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The largest difference I’ve observed in all the companies that I work for on success versus failure is the ability for the entrepreneur or business to actually execute. It frustrates me to watch friends and fellow entrepreneurs not realize their success simply because they don’t execute. Fear and greed are the two things I see that stop entrepreneurs in their tracks.

Here are a couple of examples:

Entrepreneur A has a great product that’s working but undeveloped, unbranded and not ready for primetime. For 3 years now, he’s been spinning his wheels. He’s got prospects hot and then they cooled down. He’s had opportunities for talented partners, but he’s wasted their time and eventually turned them off. He’s micro-managing legal paperwork, marketing, and everything that has to do with the company because he thinks he can do it all. 3 years.

• Let’s say this company is going to be a $500k company in a year. To date, that means that they’ve lost over $1 million because of their inaction.
• Let’s say the company is valued at $5 million. The owner doesn’t want to give up significant shares of the company to those that can help him get it off the ground. He thinks if he gives up an additional 10% in ownership, that he’s giving $500k to the partner. Remember that $1 million in lost revenue? Because he didn’t give $500k to the partner, he’s now lost $1 million in revenue… with the majority of that money being his. That means that his stubbornness at negotiating a lower percentage is actually costing him money. Weird economics, I know.
• Of course, the actual percentages mean nothing until there’s revenue behind it. And as long as he can maintain majority ownership, he gets to keep the majority of the business’ value. 100% of a company making $100k a year is $100k. 51% of a company making $500k a year is over $250k per year. Who cares if your partner is going to pull in an additional 10%… if it’s growing your bottom line 250%?! You’re not sacrificing anything and your company is valued better and you’re making more money.

Entrepreneur A never gets his business off the ground. Or, if he does, it’s built with people that really don’t have anything invested in the company so it’s lackluster and doesn’t take off. 10 years from now, he’s still scratching his head on what went wrong – perhaps blaming the talent around him, not realizing it was his choice.

Entrepreneur B is scared. He’s got an okay product that has copyrights, trademarks, and patents. He’s spent a fortune on attorneys and spends his time scouring the Internet for those people who might be utilizing his trademark in violation. He won’t work with anyone for fear that they’ll steal his idea. He doesn’t trust anyone. And because all his money is tied up in legalities and his time is spent watching for people ‘borrowing’ his idea – his product never progresses.

Something better comes along and buries Entrepreneur B. He wonders what happened to this very day.

Successful entrepreneurs don’t let greed nor fear get in their way. They recognize their professional weaknesses and find talent to overcome those. They don’t care if every employee becomes a millionaire in addition to their wealth… in fact they relish the opportunity to create wealth for others. They also don’t waste time on the competition or the naysayers… they execute, execute, execute.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more. Douglas is also the author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies. Follow him on Twitter @douglaskarr.

Did you know Douglas Karr's book is coming out in August? You can pre-order Corporate Blogging for Dummies now on Amazon. Check out our new site, Corporate Blogging Tips, to find out what events that we'll be speaking at.

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Like many folks, I underestimated the power of ChaCha. A lot of people thought that ChaCha has been a crazy experiment. People have joked about the ChaCha guides just looking stuff up on Google and responding with it.

Working closely with Scott Jones and ChaCha has been quick-paced, challenging, fun… and rewarding. ChaCha is turning a corner… and people are starting to take notice. The next month at ChaCha will be even more exciting than the last… this I promise you!

What ChaCha has amassed is one of the fastest and most complete question and answer databases on the Internet. Some questions have been asked hundreds or thousands of times… and ChaCha no longer has to verify the request, they can simply provide it.

The numbers are pretty amazing… over a million requests answered a day. Over 4.5 million Chuck Norris joke requests alone! It’s not all fun and games, though. ChaCha has real-time answers on what’s happening in Haiti, how big is the universe, or practical answers like how to get gum out of your hair or the address or phone number for a company.

ChaCha.com continues to grow in traffic as well – not just from direct requests but from the search engines themselves. Even Google has noticed how good ChaCha’s answers are – search engine growth continues to rise. The site is now the largest Indiana website for traffic and has surpassed many social media darlings in Silicon Valley.

Ask ChaCha a trivia question and you’ll probably get a pretty good response, as well! Try it yourself by texting a question to 242242 or calling 1-800-224-2242 (242242 spells ChaCha). Or you can test out a new widget I built in my sidebar. (Note: There’s still some clean-up to do on it – like figuring out why IE sometimes doesn’t like it!).

While Google has amassed a well-indexed database of where to find answers on the Internet, ChaCha has actually found the answers. That’s no easy feat. As the database gets larger and the number of users of the system grows, you’ll notice the quality of responses is growing as well. It’s not perfect – but ChaCha is a tool that, when used correctly, can be quite an asset to have!

ChaCha also has insight into trends (to the left is a dashboard I’ve also built). Twitter trends is what people are talking about, Google trends is what people are trying to find… and ChaCha has the exact questions that people are asking. That’s pretty valuable information – something that ChaCha is also beginning to realize. Of course it was probably something that Jones et Investors understood all along.

Full disclosure: ChaCha is a key client of mine.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

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Marketing on Twitter continues to be one of the most talked about subjects in social media today. The social media purists still sing campfire songs about how you can’t do it. Dell is up to $6.5 million dollars in sales there. While I strongly believe there is no right or wrong way to use Twitter — you can find an audience for anything on any medium with a certain level of critical mass — I believe Twitter to be a mainly conversational platform.

With that, I have noticed four major types of marketing styles emerge among those using Twitter as a marketing platform, each with examples of large followings, audiences and (probably) successes. My description of each has personal observations included, but keep in mind I don’t offer these up as criticisms as each can work, depending upon your audience. That said, consider these as styles you may choose to use in your Twitter marketing efforts.

Twitter Marketing Styles

The Conversationalist

Conversationalists are users who clearly have a reason to use Twitter for their business, but seem more apt and willing to participate in the daily chitter-chatter rather than carve out clear drives or calls to action for their business purpose. Many independent consultants and/or thought leaders fall into this category. Does Geoff Livingston’s new agency, Zoetica, benefit professionally from his Twitter presence? Certainly. Does he often intermix links or sales messages for Zoetica’s services? No. His Twitter involvement is as a genuinely interested participant in the conversation. The professional benefit is less direct and trackable, but, rest assured, it’s there.

Examples:
• @Geekmommy
• @AmberCadabra
• @shashib
• @unitedlinen

The Conversational Marketer

Varying slightly from the Conversationalist, the Conversational Marketer has a more obvious, even stated, purpose for using Twitter. Perhaps they link to their own blog posts with more frequency. Maybe they regularly remind you about an e-newsletter or their book. But they still participate in conversations with regularity, even lapsing into a let-your-hair-down approach to the extent you forget they’re using the network for their business. A good example of this is Darren Rowse of ProBlogger. He’s as approachable and engaging as anyone, but a quick glance at his latest 20 tweets while I wrote this showed no fewer than six links to ProBlogger.net posts, four to new job posts on his job board and two to his personal blog. Some people would consider that level of self-promotion spammy. Darren is anything but, however, and his audience loves every link.

Examples:
• @delloutlet
• @meijer
• @briansolis
• @mcdonalds

The Salesman

Crossing the 50 percent threshold to being mostly promotional with less conversation is the salesman. Now, some in the social media space would say this type of person is disingenuous to the social media audience. I disagree. There are lots of companies and even people on Twitter who sell first, but do engage, provide interesting links and other nuggets of value in their approaches. Michael Stelzner is a good friend of mine and the man behind Social Media Examiner (@smexaminer), a very well done blog (he calls it an online magazine, I call it a blog) on social media. The Twitter account, however, is a sales-first pitch for the website and affiliated learning opportunities that are apart of it and Michael’s business. While this type of approach may not be popular among the social media purists set, there’s always an audience for a sales-driven Twitter account that has a good product on the other end of it.

Examples:
• @jcpenney
• @phoenixsuns
• @chrysler
• @newyorker

The Spammer Broadcaster

REVISION: Thanks to Tom Webster of Edison Research and BrandSavant.com who suggested the term “broadcaster” might be more appropriate. I agree, so I changed it. Thanks Tom.

I hesitate to use the term “spammer” here, but it is appropriate. Please know I don’t use the term with these accounts as a criticism, per say. It’s a statement of fact, based on their streams, they self-promote almost exclusively and do not appear to participate in conversations (RT, @ replies, etc.). HOWEVER, I don’t necessarily think this is bad. For instance, George Stephanopoulos (@GStephanopoulos) appears to fall into the category of no conversations and ABC News pimp. But 1.6 million people dig that stuff. While that may be a bad example because he’s a celebrity, there are companies out there who have thousands (or more) of fans who would gladly take the spam to get a coupon, find out about new product releases and more. One example I use below is a Raffertys restaurant in Louisville. It’s all spam, but I follow it in case they have a good drink special or something going on when I’m interested in a local deal.

Examples:
• @nbc
• @raffbreck
• @tide
• @usweekly

So where do you fall in your Twitter approach? Are you solidly in the court that the first two are okay but the other two aren’t? Are you in the second two and have business metrics to prove your approach works? Tell us your story in the comments and let us know the good and bad in your approach. If you haven’t defined an approach yet, tell us which you think you should take and why.

The comments, as always, are yours.

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India had banned all blogging sites recently.There are 36 million internet users and about 1.5 million bloggers in India. They raise voice against delayed justice, No rule of law but rule by law, as enforced by corrupt police, politicians, and bureaucracy. Right to information and recent dilution of law relating to it.
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