The Most Important Discussion On Marketing I Followed This Early Morning

Chris F. Masse May 26th, 2008

Michael Giberson and Robin Hanson are fond of Inkling Markets’ Godfather, Paul Graham. I am not. I am more interested in Robert Scoble, Loic Le Meur, and Jason Calacanis. With other bloggers, they started a discussion on modern-days public relations.

Here are the good points they made, along with my associated thoughts:

A very good product, by itself, will get you users and traction. TradeSports, BetFair, HubDub and NewsFutures attained success because early users like those services.
The CEO (e.g., Emile Servan-Schreiber, Adam Siegel, Nigel Eccles, and John Delaney) should be the spokesperson of the company. [As a counter-point, see the point #9, there.]
You should build your community without marketing and promoting in mind —more like entertaining and helping friends of yours, than pitching prospects.

“Evolution is the révolution.” Everything is iteration. Look at the fantastic R&D that BetFair is building into its products.
Don’t be a smart ass. Be a smart entrepreneur. Start something (a company, a group blog, whatever). That way you will be able to “iterate”. (Remember point #1? ) The best decision that David Perry made in his life was to start off Consensus Point with Ken Kittlitz.

You should create visually rich experiences. Prediction exchanges (like InTrade and BetFair) should focus on developing dynamic, compound chart widgets with customizable news markers.
You need to reach the “influentials” (the blogging élites). Get to them.
Have luck. Luck is part of the success. Go reading Robert Scoble’s point #3 on Qik.com.