OK, this post will be short and sweet. I have a client in the early stages of their blog with multiple authors in the mix. One of the real challenges is to help them figure out what to blog about. We’re not talking about the executive team here. We all agreed on an editorial calendar [...]
Not a reference to the Cultural Revolution. Not the English post-punk band (whose latest album cover is shown to the right). We’re talking business peer groups here. Years ago when I owned a Parcel Plus franchise, I had a standing monthly meeting with three other franchise owners – lunch followed by a couple hours discussing [...]
If you run a project-oriented business, you probably track employee time. We all know the routine. Figure out the time it took to do one project and you have a decent predictor for the next. It’s even more critical when you bill hourly. For me, it started decades ago with my experience at Andersen Consulting [...]
The folks at eMarketer recently wrote an article about the C-Suite and social media (quoting studies by BrandFog, Accenture, and The CMO Council). Here are a few interesting takeaways about the impact of the C-Suite using social media: 86% of those surveyed indicated they would be more likely to trust the company. 71% said it [...]
It’s tough to stay motivated sometimes. You have a million other priorities. You’ve tried to block off time each week, but with electronic calendars, it’s so easy to move that appointment around. Or worse yet, you delete the recurring appointment because you’re just tired of looking at it. And then the dreaded writer’s block – [...]
Came across a great post by Neil Patel in SEOmoz.org the other day. It’s a very good list of what NOT to do when writing for your blog. From a positive perspective, here are a few takeaways: Headlines are absolutely critical. You have to draw the reader in – essentially give them a reason to [...]
All you designers already know this stuff, so you can pass on this one. But for the rest of us… We see tons of logos every day – every one unique in its own way. What I love about the following logos has more to do with what you may not see. Each has a [...]
OK, you get one of those Staples easy buttons, wire it up to a power source, connect via USB to your laptop, launch WordPress, think real hard, and press the button. Wham! You get a relevant, interesting blog post. Not so much. According to my blog feed on LinkedIn, it’s been 245 days since my last [...]
This is literally the case at Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires. We caught their Guys and Dolls show this weekend Just outside the Box Office is their iCritic Booth. Anyone can go in and record a video critique of the show (or the theatre, actors, or any other darn thing). You get 3 minutes [...]
“You can have the best product or service in the world, but if people don’t buy – it’s worthless. So in reality it doesn’t matter how wonderful your new product or service is. The real question is – will they buy it?” – Noel Peebles One of the more interesting challenges in my world is [...]
From the folks at Content Marketing Institute, a great checklist of things to remember for your email newsletters. Go read the post, but in the meantime, here are 7 quick takeaways: Planning - Tie the newsletter to your marketing strategy (which of course should be tied to your business strategy). Create an editorial calendar and [...]
The nice folks at Hubspot put out an eBook of 101 Awesome Marketing Quotes. Just about all of them are thought-provoking and right on target. Some of my favorites include: People share, read and generally engage more with any type of content when it’s surfaced through friends and people they know and trust. – Malorie [...]
I was editing the monthly newsletter for SBIS today. They’re a client who focuses on benefits for small businesses. This month was all about how to capitalize on stabilizing health insurance rates. Our content strategy involves first writing a blog post about a topic from our editorial calendar – we did that and posted it [...]
While much of my work is for B2B clients who largely don’t need a presence on Facebook, I do have a few clients for which it’s a viable strategy. To that end, I came upon this article by eMarketer which talks directly to posting strategies to encourage engagement. A few takeaways: Post as close to [...]
Budgets don’t lie. OK, I take that back, sometimes they do. Come to think of it somtimes budget makers lie too. But that’s another post altogether. In this case, MarketingSherpa’s recent survey of 1100 marketers definitely reinforced two fundamental shifts in marketing: From outbound to inbound From offline to online On the inbound / online [...]