Are you celebrating failure? While business successes are great, we tend to learn far more from our failures. The stuff that goes wrong and makes for business case studies and lessons learned, and adjustments, innovation, and change. Ralph Heath's Celebrating Failure...
So why are businesses using social media? According to the State of Social Media for Business, the top goals for companies are branding and community. Rounding out the top five are increasing Web site traffic (hmm, I hope that's not really an end in itself),...
You couldn't have a GrowSmartBiz* conference in 2010 without talking about social media, innovation, and the role of buzz in your marketing arsenal. And the panel at last Friday's conference didn't disappoint, offering good insights and smart tips: Jason Falls...
RockMelt, unveiled yesterday, touts itself as a social browser "designed around you and how you use the Web." And it might be the future -- but the future, in this case, isn't now. 1. You have to "log in" via Facebook to use the browser (see #2), which is designed to...
"You need to deliver outstanding customer service or die," said Barry Moltz at GrowSmartBiz.* His point: that new consumer attitudes in the wake of the economic downturn, coupled with changes in technology and "faux personalization" (think Amazon) are forcing...
At Friday's GrowSmartBiz* conference, SBA Deputy Administrator Marie Johns talked about her agency's "3Cs" and highlighted new legislative help for small business owners. Talking about the 3Cs, Johns said that the Small Business Administration focuses on: Contracting...
I'm a big fan of data-driven decision making. And data means data collection--which means asking smart questions of your employees, prospects, customers, and other key stakeholders. Ask the right questions and you get useful information that you can put into action to...
Can you keep a secret, or are you indiscriminately telling all? Whether you're a full-time workshifter or you just take the occasional business call while watching your son's t-ball game or standing in line waiting for a latte, you need to be mindful of not sharing...
According to Jeremiah Owyang, true social media integration doesn't exist. In a fascinating keynote speech at the MarketingProfs B2B Conference last week, Owyang walked through an 8-step roadmap for integrating social media and your (corporate) Web site. The aim is to...
I was just looking over a short report on business-to-business marketing put out by MarketingProfs and Forrester Research. According to What Works in B2B Marketing 2010, the top three challenges facing marketers are lead generation, increasing product/service...