The Tinkers Academy Conversation

This is the second post in this blog. I started by making a few comments and asking a few questions. Three of you have posted Comments to my first blog note: I Had An Idea. I have also received some offline communications as a result of this blog post. If you are new here, I suggest that you read the first post and all the Comments before you read this post. That way, you will not miss any part of this conversation.

The common thread of your Comments (so far) is that technology, product development, and marketing & sales are all important and they are somehow related to each other. Those who have responded want to know more about the technology to help themselves in the tasks of product development and marketing & sales. They also want to know how to do those tasks in ways that work for their business.

In several of your communications you have talked about creating your websites and this seems to be (at least, I assume this from your communications with me) the first step in your process. I also assume that some of you have started building your products as your first step and then you will build (or then, you built) your website as the second step. In both of these you are using the model of, “Build It And They Will Come.”

Another idea that surfaced in your Comments is the belief that your website is your basic communication tool with your market (again, I assume this based on what you talk about). So, you use this piece of technology (your website) as your way of representing yourself and delivering your part of the communications. This has been a basic concept of Internet Marketing for as long as there has been an Internet. In fact, it has been a basic foundation of advertising, in general, to use technology as a one-way communication tool to get your message out to the market. Print and TV advertising does exactly the same thing.

Recently, my wife’s family had a big family event in our apartment. Some of her family are in Peru and others are in Belgium and they could not attend. So, I set up a live webcam feed so that those who could not make it could witness this event as it happened. I was also busy videotaping the event so that everyone would have a way of remembering the event and the people who were here.

I was so busy the whole time that I did not make real contact with any of those who were here. I was using all of my technology stuff to help others. This was how I showed them that I cared about them. But, I did not have any meaningful contact with anyone who attended, because I was walking around looking at the event through mt camera.

From my work I recognize that people need to use, as their basic media, certain contextual frames. I need to work with technology and information. Other people can work with other frames such as people, time, place or some others. Each of us has our own mix of these contextual frames.

My contextual frames work great if my market is also paying attention to technology and information. But, I need to find out who my market is before I can be sure that my communications is a good match for my market. And, I cannot know if the match is good unless I have a two-way conversation with my market.

So, building products and building websites might not be the best starting place for the conversation with our market. So, I’m writing a free ebook about just this subject. I’ll make it available to you through this blog. If you have joined this blog, I’ll email you as soon as I have it posted.

Now, more queries. Please use the Comment feature of this blog to join the conversation, so we all can benefit from your thoughts and ideas.

1) Tell us about your products you sell/deliver from your websites. Tell us about your market (housewives, professionals, small businesses, sports enthusiasts, etc. . .), your product form (ebook, audio, video, tele-seminars, etc. . ), and your content (happiness, goal setting, health, etc. . .).

2) Tell us your biggest challenge in your online business (difficulty with the technology, struggling to create content, not enough customers, etc. . .).

Comment now while you are still here. I’m listening.

Rodger