Month: August 2009

  • How much did that ad just cost you?

    The following post is rated PG-13 for adult language. I went looking for some decent affiliate marketing blogs to read and subscribe to this morning. Being the Googling sort, I searched for affiliate marketing blogs and popped open the top 20 results in a series of tabs to see what I’d found. Of the top…

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  • How Batman will help you beat social media narcissism

    Mitch Joel and Mashable both are raising red flags about social media being focal points for insane quantities of narcissistic behavior. Mitch asks: So, the question is this: how do people build and develop their personal brands, if all we really want is content that is valuable to us and not self-promotional in any way,…

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  • Why you're not motivated (and maybe how to fix that)

    As I’m sure you have, I’ve listened to and enjoyed tons of motivational programming, from keynote speakers at conferences to books to audiobooks to seminars to… well, you get it. I can tell you all about Tom Hopkins’ sales motivational methods, recite Tony Robbins and Richard Bandler backwards, rant as much as Gary Vaynerchuk, etc.…

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  • The Pareto Principle of Twitter Spam

    The Pareto Principle – 80% of something comes from 20% of something – is so often repeated that it’s cliche. It’s also true. The majority of your revenue comes from a minority of customers. The majority of your time spent on anything is focused on a minority of time sinks. and so forth. Twitter’s no…

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  • A bottle of awesome

    I had a conversation recently with a friend after she’d gone for a long drive along the lakeshore with her favorite music cranked to 11, and she expressed the rather fervent wish that she could somehow bottle the way she felt, but couldn’t. The thing is, you very much can do so, you very much…

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  • It's how you make me feel that matters

    Here’s another obvious but overlooked aspect of communication: you’re selling emotion. We are emotional creatures. We feel first, then think – and this is wholly right and as it should be, because to feel primal fear is to ensure survival. You don’t analyze how many claws the lion has, you feel the fear and run…

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  • Is anyone stealing your stuff?

    Matt Mason, author of the Pirate’s Dilemma, pithily says, Piracy is a market signal. Piracy indicates that something is sufficiently valuable enough that it’s worth stealing. It’s worth making an illegal copy and spreading without compensating the creator. Do you want the most accurate, unbiased, unmanipulated measure of how popular and valuable something is? Go…

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  • BlizzCon proves that awesome works

    Food for thought: BlizzCon, the annual conference held by Blizzard Software to discuss their products with their customers, is happening right now. Blizzard’s conference and convention attracts fans from all over the world to ask questions, try out beta software, and give feedback about their stuff. If you’ve ever been at any company’s product launches…

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  • The easiest way to drive growth

    What’s the secret formula, the special power, the magic bullet that will drive growth, especially in new media and social media? It’s really simple. It’s really easy. It’s also very difficult for too many people and companies to ever bother doing. Be helpful. Here’s the thing about promotional efforts online, about marketing online. There are…

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  • We can become the company we keep

    “A man is known by the company he keeps.” – Coverdale, 1541 A proverb with roots that go back to ancient Egypt, this bit of wisdom takes on a new face and new life in the 21st century. You see, in decades, centuries, and millennia past, you were more or less confined to your class.…

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