Category: Strategy

  • Do Auto-DMs Work?

    Some people love them, some people hate them (rather like popups, right?). But the question isn’t whether or not you like them, the question is, do they work for generating any kind of traffic or attention? The answer is… let’s test! You see, as much as I may have an opinion on any given marketing…

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  • The nuances of strategy

    One of the topics discussed at the recent MARCOM forum which there was great confusion about was the entire concept of marketing strategy. Marketers are genuinely confused at this point about strategy from a company perspective vs. strategy for specific marketing objectives. Are they the same? Yes and no. The reason there’s so much confusion…

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  • Boring but valuable

    World of Warcraft mirrors real life in astonishing ways, none more so than in economics. One of the easiest ways to make gold in World of Warcraft is through in-game professions, and these professions have a powerful lesson to teach us: boring but valuable pays well because no one wants to do it, but everyone…

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  • 3 Questions About Your Top 10

    Here’s a very simple experiment you should try if you’re promoting something via social media or other digital marketing channels. Go to your Google Analytics. Go to Traffic Sources > Referring Sites. Look at the top 10. How many of the referring sites in the top 10 are platforms you are actively promoting on? Now…

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  • How to arbitrage data and become a leader

    If you’re unfamiliar with the word arbitrage, it means this: In economics and finance, arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets: striking a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices. If you extend the idea…

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  • How to Set Up Facebook Insights For Your Website

    Facebook announced not too long ago that its Insights analytics would be available for regular websites in addition to its very popular Pages. That day has come (actually, it came a little while ago), but it’s one of those features that tend to get glossed over since it’s neither sexy nor interesting to implement. Technically,…

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  • Premium Content Newsletters: A Case Study

    Two months ago I set out to try an experiment, using the concept of premium content in my personal newsletter. I announced on March 4, 2011 that I’d be offering premium content to newsletter subscribers who completed their profiles with all required fields. I wanted to see what would happen in terms of newsletter subscribership…

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  • When is the best time to tweet?

    When is the best time to tweet? … is the wrong question. At least as it’s currently being asked in social media, it’s not only the wrong question, it’s an overly simplified question that provides an answer that’s not likely to help you meet your goals. It’s a question that is presented to people who…

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  • Beyond Recipes

    Chris Brogan posted an interesting commentary on offering recipes to your buyers, on the premise that people would be happier to buy from you if you offered serving suggestions rather than just a pile of ingredients. Go read it. It’s a good start, but imagine this was the menu being served for dinner: Strawberry shortcake…

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  • Mergers & Acquisitions: Stay or go?

    In yesterday’s post, we discussed the process of mergers and acquisitions (very roughly) and its implications for employees. Today, let’s talk about the career prospects for those employees. Stay or go? When companies merge, culture changes. Sometimes the change is slow and gradual, sometimes it’s immediate.  In cases where a large company acquires a small…

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