Now that Google+ has been around for a few years, the benefits have come into sharper focus. Most notably, this rapidly-growing social network is proving to be a popular, integrated platform for small business. The brilliance of Google+ lies in the variety of engagement opportunities it offers. With tools like Communities, Hangouts, and Circles, small... More »Building Your Brand With Google+
Earlier this month, I immersed myself in two and a half days with Mike Bosworth in his Story Seekers workshop and was once again reminded of what makes great salespeople great – their ability to connect emotionally with buyers and to truly listen. I cannot easily summarize the 2.5 days in 600 words, but I... More »Why Salespeople Fail: Failure to Listen & Premature Articulation
Last week, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) released its Quarterly Business Review (QBR) for the Q1 2013. The news is good. The last months of 2012 were overcast with economic uncertainty (fiscal cliffs, et alia) but first-quarter performance indicators point to strong growth prospects ahead. The report, available on the DMA’s website, spotlights these issues:... More »How’re You Doing? The DMA’s Q1 2013 Business Review
TSA recently announced that it was changing some of its carry-on restrictions; in addition to certain types of knives, they will allow passengers to bring golf clubs, hockey sticks, and plastic bats onto planes, all of which had been restricted post-9/11. Other than the obvious question about whether the world is a safer place now... More »The Problem with Inside-Out Thinking
Have you ever come across a website that was so hard to navigate that you left as soon as you arrived? Chances are, the owners of that website may have focused too much energy on optimizing it for search engines and not enough for regular Joes like you and me. The last time we checked,... More »4 Simple Ways to Optimize Your Website for People and Search Engines
I read a wonderful post by Shane Parrish titled “Warren Buffet: The three things I look for in a person“. Here he shares three qualities that Buffet looks in a person: Integrity Intelligence Energy He also thinks that without the first, the other two don’t matter much. This reminded me of my mentor and his... More »Three Things That I Look For in a Person Before Hiring
A whopping 83 percent of people in the U.S. are now using the internet to search for local businesses, according to The Kelsey Group. That’s an amazing statistic, and one that every business – big or small, web-based or brick and mortar – needs to take note of. In today’s world, lots of people won’t... More »Use Local Internet Marketing to Find Customers
The Indian Premier League’s matches are drawing to a close and these 6 weeks we have seen IPL franchises like Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians having a good response to Social Media. However, we have also seen a co-relation of on field performances (or the lack of it) transferring to their online performance as... More »IPL On Social Media Week 6: CSK Lead On Facebook While RCB Dominates On YouTube
The goals of SEO are similar to other kinds of advertising: it’s about getting people to figuratively step into your store – or lead generation. The next important step is converting those leads into sales, whether that means purchasing a product or hiring your services. How you accomplish that depends on a number of factors,... More »Once They’ve Arrived: Converting Online Leads to Sales
One of the things I like best about my current position is that I can look out from behind my desk and see the front desk interactions, the office and lobby interactions. I cannot necessarily hear the conversations taking place but in a moments notice I can be a part of a conversation. Also, if... More »Be Human In Marketing
How can marketing communications managers know how much interest to generate if they don’t know their salespeople’s quotas? Ask any group of marketing communications managers, exhibits managers or even marketing managers and less than 40%, overall, know the quotas for the sales channel they represent. What world are they living in? How can these people... More »Marketing Communications Managers Must Know the Sales Quotas!
Often in the digital world, we talk about “disruption.” You may ask “what is disruption?” I thought I would shed a little light… Disruption is anything that interferes with (or disrupts) the way that things are traditionally done. According to Miriam-Webster, disruption means “to interrupt the normal course or unity of” To provide some real-life... More »Are You Ready For… Disruption???
General Electric (GE) was once revered as one of the bluest of all blue-chip companies in the world. During its glory days, GE was respected as an industrial conglomerate that manufactured some of the world’s best jet engines, locomotives, appliances and even the highly regarded General Electric light bulb. However, as best I can determine,... More »General Electric Looks Like It’s Becoming The Shareholder-Friendly Company It Once Was
Because the post on music discovery is one of our most popular articles ever, I thought this beautiful infographic from IndigoBoom would be of interest. Selling music beyond first became possible in 1877 with the introduction of the phonograph cylinder. Since then media formats have developed and radically changed the way we listen, and recently... More »Music Media, From Vinyl To Bitstreams [Infographic]
From 140-character tweets to 14,000-word print books, most content marketers now understand the value of producing content of varying lengths and format. But those that try to churn out equally high volumes of content at every length will soon find themselves collapsing from sheer exhaustion. Enter the Content Marketing Pyramid, a framework which I first... More »The Content Marketing Pyramid: Are You Hungry for Content?
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