A crash-course on desktop research

“I know Kung-Fu.”

• Neo, The Matrix

I was at the end of my stint at Google Singapore and one of the newer colleagues asked me how my Google-Fu was.

Me: Huh?

Him: You know all the ways you can track and pick up information on the web.

Me: Oh yeah I’m a jet.

Remember the core concept Take action every time?

This is the only time I’m going to let you off the hook.

We need a list of at least 10, ideally 20 or 100 “places” you’ve heard from interviews, mentions, and learned from your customers.

I’m giving you permission search and sense-check and determine if the channels you’ve uncovered are:

• Accessible
• Have a point of contact you can reach out to, and
• There’s potential for you to collaborate and value

You want to create a hit list.

You’re looking for places you can partner up with and add value to their audience.

Their audience (hopefully) includes your customers.

Your process will look like this:

1. Can I approach this place?
2. Do they have a reasonable audience size?
3. Do I have something of value to add? (You’ll get help with this in a later section)

This begins as a very manual and time consuming process, but once you get the hang of it, it’s a strategy can be repeated and refined to infinity.

So how do we answer the questions above?

Create a spreadsheet or table with categories like this:

• Name
• URL (website link)
• Contact details
• Key People
• Do they have an audience?
• Notes

There will be some straightforward ones.

Say you’re interested in teaching sewing classes to a neighbourhood house that is offering online courses to locals.

You would simply list:

Name:

Port Melbourne Neighbourhood Centre

URL:

http://friendsofportmelb.com.au

Contact details:

contact@friendsofportmelb.com.au

Key People:

Tash, Community Liaison and Facilitator

Have an audience?:

Not sure, but have previous events with 80 RSVPs

Notes:

01/10/22 Looking for submissions for Term 2

That’s it.

It’s not always that easy though.

Sometimes you’ve got to think a bit differently. Not every channel has someone to greet you at the door that you can simply look up and knock on.

What do I mean by this?

Examples of channels that are great, but don’t have a “front door” include:

• Solo businesses who have built a community around what they do
• Shoulder or adjacent businesses that aren’t competing with you, but can benefit from sharing your expertise with their audience
• Media channels that cover the area you’re in think podcast hosts, news websites, education providers
• • many more…

How do you know if they’ll be useful for you?

You don’t.

You can make some educated guesses.

Other clues will be in how many followers these organisations have, and what sort of response you get when you reach out.

You’ll figure more out as you go.

It’s important not to get too caught up on things like follower counts they’re a loose indicator of value at best.

The shoulder and adjacent businesses these are one of the best “partners” to collaborate with because you’re not competing.

It’s one of the cleaner ways to create win-win-win scenarios.

Their business wins because you’re adding and serving value to their audience.

Their audience wins because you’re going to teach / offer / or otherwise share something that makes their lives better.

You win because it’s one of the more direct ways to get in front of an audience and deliver.

What this all means and how to execute it will all be answered next.