Pedro Jareño from Minube.com was today's speaker and it was an interesting class to say the least. Our first impression of him was his statement: "I am a walking brand". Although strange I was somewhat excited that he stated this because I had always wondering if ALL entrepreneurs have their own twitter account, their own blog etc. I myself in begining to formulate my own company have decided to do as he has done. Brand myself. As I believe as Pedro stated, people what to interact with a human being who sees the world and has opinions and therefore can respond to their needs, they don't want fake things anymore!
WHAT IS MINUBE?
Minube is a social travel portal out of Spain launched in Nov 2007. It has versions in Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, French and Chinese. It is all about users sharing their travel experiences, photos, videos and comments with other fellow travelers. It has since grown tremendously in Spain and plans to build up its other locations however like most startups they are strapped for cash and thought that it might be best to become a market leader in their own country before expanding into a huge market like the English-speaking market. They say they want to prove what they can do in their market first and then bring it to the English market. Similar to the founder of Idealista.com, Perdro seems to believe that it is best to first focus their attention on their main market rather than globally expand before fully understanding the model and how it can be best optimized.
What does he say about Attracting Online Communities?
Before they went out and found users they started populating the website with content from friends and family. THEY WERE THE FIRST USERS. Once that was built the key steps in trying to attract online communities were:
1) Target Identification:
- They began by looking for travel bloggers especially the Spanish ones: google, blogserach, technorati, twitter
- Then they personally wrote to each one of them to tell a story and advise them what they did and why they thought that their company was beneficial to them
- They had 2 – 3 people spending 10-12 hours a day doing this
2)Get Users:
"each new user is a great success"
- Tell them a story: What they are and why the user was important! If you don’t tell them then they will think you are a scam
- They held contests to attract travellers: it worked because they had to give their users something; and remember people like crazy things
- They used Inventiveness to create a friendly brand
3)Dynamization
- Productivity is very important: you need to show your users that you are very active
- He reminded us that "YOU HAVE TO BE THE FIRST USER"
- Conversation: each user is more than a user they are human beings
- They then held monthly or b-monthly contests to get users active
4)Fidelization:
"You need to create loyal users"
-They had Newsletters and "user of the day"
Key factors to Build a Community?
1) Constant innovation : users want to know that you are always innovating
2) Passion: is contagious and it is transmitted
3) Humanization: reveal the humans behind the brands. People want to met them
4) Honesty: be what you are. That’s all
5) Differentiation
6) Focus
....
What I find true and also enlightening is the fact that she theorizes that we are in the age of conversation, where people are no longer looking for one-way conversation. Users are looking for interaction and engagement and no longer can be won over by the largest bider. Therefore, those that will survive will the ones that work to earn their users and no longer blast large headlines expecting users to stay and be satisfied.
"WE WANT MORE!" They scream...
Great abstract of the talk, and a lot of value added with the references, Laurie, thanks!
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