Category: career
When you hear about social media marketing, maybe you translate that as Facebook and Twitter. In some circles, it’s all about video, so you might think of YouTube, Vine or Vimeo. Or maybe you’re wondering how your business could use Pinterest, Quora or Reddit better. But many of us joined LinkedIn long before we’d even heard of Facebook. It’s 10…
This year at SXSW Interactive, I heard a speaker say something that made me want to leap up, throw my hands in the air and yell, “Amen!” He suggested that many new technologies, whether that’s smartphones, social media or the Internet itself, have been around long enough that we should no longer be infatuated with their gee-whiz factor and instead…
The goal of marketing is, at its most basic, to encourage people to buy. Reach the right audience in the right place with the right product at the right price, tell them the right things about you and your product, and boom, sales. A few weeks back, I wrote about making sure your marketing is in sync with your sales…
I’ve worked with three different clients in the last week where at some point we talked about who they are — and who they are not. While we worked on social media planning, one set of clients were very direct in saying they don’t think their target customer is using Vine and they don’t think Pinterest makes sense for them.…
Marketing means many things to many people, but the traditional definition generally includes what products you’re selling at what price, in what place and with what promotions. Depending on your business, you might translate that to anything from what your slogan and logo are to what kinds of brochure or website you use to communicate with customers and prospects. However…
Lately I’ve heard several variations on this question: I know I should use Facebook to promote myself, but I’m a private person. Should I just skip Facebook completely if I don’t want to share my personal life? The good news is that you control how much you share on Facebook. If you don’t want to tell the world every time…
With Memorial Day coming up, the summer vacation season is approaching. Why WHY do you bother with an autoresponder email that says something like, “I will be away April 12-19.” ? OK. That’s good to know. But what do I do now? Especially if I have an issue that can’t wait? Here are my thoughts on a good out-of-office message…
Last summer, I wrote a series of guest blog posts for Stirring Up Success, a B2B blog run by Dawn Foods, a manufacturer of bakery ingredients and products and distributor to the bakery industry. According to a case study by Crossroads, StirringUpSuccess.com has been featured in top industry trade publications as a unique and helpful tool for bakery owners. Here’s…
While thousands of music fans watched bands and ate good food in the rain at New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, just a few blocks away, Launch Fest gathered a couple hundred entrepreneurs for talks about how to score investors and how NOLA can develop its tech-savvy talent pool. I got fired up by the enthusiasm and knowledge of the…
Last summer, I wrote a series of guest blog posts for Stirring Up Success, a B2B blog run by Dawn Foods, a manufacturer of bakery ingredients and products and distributor to the bakery industry. According to a case study by Crossroads, StirringUpSuccess.com has been featured in top industry trade publications as a unique and helpful tool for bakery owners. Here’s…
I held off on Marketing Monday last week — it just didn’t feel right to talk about increasing your business when we were still learning the extent of injuries in Boston. Deciding if, or how, your business should respond to current events can be tricky business. Maybe it seems straight forward to post an expression of grief about the Boston…
Most of us don’t choose our phone numbers, and unless you live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, you probably picked your home first and the street number just came with it. However, you can choose your email address. As of last year, an Ipsos poll showed about 85 percent of people in the world use email. That might be even higher…
Earlier this year, New York magazine ran an article headlined “How to Read 31 Books in Four Minutes.” Far more abridged than even Cliff Notes, the article included just a handful of ideas from each self-help book. Maybe the universe will collapse in on itself if I further summarize an already very brief synopsis of some of the books they…
By this point, Facebook has become so culturally ubiquitous that probably even the remaining holdouts who don’t have an account have at least seen it and are aware of the concept of the interconnected social network. But even those who are active personally might not know how to use Facebook for marketing. Sadly, it’s getting harder, as Facebook’s algorithm for…
A few weeks back, I wrote about how to blog if you don’t like to write — take photos on Instagram or chat on camera using YouTube, for example. That post prompted several people to ask variations on the question perhaps best posed by Michael: How do I blog without looking like a douche who is bragging? There’s an oft-used…
Earlier this week I blogged about one theme I heard in digital marketing conversations at South by Southwest Interactive — authenticity — but the panel that really rocked me was about serendipity: Serendipity is a fuzzy concept that has a powerful effect on our lives. More than blind luck, it’s the product of lots of passion, insight, or proximity. As…
I recently returned from South by Southwest Interactive, a massive technology conference that takes over seemingly every square inch of Austin with growing numbers each year. While the marketing spending seems more pervasive — both Oreos and Game of Thrones sponsored pedicabs, as one small example — there’s still plenty of good content, ranging from 3D printing to the relationship…