How do you suggest I/we manage twitter?

It can certainly be tough to build up a substantial follower base, starting from nothing or very little, especially if you haven't launched your product yet. But here are a few tactics to help you get in front of more people pre-launch: 1) Start sharing tons of useful content. Before you bother sending people to your Twitter feed or Facebook page, you want to make sure they'll find something valuable once they get there. If you have the time, create original content that ties into your industry, your product, or your company in some way (without directly promoting yourself, though). If you don't have the bandwidth to create your own content, find other articles from bloggers you admire or experts in your industry, and share their content. Just make sure you're putting out information that's highly relevant and valuable to the audience you're trying to attract so you can engage them once they find you. 2) Create conversation. The people who aren't following you yet aren't seeing your tweets, so how do you show them value and get them to discover you? Start a conversation! At Change Collective, we're rolling out our first course on Becoming an Early Riser. So I'll do a Twitter search for "need to wake up earlier" and find a bunch of people who are tweeting about the exact problem we're setting out to solve. By favoriting their tweets or replying with -- "That's great! We think we can help - check out our newest course & let us know what you think!" -- I'm getting our product on their radar and simultaneously providing value to them. 3) Ask for help. Start with your fellow team members, and ask them to share the company's Facebook posts or retweet some of your tweets. You can even create lazy tweets for them to share. What about your board members? Advisors? VCs? They all have a stake in helping your company grow awareness and adoption, so find an easy and appropriate way for them to help by leveraging their networks. And if you have friends and family who are excited about your business and supportive of what you're doing, they probably won't mind a friendly request to help spread the news every once in a while. Hope this helps! I just joined an early-stage startup and I'm currently building up our marketing from scratch. Happy to jump on a call and offer some tips from the trenches if you'd like. Best of luck!

I've been in the picture messaging space for a while now with my apps Lutebox (voted one of London's top ten most loved apps) and now Click Messenger. I've written a few articles about the space including a recent post about the Future of Mobile Messaging. Snapchat started out as an app called Picaboo, which pretty much did what it does now (prior to the latest update with chat and video calling). They quickly rebranded but saw a little uptake in user numbers and had quite low downloads for several months. Then around Christmas 2011 one of the founders' mom had told her friend about the app, who told her kid and her kid basically then spread the word throughout their high school in L.A. That was what really blew up their download numbers as it spread across teenagers at local high schools. As far as I know they didn't advertise in the early days, relied solely on word of mouth. Also it is assumed that they have a solid user base. Comparatively speaking, their user base may be in the low tens of millions, which may a great base of users, but nowhere even close to being as big as Facebook or Twitter. I'd be happy to speak about this in more detail or about the picture messaging landscape and what I believe to be the future of mobile messaging.

The best way to work around something like this is to map out the long-term strategy in phases. Build out a brief project map that outlines what they will receive within the 1-3 month period, the 4-7 month and the 8-12 month period. Set micro objectives for each period and this will give the client a bit more confidence in the short-term plans as well as the long. The key thing to remember here is that the client will often be worried about being tied into a contract that doesn't deliver results. As a result, you need to show why you need the time that you do. One thing that I often throw in is an extra incentive for longer contract lengths - for example, an extra PR/content campaign or some paid advertising extras. Try to assure them of some shorter term results that you can obtain as 'quick wins' and build their confidence this way - the major targets will always be longer term but if you can demonstrate that there will be progress between then they will be a lot more receptive.

Hi there! In few words, the launch date does not matter a lot as long as you are following with a continuous marketing plan all the year. It is better to tune your lunch date according to your marketing campaign than connecting it to the seasonal event. The timing of your launch only matters if your website is already ranked or has a good authority associated to it. Launching a website is not like opening a local shop. The launch date is defined by the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. In other words, your question must be rephrased as: "When is the best time to launch my first marketing campaign for my newly created website?". In that case, you will need to describe in details what kind of website you have and how are you planning to market it. I would be able to give you a more accurate answer if you explain to me what kind of website are you planning to launch or what products mainly are you selling. Hope that helps!

I don't even know how to answer this. Do you know what the difference between McDonalds and the local burger joint that is filing for bankruptcy is? It's marketing. McDonalds is worth billions of dollars not because of the quality of their food, but because of their marketing. Marketing is not an expense. A janitor is an expense. Your computer is an expense. Marketing is an INVESTMENT. Would you shop around for the cheapest heart surgeon? Of course not. Because you would likely end up dead. Why, then, do you shop around for a marketing expert? Are you ok with your company going bankrupt? Is that worth the small savings to you? No. Of course not. Hire someone who is good at marketing. Hire someone who knows what they are doing. Buy yourself a Lamborghini with your profit the first quarter. Get a beach house in hawaii. Grab a yacht. Or, try to find your business the cheapest heart surgeon you can and then spend the next five years wondering why such a solid business idea failed in the first 6 months. I'm passionate about this exact topic because all those statistics you read about "70% of businesses failing in two years" are solely because of horrible marketing.