"I am great! Really. Truly great! Really!" How many people (or organizations) have marketing strategies that boil down to self-serving claims of greatness? (Too many.) How effective are these emails, LinkedIn profiles, ads, websites, TV commercials, or billboards? (Not effective at all.) There is a trust hierarchy of marketing strategies: [More]
How do you spend the first 20 minutes at the office each day? If you were in the 1970's, you would spend the time reading the newspaper, then organizing your inbox (the box on your desk), and finally looking at your calendar before "starting" your day. In the 1980's, you [More]
Consider these Tipsheets: there are over 650 of them, and they certainly don't "sell" anything. Each week, I give away a small nugget of information, and tie it to an immediate action. These non-salesy Tipsheets, like the vast majority of blogs, are designed to credentialize expertise and build trust, slowly [More]
If you spend 10 minutes on LinkedIn each business day for the last two years, you've made an investment of 86 hours... or two weeks of vacation. Up that to 15 minutes, and you've gobbled three weeks over the year. How satisfied are you with the return on your time [More]
Chances are that you are not a blogger. But chances are relatively high that you like the idea of being one. During my last 100 or so presentations, I asked the audiences if they blog: surprisingly, only a sprinkling of hands typically go up. When asked if they like the [More]
Have you labored over your blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter for years, only to suddenly find a huge drop in your traffic? As leaders begin to probe the Return on Social Media Investment, an unexpected reversal is frustrating - and can have direct impact on the organization's brand... and those [More]
My recent trip to India has once again sensitized me to an assumption that writers and speakers too often make: that everyone understands what you mean to say. This is absolutely not the case. Test yourself - what do the following three words mean? Flyover, Subway, and Removalist. If you [More]
Have you ever considered how many ways there are to express one of your ideas? Here's a short list: A book A whitepaper A case study A brochure A blog post A newspaper op-ed A voice message or phone call A tweet A magazine article A TV series A documentary [More]
Every organization - and every individual - can find themselves somewhere on the three-tier Digital Communications Engagement Index. Where are you? Level I, Passive: At best, passive users have a profile on a few sites, but do very little otherwise, with the exception of responding to the occasional connection request. [More]
While Build It and They Will Come might work in the movies (remember Field of Dreams?), it doesn't quite work that way online. Yes, you can put up a Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, or YouTube channel, but how can you truly attract followers? And how can you truly drive engagement? [More]
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