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Rachel Chaikof

9 Awesome Reasons to Use Infographics in your Content Marketing | Jeffbullas's Blog - 0 views

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    Gotta come up with more infographics to create for Invup!
Daniel Benoni

Virtual Volunteers - How to Recruit Online Volunteers For Nonprofit Fundraising - 0 views

  • Virtual Volunteers - How to Recruit Online Volunteers For Nonprofit Fundraising
  • Most parent organizations, charities, teams, and other non-profits can always use as many volunteers and donors as they can get.Organizations have difficulty finding volunteers for a variety of reasons.
  • the smaller and more local the organization is, the smaller the number of potential volunteers there are available.
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  • a community soup kitchen will never be able to recruit as many volunteers that a national hunger relief charity will be able to.
  • smaller nonprofit organizations have the same needs that the larger ones have
  • fundraising, there is always a need for a fund-raising chairman, a person to do publicity, team leaders and members and the list goes on
  • virtual volunteers.-Volunteermatch.org -Networkforgood.org -Charityguide.org -icouldbe.org -Onlinevolunteering.org -Serviceleader.org -WorldVolunteerWeb.org -Youthxchange.net
  • For example, if you are in need of a graphic designer you might be able to find a virtual volunteer half-way across the country willing to design your fundraising promotional materials.
  • Managing virtual volunteers requires a person with good communication and computer skills.
Daniel Benoni

What is the best way to do customer discovery when all I have is an idea? I don't want ... - 0 views

  • What is the best way to do customer discovery when all I have is an idea? I don't want to build a prototype until I know the idea is valid and that it's worth doing.
  • Read up on Lean Startup from CustDev.com and AshMaurya.com.
  • write down your hypotheses and assumptions around the idea you have
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  • Benjamin Yoskovitz
  • identify a target market and speak to (ideally in-person) 30-50 people in that market and validate (or invalidate) whether they have the problem you think you can solve.
  • If they do have that problem, then you can find a way to build a prototype or even just put together an HTML prototype or a Powerpoint deck together and go back to those people and interview them about your solution. If that validates, then you build.
  • Chances are when you do Problem Interviews you’ll find there are holes in your reasoning. You’ll go back and change your hypotheses and assumptions and do it again.
  • Bottom line – you absolutely do NOT need a prototype to validate an idea.
Daniel Benoni

On the (un?)importance of design - 0 views

  • On the (un?)importance of design
  • We recently underwent a Cinderella-like transformation: A total redesign of the WP Engine website from despicable steaming pile of hideousness to a designed, thematic — dare I say artistic? — sleek new look. Does it matter?
  • It was such a contrast, customers emailed us saying “Thank God you fixed that horrible website. I was embarrassed when referring you guys to friends.” But hold on. They were still customers. And they still were referring us to friends. So I wonder, did it really matter?
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  • It must have mattered. Look how bad it was. Not only were the pages just ugly, they were peppered with database errors and CSS blowups
  • . It doesn’t prove design doesn’t matter, but it does suggest design may not be the deciding factor.
  • Can you see at what point in time we changed design?  No?  Must not have made a difference. Let’s look at time-on-site:
  • Nothing. But this is all superficial — what Really Matters is the Conversion Rate: are more or fewer people signing up each week:
  • Hmm. Looks like everything objective is saying “it doesn’t matter.” But as much as I respect and follow Lean Startup theory, objective measurements aren’t the only things that matter. Those customer emails matter too.
  • The other day we landed a large customer who said they could tell from our website that among our competitors we’re more mature and ready to handle a bigger customer like them. I can tell you — objectively — that we’re among the youngest of our competitors, and although I have a list of reasons why “we’re better,” the truth is that particular customer would probably be served just fine by several of those competitors. Was it the design that gave us that edge? Could be. Didn’t hurt, anyway.
  • Still, the more I look at the importance of design in the startups in my little career, the less it seems to matter.
  • Modern Lean Startup theory blares out from the red-tiled rooftops of Stanford: Seek the Data and Ye Shall Find! First the bounce-rate. If our website design was repulsive — literally — the bounce rate should now diminish. Here’s the data:
  • An even more extreme example comes from my second company ITWatchDogs. I displayed its old homepage at the magnificent Webstock design conference in Wellington earlier this year; the crowd whooped at our violent assault on the visual arts, complete with calliope menubar colors, two broken images tag above the fold, and a layout model that could be seen as a “grid” only after consuming a pillowcase of mushrooms:
  • But you’re anticipating the punch-line — ITWatchDogs grew every month, made millions of dollars, stole business from competitors with billion-dollar market caps (and professional-looking websites), and had a successful exit.
  • Of course it’s only fair to also point out some of the many instructive counter-examples: Hipmunk is the same thing as Orbitz or Travelocity — the only difference is amazing design, not just because it looks good but because it’s so useable. In the words of Joel Spoksly — the design “affords usability.” (P.S. Early Hipmunk team member Alexis Ohanian is so cool and smart and rich and funny and successful and good-looking that really he doesn’t deserve to be alive. (P.P.S. Hey flamers, for God’s sake it’s a joke! Don’t you realize I’m just sore from losing the Pecha Kucha competition to him?)) I always use and recommend Amy Hoy’s time zone tool only because it’s just nice to use and look at. (P.S. she also authors a terrific blog aimed at the solo entrepreneur.) Many people credit Mint’s smash success with their terrific design. Considering how many features were broken for how long, it’s hard to argue. 37signals documented — with data — how design changes results directly in more credit-card-swiping customers. It doesn’t get more “business value” than that. So where does that leave us in the “matters / doesn’t matter” question of design?
  • I think you can go either way, but you must decide whether or not you’re going to value design as core to your startup’s identity, and then act consistently. Here’s what I mean.
  • It’s clear from the outset that design is the only competitive advantage Hipmunk has over its competition. Specifically, by making the flight-search problem pleasurable and useable instead of feeling like you’re navigating pivot tables from Excel ’98.
  • They don’t have better data, better branding, better name, better SEO, or more money. Just better design, and not just easily-copyable incremental improvement, but a quantum leap better.
  • When design is that fundamental to the business — how it acquires and retains customers, garners attention and referrals, and distinguishes itself in the market — obviously design can be the most important thing.
  • Conversely, at ITWatchDogs the company’s internal and external culture was that we’re low-cost, friendly, approachable, regular guys, who understand exactly what you worry about, exactly what your budget is, and we nail it. The site might have looked bad, but our message couldn’t have been clearer.
  • But it is useful to decide where you come down on the question of design in your startup, because if it’s important you’d better work on that right now and develop a consistent culture of valuing design through-and-through, and if it’s not important you’d better decide what is important and nail those things all the harder, because you’ll be competing with people who are using superior design to cover up their lack of competency in those same areas.
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    Design, important or not
Daniel Benoni

Charitable Checkin Turns Your Good Deeds Into Rewards - 0 views

  • aking the checkin and making it philanthropic
  • lets users post their actions via SMS, web, email, Foursquare or Google Talk.
  • ach act earns the user points that can be redeemed for actual rewards and discounts
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  • choosing to snack on an apple rather than a piece of cake
  • or larger projects like volunteering your time to a non-profit
  • users start to build a social identity based on their actions.
  • where users flesh out profiles based on their philanthropic interests.
  • This concept of a charitable social layer has taken off on other online platforms like Jumo or Causes.com. People are becoming more conscientious of how they’re perceived online. This social layer based on philanthropic interests is both an easy way to track causes and a positive way to self identify.
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