The Future Buzz

Some background

My major during college was not marketing. I studied it as an outside concentration and took the basic courses (part of the requirement to get my degree), but it was never my main focus. Interestingly enough, here I am as a marketing professional, working on national campaigns and seeing big results for ideas I’ve created.

At the same time, I have friends who did study marketing as their main focus. Sadly, many of them are still searching for jobs in the field, or have given up and gone into other areas of business, hoping one day to switch to a position in marketing (marketing is apparently a pretty hard field to get into).

How I learn

I was always highly interested in psychology, sociology and philosophy and have read countless books on each of these subjects. Being a student of the mind, society and humanity might be what prepared me to be a marketing professional more than anything else. Or perhaps it was the fact that always I loved writing and putting together/remixing content that I thought people would enjoy and share.

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Yes, they’re popular. And yes, you probably secretly like them even if you complain and post negative comments every time one graces page one of Digg. Of course, I’m talking about lists (top 10 lists, top 100 lists, top 9000 lists, you name it).

Lists are a popular way to arrange content on the web for a number of reasons. Wait for it – I’m going to list them.

Lists:

• Are scan-able
• Provide easy to read and consume content
• Have the novelty factor
• Are many times “must-share” content
• Engage people
• Are at times humorous, entertaining or incredible
• Are a strong social web meme
• Get strong traffic

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As I’ve written previously, your small business website is the most powerful tool in your arsenal to sell your company’s services.

While I did give a brief mention in that post that your small business website should have a blog, I wanted to go through some of the reasons why this is so vital.

Here’s 10 basic reasons your small business should have a blog:

Prove you’re ahead of the curve
Do your competitors have blogs? Guaranteed at least some of them do, and you can bet that potential clients are reading them. If a client was looking for a cutting-edge company to employ, having a well-written, professional blog would definitely be a nod in that direction.

Show your passion
Having a blog allows you to really draw out the conversation and show your passion as a small business. Your static webpages can open the dialog, but the blog is what differentiates you as a passionate business owner and someone who really provides the best product. It’s a good way to stand out from the pack. […] Continue Reading…

Parallel to traditional media moguls, there are several blogger-entrepreneurs (blogtrepreneurs?) who have built successful blogging networks that all began from one successful blog.

The obvious examples are TechCrunch (and its “Crunch” network) Weblogs, Inc. (which sold to AOL for 25 million in 2005) and Gawker Media (which runs Consumerist, Valleywag, and Gizmodo to name a few). Those are networks managed by several people and definitely large-scale operations.

For this case study, I want to show you an exceptional example of what one single person has done on a smaller (but by no means less significant) scale building a blogging network.

Enter the “Daily” network, which includes three sites all run by avid blogger Daniel Scocco:

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I previously wrote how TechCrunch had been nice enough to ship me a free, signed copy of Sarah Lacy’s new book: “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good – The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0.”

I’ll try to just add my opinion and not go into too much detail as I don’t want to ruin the book for you.

In one sentence: this book is essential material for everyone involved in the web 2.0 world. It’s a fantastic read of how we got where we are, the entrepreneurs pushing the envelope and the culture behind the scenes of Silicon Valley.

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Twitter, Digg, Friendfeed, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. – these are all incredibly popular social networks with useful services connecting millions globally.  Notice all of those links take you to my personal profile page within each of those networks (feel free to friend me on any of these sites). 
Within those […] Continue Reading…

Spam protection on the web is a big deal.  Especially for independent publishers who don’t have much time to to focus on anything besides creating content for their site.

Many people think that spam only comes in the form of those annoying email messages you receive offering you pharmaceuticals or […] Continue Reading…

Just remember, it has to be beyond awesome. You’re competing with videos as compelling as this:

or as creative as this:

or as thought provoking as this:

or as cute as this:

or as hilarious as this:

(Related: here’s 5 essential tips on how to make a […] Continue Reading…

Marketers, PR people, artists, even other bloggers want what they are doing to be written about on blogs.
This doesn’t always play well with the fact that bloggers are an independent bunch and love to come up with posts entirely on their own. But, that’s not to […] Continue Reading…

The Internet is the great enabler for sharing content. And, this new incantation of the web offers an extremely diverse array of tools to share anything we want with friends, family, co-workers or even complete strangers.
Some people use social networks like Digg and Reddit to share […] Continue Reading…