As a former journalist and current manager of Spin Sucks, a proud outpost of branded content, many of my old colleagues would probably say that I’ve gone over to the dark side.

When I was a cub reporter at a small newspaper on the central coast of California nearly a decade ago, a respected veteran reporter on staff, upon resigning from her post, left me a note saying she was certain I would run a publication one day. Continue Reading »

Nicole Ashton asks on the Arment Dietrich Facebook wall, “How do we get on the first page of Google without paying an arm and a leg?” I have three resources for her, ranging from free to $500 per month. Which resources do you recommend??

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Guest post by Mike Schaffer, social media and online marketing manager at Iostudio.

Despite the incessant buzz in the marketing industry surrounding Foursquare and Facebook Places, I see four major challenges facing location-based services.

For all the hype, only four percent of adults are using these services (not to mention the 84 percent of adults who have no idea what they are). Clearly, not a ton of folks are taking advantage of them, so let’s investigate the main reasons why they haven’t caught fire…yet. Continue Reading »

As of late, there has been quite a bit written about equality in the workplace for women. First an absolutely scathing article, “Equality, Suffrage, and a Fetish for Money” was posted on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce blog about how ridiculous women are being in wanting equality (read the comments – it absolutely blows my mind people like Harrytoo exist in our country). Yes, on the blog of the organization that supports small businesses (thankfully the Chamber’s COO wrote a week later stating he didn’t agree with the original post).

Then, I’m going through my Google Reader last night and I find a post on Harvard Business Review called, “How Sex Hurts the Workplace, Especially Women.” An article that explores Mark Hurd’s recent scandal (Hewlett Packard CEO) as a casualty to high-achieving female executives because now men will look at the situation and think, “Poor guy was fired for dining alone with a junior woman. No one is even alleging a sexual relationship. How crazy is that! It makes me want to avoid ever being alone with a younger female colleague.” Continue Reading »

Guest post by Anna Barcelos, co-moderator of #IMCChat.

Many organizations have an abundance of data. The big question is how are they using it to better communicate with customers and prospects? Additionally, some of this valuable information resides outside of marketing, making it a challenge for effective, relevant marketing and communications.

From an integrated marketing communications (IMC) perspective, the best use of customer/prospect data is aggregating it into behavioral groups; for example, aggregating information on existing customers based on how, when, and how often they buy the company’s products and services. This is more valuable than traditional segmentation methods that classify customers into categories according to demographic, geographic, or psychographic types. Once behavioral groups are established, the organization can more effectively tailor its messages to customer/prospect needs. Most importantly, customers and prospects are treated as individuals, not markets. Continue Reading »

Steve McKee, the founder of McKee Wallwork Cleveland, BusinessWeek advertising columnist, author of When Growth Stalls, and friend wrote recently here about branding and how the tide has shifted. He says you no longer control your company’s brand; your customers do.

Think about that for a second. You no longer control your company’s brand; your customers do.

It used to be that the big, Fortune 500 companies would spend millions of dollars on fancy advertising and huge global PR campaigns and years and years and years to tell their customers and prospective customers what they wanted them to think about the brand. If someone was happy with the product or service, they wouldn’t tell anyone. If they were unhappy, they’d tell five to 10 people and hope to get attention through a nastily written letter to the CEO that almost always went unanswered. Continue Reading »

Guest post by John Heaney of Orange Envelopes.

Entrepreneurs perpetually play the role of David against their Goliath corporate competitors. And, just like their biblical counterpart, small businesses can defeat their large competitors by outmaneuvering, out-imagining, and outperforming them.

In a recent scholarly analysis, “How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict,” author Ivan Arreguin-Toft analyzed battles between very large armies and small forces and concluded that during the past 200 years the smaller David-sized forces won nearly 30 percent of the time. In many of these battles, the smaller forces were outnumbered 10 to one, yet were able to defeat their numerically superior foe. Continue Reading »

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Christopher Burgess in person. He is a senior security advisor at Cisco and we had a delightful debate about social media, networking online, and location-based technologies. A blog post with his advice on keeping yourself safe online is forthcoming, but today I want to talk about the discussion we had around paying employees for innovative ideas.

Though I don’t have all of the details, the gist of this program is that Cisco pays $500 to every employee who comes up with an idea, a few thousand for those whose ideas are good, and a few thousand more if a patent is sought and the company uses that idea. Cool idea, right? So, why then, other than the person who sends in several hundred ideas a week (known as internal spam), is no one taking part of this program?

While I rode my bike the next morning, I was thinking about that and about Daniel Pink’s philosophy in “Drive.” If you’ve not read the book, I highly recommend it, but if you want to get the Cliff’s Notes version, watch this 12 minute video clip, “The surprising truth about what motivates us” (though, I warn you, it may make you car sick – it did me). Continue Reading »

In a follow-up to Gini Dietrich’s video post discussing Angelica Colantuoni’s idea of “unplugging,” I thought this article from the New York Times, “Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime”, related.  It doesn’t exactly highlight the dangers of digital devices but describes how they are altering our thinking and lessening our ability to brainstorm and be creative.

Our brains need downtime; we need to digest information in order to think more strategically.  Maybe this is why billionaire and new owner of the New Jersey Nets, Mikhail Prokhorov, is able to run such a successful business.  He doesn’t own a cell phone and claims to rarely use a computer.  “I don’t use a computer. We have too much information and it’s really impossible to filter it,” Mikhail tells 60 Minutes.

Continue Reading »

Last week Daniel Hindin and I had a Twitter brainstorm while I was in LA and he was in our office. While we were talking to one another, because it was publicly, a few of our friends jumped in to help. The idea? A round-up of five blogs, articles, videos, podcasts, or columns from the week that you should read/listen to/view.

We have decided to do the round-up on Fridays because it’s our non- self-serving day as we already discuss reasons you should #FollowFriday someone on Twitter and on their blog. We figure this is another great way to talk about our smart friends around the globe. Continue Reading »