When a colleague asked me whether I wanted to review David Siteman Garland's new book I did what every Web-savvy marketer would do: I went to Amazon to read the reviews. I got no further than the author's own video introduction. In other words, he found a smart, fast,...
Hubspot founder Brian Halligan kicked off What’s Next DC* with a terrific presentation on inbound marketing (aka, how to get found by your clients, customers, and prospects). In it, he identified six steps to viral growth and looked at the skill sets needed to market...
It's generally a bad idea to mix business and politics. (Unless, of course, your business is politics.) My friend Deborah Brody pointed me to this story on Friday about a bar owner who used his blog to share his opinions about illegal immigration. By the time I...
Over at Small Business Labs, Steve King set out his top 10 business trends for 2011. At number 9: "Freelancers Realize They're Small Business Owners." King identifies two categories of contingent workers: those embracing freelancing and those stuck with it because of...
Branding firm BBMG has released an interesting white paper on what it terms "co-creativity." The idea is for organizations to put their stakeholders at the center of a new, more participatory brand experience. BBMG writes: For all the hype about brands inviting...
What is the future of marketing? That was the topic at a recent Thoughtlead online mini-conference. The premise: Select 60 smart people, ask them one big question, and give them each 60 seconds to make their case. The responses were sometimes predictable. More often,...
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...
"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...
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...
I have a confession: I hated my "About Us" section for a long time. It was impersonal. Static. Written like it belonged in a so-last-century corporate brochure. Despite that, it took me two years to figure out how to rework the language to get the balance I wanted of...