© 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
✤ Blogger
<
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
✤ Facebook.com/ajnichols
✤ Twitter.com/alexnichols
