The Point

Bubble 2.0: Is it happening again?

Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion. It paid that kind of money for a photo sharing app that can be used for free. Instagram has no revenue. For those of us who have been around the block for a while, deals like this are like déjà vu. We have seen this all before, way back in late 90s. The Internet was beginning to boom. New web-based businesses were supposed to defy gravity. Earnings didn’t matter. All of a sudden we talked about eyeballs and clickthrough rate as the measures of success, without even considering any financial data. The question is, are we seeing this exact same bubble – again?

Here are a few data points from the old bubble, for those of you who have forgotten:

Boo.com spent $188 million in half a year attempting to create a global online fashion store. They went bankrupt in May 2000.

Pets.com sold pet supplies to retail customers. Although sales rose dramatically, the company was weak on fundamentals and actually lost money on most of its sales. This was a fundamental flaw that the company couldn’t make up in volume.

During this first tech bubble several large companies had similar stories. There was WorldCom’s rise and fall:  The company filed for bankruptcy in 2002 and former CEO Bernard Ebbers was convicted of fraud and conspiracy.

In the late 1990s it was enough for a company to have .com in the name, perhaps enriched by a leading “e” prefix. The market rewarded companies that were hardly more than a website with no revenue-producing business. Investors as lost money in the bubble because it turned out that many of these companies had no sustainable business model.

This time around, LinkedIn and Groupon are “real” companies. They have a business model. They have real revenues and profits.

Today’s start-ups are smaller and require less up-front funding because of cloud computing. In the late 1990s Venture Capitalists dominated the investment landscape and very often provided the fuel for some of the excesses. This time around Venture Capitalists come into a deal at a later point in time and have a lesser role.

Still, the similarities are striking enough to remain concerned. The social media hype leads to companies that try to “jump” on the social media bandwagon. If you throw a stone on a street corner it’s hard not to hit a social media expert. The job market in Silicon Valley is red-hot again. And certainly valuations have sky-rocketed. LinkedIn went public as one of the most expensive companies in America based on the ratio of its market value to its annual sales. Facebook is on a similar trajectory.

While today’s companies such as LinkedIn, Groupon, and Facebook are real companies, investors can still lose real money just like they did in the 90s tech bubble.

So, did Mark Zuckerberg do the right thing? Instagram has grown to over 40 million users. It went from 30 to 40 million users in only 10 days in early April of this year. It recently launched on the Android platform. Now it has access to another half a billion users. There is plenty of room to grow.  Facebook saved itself time and headaches. It bought the competition while it was able to do so. Mark did what Mark had to do. The rest of us, including Facebook’s board, will watch what’s happening next.

Get Your Club into Growth Mode

Every year Toastmaster clubs around the world are working on their Distinguished Club Goals (DCP). In order to get to all ten (10) goals a club needs to achieve the following:

- Goal 1 and 2: Four (4) Competent Communicator Awards

- Goal 3 and 4: Two (2) Advanced Communicator Awards 

- Goal 5 and 6: Two (2) Advanced Leader Awards

- Goal 7 and 8: Eight (8) new members

- Goal 9: Train their officers in the summer and winter

- Goal 10: Submit the officer list in the summer and get the dues in on time at least once

It’s very rewarding to reach all ten goals. There is lots of recognition on the area, division and district level as a result. Most importantly it’s fun to be part of a club that is humming like this. Now, all goals except 7 and 8 are about making it happen with existing club members. We can identify people by name, we can talk to them, track their actions and help them, if needed. So, goals one to six and nine and ten are basically about good management and leadership. Goals seven and eight are different. How do you reach out to people you don’t know yet? Here are three simple principles that are the key to success.

1. Every club meeting is a demo meeting

Consider every meeting as a demo meeting. A good meeting features well-prepared speeches, fun table topics and constructive evaluations. If you think there is a problem in the way your club runs its meeting, then your intuition is probably right. There are Toastmaster assessment tools (e.g. The Moment of Truth) that help to dig deeper. Use them. Get a club coach if a fresh outside perspective is needed. The VP Membership needs to be good in talking to visitors and following up. It should be everyone’s job to make sure that visitors feel welcome. If you have the foundation built, it makes sense to increase traffic to your club. New people will be attracted and join your group.

2. The club can be found easily

Traditionally, Toastmasters made all sorts of efforts to get the word out: Flyers at the library, hang outs at the local super market. I wouldn’t want to discount the effectiveness of those. However, in today’s world people go to the web to find out about stuff. So, your best bet is to make sure that your club can be easily found online.

a. Accurate club information on http://reports.toastmasters.org/findaclub/: Make sure that your club’s information is listed correctly on the global Toastmaster website. Check the correctness of the meeting time, location and contact information (email and phone)

b. Have a website for your club: This doesn’t have to be fancy. There is a free hosting platform that allows you to set up a club site. Check out www.freetoasthost.org. Ask your members to fill in their profiles. Give your club that personal touch that others can relate to. Check out this club as a simple example: http://fstoastmasters.org.

c. Search engine ranking: This requires a little more tech savviness, but it goes a long way. Submit the URL of our club site to the main search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Bing). If you don’t know how to do this, find someone who does. Here is a simple litmus test. Conduct a Google search. Type “Toastmasters”, your city and state. For example search  for “Toastmasters Reston VA”. If your club shows up on the first page, you have done a good job. Ideally your club should be among of the first three links.

d. Leverage advanced platforms: There are additional ways for people to find you. Look at meetup.com or facebook.com. These platforms are social networking sites. You might consider to build a community of existing club members  and friends there. Then you can publish your meetings and reach out to others. I would recommend this after you have completed your work on a-c.

3. Reach out to the club member’s network

This last principle is about active marketing. There is a difference between corporate clubs and community clubs. I have recommendations for both.

 a. Bring a friend: This is the most straight forward approach for boosting attendance that works very well in community clubs. Put a meeting together with some of your stronger speakers. Arrange for a nice welcome. Ask every member in your club to bring at least one friend to the meeting. Involve your guests in the meeting. Table topics is great for that. Don’t forget to ask for feedback. Arrange the follow up.

b. Toastmasters means business: Corporate clubs have the opportunity to tie Toastmasters to the goals of their company. At the end, what organization doesn’t need good speakers and leaders. Talk about your club in the company  newsletter and publish an article on the intranet site. It makes a huge difference if your club officers are able to secure executive sponsorship within your company. If company officials are endorsing the club, you will have it much easier to reach out and stir up interest. Go for it. Executives will get the value of Toastmasters quickly.

Personally, I have seen clubs that are President Distinguished year over year. Some accomplish all ten goals in the first six months of a Toastmaster year. I also have witnessed how a low membership club with six members grew to a club with more  than thirty members within eighteen month. The success of these clubs is based on these three simple principles. If your club goes systematically through the recommended actions, visitors will come to your meeting and you will turn visitors into members. A little extra tip. It has always been a good idea to feed your members and visitors very well. Great speeches combined with great food are irresistible.

Social Networking in Business – The Results of the Survey

When Britney Spears launched her back-to-school commercial for Candie’s this summer, it wasn’t first seen on TV. It wasn’t first in theaters, either. She launched the commercial on Facebook, Twitter and BritneySpears.com. So, we don’t have to guess where marketing pros think our kids hang out online these days. But what about us — Professionals in their thirties and upward. This is the group of people I mostly interact with on my job. This is also the majority of the readers of “The Point”.  I had posted a questionnaire on how we use social networking sites a few months back. Today, I am publishing the results. The survey had a little over one hundred participants. I asked three simple questions to ensure that the survey could be completed in less than a minute.

Question 1: What social networking platform are you using?

This question allowed multiple answers, because most of us join multiple networking sites over time. As expected, Facebook and LinkedIn scored high. MySpace didn’t score high at all among readers of “The Point”. Twitter and Plaxo came in with decent results. Among “Others” particpants named sites such as Skype, Ning, TonyRobbins, GreenPearl and Naymz.

 Question 2: How many hours do you spend on one or more of these sites on a weekly basis?

It is worth mentioning that some folks in the last categoy “+20h” spend as much as forty hours on social networking sites per week. On average, the survey participants spend 6.42 h on these sites. The median came in a tad lower with 5 h.

Question 3: How do you navigate to these sites?

The majority is still using their computer to navigate to social networking sites. But our iPhones/Blackberry usage is catching up. Certainly the downloadable apps make the wireless visit to sites such as Facebook and Linkedin easier.  Twitter is optimally suited to be used from a cell phone. Anyone following Lance Armstrong’s tweets this season on the Tour de France knows that.

Based on some of the comments I received so far, it appears that social networking is already a serious tool for people in the search industry as well as  those in business development or sales roles. This is not a surprise – the benefit is obvious. As social networking becomes increasingly  important in our business lives, I am interested in all the use cases that are out there. How do we leverage our membership with the LinkedIn’s of the world conducting business? Please feel free to comment or simply send me an email to my LinkedIn account.