From the category archives:

Marketing

How MailChimp Gets It Right By Doing Everything Wrong

June 9, 2010

By rights, I really ought to hate mailing list service MailChimp.
Their corporate tone is jokey (their mascot is a talking chimp who has something silly to say every time you log in), they admit it when they make mistakes, they put a ‘loading’ page in front of the site after the latest upgrade which slows [...]

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13 Essential Wordpress Plug-ins For Business

February 22, 2010

I use Wordpress to host and run my websites. Plug-ins let me do everything from put headlines in my sidebars, to helping me track how many people visit which article, to creating sign-up forms, and create those cute little ‘link to me’ buttons at the top of this article. Here are the ones that allow me to build websites that make my clients go “ooooh!”

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You Can’t Afford To Be As Secretive As Apple

February 1, 2010

Hardly anyone knew anything for sure about Apple’s new tablet, the iPad, before its vaunted launch last week.
Within 13 minutes of the word “iPad”’s first public utterance it was the top trend on Twitter.
But are you sure you have Apple’s reach?
Not The Apple Approach
Last week, something else happened that got less press, but meant a [...]

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How To Create Great Customer Reviews

October 11, 2009

What’s more likely to tip you over from browser to buyer:

a detailed list of features and benefits

or

an enthusiastic recommendation by someone just like you?

Consumers are pretty savvy these days, having been bombarded with advertising since they were babies. They are skeptical of your claims about your product. They know your job is to sell it [...]

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How To Excite Your Customer

September 30, 2009

…they used jargon, they droned, and they aimed their words at their colleagues, not at the audience. I turned them off and have no idea what their names were…

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Why Your Business Needs A Website – Videocast

September 28, 2009

Too many small and local business still don’t have a website. Find out why you need to take control of your online presence (even if you didn’t know you had one!)

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How To Avoid Looking Like An Idiot

September 21, 2009

…it’s fine to distance yourself from a trend that you don’t love. Just don’t make yourself look like a fool in the process.

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How To Find Your Audience On Twitter

June 27, 2009

As a follow-up to my last post (about getting more followers on Twitter through auto-follows), I wanted to post quickly about how I’m finding the right people to follow (and hoping they auto-follow me).
At first I was searching Twitter for keywords, manually (at search.twitter.com), reading conversations and cherry-picking the best. Then I was joining conversations [...]

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Finding More Followers on Twitter

May 28, 2009

I have started to see increased traffic on the business website with this unobtrusive and, frankly fun form of marketing. It feels collaborative and fun and nothing like a sales job!

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Are You Listening? Twitter and Motrin

November 16, 2008

Think Twitter doesn’t affect your business? Johnson & Johnson did.
This weekend Motrin became the #1 topic on Twitter. More specifically their web-ad about Babywearing (you know, slings, front carriers etc.) made them the #1 trending topic on Twitter…and not in a good way. In fact, they they managed to offend both people who wear their [...]

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