2013 Blogging Plans
January 14, 2013
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.