Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century - Teens in Tech Conf

© 2010 Alex Nichols

Entrepreneurship in the 21 Century

with Alex Nichols@alexnichols

st

Who is Alex Nichols?

✤ Founder of:

✤ I Love Code (iloveco.de) , a tutorial site for people who want to learn how to code.

✤ Nichols Consulting, an IT Consultation firm to businesses

✤ Take A Tee, a small company that sells tech themed t-shirts.

✤ I am the Director of Marketing for Teens in Tech Networks

✤ Marketing/PR ninja for CloudApp (getcloudapp.com)

World is Changing Fast

✤ Marketing today is radically different than it was in the past.

✤ Great environment for teens who are entrepreneurial

✤ The Internet has leveled the playing field – you no longer need billions to launch and grow a business

This is Then...

✤ 3 TV networks

✤ 5 national magazines

✤ 1 Local Newspaper

The “good ole’ days” are over.

...And now

✤ 1000’s of TV stations

✤ 10,000+ magazines

✤ Dozens of Local papers

✤ Social Networking

✤ Mobile Devices

Now, “Brands” are created overnight thanks to the Internet…

Search Rules – Get What You Want, When You Want it.

Growing Gap between How Money is Spent by Marketers vs. How Consumers Are Spending Their Time

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

2006 2006

35%

7%

20%

12%

5%

12%

8%

32%

33%37%

Ad Spend vs. Media Time

Television

Radio

Magazines

Online

Newspapers

Ad Spend Media Time

Traditional Marketing Internet Marketing✤ Newspapers

✤ Television

✤ Magazines

✤ Yellow Pages

✤ Twitter

✤ Google

✤ Blogger

✤ Facebook

<

What is Social Media?

✤ A fresh direction for marketing allowing companies to talk with consumers instead of talking at them

✤ Platforms for interaction and relationships, not just content and ads

The Reach of Social Media

✤ More than 6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)

✤ Around 1 million tweets are posted every day

✤ 12 hours of video per minute uploaded to YouTube - Over 150,000 videos a day are uploaded to Youtube

This is not a fad, nor is it used just for personal reasons.

This phenomenon represents a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.

hundreds of millions

1 billionof distributors.

There are now over 1 billion content creators,

and hundreds of millions

Teens Can Take Advantage of These Trends: Teen-trepreneurs

What Do You Love? What Interests You?

Find a Team

Get the Boulder Rolling

Make some monies

✤ Get users to participate

✤ Identify the value of this audience and estimate site engagement and users

✤ Find advertisers interested in this audience

✤ Maintain scarcity – don’t load up the site for ads

Marketing

Get Known

✤ Create a website

✤ Find similar people on Twitter and connect

✤ Publish your ideas

✤ Talk about your products and services and get others to do the same

✤ Build up a reputation of good service by listening to feedback from your customers and providing a good product.

Create Effective Branding

✤ Branding is the DNA of your company – reflects your company, value, products

✤ Also helpful is having a good logos – they communicate this brand DNA

Good:

Bad:

Design matters

✤ Clean, tasteful design

✤ Easy to use

✤ Straightforward

✤ Focused on Content

Good

http://apple.com

Case in point

✤ Hideous design

✤ Too many bright colors

✤ Complicated

✤ Attempts to fit too much information in a small space

Bad

http://www.fabricland.co.uk/

In Conclusion

✤ There has never been a more friendly time for Teens and entrepreneurship

✤ Massive changes in the media world have leveled the playing field so anyone with ambition and good ideas can create a business and a brand for themselves

✤ Leverage social media and search – learn how it works and do it regularly

✤ Always figure out how the idea can make money – a good idea without a business plan will often fail

Questions?

✤ Feel Free to contact me at

✤ alex@alexnichols.com

✤ Facebook.com/ajnichols

✤ Twitter.com/alexnichols