Month: December 2010

  • Favorite Christmas songs

    Recently, Amy Garland asked me about my favorite Christmas song. Here’s mine, from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. It sums up everything that I love about this time of year and never fails to bring a tear to my eye. Listen carefully and enjoy it. If you like it, please do right by the band and buy

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  • #the5 for the week ending December 17, 2010

    [the5intro] Bonus item for #the5, one of mine. Passwords are not enough: https://cspenn.com #the5: WordPress Plugin that tells you if any of your readers are on the Gawker Hacker List https://bit.ly/gPjN6H #the5: Very cool: the WordPress printable gift certificate plugin: https://www.christopherspenn.com/youve-discovered-the-missing-link/ #the5: Two powerful email signup form ideas on the @whatcounts blog: https://www.christopherspenn.com/youve-discovered-the-missing-link/ #the5: Sixth

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  • Line of sight digital marketing framework

    At the Blue Sky Factory User Conference this past year, I unveiled a marketing framework that I think does a reasonably good job of explaining what’s broken in your company, how to find it, and how to make things better. It’s called Line of Sight Marketing, and it’s derived from Avinash Kaushik’s Line of Sight

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  • Passwords are not enough

    How secure are your digital assets? With the massive database compromises of sites like Gawker and its associated properties, both individuals and groups are finding that passwords aren’t enough. But what’s a realistic alternative or supplement? Here’s one. Do you see this little gadget attached to my keychain? It’s a World of Warcraft authenticator. It’s

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  • Multitasking is still a lie

    Multitasking is still a lie. I’m going to be bold with the following statement: If you are multitasking, you are either doing work that is trivial or you’re doing a poor job. Watching tonight’s martial arts class, there is no multitasking. There is never any multitasking. You can’t afford to. You’ll get a fist in

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  • Paradigm shifts in marketing

    In the comments about overused marketing words in my post about synergy the other day, Christopher Morris said, I thought it was “paradigm”. Or is that overused word old and busted now? Paradigm and paradigm shifts were definitely broken by overuse in the 1990s. Eventually the term became meaningless because it was used to describe

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  • #the5 for the week ending December 10, 2010

    [the5intro] #the5: @seomoz on steps to improve your content’s shareability: https://www.christopherspenn.com/youve-discovered-the-missing-link/ #the5: @djwaldow on The More You Like, The More You Save campaign and results: https://www.christopherspenn.com/youve-discovered-the-missing-link/ #the5: One of mine, who do you blame? https://www.christopherspenn.com/404-sorry-chris-probably-deleted-that-link/ #the5: See the first Chrome OS notebook unboxed from @blogoscoped: https://www.christopherspenn.com/youve-discovered-the-missing-link/ #the5: How to time your pitches and upsells on

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  • Blame

    One of the easiest ways to judge whether someone has the qualities of a leader is through a very basic metric: how often do they assign blame to someone else, and how often do they take responsibility themselves? It has been my experience that the people who are true leaders in my life, the sorts

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  • Metcalfe’s Law and Social Media: Size does matter

    Metcalfe’s Law and Social Media: Size does matter This will be an unpleasant post for some to read. If you are in the school of thought that says numbers don’t matter with regard to things like Twitter followers, blog subscribers, etc. this post will make you angry. I would kindly urge you to close this

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  • What LOLcats can teach us about social media efforts

    I was watching the other day as some folks inside the social media fishbowl were poking fun at a company’s somewhat ham-handed attempts at using Twitter. Phrases like “clueless” and “they just don’t get it” were bandied around and it occurred to me that this judgement was overly severe. Yes, the people executing on a

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