Rui Nunes's thoughts and ideas

Photo from Rama V and some rights are reserved.

In a previous post, I've written about a very interesting niche for those who want to grab it. Now I would like to elaborate a bit more on it.

The thing with searching niches for the sake of business models is that it's very difficult at first to really understand if there is really a niche and if it is profitable to offer some service or product to that niche?
Basically, will it sell? 
Well, you must be saying, it depends. Yeah, of course. But it's very important to master that "it depends". We cannot launch a business only supported by hunches or gut feelings. 
If your primary market is a well defined niche, then you must study it very hard. Actually becoming a user or a fan of that particular interest, doesn't matter if you're a Mac Lover (wait, that isn't a niche anymore, right?), a tunning enthusiast or just a plain Indie Movie neurotic. This will give you knowledge, and knowledge is all you need to make things happen.

What Now?
After you realize that a product can sell, then you need to know how to get to promote it. The correct way should be by crowd support. Find a few members of that "Tribe" as Seth defined it, then see their reaction and empower these people to spread the word. But there are really other means as well that can speed up the process. That's when knowledge comes in handy. If you know how these people work within a determined niche, then you're most likely to find a way to steal their attention. Specially, if you partner with some other business or community associated with that "Tribe". Be creative! 

After you get their attention, you can start with nurturing that small base of potential active supporters and give them the tools to make the project's communication for you. Don't just sit back and relax. Interact constantly, gather feedback and improve your product, your price or marketing strategy. Be open to change the entire thing. Be Open-Minded!

Be Honest! 
If you're in trouble to make the necessary changes in a reasonable time, then say it out loud. With no fears. Just be frank. People will give you more credit and will value that honesty. They will pay you with loyalty and more good will to spread your word.

Take care of your Gold
You must already know this, but it's better to have just 10 great enforcers of your brand, than 500.000 of absent people. If you're getting an ever growing demand of interaction with some people that aren't making any difference spreading your brand and just distracting you from your business or from the real active ones, then you need to set priorities and understand that what you really need is to get some focus. Provide attention to where it can be better used at.

Rewards are always Welcome
Implement a reward strategy for those who are making their effort to give you value. It doesn't matter, if it is someone recommending you, or publishing an article about your product, or even just someone that interacted with you. Reward them. It can be just by a thankful comment, or a link to somewhere, giving them attention or even with some gift that you can afford to compliment these people with. You name it, but reward people!

What are your ideas about this topic? Can you provide more suggestions or experiences? I'll appreciate that and I'll reward it.

P.S: By the way, thank you Sara for correcting some miserable mistakes to my posts. ;-)

Photo of JD Lasica

Here's the thing. People rush to prejudgements and be very critic about something without investigating further. The bad thoughts are the first ones coming to mind and people almost struggle to be the firsts with an inflamating comment at a medium.

Here's an example I've stumbled a few days ago. Marissa Mayer, the head of Search Departament at Google was appointed to lead the Local Programs (Localization and so on), leaving the previous Departament. Rapidly and based on comments from "someone" not identified but described as a Google Employee, news sites were fast to propagate the news as if Marissa had been demoted. If you check the comments in these articles, several people just rampage saying that she deserved to be demoted since she lost the run for Facebook's agreement to search their users as Bing has succeded and that she was having lucky so far, because of her looks and by being with the market leader. Well, I don't really know if this is true or not, but I don't make assumptions or fast judgements if I don't research a bit more or learn a lot about a company's methods or a person's background and capabilities. For what I've checked in some other sites and professionals of this sector, opinions are that she's actually a very good professional. So, why alleging that she's heading some department because of her looks and so on? Is it based on a real situation? Hardly!

I need to have experience on something to make some kind of remarks.

This is what I think people tend to forget and just don't care about. It's very easy to make comments about some sort of subject that brought our attention with a light mind, but get over it.
What's even more wrong to me is to see some media just posting something that is being rumoured in a kind of writing that people tend to believe as an absolute truth.
A few years ago, newspappers were considered respectful and credible organizations with hundreds of journalists all dedicated to investigate their stories and check every source. Even trying to hear both parties of a question. Something tells me that it's being lost. Why? Well, we live in a fast information flow and the breaking news sites are the most visited. Because they break the news faster. But we really need to get the investigation journalism and old school stories where we check everything very well before writing an article.

Interesting that Jason Calacanis, a notorious web content entrepreneur, famous for starting up with Weblogs,Inc and Mahalo Inc, to name a few, is claiming precisely that. We have a great ammount of news breakers but not enough well written researched stories. Maybe there's a very large and profitable niche here, and press groups are in the best situation to dominate it, because they have the professionals, the methods and the structure. All they need to do is to understand that this is a new medium, not exactly the same as the paper product. There are some different good practices they need to dominate before starting a project like this.

Humm, what are your thoughts about it? Do you have anything to add? I'll appreciate your insight.

If you search through some media sites you'll come across some news about this topic. Even a recent Forrester Research says that the content being generated worldwide has stopped growing or mainly decreased its flow; on the other hand the social media usage is increasing nonstop by several points in a row.

Well, numbers are just that, numbers. But if you try to analyse the results, you'll see that this brings a huge opportunity for those providing content. 

The social media beast is eager for more content. It's fed by quality content worth spreading.
So, if you provide that kind of content, you're in a roll for success. Learn from the social network at stake, notice that one is different from another, determine what's your goal and provide the correct content to be spread by that network.

Opportunity is there. Grab it!

This photo is from a project that I admire from Magnet Recognition Program. It illustrates well what I wish to write about.

This is a subject filled of sensible details, but very very important for every business. No one can be 24h/day controlling everything it's done with the business. You need to empower your people. But we must be careful as we do it.
Here a few tips learned the hard way, other came from other professionals experiences that were kind enough to share:

Be cristal clear about the objectives or the guidelines

There are so many things that can go wrong when we don't explain clearly what's to be done. For example, you're at the restaurant business and a client is feeling upset because the coffee is to hot or too cold. If the employee doesn't know the strategy and the clear guidelines from which you want to conduct your business, he or she may just say sorry and go on to another table. Instead, could have offered another cup of coffee free of charge more hotter or colder depending of the client's needs. All with a big smile and a caring attitude.
Or at the tech industry, your engineer in charge of a project doesn't know the exact priority of that project at the companies strategy, so when a problem comes up at a middle of a workflow he needs your approval to do some changes and you aren't there. Until then, the project is stopped. If you've been clear about the importance of that project he would be knocking other departaments asking for help to make that going.
Don't assume that they know what you want. Tell them what do you want and then let them make their decisions based in clear directions. CLEAR is the word.

Trust them

If you're empowering someone to do something, then you need to have confidence the person is going to do the best he/she can. It is NOT the way to say someone they're responsible for something and then being in their shoulder all the time. That's not empowering, that's just being a boss or a manager. A bad one, by the way. Do I mean that we should abandon completely? No, of course not. We need to stablish goals, timelines and check the progress. See if what we ask to do was done, and if not, why??  But let them make their own decisions and be available when they ask for advice to find the correct path again.

Reward

It's basic, right? If you're empowering someone you need to reward them when they fulfil their tasks. However, the reward does not necessary needs to be money. The reward can be a public display of success in front at the entire team, appreciation for what they've accomplish and tell them how they have influent the company's goals. This is going to make the other colleagues work just as hard to accomplish the same objectives. Also, knowing your collaborator may give you an idea of what drives him or she. Maybe a race circuit experience will make his eyes roll, or a payed dinner with her spouse. Everyone is different. Act accordingly.

Edit and Re-Empower

From time to time, you need to make a refill of the strategies or goals. Not even because it can become diluted but also because strategies and goals change from time to time. People tend to forget some of the points. Also, when they already have some experience doing things right why not teaching them to empower their teams or their co-workers? Upgrade them.

These are just a few thoughts that you can use but there are so many more in this topic. Some are new to you some are not. I would love to read some of your suggestions as well. Share...