Your Startup’s 10 Most Important Metrics

Article by TOMASZ TUNGUZ

With the analytics tools today, it’s easy to measure hundreds if not thousands of different metrics for your business. Cutting through all the chaff to determine the most important or insightful metrics can be quite a challenge.

Below are the ten metrics I’ve found to be most useful in board meetings. They answer the questions of how should a startup founder might measuring the business at the highest level. You should have many more metrics than these, but I’ve highlighted the ones that I recommend presenting to your board and reviewing each week.

The Reachable Stars

Your business thrives on profit. Profit comes from your revenue. Revenue comes from your customers. When customers are low, the domino effect can force you to either shape up or ship out.

The success of any company is not entirely dependent on just one factor alone, a wholistic approach is always wise. No company is ever too big for any consumer, that is an appropriate mind set. There’s got to be a market for what you are selling but you need to identify, target then hit them.

Big corporations get bigger because they have their clockwork going. They corral what they gather and they keep searching for more. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Don’t be afraid to try something new.

My geography class in college taught me to find the radius around a point on the map. It was fun doing it because I essentially ended up making as many radius to last the whole semester. It taught me that there is no single route to a destination.Some areas overlap but it gave me different options and avenues to take, literally.

The market is vast and it’s not possible to conquer them all at once. You have to isolate and target. Focus on what works and build on it.

Your market is stellar, but unlike the stars they are reachable.

How Does One Become an Expert?

This word is thrown around like a dirty, used rag.

I am a start-up company and while I have the education, the background and significant work experience, I admit I don’t know everything, hence I connect and learn from people in the field. The sooner I got live and started scouring around for helpful information and resource, the offer from so called experts are like worms out of the can.

When I have about almost close to 2 decades of work experience in advertising and media and I see people in their twenties calling themselves expert, I scratch my head and ask “how?”. Even my professors and creative directors never called themselves experts. How is that possible? So what really are the requirements and qualifiers if you must, to be one?

I am leery of anyone approaching me and offering me to get rich quickly. I am rock steady, slow -but-sure kind of a person. Establishing a company goes through a process, and I know that. So being an explosive start-up in 7 days, how does that work really?

Some people on Twitter has thousands of followers, but they only have one tweet! Some account holders don’t have as much, but the content are very useful. No one values that? People on Facebook are going crazy over Likes, but not ready to engage and learn. Why?

I don’t want to be an expert, I just want to be reliable and knowledgeable. Well, expert is good if you tell me how.

Rockstar Mentality

I am a Rockstar and the world is my groupie. Unfortunately, unless you really are a rockstar, this kind of mentality can’t be used when you are establishing your presence online.

Let me explain further.

Three years ago, I had a personal Facebook account and an old classmate from college added me. After adding her, my initial reaction was excitement so I decided to leave a message on her wall. Oddly enough, there was no response nor interaction but instead after a day she started tagging me in her pictures. It would have been fine but I was not in the pictures. I let it slide but then the next day, she tagged me again. Not a big deal I thought and I left a comment. Yep. no reaction still.

So that night I was playing a game and decided to send her an invite so I can get some level up freebies. After two invites, she left a nasty comment in our group telling me to stop sending her invites to the games because she was not interested in playing it. Needless to say, in my chagrin I said ” well stop tagging me in your ugly pictures because I am not in it and I am not interested either“. Yes, I hit “block” and never spoke to her again.

Does that sound familiar? I have had people who requested to be added but after getting in my circle, it was as if I never existed! Not even a hi. When people keep adding and not engaging, obviously it is just for statistics. I remember before I finally deleted my personal account that I made a comment about none of my “friends” were rockstars and I refuse to be their fan or a groupie. I said goodbye to my friends and deactivated my account.

That is a little bit extreme to some but isn’t the purpose of adding each other to engage and catch up?

If you are running an online business, a great caution should also be exercised. Part of establishing your company’s reputation is to be consistent in communicating with your audience. Interacting with them build trust and gives your virtual persona a little bit of personality.

Here area few tips:

1. Someone likes your page, return the favor and pay them a visit. You don’t have to like them if you don’t want to, but at least acknowledge their presence. You don’t know who you might end up doing business with.

2. Someone leaves you a comment, try to respond as soon as you can. Thirty minutes or less should be appropriate. If you don’t check your online activities and leave comments unanswered, your audience will feel neglected and unimportant.

3. When posting something, be friendly but stay professional. Your business page is a tricky fun place and can attract undesirable visitors, so be polite and regulate accordingly.

4. Easy on the hashtags. Twitter for example is a very powerful tool and an efficient way to send your message across if you do it the right way. Two to three appropriate hashtags are better than ten irrelevant ones. Do not #hashtag #every #word #in #your #sentence. Don’t drown us in the hashtags, I don’t want to scour for the link to what you are trying to share.

5.Finally, don’t be a rockstar. Support fellow netizens and treat them the way you would want them to treat you. Liking, leaving comments and sharing each other’s content help promote business and potential friendship.