3 Tech Benefits and 1 Threat for Guru Businesses

By Tim Berry

By guru business I mean the expert business, and particularly the one-person expert business. I mean consultant, coach, adviser, researcher, business hired gun, life coach, trainer, and so on.  I mean a person who makes a living by selling (real or imagined) expertise, experience, and knowledge. I was a business planning consultant for most of... Read More »

For Better Market Research Get Real Clicks not Fake Answers

By Tim Berry

For real information, watching what people do is way better than asking them what they think, what they did, or, the worst case, what they intend to do. That’s why I like this new click-based and search-based research so much.  Don’t go with what people say; go with what they do. A great recent example... Read More »

Social Media = Conversation. With the Mike On. In a Large Room. And the Record Button Pressed

By Tim Berry

I just read about a university student who was dismissed from the football team because he complained about the coach on his Facebook page. And there, in this person’s unfortunate plight, we get a good reminder: a lot of what happens in social media feels private, but isn’t. It’s publishing. It’s that feeling of private... Read More »

The Joy of User Revolts

By Tim Berry

It’s not that surprising, really; and we’ve seen it before with Facebook. When Twitter released a new feature, and it’s users didn’t like it, they had to change it back. The Read More »

The Next Big Thing Already Happened

By Tim Berry

The next big thing is never a repeat of last big thing. It’s always something new and different. It’s an original, not a copy. What if the next Facebook already happened, and it was Twitter? What if the next Netflix already happened, and it was YouTube. I see this a lot in business plans: businesses out to become... Read More »

Help! One of Me, Dozens of Social Media Sites

By Tim Berry

I posted here yesterday about the landrush problem of social media, which is my phrase for what happens when user feedback systems are subverted by vendors seeding reviews. Another social media trend that worries me is the proliferation of sites. How do I deal with all the different sites I’d like to join? Currently, for... Read More »

Facebook Disaster: Don’t Bother Coming In Tomorrow

By Tim Berry

I’ve had a run-in on this before, including this one on the Huffington Post that got a lot of comments …  but still, look at this delightful post from thenextweb.com: Author Zee, editor in chief at thenextweb.com, titled it: “Note to self: Don’t ‘friend’ your boss and then bitch about the job.” After all, what... Read More »

2 Pictures, 200 Words, Lots of Ideas.

By Tim Berry

Pictures, words, ideas. If one picture equals 1,000 words, how many ideas does it generate? Is there a transitive property there? I had time over the weekend to pick up two unrelated pictures. Each covers something entirely different. Both are full of ideas. The first, a chart by Seth Godin: This is one of those... Read More »

GDGT: No, Please, Not Another Social Media Site!

By Tim Berry

I read it last weekend on the New York Times website. It’s about a new gadget site to be called GDGT starting this week, developed by founders of other gadget site successes. Get this: Their new site, called GDGT, will open to visitors on Wednesday. It differs from Engadget or Gizmodo by aspiring to be... Read More »

In Love With Social Media? Do a Social Media Plan

By Tim Berry

OK, I agree, Twitter and Facebook can be fun, LinkedIn can be useful, but is the time you spend there really business time? Or is it just a rationalization for not doing real work? I posted Social Media Business Plan in 5 Easy Pieces today on the American Express OPEN Forum. I like to think... Read More »