put my business cards?)
E2.0 Launchpad Update
Thanks to everyone who voted for us in the first round of the Enterprise 2.0 Launchpad - Infovark has made the “Sweet Sixteen” of finalists!
The next round is a series of 1 minute videos, so Dean and I are trying to figure out the best way we can show how Infovark can help you in 60 seconds.
So, watch this space – we’ll be posting our video as soon as we can get it together!
(And then we’ll no doubt be nagging you to vote for that too… )
