Posted in Business, Impactiviti, Innovation, Musings, Selling, Uncategorized, tagged Business, Consultant, Consulting, entrepreneur, Great Wolf Lodge, Impactiviti, Management consulting, Marketing and Advertising, Salesmanship, Small business, startup business on July 2, 2008 | 9 Comments »
It was on I-80 Eastbound. On the way home from a little father-son getaway with my fourth at the Great Wolf Lodge in the Poconos. After a day of water-sliding, a professional epiphany at 60 miles per hour.
For 9 1/2 years, I’d worked with a small company doing sales/marketing/biz dev in the pharmaceutical training field. [...]
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Once again, a large group of authors is contributing to a collaborative book called “The Age of Conversation.” The first edition was a great success; this newest version, due out later in the summer, has over 200 authors (each contributing a brief chapter).
Ryan Barrett has assembled some “snippets” forwarded by various authors on her blog. [...]
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Posted in Blogging, Collaboration, Fun, Humor, Networking, Personal branding, Social Media, Twitter, Uncategorized, tagged Colorado, Gary Vaynerchuk, iPhone, Jason Calacanis, Liz Strauss, Robert Scoble, Terry Starbucker, Twitter on June 16, 2008 | 7 Comments »
Terry Starbucker, the renowned “Ramblings from a Glass Half Full” blogger, was spotted yesterday in a small bar in Boulder, Colorado, nursing a wine glass that was three-quarters empty.
Blogger audiences - half of them, anyway - were stunned. RSS subscriptions dropped precipitously as disenchanted readers abandoned Starbucker like a beached Twitter Fail Whale.
“I can’t believe [...]
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Posted in Advertising, Blogging, Branding, Networking, Social Media, Technology, Uncategorized, tagged Branding, Business, Consulting, Delta, Delta Air Lines, Marketing and Advertising, News and Media, Twitter on June 6, 2008 | 9 Comments »
Congratulations! As a business professional, you’ve outsourced a growing proportion of your marketing.
Whether you decided to or not.
Time was, companies could control their marketing messages to a large extent. They could craft their brand image and messages and pro-actively distribute that marketing to their target audience. Sure, word-of-mouth was always powerful in the shaping of [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on May 27, 2008 | 3 Comments »
It was bad enough when they rolled out something called a Touareg. A meaningless, hard-to-pronounce name that has all the cachet of rusted flywheel.
But they couldn’t stop there. No, today I see an ad for a new VW model called a “Tiguan.”
What’s a Tiguan? Your guess is as good as mine. Let’s free-associate: Wigwam. Tequila. [...]
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Call me an idealist, but I think true professionals yearn to add value. There is no fulfillment in collecting a paycheck while being unproductive (except for the chronically pathetic “worker,” but that’s another post).
So, in your current role, what is your value-add? How are you making life better for customers? How is your company [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on May 12, 2008 | No Comments »
Jim Kukral (jimkukral.com) has just generously made available a series of tutorials (short videos, of course) on how to do basic online video using tools like the Flip video camera. Just go here - it’s free!
I have found Jim, and his on-line examples, to be quite helpful as I began my journey into video blogging. [...]
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Put (your name) in those brackets, and we have the new reality of customer service.
Bad products, bad customer experience, bad attitudes - all increasingly come to light and are publicly magnified by those who blog, Twitter, and otherwise engage in Share Media.
I think every corporate training program should emphasize this one overarching reality: today’s customer, [...]
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How can you better rejoice in the glittering elite of the budding Twitterati than by ordering your very own Twitter Rock Star Half-Year Calendar!
Yessir, it’s a fast-paced world! New Twitter stars have emerged over the past few months, meaning that the 2008 full-year edition of Twitter Rock Stars is already obsolete. Trashed! Now, you can [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on May 9, 2008 | 1 Comment »
It’s going to be Mother’s Day this weekend here in the U.S. The easy remembrance is flowers, a dinner, a card, etc.
But why stop there? Shared memories are even more important.
What is your most cherished memory of your mother? What impresses you the most (particularly as you’ve gotten older)?
For me - and this won’t sound [...]
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Perhaps you’ve never been a Boy Scout. Whether you have or not, the Scout motto - Be Prepared - is a good one to consider right now.
You’re read about all the recent layoffs in many industries. You’ve heard about, or been part of, one or more of the many mergers in recent years. There is [...]
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Posted in Advertising, Blogging, Branding, Business, Collaboration, Innovation, Marketing, Musings, Networking, Social Media, Web on May 5, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Of late, I’ve been burning up brain cycles on the branding of social media - that is, how can we simply and accurately present what social media is, and what it offers, to the vast majority of people who are non-users?
Wired in the way that I am, that always boils down to a terminology issue [...]
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1. Phone charges by the minute. My grandchildren will ask me about this one day, perplexed by the concept.
2. Geographical barriers. Without a second thought, I’m communicating with people around the world. Effortlessly. Any time. A lot of those barriers were in my mind only, it turns out.
3. Finding information. Any information. About anything. Just [...]
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This has been a week of catch-up work in my home office. And it has provided several opportunities to gain real-life benefit from social media tools. Here’s how:
1. I’ve had an ongoing problem with my iPhone creating static-y noises over my computer speakers. Not the end of the world, but annoying. Out of the blue, [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on April 30, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Why is your company in business? Let’s consider three drivers that shape any business, and see what they say about your brand.
Every company or individual goes into business with the goal of Doing Well. This is the baseline level of commerce. At the very least, you want your revenue to exceed your expenses, and to [...]
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I have no girls, and so the whole Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus phenomenon has, up to now, passed me by. However, just last week, I read through a magazine article expressing appreciation for how this young lady has managed to keep a relatively pure image, and avoid the scandals of other tween/teen starlets.
Unfortunately, with fame and [...]
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I was intrigued by the description of a new social web platform called Twine, so I accepted an invite to the Beta, and started exploring a bit this morning.
Twine is digging into some concepts of the semantic web, and its purported approach mirrors some ruminations I’ve had about Web 3.0/4.0/5.0 whatever-you-want-to-call-it (long post brewing for [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on April 17, 2008 | 4 Comments »
OK, I’m finally doing it this week.
Recently, I bought an iPhone in order to try to consolidate cell phone, calendar, contacts, music, and whatever into one device. It’s a very cool machine…but I’ve been putting off one very painful task.
I have contacts scattered through at least 3 main applications - my Yahoo mail program, a [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on April 16, 2008 | 5 Comments »
We have a branding challenge.
Those of us involved in social media are breaking new ground, and with that, there’s a certain degree of messiness. As in, a proliferation of terms used to express this new world where there is no barrier to entry for any and all of us to publish and participate.
Social Media. Web [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on April 16, 2008 | 5 Comments »
I just noticed on my WordPress dashboard that THIS is my 300th post on the Stickyfigure blog!
And what is foremost on my mind when I think about that milestone?
How thankful I am to be so much richer, as part of this marketing/blogging/Twittering/socializing community.
I never anticipated what would happen following my first missive (How to Waste [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on April 15, 2008 | 1 Comment »
While browsing through Forbes magazine, I came across a series of 3 full-page ads, taken out by Emerson (tagline: Consider it Solved).
Boy, do they have a marketing challenge to solve.
Emerson, like conglomerates such as United Technologies, Siemens, and GE, are into just about everything. The three Emerson ads I viewed talked about wireless plant operation, [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on April 7, 2008 | 13 Comments »
For a moment, I was going to write “Where is it going?” But after a weekend of intensive interaction with 80+ bloggers at Blogger Social ‘08, “Where are we going?” seemed far better.
Why? Because it’s not about a technology movement. It’s about people using technology to be…more complete people.
Now I freely confess that I am [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on April 6, 2008 | 2 Comments »
For those Blogger Social attendees still socializing today, the Boonton BBQ is ON no matter what the cool, cloudy weather. We’re an indoor/outdoor environment here!
The ribs are smokin’; the burgers and chicken are waiting for the grill; fruit, vegetables (and vegetarian) are all lined up, and American micro-brews (along with Australian wine) is chilling.
Anytime after [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on April 5, 2008 | 5 Comments »
It was a rockin’ night at The Perfect Pint for the Blogger Social ‘08 Kickoff. CK did a fabulous job organizing the event, with a huge assist from Lori Magno and many others. For many of us, it was the first time actually meeting after many on-line interactions, and how easy and natural it was [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on May 23, 2007 | 1 Comment »
That includes six February 29ths (leap years). 1,352 Monday mornings. 227,904 hourly trips out of the cuckoo clock.
Today, my bride and I have been married for exactly 26 years. This July will be my first blogging anniversary - a wonderful milestone! But it pales in comparison to knowing and loving my best friend for over [...]
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