A Smart Bear: Marketing tips for geeks
Posted by Jean-Baptiste Jung on Oct 27, 2008 in Blogging Tips • 26 commentsDid you ever noticied that only a few geeks are great marketers? As a former web developer myself, I must admit that I wasn’t good at topics as such as business and marketing. Happilly, since I launched Cats Who Code, I started to learn marketing principes and how to make money online. Here’s how.
Let's get started
To tell you a bit about my life, I didn't received any business/marketing education. I had development courses, and web development became my job.
As this job is very interesting, I took a lot of my spare time to develop websites, webservices and softwares. In order to distribute my codes, I created a section on my then personnal site, where people can freely grab my softwares and codes.
Guess what? The most interesting code was downloaded 15 times in a month. Honestly, this is ridiculous. Therefore, I don't think that the software sucked that much. The problem was that I can code nice softwares or websites, but I had no clue to how I can turn it into a business, or even publicize it enought to be able to call that project successful.
The same goes when I started blogging in 2006: I wrote articles, and published it on my blog. That's all. I don't need to tell you why I didn't received any visitors, right?
Happilly, things changes, and you can learn some marketing tips that will help you to turn real ideas into real profits. In my opinion, the main problem with developers is they have lots and lots of good ideas, but don't know how to use their ideas to create a valuable business.
As a blogger myself, when I decided that I should learn marketing and business tips in order to be able to create a company someday, I searched among blogs. I have found many blogs talking about business and/or marketing, but most of them were damn boring to read and looked more like school courses than the kind of concrete tips I was looking for.
Meeting a smart bear
Happilly, I finally stumbled upon Jason Cohen blog, called A Smart Bear. Jason is the founder of Smart Bear Software, an American company who sold softwares as such as Code Collaborator, the world's most popular tool for peer code review and recent winner of the Jolt Award.
Let's talk a bit about Jason's blog: As a former developper and geek himself who became the founder of a successful company, Jason knows exactly why marketing and small businesses topics aren't only for MBA's and right-brain types.
On his blog, Jason explains lots of aspects of marketing, always using a "straight to the essential" editorial line and concrete tips that will make you understand business tips more easily.
Here's my personal selection of the 3 best posts from Jason:
Is it Ok to suck?
In this posts, Jason talks about the fact that critism is one of the best things which can happen for your company. Why? Simply because for one person offended, one other just felt in love.
The benefits of features
Everyone involved in business says that benefits are what the customer wants and features are merely the means to the end. Jason don't think so, and I totally agrees with him on that point.
Guy in bear suit
In this post, Jason talks about the importance of having a mascot and a visual identity for your business. For exemple, my mascot is the cat. You can see some cute cats on almost all my websites, which creates a complete identity for me and my projects.
Here's a blog to definitely have in your bookmarks if you're calling yourself a geek, and wants to learn about marketing and small businesses!
And you, did you already knew Jason's blog? Do you like it? Tell me in the comments!
Nice article, Jean!
I didn’t knew this blog before but what I read now (Your selection) is very interresting. One more blog to have on my google reader!
i completly aghree samir
I have a business/marketing education but I haven’t a web development course…We are complementary ^^.
If you want I have good french blog in marketing.
See you soon,
Camille
Sorry for this double post.
It’s important to have a visual identity as it’s important to have a story. Even if a blog is not a company, you can create or just developpe a story (from your personnal story or create a story from the blog).
Nice one. I didn’t knew this blog too but there’s a lot of good ideas there. I’m a geek who don’t know anything about marketing, so i should consider suscribing to their rss feed!
Very good information here. Appreciate it.
It is amazing how marketing a business efficiently can be the prime reason it is so successful, online and off line business alike.
Smart Bear Software (http://www.smartbear.com) also has a commercial online code review tool called Code Collaborator. They license it free for Open Source projects - the gallery project uses it (http://codex.gallery2.org/Gallery2:CodeReviewTips).
I was actually the opposite. I have a degree in business but am just learning now about web development and applying marketing online. I will say one thing, I don’t think I even needed that degree now!
It is ironic that few geeks are great business managers. That should change, there’s no reason to outsource a job a geek can learn. May take time, but it’s the geek that truly understands his own products, so why no manage them?
Thanks jbj for the post!
That is a another good blog that I can add to my reading - thank you. I need all the help I can get with marketing a business, and writing a good blog!
ooo.. Some nice reading there.. Thanks
Geeks are cooler than marketers, but how will anyone know if geeks can’t market. You’ve done a good job of branding yourself/your blog (I love cats!). It’s something that I really need to think about. Being general is a bit bland.
this is a very good help for aspiring marketers out there.. I enjoyed reading your post. Very interesting and I learn a lot from it. Thanks!
I’m particularly in tune with the comment about criticism. Constructive criticism is essential to robust product development. Think about a feed back loop where products are consinually improved as a result of continual feed back from users.
Thanks for the site link. As for your title and excerpt, being a techie myself, I must confess that most coders are pathetic marketing people. We face a lot of difficulties at work due to this… some smart person usually hog the limelight for whatever good we might have done/implemented.
Fortunately, as you rightly said, things like blogging is slowly helping to improve the marketing skills
Cheers,
Ajith
Nice blog!!! I will have to subscribe. I just started a new office job and my boss wants me to start doing some marketing. I don’t know anything about it. I think you could definitely help! THANX!!!
Thank you for this blog post. Any help we marketers can get with our marketing efforts is very much appreciated. I will have to check out Jason’s blog.
Thanks for sharing the blog. It really worth some time to read.
This is an interesting and informative post. Thanks for sharing ! I love this blog.
That is a really interesting post . Just shows how it takes a combination of a geek as well as a marketing mind to be really successful. Nice share.
I’m not a geek or marketing guru, by any means! I’m a San Gabriel Valley, Southern California house painter and I started using Web promotion to market my residential painting company in the local area.
Daveloping an online identity is an idea that carried over to my contract forms and business logo. Web marketing and identity has helped me greatly and is an important component of my painting business strategy.
OK I’m going to check out the smart bear blog now. I love cats. Good mascot. I’m wondering what animal I could use for my mascot? Maybe a monkey.
That sounds like me! Very interesting article.
Quote:
“Happilly, things changes, and you can learn some marketing tips that will help you to turn real ideas into real profits. In my opinion, the main problem with developers is they have lots and lots of good ideas, but don’t know how to use their ideas to create a valuable business.”
It is really a fact that there are many bright people out there with rich ideas, but they don’t have any idea to harvest them in a profitable manner. Blogging can be a very useful tool to promote such ideas.
It is the normal human tendency to identify a name with an object or a mental picture. Say for example, if you utter a word “Apple”, you identify it with a “red rounded object”. Similarly the name Jennifer Lopez conjures up the face of that famous personality.
It is for this purpose that getting an “avtaar” is beneficial in this virtual world of Internet. It provides you with an identity, and helps you to interact in a better way with others.