2013 Blogging Plans

January 14, 2013

2013 Scheduled Content
As a reader of several business blogs, I have come to appreciate bloggers that foreshadow their plans for what they plan to write in the upcoming weeks and months. It allows me as a reader to set my expectations and get excited about upcoming entries in the year to come.
Over the past year, I have tried to incorporate a glimpse into my following week’s post at the conclusion of each entry, and this has been well received by my readers. However, this short-term foreshadowing doesn’t give the reader purview into the bigger overall topics and themes that I plan to tackle in the upcoming months.
In an attempt to fill that information gap, I have decided to try something new. At the start of the year, I will provide a post foreshadowing the high-level topics I plan to cover over the course of the next 12 months.
This will not be a complete list of the topics, but should provide readers with a good sense of my plans for the year.
Below is a list of topics I intend to write on in 2013:

How to Quickly Size a B2B Market Opportunity

This series will discuss the purpose of opportunity sizing and provide an overview of several common approaches to quickly assess a market opportunity. This same approach is also useful for getting a rough overall market size to use in an investment opportunity assessment, either from the perspective of an acquirer or an outside investor.

Overview and How-to Guide on Win Loss Analysis

This series will explain the purpose of win-loss analysis and provide examples of applications in a startup or expansion stage business and then walk you through a step-by-step process for how to plan-out and execute this type of analysis.

Primer on Addressable Markets and What it Means for a Valuation

This series will be a high–level overview of what an addressable market is and what it means from a business perspective and an investor perspective. This information must be used in conjunction with an overall market size to truly evaluate a market opportunity.

Customer Experience Management Tips

Throughout the year I will share customer experience management tips and lessons I have learned from working with the OpenView Portfolio Companies and Bill Price, OpenView’s Customer Service Adviser.

Marketing Strategy and Branding Tips

Throughout the year I will share about marketing and branding strategies, tactics, and trends that I come across in working with and advising the OpenView portfolio companies.

Marketing and Product Strategy Lessons from Real World Case Studies

Throughout the year, I will write about major events or strategic decisions that demonstrate startup lessons for strategic and expansion stage companies to learn.

Market Exit Strategy Tips

As I have done in the past, I will share tips on how to prepare your company for an exit. Occasionally, I will write case studies highlighting success stories that were driven by these best practices.
This should provide you with a good sense of what I will be writing about over the next year. I hope you will be joining me on this journey.
This blog is meant to be a forum for discussion and lab for developing ideas. I rely heavily on the interaction of my readership community to help take these ideas to the next level. I encourage you to provide feedback on my thoughts in the comments section below, via LinkedIn or Twitter @bhickie.
If you have some specific topics you would like me to explore this year that are in-line with the focus and themes of this blog, please suggest them in the comment section below. I will attempt to address as many of these topics as I find fitting to my readership’s interests.
Next week, I will share five tips on preparing your company and management team for a market exit opportunity.

Marketing Manager, Pricing Strategy

<strong>Brandon Hickie</strong> is Marketing Manager, Pricing Strategy at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/">LinkedIn</a>. He previously worked at OpenView as Marketing Insights Manager. Prior to OpenView Brandon was an Associate in the competition practice at Charles River Associates where he focused on merger strategy, merger regulatory review, and antitrust litigation.