Blog Archives
Marketing Maxim, too long for twitter
95% of marketing "creative" is plagiarism. The trick is not to find the 5%, but to let the other guy fail while trying... during which time you find out which kinds of plagiarism work best for your customers.... more...
Microsoft Live Search Cashback: the market's verdict
Back from vacation, and whoops! my May post is only two spots down. Looks like the right time for a ToldYouSo. Betting against Microsoft in the online space is rarely a bad bet, but on May 21 I wrote, "[Microsoft's]... more...
NJTwatch creeps into Beta
My summer side project is NJTwatch.com, a free site with crowdsourced info about how the local commuter trains are doing. It scrapes the official alerts from the New Jersey Transit site, and mixes in emails and tweets from smartphone-armed commuters.... more...
Microsoft Live Search CashBack - prelaunch thoughts
Predictions are a fool's errand, especially when you haven't seen the thing whose future you're speculating on. So here goes! I can't resist an early comment on Microsoft's CashBack service, which will give rebates to people who find and buy... more...
Nine Marketing Tasks You Shouldn't Be Doing Anymore
For the marketer at a medium-sized company, the development of web-based apps has made some tasks obsolete. With some effort and startup costs, by 2009 you can stop: Running your business without an intranet. A simple intranet can help you... more...
The Adwords Nanny Knows What's Good For You
Today brought a meaningful program change for Adwords customers. The load time of your landing page now impacts your Quality Score. In English, this means that the speed at which your site loads can have an effect on where your... more...
Business Blogging - Five reasons why it might work for you
Let’s define a business blog just as a regular stream of commentary on a topic. Here's how it can work: Engages and builds trust with customers and prospects. Your prospects are looking for a solution from someone that understands... more...
Finding Saint Hillary
I get compulsive when I can't immediately find something online. This morning brought me an example, which serves as an interesting illustration in the free- versus paid- content battle. We begin with Charles Krauthammer's op-ed in the WaPo. He refers... more...
Zoho Meeting - Free Desktop Sharing
The attack on paid software and services continues. In general, free and open-source software isn't yet robust enough to stop the corporate dollars flowing to Redmond. Nor are shallow-pocketed companies likely to try, since the development effort to match feature... more...
Nifty Email Broadcast Service: CampaignMonitor
For years, I've been looking for the right email broadcast service for small- and medium-sized firms with a monthly newsletter. I've kissed plenty of frogs: Topica. A hosted service for medium- and high-volume senders. For a test account, they mistakenly... more...
New Site - Fishers Island Conservancy
We spent most of Good Friday on pro bono work -- producing a simple website for the Fishers Island Conservancy. I tell paying clients and friends alike that I'm not a web developer (unlike the pros at Design4Results and ImageCog),... more...
Acing video interviews
At the NYT Small Business Summit in October, I got formally interviewed on video for the first time. AMEX was the main sponsor of the Summit, and their small business campaign theme is "Share Your Story". They hired a production... more...
New York Times site open for business
Usually I can't share details of client projects, but this one is different as my role is a public one. The NYT Small Business Summit Center is a microsite that supports an annual day-long event targeted at entrepreneurs. We wanted... more...
Web hosting highs and lows
The majority of the websites I maintain are hosted at MediaTemple in LA. They came recommended by Komra at Design4Results, answer the phone, and are big enough to give me a secure feeling. In September they had some problems with... more...
What gives a marketer her authority?
In a post from last week, I mentioned (almost as an aside) that marketers have to own the “What The Customer Wants” piece if they want any authority. This was a rather loose end that needed tying. I can... more...
