Month: December 2014

  • My Top Blog Posts of 2014

    As the year winds down, let’s rewind the clock and look back at what you really liked in 2014. These are the top 10 pages of 2014 on my blog by page views. A reminder, if you’d like to construct your own top 10 lists, there’s a quick tutorial here. #10: Benchmarking your site in

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  • Use behavior rather than demographics for marketing targeting

    When you give it some thought, you realize that basic advertising and marketing demographics are largely unhelpful. There are some statistically relevant associations, but just because someone is 25-34 years old, male, in a household income $75,000 and up doesn’t automatically mean they’ll buy your product or service. Demographics data is useful for telling you

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  • Should you blog during holidays?

    Here’s a fun exercise to try that might save you some time this holiday season and for every holiday going forward. Should you blog, post social media updates, or be active online during holidays like Christmas, New Year’s, Hanukkah, etc.? There’s an easy, simple way to discern an answer. First, why are you active? Is

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  • The hottest marketing job skills of 2015

    LinkedIn recently published their data-mined list of the hottest individual job skills of 2014, based on recruiter interest and LinkedIn profile data. Here’s the raw list: Do you see a trend? I do. Let’s cluster them together by broad topic areas like marketing, data analysis, and technology skills: That’s impressive. Of the top 25 skills,

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  • 5 Breakout Marketing Trends for 2015

    It’s that time of year again, time to make wild guesses about what’s to come in the year ahead. There are two general approaches folks use to predict the future. The first is the blatantly obvious; it’s been the year of mobile for about 3 years now. Content marketing is still pitched as a new

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  • Choose a marketing-free zone

    Today, I want to flip things on their head a bit and advocate against marketing. I want to advocate for a marketing-free zone. In our efforts as marketers to experiment with as many different marketing channels as possible, we have a tendency to let marketing spread to everything. Everything becomes marketing. We fill our social

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  • How important is the long tail to your business?

    The long tail is something of a legend when it comes to content marketing. Lots of people talk about it, but few people ever really go looking for it. How real is the long tail? How relevant is it to your business? Luckily, our stalwart friend Google Analytics can help us to understand that. If

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  • Marketing inventory

    Ever been to a grocery store during inventory? It’s a messy, messy place. Items are all over the floor. U-boats are in the aisle. There are clipboards, papers, scanners, and diagrams scattered everywhere, like leaves after an autumn wind. Inevitably, every inventory cycle finds something unexpected. Some products are in the wrong place. Some products

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  • What World of Warcraft’s Garrisons Teach Us About Priorities

    World of Warcraft’s latest expansion, Warlords of Draenor, introduced an entirely new game-within-a-game called Garrisons. Ostensibly a response to players’ requests for housing for their characters in-game, garrisons changes the Warcraft experience considerably. Now, your character can act as a commander or general to non-player characters called followers, as well as build an entire town.

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  • Striking similarity

    Jason Falls wrote a blog post recently about originality, plagiarism, and synthesis. If you haven’t read it, go read it first. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. If you need legal assistance, contact a real lawyer! The concern on the Internet isn’t about plagiarism per se. While it’s unethical, it’s not illegal in its own

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