Reading Time: 2 minSometimes you will execute something perfectly, yet another person might think you’ve made a mistake. Depending on who that is, it might be worth owning up to your “mistake” rather than making a bigger one by trying to correct them. In his pursuit of excellence, Danny Meyer shares these thoughts in the book “Unreasonable Hospitality“, […]
Trust
Boast or fact?
Reading Time: < 1 minWhen marketing your company, there’s a fine line between boasting and sharing facts. Boasting can be fine is certain cases, but facts should always win. A recent post from Jonathan Stark laid this out perfectly, and he compared it to the movie “Elf” where Buddy tries the “World’s Best Cup Of Coffee”. If you’ve not […]
Give or take?
Reading Time: 2 minAfter my recent post “experts don’t cold call“, I had an interesting comment from a friend. He defended cold calling to a degree, and ended with “you have to start somewhere when you’re new“. I agree with that, but you have a choice when you’re new: you can choose to give of yourself, or you […]
Experts don’t cold call
Reading Time: 2 minSome of the funniest emails I get are from “SEO experts”, and I’m sure you get many of the same. My initial thought is “if they’re so good at SEO, why do they need to resort to spam?”. Of course, they’re not any good at it, which is why spam becomes their tactic. In a […]
Set them free to do their thing
Reading Time: 2 minWhen building websites, or really any kind of marketing deliverable, we have to strike an interesting balance. On the one hand, we have a tight scope of work and a clear directive on what needs to happen. On the other hand, we’re not always sure exactly what that looks like. If someone needs a new […]
Personalization versus personal
Reading Time: < 1 minI’ve shared before my dislike for most forms of automation, and personalization is often closely related. Both of those are marginally acceptable for huge companies, but it’s shaky at best. It’s cute that Verizon sends emails that actually start with my name, but as Seth Godin has said, “A mail merge makes nobody happy“. Personalization […]
The truth versus paywalls
Reading Time: 2 minIt feels like most information today is free, and it largely is. Movies and music are locked up in services like Netflix and Spotify, but most news and information is free, right? It largely is, but the growing list of news outlets that are putting up paywalls is becoming troublesome. I don’t object to them […]
Great communication is built on trust
Reading Time: 2 minIn his book “The Hard Thing About Hard Things“, author Ben Horowitz shares simple yet powerful way to speed up communication: trust. Ben simply says: “In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust.” The more you trust someone, the easier the communication. If you know their […]
Who wants to hear your message?
Reading Time: < 1 minAs time goes on, I’m becoming increasingly annoyed with unexpected interruption-based marketing. I’ve mentioned before that I’m fine with ads during TV shows, podcasts, and other areas where I expect it. I don’t like them, but I recognize that it’s part of the deal and it’s my “payment” for the content. Fair enough. However, as […]
Honest skepticism
Reading Time: 2 minIf you disagree with something I post on here, or something you read elsewhere, or with a position that a political candidate holds, that’s great! You shouldn’t (and really can’t) agree with everything out there, so holding your position is very important. However, what if you later realize that you were wrong? If you said […]