Ross Mayfield's Weblog

How to Bootstrap Your PR

Inc. Magazine interviewed me on How to Bootstrap your Public Relations. There are, of course, new opportunities and challenges given how technology is disrupting media:

"When you had to go through mass media, there's really a handful of media outlets or influential or important reporters. Because there were so few of them that had the ability to publish, there was this whole layer called the PR industry," he says. "Well, (now) everybody has the ability to publish. You engage in direct conversations with both traditional journalists and bloggers through the Web. As long as you were willing to be more open and sharing than in the past, now it's much more of a conversation."

The article goes on to provide some practical advice for entrepreneurs. In the interview I laid out some key elements for bootstrapping your PR, such as:

• Read first
• Amplify your interests, even if not on topic for your company
• Converse as an individual, to develop both your brand and the startup's
• Don't blog only about outcomes, share the process you are in and what you learn
• Practice what you pitch
• Develop real relationships

PR is the most important marketing function while bootstrapping and is a critical founder skill to develop. I also want to highlight that after the initial boostrap you want to staff the PR function in house or work with a PR firm for baseline programs and the ability to scale during key events.

Its the same topic as a Finance4Founders panel from early this year, I'll post a video if I can find it.

Growth is the #NewTwitter

For many the NewTwitter is about a new user experience. Or Twitter eating its client partners for lunch while adding content partners. But for me NewTwitter can be summed up in this slide:

You've probably seen a lot of charts labled Hockey Stick Growth, but this actually is one. But the good folks at Twitter probably saw something happening about six months back -- the potential for Tweets per day to level out. As Ev tweeted in his presentation: 

You don’t need to tweet to get value from Twitter any more than you need to make a web page to use the web about 2 hours ago via web

Six months from now they probably want to show another hockey stick, with today as the inflection point, and it will plot visits or views again. This is what they call mainstreaming. What's impressive is how Twitter pulled together their most significant upgrade. And if the goal was expressed in numbers it would be for mainstream growth. 

But a word of caution. Mainstreaming was the thing that Yahoo thought they did best, the core of their initial achievement. But as 2.0 came along the Mainstreaming legacy groups, culture and processes kept them from adapting. If Twitter succeeds, they need to be wary of the kind of success that can come from growth. And I hope they do, because this is still just the beginning.

P.S.: This post is really just about the obvious, while I'm waiting to actually play with it.

Management Consulting, Finance & Law Job Descriptions

DailyEndeavor, the job guide written by regular people (I'm one of them and an Advisor), just opened up three new job review categories: Management Consulting Jobs, Banking & Finance Jobs and Law Jobs. 

If you are a lawyer, consultant or budding tycoon please go share your experience for job seekers to understand what's out there and what job they would really love.

If you are a job seeker, watch this resource. For example, if you are interested in starting a career in Management Consulting, here are some job reviews that will save you some legwork:

• Manager in Strategy Management Consulting
• Analyst in Strategy Management Consulting
• Research in Strategy Management Consulting
• Summer Associate in Strategy Management Consulting

If you can't find the job review you are looking for, you can post a brief request. Other categories include Education Jobs, Human Rights Jobs & Microfinance Jobs with more on the way.