Business Networking Archive

Venture capitalist Chris Fralic from First Round Capital presented to a group of entrepreneurs at DreamitVentures in Philadelphia. Chris spoke about business development for startups and took a look at his history with a variety of companies including Delicious, Wikipedia and half.com. I’ve embedded the presentation below.

If you are looking for more business development for startups topics, checkout our video recap (over 1 hour) from the nextNY business development seminar earlier this year.
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The video below is part two of the nextNY group session named, "The Business Development Discipline: Practitioners’ Roundtable". Click here to view part one. About 50 people attended the session where a variety of business development topics were discussed. Most of the discussion was around business development for "major" startups and large companies.

The evening’s speakers included:

• Chris Phenner – VP of Business Development, Thumbplay (left side of camera)
• Dan Rosenberg – VP of Business Development, Rave Wireless (right side of camera)
• Matt Milner – VP of Social Media, Hearst Corporation (right side of camera)

Earlier this year, the nextNY group held a workshop on hiring for startups. If you plan to do any hiring for your startup, the videos are a must watch.

Tonight the nextNY group held a business development session named, "The Business Development Discipline: Practitioners’ Roundtable". About 50 people attended the session where a variety of business development topics were discussed. Most of the discussion was around business development for "major" startups and large companies.

The evening’s speakers included:

• Chris Phenner – VP of Business Development, Thumbplay (left side of camera)
• Dan Rosenberg – VP of Business Development, Rave Wireless (right side of camera)
• Matt Milner – VP of Social Media, Hearst Corporation (right side of camera)

I was able to tape the first hour of the discussion and part one (30 minutes) is below. The other half of the discussion will be posted on Tuesday morning.

Earlier this year, the nextNY group held a workshop on hiring for startups. If you plan to do any hiring for your startup, the videos are a must watch.

A few years ago when someone visited a website they would expect to see a static page of content with some basic information on a company or individual. You would be greeted with the standard home page, followed by an about us/services page, and then if you were lucky, a contact page. You would read through the site and then judge whether or not the person/company really knows their stuff.

Nowadays having a blog is almost expected and in fact desired. Blogs offer something that static websites just can’t; (generally speaking) perspective and content. A blog gives far more insight into a company’s (or individuals) way of thinking and users like that. Now, instead of visiting a static page, a user can visit a dynamic page filled with valuable information and insight. If you are in the Venture Capital business then you can bet that your users are going to want to see a blog with some with some analysis on the VC market, tips and tricks for getting funding, how to avoid bad deals, etc. If you’re a hypnotherapist or marriage/family therapist you SHOULD have a blog that offers daily advice on how to deal with various situations, calming techniques, benefits of hypnotherapy, etc.

Blogs are becoming the new standard for websites and believe me blogs can be fantastic lead and revenue generation tools. If you are able to provide valuable information and analysis for the users in your respective industry, then your users will view you as being an authority in that industry. The Online Marketing Blog is a great example of how a blog is used to generate leads. Lee Odden and team put out quality content almost every regarding PR and SEO. As a result the blog is virtually an authority on the integration of PR and SEO and you can bet that Lee Odden and team are getting plenty of leads out of it. According to Lee, the Online Marketing Blog generates:

• 4 ad inquiries a week
• 1-2 speaking requests a week
• 1 media inquiry a week
• 4-5 leads a week.

As Lee puts it, “If the company has something to say then a blog is a great tool for them, and if they don’t have something to say then they have other business issues to deal with.”

Gone are the days of static content pages. Users want more; they want to understand the mindset of companies and individuals. They want to know what they can expect and they want to know that they can trust you. Blogging about your industry is a great way to build trust with your users and prospective clients. A blog gives your users a chance to see what you know and how you interpret information. Think of a job interview, you wouldn’t hire someone to run your marketing for you just because of their resume, you want to meet and interview the person before you offer them a job. A blog is a way for the world to interview you to see if they want to work with you. This is why it is so important to provide quality content to your readers on a regular basis.

You’re not still using that old website to get leads now are you?

Jacob Morgan is a social media consultant and runs a team of technical SEOs in San Francisco. follow him on twitter.

LinkedIn has released a new beta version of their site this morning. And to quote Jan, "widget widget widget". Mario from LinkedIn has a good overview of the new features. There’s also new APIs coming soon. Along with the APIs, I’d love to see some new widgets to integrate into a Web site – profile, jobs, etc.

The new home page looks great – an absolute improvement over the old, crusty version. It has a widget feel to it and sure enough it has some widgets that you can move around, add/delete as you wish. The contact viewer is also cleaner than previously. The page feeds very open and airy and a nice 2007 flavor.

They also moved the job board to the home page. Perhaps LinkedIn should look at offering a job board similar to the Job-a-matic board offered by SimplyHired.

If LinkedIn’s goal is to create a more sticky environment, why not partner with a start page provider such as Netvibes or Pageflakes and then you could actually create a very strong business networking environment.  Feeds, travel, etc. — all should be available.

From my perspective, LinkedIn still wins over Facebook for business networking. I get 7-10x more LinkedIn requests than Facebook requests. If you’d link to link me up, check out my profile.