Reading Time: 2 minI’ve long heard people (including myself) long for the days of the “old” media, where you had broadcasters like Walter Cronkite that were less biased than the media today. It seems to be true, and the problem today is one of incentives. Years ago, it was in the interest of media outlets to stay in […]
Social Media
Branded searches are taking over Google
Reading Time: < 1 minAs time has gone on, and our search engine patterns have changed, a big new trend is beginning to emerge: people are using Google for branded searches more than ever before. Put another way, people are searching for “Nike” instead of “best running shoes”, or “GreenMellen” instead of “web design companies in Atlanta”. People are […]
Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome
Reading Time: < 1 minDigital marketing is changing quickly, and there are two big reasons behind it. I’ve talked a lot about the first one, but lately I’m noticing much more of the second. In short, tech companies are becoming increasingly incentivized to keep users on their site, which is making things a little bit worse for all of […]
Bluesky loves links
Reading Time: < 1 minThe social app “Bluesky” is having a bit of a moment lately, with traffic soaring as people leave Twitter/X to come over there instead. There are a variety of reasons for that, but one that I love is their idea of federation and how it can potentially lead to a truly open social media platform […]
Google is a reward for getting marketing right in all the other channels
Reading Time: < 1 minI shared earlier this year that we need to avoid the mistake of giving Google credit for when other sources are really where your company was found. A few years ago I shared the story of how we found our CPA firm, and how they could have wrongly attributed things to Google. In a recent […]
Do you treat social media like junk food?
Reading Time: < 1 minI shared last week about finding the “middle place” when it comes to social media usage, and a recent comment I heard on a podcast helped shape that a bit further. While listening to a recent episode of Adam Grant’s WorkLife podcast, his guest Jay Van Bavel made this comparison of social media usage to […]
Shut up and sing
Reading Time: < 1 minThrough the election cycle, a lot of were people upset that celebrities were using their fame to endorse various political candidates, with shouts to “shut up and sing” or “shut up and dribble” — stick to their profession and stay out of politics. I agree in theory, as political endorsements from my friends and people […]
Finding the “middle place”
Reading Time: < 1 minSocial media has some serious flaws, no doubt, but there is still a lot of good to be found on there. I enjoy seeing what my friends are up to and celebrating or grieving as we all go through life together. The problem, as social media sites are specifically designed to do, is that we […]
The Hamster Wheel of Social Media
Reading Time: < 1 minAbout a year ago, Jay Acunzo released an amazing concept called “The Idea Impact Matrix“, which was focused on creating higher-impact content. As part of the matrix, he encourages us to stay out of the “commodity cage”, where you produce content that is very general and not too insightful. There is a ton of that […]
Big fires aren’t started by big sparks
Reading Time: < 1 minThis is one of those things that we all already essentially know, but I had never really thought about. If you see a giant fire blazing, you never think “wow, it must have taken a huge spark to start it“. A tiny spark can turn into a giant fire just as easily as a huge […]