Presence, Product, Promotion, Partnering

I came up with a cute list of the categories of business effort. They all happen to start with P, so here they are.

The 4 P's:

1. Presence
2. Products
3. Promotion
4. Partnering

I define 'presence' as the way you are perceived. Think "presentation". Things like logo, business cards, marketing copy, etc., and especially website are included, but also reputation. My resume would also be included here. But also the perception of my expertise and goodwill towards me. So, publishing articles, tutorials, and eventually a book will count towards building my presence. Participating in user groups and answering questions in forums will also help.

My 'products' are not only the QA-Site, but my expertise as a tester and test environment setup. I haven't really worked on either this week, and need to make sure I take time to both work on my physical products, and increase my skills. Infrastructure work could be included in products, which I have done some of.

'Promotion' includes networking and advertising, which I spent a lot of time on this week, but could also include things like blog posts and other writings. (I'm not sure which category these would go into -- it probably depends on the specific content, as well as how I choose to put it out there. In one sense, forums and user groups are networking, so involvement in either could be considered promotion.

'Partnering' is the best form of networking, and this would include open source projects I'm working on such as Harvest, as well as business ventures.

I need to balance my efforts more. This week I spent too much time researching networking (perhaps unavoidable at this early stage) and not enough on my product. My website could use better copy, and I need to create better content, and add to it regularly. And I've been neglecting my partnership opportunities.

Things outside this list would include business management, and things like market research (which I guess could fall under promotion.) And of course, client work, which is what I'm doing all this other stuff to hope to help achieve.