Does Television Equal Kmart?

  When I was growing up television was considered the “Kmart” of the entertainment world.  I mean first you have  the theater (Target), then you have the movies (Walmart).  Then television.  No serious actor would be caught dead in television.  Or if you had to do it, everybody else had better be doing it.  Such as a guest spot on the Love Boat.  Check out all the stars that appeared on The Love Boat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Love_Boat_guest_stars  

          As viewers, I assume the feelings and pocketbook matched the sentiment.  Our family could not afford movies, much less serious theater.  So, just as I have memories of my mother putting oodles of clothing through the Kmart Layaway window, television was for me the majority of my entertainment in my growing up years.  Even though we only had four channels and could never afford cable, there was always something to watch on TV.  While I did get a taste of the theater as an actress, (all right, it was high school drama in Wyoming, but it was still on stage.) television has always held a fond place in my heart. 

           I feel like I was raised by Designing Women, Family Ties, Bill Cosby and so much more.  There has always been a resentment in me when people complain about how much television is watched.  Television, like books is another world to live in.  We see a multitude of actual facial expressions and find people to love, laugh and cry with.

          So, beginning the site www.seetvgo.com is a celebration of that part of my life that loves to be entertained by television.  It has been really fun delving into many shows I have never even heard of.  While I am a bit of a prude and dislike some of the shows, (In other words: I wish most of the shows on Adult Swim had never been born.)  I know there is something for everyone on television.

          Also, it makes my heart happy when I see big names taking lowly TV jobs.  Like Gary Sinise on CSI: NY.  Television has slowly been revamped from Kmart to something a bit more up class that serious actors don’t mind taking part in on a regular basis (It may only be up to Walmart standards right now.)  Maybe someday Kmart itself will actually compete with Target. Maybe not.

Getting Past the Pitfalls

What are the pitfalls of trying to create a company with three people who have three different lives and lots of distraction and live in two different states?

We have so many cons against us making it big:

*Two of us are married with kids (Not to each other)- Pitfall: Spousal and offspring interruption.

*One of us had some major surgeries- Pitfall: One third of the workforce out on medical leave.

*A rotation of one of us seems to be sick every other week- Pitfall: See above.

*Leaky Ceilings- Pitfall: they occurred in the room where Gary had all operations set up.  While he managed to overcome this by moving everything temporarily, it blew a weekend.

*No regular income from the site.

*No ongoing budget.

*Other things in the universe that we decide are more important.

*Two full-time jobs and one PTA President.  (Yup, I’m a President. And it is a part time job with zero pay.)

*The internet won’t work.  This was me last week on Tuesday.  I totally forgot to unplug and reset the modem box.  After waiting 12 hours to talk to Gary, he figured out I hadn’t done that, and voila!  This is my excuse for no blog last week.

*We have a best friend and sister and brother.  What happens when things don’t go well there?  Hopefully we can all be friends at the end of this thing.

When one week or weekend is blown for one person in a company of three, it’s like blowing 7 weeks of work.  Okay, I’m making that number up, but really, we meet every Sunday evening to for a business discussion.  If you were able to take a snapshot of the company progress from our first meeting over two years ago to now, it would make the most lame flipbook of all time.

Although, since the beginning of February we have been kicking in more regularly and it’s starting to pay off.  www.seetvgo.com has been getting many more new visitors and hopefully this will net out many more return visits.

One exciting accomplishment this week was that Gary added A&E to our channel lineup.  Now we have links to Bates Motel, Hoarders, Storage Wars, and Duck Dynasty, plus many more!

Please feel free to leave any feedback about www.seetvgo.com itself here on the blog:  Do you like or not like the way it looks?  Are there things we could do to make you want to come back more often?  We would love to hear from you!

What Comes Next?

Trying to figure out my social media posts is a bit challenging.  There are as many directions to go as there are tv shows on our site.  (We have links to more than one thousand shows!)  What do I compose that will make people say, “Oh yeah, I need to catch up on "xyz" show through www.seetvgo.com!”   Or what do I highlight to help people find a new show that they might enjoy?

JD added a great feature to the site last week.  On the home page in the third column, there are now 10 random shows that have brand new episodes posted somewhere out on the web.  If you are bored, this is a great place to start finding a new tv addiction!  One show posted today is the History channels "Vikings" which is also a new series.

But, back to figuring out posts for our social media: when you look at all television shows as a whole, they make up an entire world.  From the classy to the down right trashy, there are thousands of directions to go and right now, not a clear idea of how to grab people’s interest.

And how do I not let it focus all on my interests?  I could post Big Bang Theory things every week.  (And NBC’s Thursday night lineup.) But, I’m trying hard to capture a varied audience and draw in all the people who have the common thread of just plain liking to watch television now and then, or all the time, classy or trashy.  

One of the tools I have using for inspiration is “FlipBoard” which is an app on my android tablet.  I love FlipBoard. They have made the internet into my own little magazine.  To use it, you go in and pick websites that appeal to your interests.   For myself, I tailored it to site that focus on entertainment and television news.  It’s basically your favorites list. Then FlipBoard puts all those “favorites” into a personal magazine that you can flip through, seeing the most recent posts on those sites.

One thing all three of us at www.seetvgo.com could use from our site’s visitors are ideas, feedback and input about our site.  Are you liking my posts?  What do you want to see more of?  Is there is a channel you are really needing to see added to our lineup?  Since we are just starting, there’s a hot chance one vote for a channel will get it added to our lineup.  Gary has promised to start working on a new channel this week, and hopefully we’ll see it soon!  (I don’t know what it will be, I forgot to ask.) 

We are plugging away, working to give you a better and better experience on our site.  What do you want to see next?  

Have you ever been to Kitty Hawk, where the Wright Brothers flew successfully for the first time?  There are markers at each successive spot where the plane landed after a short flight.  It is exhilarating just walking the markers and imagining the building excitement of the team as the plane went just a little further, then a little more, and then, take off! 

While our website is nothing in comparison to man flying, I imagine I feel a little like the Wright brothers at each little leap their plane took.  Google Analytics helps our company track users on our site.  I am watching our Google Analytics page everyday, seeing 5 users, 10, 25, and just hoping that the thing will actually fly!  We are hovering close to the ground right now. 

Our marketing budget is zero.  Ten or so years ago, we would have not been able even to start a company with that kind of funding.  We do not know anyone to approach for investments, and not knowing how this thing will go, don't want to bring in investors just yet, because they usually expect a big return and that's not there right now.  But thanks to modern social media, we can get a little air under our wings. 

I found this great article:   http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2048588/30-Free-Ways-To-Market-Your-Small-Business-Site

Using many of their ideas, I have begun to see an impact on the visits to our site.  We have seen some little surges upward over the past three weeks or so.  My focus has been to daily or every other day post something related to television on Google+, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. 

Being an avid Facebook user, I was sure this would be the way to go, but I am starting to think that Google+ will be much more useful.  If I am correct, people that I put in my circles have the opportunity to see my public posts.  This is different from Facebook, where I think only our likes see the posts.  In Google+ I can also make comments on the posts of people in my circles, again, unlike Facebook, where it is only people who like us.  Because I made my user name the name of the website in Google+, that helps people see our site name and hopefully begin to create brand recognition out there.

Pinterest has also shown a few little leaps.  I have repinned quite a few pictures and had a few repinned.  The interesting thing is that the pictures that get repinned are typically the pictures of hot guys.  (One was a shirtless Adam Levine; who wouldn’t repin that?  Okay, maybe a few wouldn’t.)  So, some of my strategy has become to find hot pictures of television stars to repin. 

We need 30 likes on Facebook to be able to track any activity on it.  Aside from a 26 close friends (thank you everyone!), we only have 1 stranger.  I'm not even sure our current likes are seeing our posts.  My fault?  Don’t know.  But, I keep posting there just in case.

Then there is Twitter.  I am Tweeting here and there, but only have 5 followers.  If a Tweet is made in a forest with no one around, does it make a sound?  If nothing else, the people I am following who are in the television industry give me ideas for my own tweets and posts.  My Twitter knowledge is pretty basic.  This is one area I need to research more thoroughly.

That’s my social media Kitty Hawk right now.  Hopefully we will eventually get a real take off.  Things are looking up.  Our highest day after using the advice of the article I mentioned earlier has been 27 visitors.  This may not seem like a lot, but there were a lot of days with 3 visits or less, so getting into double digits is more exciting than you would think.  So, I keep hoping for that big leap, you know?  The one that leaves 27 in the dust.  

So we have this little site called www.seetvgo.com.  It is simple and uncluttered.  In some ways it is big, because it is linked to a world of television, but within itself, it is small.  Even our company is small.  We are run by three people. 

Myself, a stay-at-home mom who’s kids are all in school now.  I am hoping the income from this site will someday justify my staying at home even though all the kids are in school.  My degree was in accounting, which I worked in for a few years before popping out babies.  My goal is to never be in corporate accounting again because every cell in my body rebels against it.  Yes, I am the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) for www.seetvgo.com, but punting  the accounting to my husband has happened a couple of times when I just could not remember or process things.  He has an accounting degree which he earned before his engineering degree.  He helps for free.

My business partners are JD who is my little brother,  and Gary, who have been friends for years.  They are always knocking around the idea of going into business together.  Their other ideas for companies haven’t taken off, but they both know computer programming.  The idea for www.seetvgo.com has been their most viable idea, so we have finally hit on something that uses the guys’ strengths. 

My husband and  I put up some capital, rusty accounting skills and learn-as-I-go marketing skills to help the guys get this little thing off the ground.  JD is CIO (Chief Information Officer) and Gary the COO (Chief Operations Officer.  (We’re all Americans, by the way, if that’s attractive to you.  I know it could go either way)

 JD is my brother and Gary is his friend.  JD will kill me for calling him that.  JD warrants death because I would call him “JD Hogg” while growing up watching the Dukes of Hazzard and he DID NOT like it.  I’m hoping to help him get over that in this blog.  Or his name may change again at some point in the future.

Both of my partners work full time (unless Gary, a contract worker is in a “Laid off” phase.)  so, fitting a forward-moving company into real life with lots of other distractions is challenging.

Anyway, welcome to my blog about our little, new business venture on a shoe string budget with three people who are hoping it will take off.