Pitch Perfect: Learn How To Promote Your App To Bloggers

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I read an excellent book last week called Pitch Perfect, written by Steven Sande and Erica Sadun  (iTunes, Amazon). It is a practical advise guide to pitching your app to bloggers and is well worth the money and time.

A few weeks ago I sat with a friend who got into mobile in 2008. We were talking about something or other and he commented that he often thinks about mobile really starting in 2007 with the introduction of the iPhone. All those companies and products that came before were just white noise.

In some ways he is right. Developing, shipping and marketing a product is completely different. In the old days we shipped to dozens of resellers with no review process, our prices ranged from $30-$160, and we marketed with traditional channels: ads in magazines, print articles and op-eds, emails and physical flyers to customers, promotion through distributors and partners, and in our case bundling.

Now, an expensive app is $4.99, all sales go through a handful of storefronts, and all the old methods of marketing are defunct.

And that’s why Steven’s and Erica’s book is so important. It gives each of us a first-hand look at what it takes to get today’s primary marketing channel — bloggers — to pay attention. Since Steven and Erica work for the popular blog TUAW, they see hundreds of these pitches every week and know the difference between a good one and bad one. That makes all the difference in this book as the advice and input is hands-on and practical.

I was honored to be asked to read an advance copy and contribute a quote. This is what I said:

There are tons of great mobile programming resources but very few great resources for app marketing. Erica and Steve do a fantastic job in their book Pitch Perfect explaining in detail the best way to raise awareness for your indie apps. I have virtual yellow highlighter all over my copy!
I mean every word of it. I highly recommend picking up a copy of your own!

The Hierarchy of Innovation

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Some interesting thoughts from Nicholas Carr in his post The Hierarchy of Innovation:

If progress is shaped by human needs, then general shifts in needs would also bring shifts in the nature of technological innovation. The tools we invent would move through the hierarchy of needs, from tools that help safeguard our bodies on up to tools that allow us to modify our internal states, from tools of survival to tools of the self.

He draws this pyramid of innovation, modeled after Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

While I don’t agree with some of his conclusions (I believe Facebook is Technologies of Social Organization), I believe this is a truly interesting way to look at business opportunities. Each tier may have a set of pre-defined business models that work best. Leisure, for instance, seems predisposed to advertising.

Another thought: I can’t help but contemplate the shape, thinking it is upside down. Shouldn’t Technologies of the Self be the widest portion while Technologies of Survival be the smallest? For that matter, what does the width mean? Is it investment, revenues, customers, business size? Nicholas seems to see it as money and reputation, which backs up my earlier statement of Technologies of Self being the widest tier:

But the rewards, both monetary and reputational, are greatest at the highest level (Technologies of the Self), which has the effect of shunting investment, attention, and activity in that direction.

One final thought: are some of us predisposed to fill certain areas of this chart professionally? I don’t seem to relate well to Social Organizations and Leisure, favoring instead businesses focused on Prosperity and Self.

Killing US Education: Emphasizing Competition Over Creativity

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Awesome post by David Brooks from April on The Creative Monopoly:

One of his core points is that we tend to confuse capitalism with competition. We tend to think that whoever competes best comes out ahead. In the race to be more competitive, we sometimes confuse what is hard with what is valuable. The intensity of competition becomes a proxy for value.

…

Think about the traits that creative people possess. Creative people don’t follow the crowds; they seek out the blank spots on the map. Creative people wander through faraway and forgotten traditions and then integrate marginal perspectives back to the mainstream. Instead of being fastest around the tracks everybody knows, creative people move adaptively through wildernesses nobody knows.

He goes on to point out that this is exactly how we treat our education system now, as if it is for building competition, not creativity:

First, students have to jump through ever-more demanding, preassigned academic hoops. Instead of developing a passion for one subject, they’re rewarded for becoming professional students, getting great grades across all subjects, regardless of their intrinsic interests. Instead of wandering across strange domains, they have to prudentially apportion their time, making productive use of each hour.

Then they move into a ranking system in which the most competitive college, program and employment opportunity is deemed to be the best. There is a status funnel pointing to the most competitive colleges and banks and companies, regardless of their appropriateness.

This is why No Child Left Behind is a joke. This is why the goal of beating out Pacific Rim countries like China, Japan, Korea and Singapore on the PISA and TIMSS exams makes no sense at all.

In the business world, in the Lean Startup movement, there is a term called vanity metrics. Vanity metrics are numbers that make us feel like we are doing well but in the grand scheme of things doesn’t mean much. They don’t mean much because they are not actionable numbers and to be actionable they must have a clear cause and effect. In the iOS software world, downloads are one of those measurements. I have no idea why downloads happen because I am completely removed from the App Store process.

I would argue that PISA and TIMMS scores are also vanity metrics. Who cares if we are 19th in the world in this or 5th in the world in that. For the most part we aren’t even comparing apples to apples, as this incredibly good article by Zalman Usiskan, professor emeritus at the Univerity of Chicago, points out. What really matters is that our students can graduate and be productive members of society.

What we need in this country is more creativity, not more competition. And our success and failure in birthing creative students will not be reflected in any test score.

 

Is Bipartisanship Bad For Us?

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George Will is a funny duck. I usually agree with half of each one of his articles and disagree with the rest. This article, about subsidized student loans, is no exception. But I’m a sucker for contrarian thought and his opening two paragraphs make me think:

Bipartisanship, the supposed scarcity of which so distresses the high-minded, actually is disastrously prevalent.

Since 2001, it has produced No Child Left Behind, a counterproductive federal intrusion in primary and secondary education; the McCain-Feingold speech rationing law (the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act); an unfunded prescription drug entitlement; troublemaking by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; government-directed capitalism from theExport-Import Bank; crony capitalism from energy subsidies; unseemly agriculture and transportation bills; continuous bailouts of an unreformed Postal Service; housing subsidies; subsidies for state and local governments; and many other bipartisan deeds, including most appropriations bills.

Speaking of bipartisan snow jobs, I watched Inside Job last night. It’s a documentary about the financial crisis, wonderfully explained and presented. Well worth your time. Go watch it (Netflix, Amazon) right now.