Disqus - Latest Comments for michellegreer

Re: The US Open Explains the Dangers Posed by Twitter

michellegreer — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:43:00 -0000

Um, I'm going to have to call shenanigans on this post.

This "no Tweet" policy enforces one of the cool parts about the game of tennis. Rules forbid you from communicating to a coach or outside source whatsoever. It's not like basketball or a football where a coach harps on you for executing the wrong strategy. If you are sucking, it's up to YOU to figure out why you suck. It makes the game more interesting to both play and watch.

Re: The full story of “the one important thing” for startups

michellegreer — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 13:49:54 -0000

Oh, and my favorite example of what can happen if you only focus on acquisition and not your current customers' happiness. Your smaller competitor, who did not focus on acquisition and instead focused on product, gets bought by a huge company with loads of cash to spend on acquisition. Oops.There is always a big picture at bay, and being single minded means you can get blind sided pretty hard.

Re: The full story of “the one important thing” for startups

michellegreer — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 13:49:28 -0000

There is always a big picture at bay, and being single minded means you can get blind sided pretty hard.

Re: The full story of “the one important thing” for startups

michellegreer — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 13:43:52 -0000

As someone who has also marketed SaaS products, this seems very oversimplified.

Say you do triple the number of customers and you spend a significant amount of money in advertising to do so. But because you are spending money in marketing and not investing in your feature set, you open yourself up to basically, being a crappy product. I know you have dealt with these types of products personally because we've had this discussion before. Now say your competition is investing in R&D, and then they decide to point blank pick off all your customers. How hard would it be for them to do this? How easy would it be to recover now that you have no real product? It depends on how elastic the demand of what you sell is, right?

The simple truth is that there is no simple truth to business, even with SaaS products. It's important to focus on cancellation rates, and it's also important to focus on acquisition. It's important to focus on profit margin and CSI. And just like a successful diet or a successful sports strategy, there isn't a single formula or metric that works universally for everyone. There is no such thing as a four hour work week and there isn't such a thing as "the single metric" either.

Re: Caveats for Quantifying Online Influence

michellegreer — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 23:19:57 -0000

Oh, and thanks for stopping by and leaving feedback on my blog, Scott! It was nice to see you the other day.

Re: Caveats for Quantifying Online Influence

michellegreer — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 23:19:23 -0000

I guess I'm an anomaly in this space. I've always supported things because I thought they were good, not because they were influential. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they aren't. Influence is never static and what's hot today could be ice tomorrow.

As a marketer, I've only advertised and associated with blogs and people that emulated a company's values or somehow reached an audience I wanted. You'd be shocked what can happen when you give a little support to something that "isn't quite there yet". You become the supporter that was there when no one else was.

Re: Quit Fighting the Cold War with Your Social Media Strategies

michellegreer — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:55:49 -0000

P.S. Thanks for stopping by!

Re: Quit Fighting the Cold War with Your Social Media Strategies

michellegreer — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:55:35 -0000

I always focus on the longterm metrics, i.e. signups, margin. Those can and should be measured. However, sometimes you have to make decisions that resemble chess moves and aren't going to have direct ROI. If you start measuring those, that's when things don't pay off longterm.

Re: Are Real Names Required For Real Socializing?

michellegreer — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:41:05 -0000

Not sure why the internet should break norms that have been used for centuries. It's called a "pen name".

Re: The (Not So) Secret Truth Behind Successful Community Managers

michellegreer — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:56:41 -0000

Case in point right here, Kelsey. I loved your book and am glad you commented here!

Re: School of Journalism hires will aid transition to new curriculum | The Daily Texan

michellegreer — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 23:44:27 -0000

Robert Quigley is an upstanding journalist, and any student interested in the future of media should totally take his class!

Re: Re: Women in Tech, Don’t Apologize, Just Recognize

michellegreer — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:54:43 -0000

Good point. This would also enforce the idea that women should feel respected in the workplace because it increases the number of qualified candidates. It's hard to deny that baseball is better off because Jackie Robinson overcame the hate he had to endure at that time.

My friend works at IBM and apparently there are many female engineers and senior management there. That's because if you are a jerk, you basically get blackballed for life there. While men shouldn't have to be robots at work, I don't think it's that much to ask that both men and women keep things professional.

Re: Re: Women in Tech, Don’t Apologize, Just Recognize

michellegreer — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:50:56 -0000

Agreed on speaking up. It is pretty lame and sometimes.

While I appreciate your offer to beat dudes up, I generally prefer "the third way". The third way isn't fighting and it isn't just fleeing the situation. No, the third way is standing up for what you believe in in a non-violent way. Sure, we won't hurt you, but we won't stand for bullshit, basically.

The best way to counterbalance this stuff is to just be awesome and supportive to your friend, so that she realizes that dude just didn't get enough hugs from his mom or something. The best way to fight fear is to realize that at the end of the day, it means nothing.

Re: Re: Women in Tech, Don’t Apologize, Just Recognize

michellegreer — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 15:24:06 -0000

Good point about the flirting. As I mentioned on Katrina's post, I'm totally guilty of this. People do meet others in work situations and you can't expect men and women to be robots.

There's just healthy flirting and then there is point blank treating a woman like some sort of sexual object. While I dislike when men treat women this way, I also don't like when women exploit their sexuality to get things they don't deserve.

I can't say I know the solution offhand. I just know that working with smart empowered women really kicks ass. I'd like to see more of it.

You are 1000% correct about the spending too. Unless she were a QVC or FarmVille addict, I don't see a female president overspending either.

Re: Top 10 Reasons To GOwalla and Forget Foursquare

michellegreer — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 10:23:13 -0000

Thanks for the post, Lisa! Very thorough analysis of both platforms. I am the Community Director at Gowalla, and if you have any questions or need any assistance, please let me know by emailing me at michelle(at)gowalla.com. Thank you!

Re: 6 Ways Gowalla Spots Can Help Your Business

michellegreer — Fri, 27 May 2011 18:00:33 -0000

Hi Paul. Thank you very much for this post. Great tips for sure. I've also seen a lot of businesses leave highlights around town to show their expertise. Here's a basic case study: http://blog.gowalla.com/pos...

If you ever have any questions, feel free to email me at michelle@gowalla.com.

Re: Why Big Companies Actually Aren’t Failing at Social Media

michellegreer — Thu, 26 May 2011 13:50:04 -0000

Thank you for commenting, Kathy. Sometimes I feel like Holden Caufield here. It's like if you call out a brand, they put a jihad on you or something, when all you were trying to do was to get reasonable service.

What's weird is that some of my favorite brands have NO human face on the internet. They just deliver stuff on time, follow up when I need them to, and have easy to use websites. Funny how that works out.

Re: Why We're Still Lost In Geolocation

michellegreer — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:30:25 -0000

Disclosure: I am the Community Director at Gowalla.

A lot of people do not engage in geolocation services, but please note, there weren't any geolocation services just two years ago. It would be unheard of for Twitter to be mentioned on mainstream channels like CNN in 2008, which was two years after it launched. Now the majority of journalists use it according to Pew Research studies, and we can follow anyone's activities from Shaquille O'Neil's pre-game routine to the Obama campaign's visits to Facebook.

Geolocation services are also in their infancy in terms of features as well. Soon, these tools will be more robust, and other services will leverage the data they have to offer. We are now starting to see third party applications that leverage our service in the same way people used Twitter's API to create Tweetdeck and Hootsuite.

So while it is key to be realistic about user numbers, it's also advantageous to hop on trends before they get too big and you get drowned in noise.

Re: YouTube: Fair Use is Why Conan Can Make Fun of Rebecca Black

michellegreer — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:42:17 -0000

When do they educate people on Creative Commons? I've given speeches to "mainstream" audiences before and it's amazing how few people understand the concept.

Maybe if more people understood the benefits, copyright champions wouldn't have to fight nearly as hard as they still do.

Re: Techcrunch: Women of Color in Tech: How Can We Encourage Them?

michellegreer — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 15:58:27 -0000

Here's the simple truth. The average Zynga user is a 43 year old woman. Women drive 80 percent of the consumer economy. I am a woman, and because of this, I can relate to the real people who drive the economy. If we as women can recognize the power we hold, you'll see more of us in tech circles.

In terms of minorities, I am simply amazed at the lack of Hispanics in the tech world. It's an exploding U.S. population with a lot of needs that software can help solve.

In the same respects politicians in DC often lose touch with the simple plight of Americans, Silicon Valley often does as well. I see too many products that merely appeal to tech nerds who tend not to pay for anything. It's borderline ridiculous.

Keep it up, Vivek. This isn't an issue of fair. It is an issue of presenting markets that investors don't seem to see sometimes.

Re: Guest Post: How Online Work Can Save America

michellegreer — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 01:18:35 -0000

Why are you comparing Leila's support of people in developing nations to slavery? It's microwork! It's things people here don't want to do but could help others so much.

Just stop with your red herrings. This is why I stopped commenting on this site.

Re: Guest Post: How Online Work Can Save America

michellegreer — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 08:33:19 -0000

"What have the Romans ever done for us?"

Please see "Life of Brian" and then get back with me.

Re: Guest Post: How Online Work Can Save America

michellegreer — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:37:08 -0000

You are assuming that hiring better higher skilled workers does not actually lead to even MORE profits for shareholders. Try telling a Google or a Facebook to cough up more money to shareholders in lieu of hiring top talent that keeps them competitive. It doesn't happen.

Cheap labor and resources in America lead to the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Rome's expansion into other territories made it one of the biggest empires ever. Closing yourself off to the rest of the world doesn't work. Even China understands that message and they have over a billion people.

Re: Guest Post: How Online Work Can Save America

michellegreer — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 21:27:15 -0000

Actually, cheap labor abroad saves companies money, which means they can dedicate those savings towards higher job functions they can't source out.

Frankly, I think we can handle it if there are fewer jobs that involve menial labor in America. We just have to actually step up to the educational challenges countries like India, China, Japan and even little guys like Finland have been serving us for years.

Provided nations support free trade, we might even find markets for goods we didn't even know existed. The luxury goods market in China is booming and was non-existent just ten years ago.

Re: Top Wealth Holders With Gross Assets of $675,000 or More by Type of Property, Sex, and Size of Net W Dataset - Infochimps

michellegreer — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 01:00:05 -0000

This data set is for the year 2001, fyi.