Social Media Entrepreneurship Resources

Project

Social Media Entrepreneurship Resources
Project Information
Has title	Social Media Entrepreneurship Resources
Has start date
Has deadline date
Has project status	Complete
Has sponsor	McNair Center
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See Also

• Social Media Project

• The McNair Center researchers' admin pages on the social media project

Twitter

Exploring the Startup Twitter-Sphere

Identifying promising new startups and entrepreneurship-related organizations should be a straight-forward feat on social media sites, such as Twitter. However, the process of finding these entities is much more indirect that one would like. Searching for companies that are quickly gaining followers or widely talked about on Twitter is not a feature readily available on the site itself; Twitter’s search capabilities only allow queries by popular hashtags or keywords and not by account metrics. This makes it very difficult to locate startups that are relatively new (because they tend to have such small spheres of influence) or find out about popular entrepreneurship events until after they have already gained enough posts to be luckily awarded a position in Twitter’s “trending” hashtags list. For example, we were not aware of KPCB’s Entrepreneurship Conference until we read their popular Twitter post with a link to their 2015 Internet Trends Report from the conference. Moreover, the accounts with the most followers are not necessarily providing the most useful content. Rather, they seem gain followers just from the fact that they are famous entrepreneurship entities. In the case of VC firms, for instance, the firms with the most lucrative investments tend to gain the most followers. It seems that users follow these VC’s because they post interesting news about their investment companies and not necessarily because they have anything useful to say about the entrepreneurship field itself. In fact, many of the highly followed VC firms don’t tend to have very many retweets or favorites on their posts, signaling that people might be following the firms just because they admire them and not for the value of their content. In contrast, news agencies dedicated to business and entrepreneurship, such as Businessweek, Forbes, Fortune, and Wall Street Journal, seem to churn out the most useful content about entrepreneurship on Twitter and gain thousands of followers. However, because these agencies are not focused solely on entrepreneurship, they may not be the most reliable users to investigate for our purposes. Therefore, there must be a more efficient way to map out the Startup Twitter-sphere without relying on individually searching hashtags and keywords. Perhaps using a search filter software, such as the Private Company Performance Metrics by CB Insights, will make searching and identifying trending organizations much easier. This metrics tool is free to use and promises to make Twitter data mining more efficient, with its measurements of website traffic, social media “chatter”, media attention, mobile app data, and hiring activity.

Social media management systems: Which to choose?

Our team is considering incorporating a social media management system for the McNair Center for Entrepreneurship. We have been looking at two possible candidates: Hootsuite or Buffer.

Hootsuite is a platform to “automatically discover, schedule, and post content”. It also has the capability to search keywords to track leads and monitor conversations. All of the social media platforms can be managed via the Hootsuite software, allowing for easy management across sites. Buffer is like Hootsuite, in that it allows for queued post scheduling at the “best possible times” across the following platforms: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest. In addition, it allows teams of workers to all coordinate the same accounts, with the ability to change permissions and contributions. Buffer also has new features, in which users can design their own images, upload videos, and upload photos. It does not, however, give users the ability to monitor conversations. Both Hootsuite and Buffer offer data analytics across social media platforms, and both offer Chrome plugins to quickly upload posts without having to change browser windows.

It seems that both systems are good options when it comes to managing social media. However, it seems that Hootsuite may be more geared towards managing social media conversations about one’s own business or organization before they get out of hand. It is less of a tool for social media research and more for managing PR. Further, Hootsuite lacks the ability to post photos on Twitter as image previews instead of links. Buffer, on the other hand, allows for thumbnail images on Twitter. Buffer, therefore, seems to be a better option at only $10 per month for unlimited posts per day.

Events/Trending

• #GEW2015 - Global Entrepreneurship Week. Starts Mon 16th Nov, 2015

Findings

• Lots of the twittersphere is about going to invitation only events.
  • The groups look closed (elite group)

Investors

• Reid Hoffman @reidhoffman
• Joshua Schachter @joshu
• Ron Conway @RonConway
• Chris Sacca @sacca
• Kevin Rose @kevinrose
• Vinod Khosla @vkhosla
• Keith Rabois @rabois
• Matt Mullenweg @photomatt
• Dave Morin @davemorin
• Marissa Mayer @marissamayer
• Benjamin Ling @bling0
• Max Levchin @mlevchin
• David Lee @davidlee
• Paul Graham @paulg
• Jeff Clavier @jeff
• Paul Buchheit @paultoo
• Trey Bowles @treybowles
• Gabriella Draney @gabdraney
• Chris Dixon @cdixon
• Fred Wilson @fredwilson
• David Cohen @davidcohen
• Mark Suster @msuster
• Brad Feld @bfeld
• Dave McClure @davemcclure
• Tony Robbins @TonyRobbins
• Richard Branson @richardbranson
• Tim Ferriss @tferriss
• Gabriella Draney @gabdraney
• Trey Bowles @treybowles

Venture Capital Firms

The following seemed to have large numbers of followers!

• a16z @a16z

196k F; 26 f <4K tweets since 2009 Silicon Valley 90%+retweets (articles, people’s compliments, tweets by companies they invested in, etc.) a16z podcast episode tweets https://soundcloud.com/a16z 156 companies invested

• Bessemer Venture @BessemerVP

47K F; 695 f 4.5K tweets since 2009 original tweets congratulating companies they invested in retweets from investments entrepreneurship events ex: #LATechSummit, Hackathons, #SalesStack15 conference 115 companies IPO

• Redpoint @redpointvc

30K F; 628 f <3K tweets since 2010 434 co. invested 136 IPOs retweets from investors podcast episodes https://soundcloud.com/vb_wtt company blog posts RT about investment co.

• Felicis Ventures @felicisventures
• New Enterprise Associates (NEA) @NEAVC

45K F; 622 f <4K tweets since 2010 tweets: congratulate investment co., content from investment co., articles about their investments, event tweets (ex: #websummit2015) RT investment co. $18 B assets, 650 investments

• Accel Partners @Accel

142K F; 629 f 5K tweets since 2009 Palo Alto, CA 449 companies, 25 IPOs, 128 acquisitions tweet articles about investments, articles from company website “insights” https://medium.com/accel-insights RT from investment co.,

• Sequoia Capital @sequoia

317K F; 832 f <4k tweets since 2009 tweeting about investment companies/RT from investment companies congratulating investment companies on their ventures and successes links to company articles on the company page https://www.sequoiacap.com/build/ perspectives on company building Financial services Healthcare Internet Mobile sector Outsourcing Technology 6 VC locations, headquarters in Menlo Park, CA consider themselves “partners” to investment co. instead of investors or VC’s

• First Round Capital @firstround

128K F; <2K f 5K tweets since 2008 250 startups currently links to articles on the company’s website The Review: tactics, advice, content magazine articles: management, people/culture, product, women, PR/Marketing,engineering, design, sales, fundraising common job application to its 250 startup companies VC company that focuses on helping the entrepreneurs succeed, introduce to huge partnerships more personable company “community of entrepreneurs” v. venture capital firm tweet quotes from magazine articles and links to the full article

• Kleiner Perkins @kpcb

149k followers, following 1k They have their own articles that they post. Recently they had 4 women entreps give an event #kp12to200 super popular tweet: 2015 internet trends report RT 1000x http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/internet-trends-v1 links to KPCB podcast: Ventured tweet about #internettrends tweet about same podcast or article a few times

• Greylock Partners @GreylockVC

127K F; 643 f <3.5K tweets

• Benchmark @benchmark
• Lowercase Capital @lowercase
• Khosla Impact @khoslaimpact
• Khosla Ventures @khoslaventures
• Google Ventures @GoogleVentures

They tweet about:

Retweeting things their investors are tweeting (80%) Related articles Houston

• SURGE @SURGEVentures
• Mercury Fund @mercuryfund

Very low followers

Angels

• SV Angel @svangel
• Houston Angels @Houston_Angels

University Entrepreneurship Research Centers

• Rice University, McNair Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation @BakerMcNair
• University of Chicago, Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation @polskycenter
• Babson College, The Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship @BabsonEship
• University of Pennsylvania, The Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center @WhartonEntrep
• George Washington University, Office of Entrepreneurship @GWInnovate
• Temple University, Innovation & Entrepreneurship Institute @IEIfox
• Carnegie Mellon University, Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship @CMU_CIE

University Accelerators & Incubators

• Duke University, DUhatch @DUhatchDuke

Media and News Sources

• smallbusiness.com @smallbusiness
• WSJ What’s News @WhatsNewsWSJ
• Yahoo Small Business @YSmallBusiness
• NT Wealth @NTWealth
• Twitter Small Biz @TwitterSmallBiz
• lifehacker @lifehacker
• Forbes @forbes
• Inc. @inc
• Young Entrepreneur @YoungEnt
• Entrepreneur @entrepreneur
• BI Tech @SAI
• Silicon Republic @siliconrepublic
• Xconomy @Xconomy
• Patent Wire @PatentWire
• IP-Watch @ipwatch
• Bloomberg Business @business
• Mashable Startups @MashStartups
• Startup Digest @startupdigest
• Mashable @mashable
• TechCrunch @TechCrunch
• Poets&Quants @PoetsAndQuants
• Dell Entrepreneurs @DellInnovators

Business Schools

• The Wharton School @Wharton
• Harvard Business @HarvardHBS
• Stanford Business @StanfordBiz
• MIT Sloan @MITSloan
• Copenhagen Business School Entrepreneurship @CBS_E_SHIP

Policy Organizations

• World Economic Forum @wef
• World Intellectual Property Organization @WIPO
• USPTO @uspto
• CFA Institute @CFAInstitute
• UN Development @UNDP
• World Trade Organization @WTO
• UNCTAD @unctad
• US Small Business Administration @SBAgov
• SBA Press @SBA
• UNDP Policy Centre @undp_ipc
• Kauffman Foundation @KauffmanFDN

Crowdfunding Organizations

• Patch of Land @PatchOfLand
• CrowdfundingCampaign @CampCrwdfunding
• Crowdfunding @CrowdfundingDo
• Ultimate Crowdfunding @UltimateCrowd
• GoFundMe @gofundme
• Kickstarter @kickstarter
• Indiegogo @Indiegogo
• Crowdfunding @crowdclan
• CrowdFund Resources @CFResources