Category Archives for Small Business Marketing
There’s More To The Brand Story – Finding Your Inner Mike Wallace.
“Jazz It Up” “It’s Not There Yet.” “I Don’t Like It.” “Can I See Some More?” It’s not easy for a writer to hear these. But it’s not that I have a problem with making changes. In my career I’ve probably made more than 25,000 changes. It’s that this kind of feedback is so vague […]
Read More »Agencies Offering Too Many Side Dishes With The Meal
I recently came across a firm that claims supreme expertise in brand strategy, content, graphic design, web development, SEO, advertising, public relations, video and business operations. Oh really. Is that all? Some web development firms say they are also experts in SEO. Fair enough. But oh, by the way, they also do content and graphic […]
Read More »Carnival Barking and Rapid Fire Posting Chaos: Improving Online Communities From Within
There’s a Facebook community I was recently excited to join, led by one of of the people in our industry I truly respect. Within two weeks, I found I had to leave it. It wasn’t largely the group leader’s fault. It was the people who killed it from within. Why? The entire mission of the […]
Read More »You’re Ignoring This Client The Most.
There’s a popular excuse that many agencies make for themselves when it comes to developing their own brand that has to do with “the cobbler’s shoes” and basically how we’re all like a shoemaker who makes shoes for every customer except his own children. I should know. I used to make this excuse myself. But […]
Read More »The Future Favors The Nimble Agency
Big or small, traditionally focused or digitally focused, only one kind of agency will be left standing in the future: The nimble one. There is a grim future for agencies that have a process that looks like so: Writer and designer team get Creative Brief. Writer and designer concept, concept, concept, concept, concept… Eureka! They […]
Read More »Prospecting: Separating The Believers From The Non-Believers
This scene from Mad Men sums up an important point for me about prospect relationship building. There are Believers and there are Non-Believers. The difference is easier to spot than we make it. As Don Draper says when explaining an ad campaign, “You either have it in your heart or you don’t.” Let’s apply this […]
Read More »Telling Clients They Have – Gasp! – a Weakness or Two.
When you’re a position to have to tell a client that they have a weakness or two or seventeen, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do. Someone asked me that recently: “So, um, what do you do when you have to tell a client that, uh, a few things they’re doing aren’t…quite…good?” […]
Read More »Branding Like A 2-Year-Old
“I help companies tell more exciting stories about themselves and the people they help.” That is about as close to the explanation of what I do, created for a 2-year-old, that I can make. I was thinking about this while looking at a picture of my nephew, who is literally a 2-year-old. He’s a genius […]
Read More »Social Media Gurus with No Social Skills
Here’s an ironic moment – we’re sitting across from a person at dinner who is chatting non-stop and loudly about trends in social media. She’s talking about the changes in Facebook search, the Recommendation she just made for someone on LinkedIn, Google’s next big move, etc. And yet, she never looks up once from her […]
Read More »How To Ensure Your Very Best Meeting Experience
Conference call group: “Can you repeat that again, Rick? I couldn’t quite hear that last part.” Rick: “Oh, sorry. I was going through a tunnel. What I was saying was as;dlkfjad;flkjasd;gajk;dklafj;daslfjkdsz;laskjf;.” Conference call group: Ummm…yeah. That’s still not quite coming through.” You know and I know it’s happening all the time. It’s happening on conference […]
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