One thing I learnt this year is that creating or developing a
piece of software is the easy part of any development process! The hard
part is getting it heard and known to a global user based related community!
As
the company Director/ Owner of Mindlogk Ltd I made the decision to put
all of our support behind supporting Mindjet MindManager as our product
of choice in teaching and coaching individuals and business teams how
to work collaboratively and be more productivity in managing strategic
and business projects. This also lead to our company moving in to the
software development space.
To date we have created two add-ins for MindManager. Mindlogik MediaNoteTaker 2012
a product well suited to e-learning in managing video and audio media
and creating media hyper-linked Microsoft Word and PDF materials for
teaching and student use.
Our other product MapFolderMaker 2012
is aimed at the record and kno
wledge management space providing an easy
and visual way of creating folder and business structure taxonomies.
We
have spent an inordinate amount of time 'learning the ropes' regarding
the highs and lows of managing a software development life cycle and we
are pleased with our result in having survived the economic roller
coaster ride of 2011 with our sales for our add-ins increasing with
each new feature added!
We are also pleased that our add-ins have been added to Mindjet's main website
and this is what brings me back to my article. This created an Eurika
moment in seeing the importance of creating global user brand awareness
with a resultant huge jump in both website visits and sales of our
add-in products. 
Creating market traction in an increasingly savvy Internet consumer and product competitive world is hard Yakka*. Each day one gets bombarded with new social media techniques and tactics as well as sure-fire ways of increasing market share. So what to believe and how to best proceed? How to get one's message out there? 
Our approach has been to develop a Marketing Plan using Mindjet MindManager to map out the social media avenues and platforms and then we have linked this to our our Blogging threads. The challenge is then to be able to use Social Media such as Twitter and Facebook to get our message out there to MindManager users in Cyberspace . A bit of valuable Internet trivia gleaned from a Webinar I attended recently on social media is that the same amount of information produced from the beginning of recorded time to 2003 is produced every 47 minutes on the Internet ! And I want someone to read and take note of my Blog. As they say in New Zealand Tui Beer ads - Year Right Mate ! On a more serous note- What I have come to realize is that people are willing to read what one has to say - but it needs to speak to an interest and/ or a need.
Below is a breakdown of Social Media MarketingTrends and they tell a visual story on where social media is happening.
Based on these statistics our company and anyone reading this article has an analytical marketing platform from which to build their business marketing strategy. We presently have 2695 New Zealand Business Clients using MindManager and our add-ins. The challenge facing us in 2012 is to use Social Media and statistical trends to grow our New Zealand MindManager user base using a well formulated marketing strategy and good old hard Yakka!
We look forward to doing this in 2012~ we hope you will be part of this journey as well.
* Yakka, term meaning "hard work". Originally from the Jagera Aboriginal language, it is now part of Australian/ New Zealand English.)
