Reading Time: 2 minYears ago, we had a few yards of dirt delivered to our house that needed to be moved uphill about 50 yards to the back of our property. I started moving it with a wheelbarrow, but we eventually broke down and hired someone with a Bobcat to move it for us. If I had continued […]
Marketing
The “about” page is the only good place for your company story
Reading Time: 2 minWhen a user visits your website, they usually have a problem that you’re hoping they can solve. If you can show your expertise in understanding the problem (perhaps you’ve faced it as well), show how you can solve it, and give clear next steps, you’re great shape. We’re talking to a couple of different companies […]
Be careful when measuring your targets
Reading Time: 2 minA few weeks ago, Seth Godin shared a pretty simple statement from Charles Goodhart: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.“ To be honest, it took me a little while to understand what he meant. We set a lot of goals at our company, and we measure our progress […]
Yes, it can hurt to “just ask”
Reading Time: 2 minYou’ve heard the phrase “it can’t hurt to ask”, and while that’s true in many situations, putting it out as a blanket statement can lead to some bad things. A great example is spam, whether that’s via email, phone calls, or things like LinkedIn connections. In every case, they figure “it can’t hurt to ask”, […]
Protect your community
Reading Time: < 1 minThere is a good chance you found this post through an online community that you’re a part of, possibly Facebook or Twitter. While having a community on sites like that is a great thing, it’s also incredibly fragile. Social media accounts get shut down constantly; mostly for good reasons (spammers, etc), but normal accounts can […]
What’s really the problem?
Reading Time: < 1 minWhen someone tells you they have a problem, there is often a deeper problem below it. Following the concepts in StoryBrand (which I’ve written about with the grunt test and first date proposals before), there are really three layers of problems. Using a movie like Star Wars, it’s easy to see how those three stack […]
The public to private bridge
Reading Time: < 1 minSocial media can be great, but as I’ve said on here many times, it’s not yours. Using social media to grow your audience can be a very beneficial thing, but moving your audience from that public network to a private channel (such as an email list) is essential to your long-term growth. We saw this […]
Why most blogs should allow comments
Reading Time: 3 minOver the past decade, I’ve seen more and more blogs get rid of their comment section and simply say something like “go discuss it on Facebook”. I think that’s a bad move, at least in most cases. At a high level, it’s because I still think we need to take back our content. Taking back […]
Principles versus policies
Reading Time: 2 minAll businesses should have a core set of principles, and policies should follow after that. It’s easy to conflate the two, and it can be dangerous if you do. I recently heard Adam Grant share the story of Robert Reffkin of Compass, and how this kind of overlap between principles and policies caused some problems […]
Digital marketing doesn’t need to lead to digital sales
Reading Time: 2 minIf you have an online store, some degree of digital marketing is essential to drive traffic and sales. On the other hand, don’t feel like digital marketing is futile if you don’t have way for visitors to transact business online. At the end of the day, marketing isn’t just about sales, but about conversions. Not […]