Last week I had the honor of co-hosting the ProdMgmtTalk weekly TweetChat. ProdMgmtTalk was put together by Cindy F. Solomon and Adrienne Tan of Brainmates to help share product management/marketing knowledge and engage the online community.

For my discussion, I built on two themes , Start with the Story and Being Relevant. Here are the questions that I wanted to address in the chat:

1. From a product perspective, what does it mean to be relevant?
2. How can you plan to be relevant from the start?
3. How do you bring customer input into this process?
4. Why do you need to care about word of mouth – isn’t that marketing’s job?
5. Why should you never overlook the magic of a good demo?
6. Where does sales come into this process?

There were a lot of points that I wanted to talk about during the chat, but the main theme was the awesome potential that product management and marketing have at the start when building a product. In this digital era, having a product with a relevant story allows you to engage with customers, build your brand, and most importantly, differentiate from your competition.

Simon Sinek sums it up best in his book, Start with the Why,

As any company forced to compete on price, quality, service, or features alone can attest, it is very hard to differentiate for any period of time or build loyalty on those factors alone. Plus it costs money and is stressful waking up every day trying to compete on that level alone.

The discussion online was fast moving but full of great contibutions and insights. You can review the transcript from the chat and I would highly recommend attending future Product Tweet Chats. It’s a great way to network online with fellow product people and to hear advice on challenges you may face. You can find the upcoming speaker schedule here.

Image Credit:  ProdMgmtTalk