Growing & Learning Archives - Page 7 of 23

Oodles of insight

June 30, 2008

Looking for some reading that will make you pause and go "hmmmm?" I’ve discovered a treasure trove.

1) Check out a spot that Chris Brogan pointed me to — Manifesto archives. They’ve got articles on marketing, ROI, escaping corporate America, the upside of a downturn and much more.

This is all part of a non-profit called Change This. Their goal — to change the way ideas are spread. Interesting premise…and some great thinking.

They also have a blog where they founders and participants talk about why Change This is so important.

2) Char Polanosky over at Essential Keystrokes is celebrating her blog’s 2nd anniversary. If you aren’t familiar with Char’s blog — it’s an excellent read. She covers a wide array of topics from web design to blogging to new media and more.

To celebrate her anniversary, Char is giving away some of her favorite web-based tools, including:

6 months free subscription to 37 Signals Highrise – the contact management system with a kick – valued at $300.
1 full year of Freshbooks (Shuttle Bus package) to streamline your invoicing process – valued at $168.
5 one-year Pro subscriptions to pMetrics – the ultimate blogger’s stats package – valued at $59.99 each.
Wiley Publishing has offered 5 copies of Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett’s Problogger: Secrets to Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. It is the absolute must read book this year!

So get over there, get comfy with her blog and win yourself a prize or three!

3) Lewis Green of bizsolutionsplus finds his summertime Fridays a bit of a dead zone. But leave it to Lewis to come up with a long list of useful ways to fill that time.

Here’s a few of his thoughts:

Recommend client’s move forward in new ways.
Send out a new thought paper.
Read other’s work.
Recommend other’s work.

Check out his post to get the whole list and add a few of your own!

Whew! My brain hurts just writing about all that thought leadership. Go slow so you don’t get a brain freeze…but don’t miss these great resources.

Study on the internet and consumer behavior

June 30, 2008

The good folks from Fleishmann-Hillard sent me some information about their European offices’ recent work on understanding how the Internet affects consumer behavior in Europe.

Key findings:

The Internet beat TV two to one on influence, and eight to one over print.
People ask other people for personal purchase advice, but for airline tickets and bigger ticket items, they prefer the corporate sites.
Only 28% of people trust the information they read online, and yet 66% say the web helps them make better decisions. Sounds like they use the web to get information but want someone in their life to verify the decision.
Different countries use the web differently: Germany uses more search; the UK has more social networking interest and the French, more digital communications with web cameras and instant messaging.

The full report on the research is free to download here.

If your company won’t embrace social media — watch out…

May 26, 2008

…because your next generation of employees will have grown up immersed in it. Watch this video and then check out Gavin Heaton’s thought-provoking post on the death of education and the dawn of learning.

The real question is — in this day of budget squeezes and spending freezes in our school systems, how do we help teachers and schools get up to speed, so they can keep up with their students?

I don’t know much about that…

May 18, 2008

Marketing and marketing tactics are changing at the speed of light. Have you caught yourself saying "I don’t know anything (or much) about XYZ?"

What happens next? Do you accept that you just aren’t that familiar with it? Or do you recognize you’d better fix that situation?

I think how you answer that question says a great deal about you and how well suited you are for a marketing career. You can’t afford not to know. I don’t care how many years of experience you’ve got. I promise you, you’ve got things to learn.

If you don’t have the curiosity or the drive to keep learning how to help your business or your client’s business grow and communicate — then dust off the resume, my friend. Because you need to get out of marketing.

How can you learn? Lots of ways.

Find someone who does know and ask them to teach you. They’ll be flattered.
Take a class or pay someone to teach you.
Find a blog written by an expert in the field. Do more than read it — participate.
Read a few books on the topic.
Wade in…and try it. Most of us learn best from doing.

If you hesitated when asked the question, remember this. Do you suppose your co-worker who is climbing up the same ladder you are hesitated? How about your competition?

I want to speak like Steve Jobs

May 7, 2008

I am invited to speak/share a nugget or two at 15-20 national conferences and conventions a year. I get high marks and am invited back, so I must hold my own.

But I aspire to inspire like Steve Jobs. He can bring a crowd to tears and cheers as he holds up the hottest new iPod, laptop or gadget. I want to hold a crowd in my hand like that.

If you’re like me or you just want to improve your sales presentation skills, check out this video from BNET on how to present like Steve.

What do you think? How could you apply this to your day to day presenting opportunities?

Portable smarts — at your fingertips

May 6, 2008

I’ve always loved trade magazines. I love their focus, I love how bite-sized the information is and, I love that it’s off-line and tangible. Portable smarts. Love that.

So when I was approached about offering my readers free magazines, I was skeptical. What was the catch? Turns out there isn’t one.

You get free magazines on marketing, promotions, branding, creativity etc. They get more readers for their advertisers. You get smarter.

Hard to argue with that equation. So click here and check out the 500+ magazines, white papers, podcasts etc that are all available to you. (As I understand it, some of these titles are only available in the States, FYI.)

I’ll feature a new title now and then, just to keep you plugged in to what’s available.

A side note: I get a commission on the complimentary subscriptions which I’ll be donating to charity.

So….you get smarter and Variety, the Children’s Charity gets a little green in their pockets. Sweet.

Are our words fading away?

May 3, 2008

There a roughly a zillion blogs and about a bazillion blog posts (these are approximations). Those posts use a gazillion and a half words. Every day.

Think of the words that seem to crop up everywhere. Transparency, conversation, consumer generated, authentic, engaged, empower. We could go on and on.

But here’s my question. Are we using this words so often and in so many places that we’re wearing them out? Are we reducing their impact and meaning? Are we squeezing the potency from them?

Can words tire? Can we tire of words?

Those are the questions I pose over at Marketing Profs Daily Fix. Come share your thoughts.

What social media tools are a must for business?

April 23, 2008

If you could only use/choose (up to) 10 different social media tools to enhance your business/organization’s performance and ability to get the job done — which ones would you choose….and why?

Dear soon to be college grad

April 17, 2008

It’s April. Which means that all of you seniors who are graduating in a few weeks are getting a serious amount of pressure from Mom and Dad to send out those resumes.

And so you will. I thought I might offer a few helpful hints.

Do not address your cover letter to the entire company, i.e. Dear McLellan Marketing Group. If you don’t have time to find out the specific person to send it to, don’t send it. And if you do get their name, for the love of Pete — spell it correctly. If you can’t get my name right, do you really think I’m going to let you loose with one of our clients?

The time to start looking for your first job is not in April of your senior year. I know it’s too late for you but warn your little brothers and sisters. Tell them to start engaging in conversations with the companies they might like to work for when they are freshmen and sophomores. Then, by the time they’re seniors — these companies will be helping them find a job. Who is helping you?

Spell check. Then, read your cover letter and resume slowly and out loud. Find is not spelled fine. Again…do I want you writing to our clients?

I know it’s a common mistake, but when you say my resume is attached — attach it.

Cutting and pasting is tempting. I cannot tell you how many times I have received a cover letter addressed to another agency or agency principal. Odds are she got mine. Odds are, neither of us are going to hire you.

It’s tough enough to get a job in this field. Don’t let laziness or sloppiness make it even harder for you. I know you think the above is an exaggeration but I just deleted an e-mail that made 4 of the 5 listed mistakes. All in one cover letter!

Want more….read this free e-book written specifically for college grads and this post on what I would do if I were a college grad, looking for that first job.

Last piece of advice — hang in there. It’s as much fun and as rewarding as you think it will be.

Okay, I lied. One last thing. If you are going to try to impress me with your creativity — then A) Be creative. and B) Don’t let spelling and punctuation errors spoil the delivery.

Check this out. See if you can spot the errors (both in the video and description). Instead of helping himself by going above and beyond, he’s just proven that he hasn’t even mastered the basics.

Alltop names Marketing Minute an “all the top” resource

April 12, 2008

In mid-March, Guy Kawasaki launched Alltop, a news aggregation site that provides “all the top” stories for forty of the most popular topics on the Web.

The headlines and first paragraph of the five most recent stories from forty to eighty sources for each topic are displayed. Alltop stories are refreshed approximately every ten minutes.

A good metaphor is that Alltop is an "online magazine rack" that displays the news from the top publications and blogs. Their goal is to satisfy the information needs of the 99% of Internet users who will never use an RSS feed reader or create a custom page. Think of it as "aggregation without the aggravation.”

Drew’s Marketing Minute is considered one of the top resources in the social media category. You can find the entire list of topics on their home page. You’ll be amazed at the diversity — everything from dads to venture capital and just about everything in between.

It’s a slick tool and gives you access to many resources at a glance.

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