Brand building mistakes France’s (and most International) entrepreneurs make | Hacker News Reader

Brand building mistakes France’s (and most International) entrepreneurs make

scobleizer.com

10 pointsnreece31 comments

Fuck. I had no idea I was so uncool until I read this rant.

Apparently being an entrepreneur means reading the marketing soundbytes of over 1000 twitter feeds. I guess the media likes twitter because they can just write headlines and omit the articles.

Nonsense isn't it. I suppose the reason Scoble loves twitter so much is that he literally has nothing else to do but use it all day. The rest of us, however, do.

I mean seriously - I don't want to sound too negative but this is just completely out of touch with anyone who actually does real work. Scoble's disappeared up his own Social Media Consultant ass. Meanwhile, back in the real world, no-one cares a jot about any of that stuff and the priority is to Actually Get Stuff Done.

Maybe Scoble would understand this stuff better if he was technical.

Yeah, that's why 500 startups are on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Scobleizer/tech-startups

They are there just to serve me, right? Uh, huh.

"Everyone else is doing it" is hardly a spectacular decision making strategy.

Just because something is popular, doesn't mean it's important to your business model. Twitter can be a powerful tool for some, but for others its still just a toy.

We used to (and still do) see people who don't have a flashy website as old and outdated. Maybe I'm wrong and this same scenario will happen again, only this time with Twitter. Personally, I have my doubts.

Regardless, that hasn't happened yet (certainly not in Europe).

http://twitter.com/cgiorgi/french-startups 157 French Startups that are on Twitter.

I don't understand what we're supposed to do with 500 twitter feeds. Surely you don't read all those?

And to be perfectly honest, I usually can't stomach reading to the end of the typical TechCrunch article, let alone reading an entire week's worth just to impress a journalist.

Do you really expect engineers to read blog hype day in and day out?

You make me feel like one of those old people who uses his mouse to click "Search" on Google.

I read them every day. It's one page. I get tons of useful things and see how companies are evolving. You should follow your own list. Maybe it's just your five competitors. Maybe just follow techcrunch. I even follow Hacker News in one list. A Twitter list, by the way, is NOT 500 separate feeds. It's one feed on one page but is a mixture of 500 feeds.

Scoble, no disrespect, because I actually quite like you. You're one of the most successful "Me, Inc." people I've ever seen. But what do you do all day?

I'll tell you what I do. I develop software. What do you do? You're a PR hound - a very good one, I must say.

You're a PR hound trying to underline the importance of PR hounds like yourself. That is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. But you must understand that many, if not most, startups simply do not have the manpower to do that kind of thing.

Diverting precious resources to assign someone to read and respond to 500 twitter feeds seems like the worst thing a startup could do. And it's a bad sign, of no product and all marketing. That might be great for some companies. But it's not a panacea and should definitely not be a blanket recommendation.

Diverting precious resources to assign someone to read and respond to 500 twitter feeds seems like the worst thing a startup could do. And it's a bad sign, of no product and all marketing.

It's probably just a sign of marketing, saying nothing one way or another about your product.

Yeah, it could actually be a good sign - it says you've got money to burn, so someone obviously believes in you.

That's all very well. But Scoble tries to label it a sign of cluelessness, when in actuality it's a rational ROI decision.

He has lost sight of the fact that most people, including entrepeneurs and VC's are not actively using twitter. He makes a large point, also in a comment here, of there being '500 startups on twitter'. 500 Out of how many? How active are they on twitter? Has it brought them anything? Do they feel it is worthwhile? In what phase did they start twittering?

Many people, entrepeneurs, companies, etc. that supposedly are on twitter, are not in fact using it. They have a presence, that's it. He mentions that many VC's are on twitter... which means nothing. There is no indication whatsoever that they are actually actively monitoring it.

The rant is also incoherent: the second point is titled 'lame and anemic marketing materials' and subsequently mostly talks about the medium through which the materials are distributed.

Several of his points are based on one case. The robot startup didn't have a demo... well, perhaps it just wasn't finished yet? Perhaps it just had a breakdown?

Then the point about the hot new app or news of the day. Because he feels it is important, it is important? I don't have time to keep track of every new thing everywhere. Hell, I don't even have an i-phone. Somehow that means I'd be a lame entrepeneur? What a silly criterion. I keep track of everything remotely related to my business. Foursquare is not related and I'm not interested in it. I have looked into augmented reality browsing. Does that excuse me or would he still get mad?

Dell says they make millions of dollars with their Twitter account. I talked with Zappos' CEO Tony Hsieh and he says Twitter is so invaluable to his business that they force all their new hires to use it. I could go on, there are tons of books about how good Twitter is working for businesses. There's a reason why businesses from CocaCola to CNN are using Twitter. I guess you have other data, though, and the rest of us are just doing good merlot or something.

If no one is using Twitter why does my Tweet stream move so fast 24 hours a day?

And, as for lame and anemic marketing materials, I figure that people got the point with just those words. I guess I have to post the lame PPT for you to be happy, but I was trying not to personally embarrass the individual companies.

Dell says they make millions of dollars with their Twitter account.

Have they explained how? Did that explanation make sense? Could there be a reason or situation in which the person you spoke would just say this?

I talked with Zappos' CEO Tony Hsieh and he says Twitter is so invaluable to his business that they force all their new hires to use it.

And anyone, including you, can name a dozen companies that are doing very well, despite not being on Twitter or even considering it.

I could go on, there are tons of books about how good Twitter is working for businesses.

The number of books is not a good indication for the success of a technology. I'd even say that the more books that need to be written to convince us, the less likely it is to be true. Smells like an attempted self fulfilling prophecy.

There's a reason why businesses from CocaCola to CNN are using Twitter.

There's a reason why dozens of other succesful business are not using Twitter?

If no one is using Twitter ... Straw man.

I figure that people got the point with just those words.

But in fact people are getting confused, because the words do not describe what follows. The paragraph hinges on two thoughts, which may leave the casual reader with 'he didn't actually support that claim'. I was interested in discovering what you considered 'anemic' and didn't find it. That's bad.

Here we go again with one useless blogger calling other companies failures. As an American living in France I'd like to point out that most of the "hot" web apps he speaks of are basically useless to me because they don't work outside of the valley and big US cities.

The French CEO doesn't hear of foursquare, in fact most Americans don't know of foursquare, because when you type in Paris you get a fuckin crêpe shop in Astoria, Queens as the top result.

And so on and so on. Most of the companies listed only have traction in US, period. Pandora sounds good but I'll stick to Spotify and Deezer because it's available right now where I'm at.

BTW, Twitter is great, but what happened to sending an email if you have questions. I have a hard time believing you can ask a good question or get a reasonable response in 140 characters. Lots of companies are on twitter but it's not their point of contact, just a tertiary channel.

I talk all the time to CEOs via Twitter. I guess they found a way to answer in 140 characters.

As to Paris, it's only been turned on for two weeks and I didn't see a crepe shop in Astoria, Queens, but I guess I missed that cause I don't like crepes. The rest of the tips left were freaking awesome, though, and I greatly appreciated the few people who left them.

Um, the whole post was actually about companies doing it right if you looked at it the right way. I didn't name a SINGLE company who was doing it wrong. Glad you are such a careful reader!

Let me summarise this: Mr. Scolbe leaves his home in the Bay Area and goes to France. He then discovers that the French are very different than the Bay Area people he interacts with and gets very deeply insulted.

Dude, this is my sixth time in France and in the past two years I've traveled 260,000 miles: most of that was to places outside of the US. When I attended a conference recently in China they had Twitter running on the screen there. Same at LeWeb (which was in France). It's pretty damn rare and lame that a company isn't on Twitter.

Yes, maybe they have heard about Twitter in other countries. But maybe in France things have not gotten to the point yet where not being on Twitter is considered some kind of a grave personal insult that requires an angry rant. I actually hope things have not gotten that far in America either.

Oh, and by the way, I wonder did the Chinese have an opinion on foursquare?

I think this rant boils down to the battle for power: does the entrepreneur have the power or does the media covering startups have the power?

If you think it's the entrepreneur, then you can ignore everything Scoble says and be happy it about. You might even disagree completely and call it a rant.

If you think the media has the power, then Scoble's post is a to-do list to be followed like the gospel truth.

Personally, I think the truth is somewhere in between, and a lot closer to Scoble's view than not. Regardless of what we the entrepreneurs think, the media has a limited bandwidth and it's regularly saturated. If you want to differentiate yourself, you gotta market and feed the media the info you want them to cover in the format they want you to use.

Funny, nowhere in the post he mentions that having an amazing product experience is essential to brand building. Apparently, product doesn't matter to the brand image but being on Twitter does.

That was implicit in the article. Geesh. I don't treat my audience like preschoolers.

If you follow these steps you raise awareness in the USA while potentially neglecting your home country of operations. Scoble should not discount the local context.

French radio was talking incessantly about Twitter this morning. You are mistaken. You really should get to France and see the local market.

Journalist in France and in Spain talk a lot about twitter, but here, in France and Spain, very few people use it. Only those that think that hype means building something. Hype is hype. Vapour. Nothing. That's the main view here.

Ahh, ye olde "hype is bad" argument. Sigh. I guess you programmers are all working at companies that are growing as fast as Facebook, huh? Well, keep doing what works! Almost every startup and major company in the world is using Twitter now. I guess they are all wasting their time creating hype.

157 French Startups that are on Twitter: http://twitter.com/cgiorgi/french-startups

I guess they are all hyping and wasting time, at least they are if you listen to the people typing here.

I guess they are all hyping and wasting time

I know you're trying to be sarcastic but basically ... yep.

Whether you agree with him or not, some people are not following the "would you say it to his face?" rule. Go ahead, criticize, but do so in a way that's professional and polite.

This annoying post could and should be retitled "list of hoops I personally demand a company to jump through or I throw a tantrum".

I mean seriously. Have you ever decided against trying out a new web site because the CEO of the company behind it isn't on Twitter? Scoble is living in his own little world.

How many startups a day do YOU really try? I bet not many.

You're right. Not many. And it has absolutely nothing to do with Twitter or any of the other points you mention.

Word of mouth remains the absolutely most powerful marketing force and as far as I can tell will remain so for a long, long time.

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