For about a year I’ve been using a Mac software package, Ulysses, to write most of my blog posts. I enjoy writing in Markdown, assisted by the software, and publishing to HTML. Unfortunately, the developers changed from a “pay up front” model to a subscription model, and the time has come for me to part…
Artificial intelligence poses a future potential problem in the exacerbation of income inequality, much in the same way that automation and robotics creates an income inequality problem today. The Old Way of Making Money In the days before automation and robotics, factories hired humans to do repetitive, boring, and dangerous tasks. Factory owners sold their…
A recent article by Rachel Kaiser on TNW asked if it’s time to kill the personal website, and made a case for its demise. Is it? In a word: No. Why? Consider this simple fact: as long as we pay our bills, our website operates under our control. Kaiser makes the point that sites like…
One of the most valuable people to visit our website is the returning visitor. This is the person who’s already aware of us, who’s already been to our website. However, not all returning visitors are the same. Some are much higher value than others – visitors who have been to specific pages on our site.…
AI is the hot topic of discussion now, and it’s understandable for people to wonder just how much of the talk is hype and how much is real. Go to any tech trade show or conference and AI is splashed across every vendor’s product descriptions. Read the news headlines and one would be excused for…
On any given day, hundreds of blog posts will tell you what the latest and greatest in SEO advice is. From accelerated mobile pages to Tensorflow-powered topic models, there are new innovations in SEO all the time. Fix the Basics First However, all the newfangled innovations in SEO are rendered largely ineffective when the basics…
Oz du Soleil responded to the most recent blog post on auto-DMs with this observation: “I remember a few years ago online marketers were all about the importance of building relationships. Today, it’s about taking advantage of technologies that allow marketers to be invasive. Email is a miserable place because marketers made it so. Now,…
A bit of backstory about this particular recipe: I learned it thanks to the power of marketing years ago. I was speaking at the Educational Travel Conference, and at the conference, the trade show floor could only be described as culinary magnificence. Many of the exhibitors were educational departments of embassies, and few things demonstrate…
I was recently asked my opinion on a piece of survey research and how valid I thought it was. One of the easiest tests for validity of any piece of research is in its disclosure statement and methodology. Why Disclosure? The more a study discloses, the more likely it is the study sponsor is willing…
Few would argue that influencer marketing, done well, is ineffective. The catch is that often, it’s not done well. Marketers and brands pay too much to receive too little. Why? The core problem is that marketers approach influencer identification in the wrong order. More often than not, the first thing someone asks is, “Who’s influential?…
