Marketing with Mike Volpe

I found this post "The Marketing Hipster Dictionary" by Craig Rosenberg (aka The Funnelholic) and enjoyed it.  (Yes, I found it through a vanity search since he mentioned me... but Craig is a good guy, already in my RSS reader and I've done a webinar with him before.)

Craig mentions a number of concepts in this post, but one intrigued me because it hit home - "Maven Marketing".  Craig says:

"Maven marketing: I just made this phrase up too, and I'm hoping it sticks. Today's marketer does two things with mavens:  (a) Courts and/or works with mavens to create helpful buyer materials that don't necessarily ever mention their product - that's right. Mavens get more downloads than you and are TRUSTED. Today's buyer trusts two people: their peers and their mavens. Those two groups far outweigh the vendor.
(b) Creates mavens from their organization. Here's one for all those people with social media budgets. Start by creating an internal maven. Here's an example from the marketing industry: Mike Volpe (@mvolpe), VP at Hubspot, has 15,872 people who follow his every move on Twitter. They read him, respect him and re-Tweet him. That's hipster marketing."

What I find interesting is that is isn't just me at HubSpot that we use as a maven to build community.  That would not be scalable, and would not be a smart way to build the company.  We're developing lots of people in the company as useful (not salesy) resources for the marketing community.  Some examples (and I left out a LOT):  Dan Zarrella, Kyle James, Rick Burnes, Ellie Mirman, Beth Dunn, Karen Rubin, Peter Caputa, Jeanne Hopkins, Rebecca Corliss, Prashant Kaw, Pamela Seiple, and many, many more.

What do you think?  Does your company develop mavens for your market?  Leave a comment...

HubSpot is having a 1K Celebration to celebrate our first 1,000 customers.  We're doing an open house in our new office.  Come by, meet the team, have a drink, play some foosball.

Thursday, Feb 19, 7pm
1 Broadway, 5th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02142

Registration is REQUIRED.

I just finished the first ever "State of the Twittersphere" report using data on over 600,000 Twitter profiles from Twitter Grader (yes, it slowed down Excel a bit).  There were a bunch of interesting trends, but the most surprising to me was that based on my estimates from looking at the data, Twitter seems to be growing by 5,000 to 10,000 new accounts per day.

See the full "State of the Twittersphere" report.

We've slowly been getting better at making viral videos at HubSpot, our first few got a few thousand views.  The last one has over 30,000 views right now.  I think this one is the best so far.  We took bets on how many views it would have on YouTube after 7 days.  What do you think?

Getting to be a finalist in awards like the Crunchies just isn't possible without a little self promotion, so here is a list of the top reasons I would like you to nominate HubSpot for the 2008 Crunchies in the "Best Enterprise" category.  It takes 15 seconds and does not require any registration at all.

1. We built the free SEO tool - http://Website.Grader.com/ - it has evaluated over 500,000 websites.
2. We've been in TechCrunch once before. Actually, twice. And Guy Kawasaki likes us too.
3. Robert Scoble says "Marketers are going to love HubSpot" 
4. During 2008, HubSpot has grown from about 200 customers to nearly 1,000 customers.
5. There are over 1,400 fans of HubSpot on Facebook. 
6. We like to make funny videos.  Lots of them.  The first one has over 30,000 views last time I checked. 
7. HubSpot has a proven business model - our customers pay between $250 and $500 per month for our software - unlike companies like Twitter that are still trying to find a business model.
8. We give away tons of free info and marketing tips on our marketing blog, which has over 8,000 subscribers, is in the AdAge Power 150 and the Technorati Top 10K.
9. In May 2008, HubSpot raised $12m in additional capital from Matrix Partners, giving us more than enough cash to last through the current economic downturn.
10. People rave about HubSpot.
11. We have the first and only live weekly marketing video podcast.  (You can subscribe in iTunes to see old episodes.)
12. We build the free press release marketing tool - http://PressRelease.Grader.com/ - it has evaluated over 50,000 press releases.
13. We built Twitter Grader - http://Twitter.Grader.com/ - it has evaluated over 500,000 twitter profiles.
14. We like to play foosball.
15. Working at HubSpot is different than working at Digg.
16. Tons of HubSpotters are on Twitter, and our @grader account is one of the top 100 profiles on Twitter.
17. We do lots of free marketing webinars.  Our last one attracted 5,000 people.
18. We have built a LinkedIn marketing group with over 14,000 members.
19. We had a fun second birthday party for our company (see birthday pics).
20. If you nominate HubSpot for the Crunchies in the "Best Enterprise" category, you'll make me happy!

Here is the direct link to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3yCB7AvvAk

I heard someone call HubSpot the "Web 2.0 Version of [a marketing software company]" this week.  It annoyed me.  Less because they were comparing HubSpot to a sort of boring company with complicated, expensive products that don't really work, but more because they described HubSpot as "web 2.0".

Top 10 Reasons Why HubSpot is NOT a Web 2.0 Company

1. Our company name is easy to spell.
2. We have more people over 25 in the company than under 25.
3. Our company name does not sound like it ends in "-er" but actually just ends in "r".
4. We are not based in a loft in San Francisco.
5. Our logo does not have a reflection in it.
6. Our product does not say "Beta" over 2 years after launch.
7. We do not have Guitar Hero in our office. 
8. Both of our co-founders have gray hair.
9. We have paying customers... lots of them.
10. Revenue.  Did I mention revenue?

I saw that the Digg folks created a little video so people would know who they were at a local Meet Up. Fun idea, cute song. Check it out.

Digg Dubb: Groove Is In The Heart from Trammell on Vimeo.

I found this video through Twitter, and the comment someone made was that "it must be fun to work at Digg - can I get a job there?" That made me think. Do we need to make a crazy dance video to show people it is fun to work at HubSpot? If we don't, does that mean it is not fun to work here? The answer to both questions is... NO.

Is it not fun to work at HubSpot? No way. We have a BLAST here! I just think we're a bit geekier than the Digg crew. Marketing Geeks. Or Internet Geeks. Or geek bloggers. We would rather debate a product feature or some interesting statistical analysis than lip synch something by the B-52s. We have lots of fun and interesting people - avid Red Sox fans, talented DJs, yoga masters, environmentalists, and animal lovers. A lot of the people at HubSpot are really funnny. Some of the quietest developers can say things that will make the whole room start laughing out loud. We keep a page on our internal Wiki with funny quotes from employees dating back over a year. We have all sorts of internal bets and games and challenges, all aimed at bringing out the best performance of our team. We cherish individuality - in terms of attire, in terms of work schedule, ideas, and more.

But I don't think any of us can dance. Maybe a couple people can. We might even have a funny corporate video some day. But it won't be like this one. Why? Because we're not Digg. We're geekier and more practical. We're across the street from MIT, hardened by Boston winters and have a practical edge to us from the New England Yankee culture. There is no time for dancing here. (Unless the dance video will generate leads and customers.)

If you are willing to work at a company that does not create lip synched dance videos, HubSpot is hiring. Even better if you are a closet marketing geek. We really are a lot of fun. Just in a different way than Digg.