10 ways to be better organized

image credit: Mike Savad

These are some tactics I use for my personal organization, maybe some could be useful to you.

1. Handle your tasks and goals with a calendar (I do it with google calendar so I can easily switch from my Mac to iphone)
2. A task should be doable in 45min (like this post :))
3. Your goals and tasks are SMART (Specific Measurable Assignable Realistic Time-related)
4. On every Sunday night, make a review of the past week goals (achieved, failed) and set new ones for the coming week.
5. Every Sunday night, start to allocate important tasks you need to do for the coming week
6. Every month, on sunday night, review your past month goals and set new ones for the coming one.
7. Assign each day of the week with a main topic that is in your goal list
8. Every night, look at your task list, review and prepare the tomorrow's one
9. Have a color code in your calendar for task status (red: not done, green: done)
10. Activate SMS notification for your tasks

If you have any suggestions, I would be happy to read them, always ready to improve my efficiency.

Day-to-day Product Management #4: 55% download increase with Facebook ads

Based on my previous experiment, I decided to run a Facebook Ads campaign for my mobile application I decided to spend 30$ to check whether the 25c per download would be linear.

Therefore, by spending 30$ and estimating a cost of 25c per download, I was expecting to get 120 new download. At the end of the campaign, I got 113 new downloads.

That's actually not far but I am quite disappointed because I was expecting some magic to happen but that was not the case :(.

Now I am going to try iAds (in-app ads from Apple) and a website.
Stay tuned!

Day-to-day Product Management #2: 2 months after launching an iPhone game

Since the last month post on this topic, I did 2 actions for promoting the iphone app I developed:

• ask people I knew to provide feedback on the game on the App Store: The game is now 5 stars and has 3 comments.
• put some links (5) on French news websites comments section for relevant articles and relevant audience

The impact is very limited since in one month I got only 11 more downloads :(

For the coming month I will try the following advertising platforms and let you know about the results:

-Facebook ads

-Google Ads

-iAds

Day-to-day Product Management #1: 1 month after launching an iPhone game

Today, I want to share with you my day-to-day experiences on distributing an iphone app.

In my previous product management roles at HTC, distributing and advertising mobile apps was handled by dedicated marketing teams. Therefore I want to enhance this part of marketing skills , the P of promotion :).

In order to do that, I chose to do a very soft launch (almost secret one!) to have a reference point of what happens when you only share the link with your friends on Facebook and talk about it around a beer.

As you will see in a bit, there is no free lunch and miracle did not happen!

Firstly, I chose to do a copycat of the successful Flappy bird game because from a product perspective, millions of users have shown interest in it and copycats have been downloaded thousands of time. So why not use it as a basis and add a funny twist to it?

As a French, I have been amused by the affair our President had earlier this year and I used this funny story as a basis for the game.

So after developing the game, I pushed it in iTunes Connect, which is the tool you need for publishing your apps on the App Store. Once released officially on the 29th of May 2014, I shared the link on several channels (and did again after a minor update on the 13th of June 2014):

• 2nd of June 2014: 
• Twitter share:

Look! I scored 0 points in Flappy President! http://t.co/S80PZmoPDG pic.twitter.com/q39mmNWbNu
— PA Antonini (@pierreantoine) June 2, 2014

• Facebook share:

                                     

• 11th of June 2014: I posted a brief article on the game on this blog and shared the article on Google+ account (but who cares, no one uses Google+ ;))
• 13th of June 2014: I asked for help on Facebook for translating the game description for iTunes

• 16th of June 2014: I shared a score on Twitter

Look! I scored 11 points in Flappy Prez! http://t.co/S80PZmoPDG pic.twitter.com/5D5E950wUp
— PA Antonini (@pierreantoine) June 16, 2014

19th of June 2014: I share updated version on Twitter and Facebook

Iphone4 bug solved https://t.co/tlLuIIIXhX
— PA Antonini (@pierreantoine) June 19, 2014

To help you visualize my network, I mainly use Facebook (around 500 friends) and I am not a big fan of Twitter (around 150 followers and use it mainly as news feed for tech and entrepreneurship).

So what are the results? Wait for it.... a stunning 123 downloads in one month!!! Youhou!!!

As you can see on the graph, main downloads are around the 13th of June 2014 (when I asked for help on Facebook on this project).

It appears that sharing update on the new version had very low effect (if any) on the 19th of June and after. Since then I have not communicated at all on the app.

So with this, it appears that with no clear promotion strategy, nothing really happens!

From this point on, I need now to test several other channels to measure their ROIs and see whether I can reach the 10K target :)!

So the plan is (and you will soon see the reports):

• Facebook ads
• Google ads (since it's a mobile app, not sure it really makes sense)
• Links in newspapers and forums
• Landing page for the app with a well-formated SEO
• iAd campaigns
• Linkedin share

Stay tuned, more to come soon!!

--Pierre-Antoine Antonini

Flappy Bird inspired game: Flappy Prez

Hi everyone,
Since my HTC subsidy closed down at the end of year 2013, I am now looking for a job in Product Management in Mobile/Telecom/Web sectors.
While applying to different jobs, I am going back to coding a bit and I have recently published on iTunes a Flappy Bird replica based on our beloved French president.
You can have a try here :)

A small interview promoting the HEC MBA ;)

Interview HEC

Launching Zifiz

Guys,

I and a fellow classmate from HEC are launching our startup Zifiz.

What we do: We develop a product locator service based on a web app.

Why? Because shopping stresses us out and we want a solution to help us save time and money!

Where we are: In Paris, in the Palais Brongniart as we got selected by Silicon Sentier to enter their startup accelerator Le Camping.

If you want to follow our progress, please do not hesitate to register on our landing page. As soon as we are launching the beta, we can let you know.

Market Study on Live Streaming services in the Music Industry

The HEC MBA is soon coming to an end :( Before that, I still have to finish one of the major assignments for my class "Business Plan Workshop" in the Entrepreneurship track.

As a subject, I have chosen to study the potential of Live Streaming service applied to Music.

The reason why, I have chosen that topic is that I am passionated about music and technology and after the MBA, I really would like to work in a startup (or create one :D) dealing with that subjects.

Working on that study has been a great way to learn more on the Music industry where I have no past experience. Thanks to the HEC's network, I have been able to meet Universal Music and EMI executives and great discussions have followed. It's really cool being able to meet anyone in an industry for an academic project :D

Right now, there are several services offering live music streaming such as Grandcrew.com, Justin.tv, BigLive.com... What is still not clear is how these companies make money out of it if they make any. Indeed, even though many companies have launched such service, music fans do not really seem ready to pay for watching a live concert on the internet.

Therefore, many studies and bloggers argue that it can be an indirect sales channel to help music bands develop their marketing strategies (Direct-to-Fan and give Reason-to-Buy). By the way, I have come across a great study by Virginie Berger (a french blogger specialized in the music industry) called "What is a good digital music strategy?" and it provides great tips on our bands should build their marketing offer to reach and maintain their fan base.

Coming back to my market study, the general trend seems now to be to have a better knowledge on your fan base and propose them customized offers depending on their willingness-to-pay. Several music startups are working on that: Topspin in the US, Noomiz in France.

But this is for recorded music as it has been a decreasing market for the last few years. On the live music market, the picture is a bit brighter in the sense that this is a growing one and that the industry is restructuring around that. Indeed, music labels are now buying music venues and tour management companies in order to find new revenues. And vice-versa when LiveNation (tour management company) offers 360-deal with artists managing their whole career from the recordings, tours, merchandising,...

So what is to be done in the live music market? Are there still market imperfections where a startup could work on and make a profit out of it?

These questions are still open for me and I will work on that for the remaining months of my MBA. If you have opinion on the subject, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Small Giants: you should read this book

I have just finished reading the book "Small Giants" by Bo Burlingham and every entrepreneur-to-be should read it!

The author explains how some companies choose to be great instead of big. By focusing on their passion and vision, CEOs manage to create companies with Mojo that have a huge power of attraction to customers, suppliers and employees.

The way to go for your start-up?