Biznology

Image by Chris Pirillo via Flickr

It’s a brave new world for marketers. When I started in this business, it would have been hard to find two teams with less in common than the IT team and the marketing team. Not only were they extremely different kinds of people, but they rarely had any reason to work together. But today, no marketer can work without dozens of software tools, regardless of whether they are involved in online or offline marketing. That turn of events has placed a new burden on marketers that few might have predicted a few years ago: Marketers must understand the software ecosystem–the software tools and companies that revolve around IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and other behemoths that affect the right tools to work with. Read the remainder of this entry »

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I’ve worked with a lot of clients over the years, and the faster the pace that the Internet drives, the more that I see one particular problem cropping up, what some would call a “tail lights” strategy–copying whatever someone else does first. It’s impossible for you to be the first one to do everything, so it is natural that when you see someone else do something that looks good that you would want to copy it. And sometimes that is exactly the right thing to do. But often, it sets you down the road to ruin. Read the remainder of this entry »

Image by Danard Vincente via Flickr

We all love to talk about social media. It’s exciting and all breathtakingly new. And we even love talking about SEO because Google is always ginning up a change the algorithm that gives the chattering classes something to talk about. But paid search just sits there, humming along, minding its own business. Sure, local search has changed the game, but what about boring old PPC? Some companies devote enormous efforts to optimizing paid search, but increasingly I find that companies do paid search but they don’t do it well. If that sounds like you, check out my latest post on Search Engine Guide, “Are you overlooking paid search optimization?”

Image by ShashiBellamkonda via Flickr

I’ve read each one of Paul Gillin‘s books and you should, too, including his latest (with Eric Schwartzman), Social Marketing to the Business Customer, a fast-paced ride through the specialty of using social media for B2B companies. I was surprised to find that many B2B companies not only are not using social media to market to their customers, but actually forbid their employees from using social media at all, worrying that it is a time-waster. I deal with B2B companies every day, but this book shows that I am dealing with a self-selecting group and that many B2B marketers are still missing the boat. Read the remainder of this entry »

Image by twicepix via Flickr

The news is unusually slow at the moment as it pertains to the world of Internet marketing. We know that AT&T has purchased T-Mobile for $39 billion, but as marketers our concern is with Android vs. Apple platforms–the wireless carrier who provides the signal isn’t that important. We can follow Google and see how they make cars that drive themselves and they are concerned about energy and just about everything else on the planet. As marketers though, our concern is about Google as a search engine and how we can use it to get our message heard above the noise. We also wonder for just a little while if Google will ever be in the social networking game then we quickly move on to things that are real. Read the remainder of this entry »