Marketing Gorgeous Tooled Leather Harley Davidson Seat Covers

Alex of OldSchoolAlex.com and I talked about making his work more more visible. He is an artisan of gorgeous tooled leather harley seat covers.

Sure, there's a lot of noise and clutter on the web. As well as Google pushes cream up to the top, rarely does the move innovative and creatively brilliant work make it into daylight. It's always some corporation's website that's already got a huge following. And it's that following that buzzes in Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
So the rich get richer.
That brings us to the Million Dollar Question. How do you market a small business against the tide of huge corporate budgets with solidified fan bases?
It's actually simpler than you think if you know the anatomy of the web. There are pressure points and hinge joints just waiting to tip to the other side. It's just like Aikido. A tiny high school girl can, using just the right angle, tension, torsion, and leverage, break a big Harley Davidson dude's wrist.
On the web, there are two types of consumers no matter what your market.
There are influencers and there are followers. 
This is saying the same thing as "there are early adopters and there are stragglers."
It's those early adopters who will swing from Apple iPhone 5 to Samsung Galaxy 4 without ever looking back in the blink of an eye. There's no loyalty. In doing so, they blog, they Tweet, they Facebook, They Pin and RePin. It's this group that also pulls the purse strings of the stragglers. Win them over and you just plain win. Now comes the grand master Kata, Poom Sae, the Drill. 
How do you tear these guys out of the huge corporate claws that have them now? You don't have to. You don't have to compete against corporate marketing budgets. You'd lose anyway.
You see, I lied. There IS loyalty. These early adopters ARE loyal. But not in the way you think. They are NOT loyal to a brand. And when you win them over, you've got to remember that. They won't be loyal to your brand either. What they ARE loyal to is "amazement."
If you've got something amazing, they've been waiting for the next amazing thing. They are not caught in the claws of your corporate competitor. They are just hanging out until they find the next amazing thing.
So if you're competing against huge corporations, you've got the wrong target in your sights. You're fighting a phantom. Your real competition is your target market's expectations. Beat their expectations to a bloody, sinewy, gnarly pulp and you've got the head of the dragon feeding out of your palm.
AMAZE.
Now that you know WHAT to do, HOW do you do it?
Simple. One human being at a time. 
These early adopters are online using public social media profiles saying things like,
"just bought a new Harley."
"my Harley broke down."
"I want a new Harley."
1. Find them. Create search filters in Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, and even for blogs. 
2, Engage them. Talk to them. Be a good neighbor. 
3. Don't sell. When's the last time you WANTED to buy from a salesman.
4. Be supportive and valuable. Answer their questions. Help in every way you can.
5. Make sure you clearly state what you do and sell. Be super clear in your social media profile name. In Alex's case, i'd go with something like @harleyleather for Twitter.
6. If you make your products overt in your profiles but never sell, you'll win the respect of target market. Yes, there is a personal vetting process.
How many times do you have to see that slick, good looking rich guy strike out with the prettiest girl in school? How many times do you have to see the prettiest girl in school fall in love with the normal guy who was just there for her and again.
7. Remember, trying to get someone to do something makes them defensive. 

Overcoming the Stats Leveraging Miracle Power
Yes, you've got to talk to thousands of people. In reality, statistically, you're going to have talk to 1,500 before any one of them buys from you. By the time you talk to about 9,000 people, you'll have about 4 sales. It's linear up to this point. Knowing this, most people especially if you have rent to pay and TV shows to watch, give up. But at 10,000 people, something quantum happens. They start taking your place.
At about 10,000 people, you've created a self sustaining current. You've become that drop of water that broke a hole through a boulder. Miracles happen. Miracles happen predictably, constantly, and dependably. 
A trained woman's voice will break a wine glass every time. An icicle focuses sunrise sunlight and sparks a winter forest fire every time. 
If a chubby Korean man can make the world dance funny, you can get other people to rave about your products.
ReCapped...
1. To Beat The Major Corporations, Don't Try to Beat Them. Just Make Amazing Stuff
2. Be a Good Friend to Early Adopters
3. Repeat #2 about 10,000 times (for how to speed this process up, see http://sparkah.com/private ) 

Stanford TaeKwonDo Defeats Cal (UC Berkeley) Breaking 23 Year Streak!

Congratulations to Tim Ghormley and the Stanford Taekwondo team

(From a Stanford Athletics Dept. e-mail)

Congratulations to Tim Ghormley and the Stanford Taekwondo team for winning the National Collegiate Taekwondo Championship this past weekend at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. 

Stats:  

Won Coach of the Year (3^rd year in a row)—Congrats to Coach Huy Nguyen 

Won Freshman of the Year (2^nd year in a row)—Congrats to Adrienne Ivey, who also won gold, and a spot on the US National Team

Broke Cal’s streak of 23 years of undefeated championships!  

Real Estate in Korea, 10 Secrets Foreigners Never Know

Korea is a modern country. It rawks in many ways. The food is amazing if you like spicy. The food and the drink is dirt cheap if you like spicy and hang overs. Love motels only cost $50 a night and some of them are nicer than Beverly Hills hotels. Most aren't. 

But the real estate sucks.

Real estate in Korea is really tricky. First of all, even if you have a lot of money, Korea doesn't have a lot of space. It's the country with the highest percentage of uninhabitable land. 70% of Korea is steep rugged mountains. It's perfect if you're going to do a mediation sabatical and reach enlightenment while you're at it. But for most people, it sucks. Everyone has to live in an apartment unless unless you're ok with commuting 3 hours to get to the city.

By city, I mean Seoul, Busan, or Dae Gu. 

There are no houses with front or back yards in the middle of the city in Korea's major cities. Actually, I lied. But they cost more than a house on the beach in Malibu. If you have that much money, just buy a house on the beach in Malibu.

So now that you know the ropes, these are the 10 Secrets Foreigners Never Know about Real Estate in Korea.

 

Genius Wall Mount Shelving Systems for Tight Urban Living

If you're paying $5 per square foot in NYC, the last thing you want to do is put your books on a shelf that's on the floor. Think about it. If your book shelf takes up 8 square feet, you're paying $40/m just to house your books. Toss in a stereo and your new Apple TV and you're up to $1000/year for the floor space to house the stuff you already paid for to own!

Sure, it's just academic.

But wouldn't you feel much better if none of the stuff you bought kept on costing you money per square foot per month?

That's why I love these brilliant designy genius wall mount shelving systems for tight urban living.

How to Decrease Bounce Rate to Blogs and eCommerce Websites 80%

You know how hard it is to get one person to click on your links. You know how much it costs too. If you use Adwords, it's going to be about $1.50 per click. If you use Facebook, it'll be less but after getting all those people to click over from Facebook, you won't be able to get them to buy anything.

In either case, you're bleeding buyers to that enemy called "bounce."

One bounce and you've wasted your buck fifty.

So how do you get people who see your Ad, Tweet, Facebook Status Update, Google+ post, etc to click through?

Once they do, how do you get them to dig deeper instead of bouncing back to where they were?

You're going to have to do what editorial editors have been screaming about for millenia. You're going to have to change your headline writing style. But don't worry, it's really simple. You only need to delete one word from your headlines. Here's that word and why: How to Decrease Bounce Rate to eCommerce Stores and Blogs.

The secret is in being pragmatic so your reader feels like you're letting them be the judge. Nobody likes being preached to.

Email Google Docs / Drive Form Submission Results & Answers from Spreadsheet

I hate how many clicks it takes to get from my Gmail inbox to the submission results of any one of my 17 different Google Drive or Google Docs forms. 

For starters, the UI is confusing. 

Do I look in my drive? Shared with me? Starred?

When I do finally find the form submission, I have to sort from LAST to FIRST ever single time. There's no way to lock in VIEW MOST RECENT.

Finally, when I do find the latest submission, if the sender answered my form with something wordy and verbose, I can't read the rest of his submissions including his email address because they get pushed off of the screen. 

So, can't I just get an email of the form submission results or answers from Google drive / docs?

Why yes. Just click the link above to see how.

There's even a fully usable javascript to paste into scripts.

Movie Countdown Timer and Calendar: Innovative Apps

In speaking with other startup and tech investors, the one thing I hear most is, "why didn't I think of that!"

Ironically, there is an answer to that. 

I recently had a chance to touch base with MediaSpree, the makers of Movie Clock, which I prefer calling movie countdown timer and calendar. His concept is brilliant. As often as we wonder when a movie is playing, we also wonder when a movie will START playing. In other words, when opening day is for that movie.

In the past, you physically had to take an event, remember the date, walk 17 clicks and drags down your GUI and enter that date in Google Calendar or other calendar program to schedule a movie you couldn't buy yet.

That's the answer.

You too could have thought of any number of brilliant app ideas to launch into the iTunes app store if you just observed all the things you're NOT doing. See why that's tricky?

Look through your daily life and observe the things you're not doing. And then ask yourself, why isn't there an app that let's me that THAT THING?

To help push you in the right direction, start with the things you are doing. Anything that takes more than 3 unique actions to execute is a target. For example, how many clicks does it take for you to buy a new pair of shoes online? 

You're so used to that 17 click drudgery that you never stopped to ask, "why aren't I doing this in ZERO clicks?"

Well, Google Glass is solving that problem right now. You already know that Google Image Search can do facial recognition. Google is using that technology to identify objects you see in store-fronts. In a few months, you'll be able to just say, "OK Glass, Buy THAT."

You see where this is going? 

Observe your daily routine and note anything that takes more than 3 clicks, scrolls, or drags. 

You'll quickly tumble down the rabbit hole of app building possibility. All you need next is a company like MediaSpree to help build that app for you. Contact them for their experience and expertise.