October Ends with Headshots!

October did not bring everything I was expecting and it had a lot more downs than I wanted. But I managed to finally get around to moving my business name, Start with Tinni, to a new ABN. Also, and more excitingly, I got new professional headshots!

My last set of good headshots were done through Josari. I love them but they were due for a change. If only because there was a pandemic between the headshots and now! Also, I plan to do some marketing for my consulting business come 2022. So it made sense to update my images.

I got three shots done:

1. A plain headshot with a nice background, you can see it on my “career summary” page

2. The image with this post that I hope conveys that I am Brisbane based without having to say it!

3. Lastly, a meeting short that I felt it was better to have than not but I suspect my uses for that will be super limited

I hope the new professional headshots and my new business structure will help me grow my business in the new year. In the meantime, it’s head down and working hard towards Kyco “go live” and Christmas sales for Sharka Bosakova!

SheEO Australia Simulcast, If the Shoe Fits, Big Ideas Competition & Small Business Expo

Last week ended in a flurry of activities! I started Thursday early with the SheEO Australia Simulcast, where I got to listen to how SheEO has progressed in Australia since I attended the launch event last year. It was an inspirational way to start the morning, where I also put myself forward by asking for people to contact me if they need my services as a consultant CTO.

During the morning I found out about the “If the Shoe Fits”, a pop-up shop from The World’s Biggest Garage Sale. I ended up buying two shoes, both of which turned out to be Shoes of Prey shoes! I was thinking that they had unusual looks. But I didn’t realise that they were unusual because they were custom made! Shoes of Prey was a very successful startup that died trying to scale-up. As a startup enthusiast, I am glad I got a chance to get a hold of a pair of this part of Australian startup history.

Thursday ended with my regular meeting with Josari at the QUT Foundry, which is when I discovered that the Foundry was hosting the Big Ideas competition. I stuck around for two pitches. I wish I could have heard all of them but I had to get going. But the two ideas I got to hear were pretty cool. One was a robot that can be a companion to stressed university students. The other was about a shampoo bar with minimum packaging that can be sold by the homeless. I think both ideas are worth exploring further.

Finally, on Friday I checked out the Small Business Expo. I heard mixed reviews for the expo. So I wanted to check it out at least once. There was a good mix of businesses there, including some MLM traps! I didn’t have a game plan for promoting myself to the people there. But I was happy to take the scene in and hang out with Anne-Marie Walton of Kids Wantu, and Paul Buckwell of Josari. I’ll have a better game plan the next time I visit. But for now, I am glad to be enjoying my weekend. Also, Happy Diwali for those celebrating!

Tea Tracker First Ad Campaign: Results and Lessons Learnt

I was waiting for waiting to implement a few more features before launch the first advertising campaign for the Tea Tracker. However, fellow attendees of the App Marketing Meetup pointed out to me that with 352 million mobiles running Android. I shouldn't worry too much about making a bad first impression. So I went ahead and created a Facebook Ad campaign for the Tea Tracker. Also, a Facebook page to complement the Ad campaign.

For the Ad, I had it run for about three weeks last month. I set a lifetime budget of $200. I narrowed down the demographics to people who were interested in tea. I also filtered for people in countries known for heavy tea consumption. According to Facebook, the ad reached 474,423 people. Not bad for $200 but what about the return on investment?

The return wasn't great, but that is understandable given that the Tea Tracker is a very specialised app. I did increase my lifetime downloads by 120 people. But did not retain most of them. But that's understandable because, again, this is a specialised app for the niche market of boutique tea drinkers. But I am glad I tried running a Facebook Ad campaign. It'll be useful experience for when I do have an app with a wider potential audience.

The biggest outcome from the Ad campaign was the creation of the Tea Tracker App Facebook page because I did get likes to the page. It's only 25 people but there is potential for the page to grow, but only if I provide worthwhile content. To that end, I am writing reviews of the teas I drink. Publishing them on Medium and cross-posting them on Facebook. I have two reviews up already and hope to review a new tea each week. Who knows, the reviews might lead to more downloads and engagement for the Tea Tracker!

Social Media Marketing: Planoly

It's almost time for next month's meetup of the Brisbane iOS/Android App Marketing group. So I am still in time with my thoughts on this month's meetup! I presented my Tea Tracker to the group this month and the chief discussion was about how to hire the right developer. But I was more interested in the secondary presentation of the Instagram social media marketing support tool: Planoly.

Briefly, Planoly allows you to plan out your Instagram posts for days and weeks in advance. So that every day, you can post something on your Instagram feed without having to do daily work. Planoly's UI makes it easy to layout images, allowing users to ensure they get enough visual variety in their feeds. Not to mention, make sure that their feeds are full of interesting and relevant images.

To help with the actual image content, Planoly also pulls in public Instagram feeds. Allowing users to easily repost other's people's photos. This latter part is allowed under Instagram's terms and conditions, but there are many who would consider this morally dubious. Especially since proper photo credit is not automatically affixed, but instead left to the Planoly user.  Personally, I would always attribute properly just to avoid any potential backlash from angry content creators.

Social media marketing is new territory for me. As such, I am woefully unaware of the tools and support that's out there for building your brand through social networking. I'll definietly checkout other tools that are available, not to mention, use Planoly to market the Tea Tracker when I am ready!

Apps as investment

Earlier this month I had another productive and enlightening meetup of the App Marketing group. The topics covered included tips on outsourcing and developing a community around a product as a means of marketing. The outsourcing talk was interesting because I never thought about funding app development as a source of passive income. Similar to having a share portfolio or perhaps a more apt analogy would be investing in a business without being involved in the day to operation of said business.

Obviously, I am developing apps through my company Virgo 19. But the difference here is between being a business that is actively in the app development space. Who is making app development or a specific app the core of their business, e.g. Uber and Lyft. As opposed to being someone with an idea who funds it and then steps back, letting the app go through its lifecycle with minimal intervention. But they retain ownership of the app or at least a significant stake in the app.

I think it would work well with tool type apps, games that do not require active support to keep players engaged. Certainly interactive story apps would be perfect for these kinds of passive investment in the app market space.

The other aspect of this is that in this situation, the person funding the app development doesn't necessarily have the technical know how. They are not a coder to put it simply. They have an idea that they believe there is a market for and so they fund it and put it out in the Google and Apple marketplaces. Depending on the level of investment, they might also undertake some marketing and let it go. Active support is impossible just because they don't have a technical team actively working on the app.

However, the goal for apps as investments does not seem to be to focus on one app and make it the next Uber. But to have a diverse range of small apps that offer a return on investment for people who are looking for complementary income, as opposed to the apps being a primary source of income. Although, I guess the dream would be that your portfolio of apps is so successful, that you can just go fishing all the time! Personally, I hate fish and fishing, but I understand that is the dream of many, many people.