The vast majority of businesses and bloggers try to do far too much with their sites. Ultimately this is a mistake. Your opportunity is to go the opposite route and be a more refined, clear and useful option.
Ask yourself, what is the single most important idea I would like my web property to communicate or action I would like a visitor to take. Now, focus your site to make sure every interested visitor sees your call to action, loud and clear. It is that simple.
Direct each visitor’s attention only to what is absolutely vital and you will win every time against your competition that does too much and is unfocused.
For example… Continue reading...
Politics and religion both are taboo subjects for marketing writers to discuss. This is so because neither institution would like you to know that at their core, they are the best examples of successful marketing in our society. They are so successful because most don’t even consider the fact that they are marketing.
By me even broaching this topic some of you are already shifting in your chairs.
Why? Because you probably subscribe to some sort of political belief and some sort of religious belief. Politics are often discussed openly, however today I would like to discuss religion from a marketing perspective as I have not seen that done nearly enough.
Religion is concurrently the most successful, yet most ignored example of the efficacy of marketing. If you are offended by me talking about religion as marketing, then the point has already been proven. Continue reading...
Image Credit: Shapeshift
I’ve written previously on how your resume is meaningless, on building career security, not job security and on the rise of personal branding. To summarize the overarching themes of those three posts quickly:
- Your work should be working for you, building your reputation, not locked away in a resume.
- A resume proves nothing, a living case study proves everything.
- Creating a name for yourself in your industry provides you the ultimate freedom: career security.
- The tools exist for you to influence your industry in deep ways to make positive change and carve out a name for yourself.
- Building your personal network enables incredible connections with the world around you not previously possible.
Image Credit: c@rljones
The web has fast become the most efficient tool for building interactions and relationships between the world and your business. No matter if you are a national brand or a fresh upstart, using the web successfully is vital to your success. It is the ultimate marketing tool, we know this - however integrating it with your business model itself can prove an even greater opportunity.
This speaks to the importance of having someone on your team, in house that is a web guru and social media evangelist. Let’s go through 14 reasons why this is so vital: Continue reading...
Image Credit: Neville Longmore Abstract Artist
McDonalds is to food as radio is to music
I abhor essentially all music that is played on broadcast radio. Yes, musical taste is subjective, but the trite, banal, watered-down music devoid of personality played on radio in America is an insult to anyone with more than a fleeting interest in the form of art.
The problem I have with it goes deeper than formulaic structure and generic, unoriginal content - although you could easily make the case for either of those - but I’d like to also highlight something you may not realize: most of it is way overproduced. It isn’t authentic and is lacking a key element that makes music special: personality.
I prefer music written by one person in their home studio with just a few pieces of gear, music recorded by an amateur band in their garage, music recorded by a live jazz performance for an intimate group - people creating music because they love it without pretense. It is real, and it’s actually far better than what most big studios put out. Continue reading...
