Marketing Articles About Books

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123 items found:

To Find As Many Profitable Niche Markets For Info Products As You Will Need. Just how do you go about selecting the best niche or niches for your online business to exploit? After all information or e-book marketing is a proven and lucrative business but for those without ... (09/07/08 09:00 AM)

Do you know about the Affiliate E-book marketing?. Getting an affiliate Ebook is an excellent way to increase your affiliate sales. You can actually take benefit of this trend in affiliate marketing, but you still have to have a good quality marketing... (09/06/08 09:00 AM)

Five Important Lessons I’ve Learned As An Entrepreneur. Sun.com: Popular entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and blogger, Guy Kawasaki understands business. Guy is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine, and author of eight books on innovative business. A list of the five most important lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur: 1. Focus on cash flow. I understand the difference between cash flow [...]

(09/05/08 09:00 AM)

Ebooks can be a very valuable asset! . An unlimited income that you didn't have to leave the comfort of your own home for? Have you ever thought about becoming a writer, and publishing books? Well, many people have become well-know... (09/04/08 09:00 PM)

Buy an eBook and you won't ever need any more Bookshelves Covered. Peter James is one author who recognized the possibilities of electronic books long ago. His techno-thriller Host' was the first novel to be released on floppy disk back in 1995 and he has long been a... (09/03/08 09:01 AM)

The Kindle and DRM.

I have completely fallen in love with my Kindle. I've now read over 50 books on it and have another 50 or so queued up. I've been reading exclusively on my Kindle when I travel (I no longer carry books with me), although I do read from the infinite pile of books in my house when I'm home. As a mega-reader, Amazon has completely nailed it.

However, I have one problem with the Kindle. DRM.

I view the Kindle as a pure substitute for a book. The way a book works is that I can read it and - when I'm done - I can give it to Amy to read. She can then give it to a friend of her's to read. Or put it on her bookshelf.

I can't do this with the Kindle. I can read the book. I can put it on my bookshelf. But I can't give it to Amy.

Now, I don't have a problem with the fact that I can't copy a book and have it simultaneously on two Kindles. However, Amazon has already solved for this - it lets me store my books on either my Kindle or in my Amazon account. So, I'm one small step away from "sharing" my book with Amy where she could then download it and read it on her Kindle. At this moment in time, she'd have it on her Kindle but I wouldn't have it on my Kindle.

That's how books work. That's how the Kindle could work. I'd even be satisfied with having a limit on the number of people that I could share a book with (at least two; less than five) and would be ok with a permanent association between a few Kindles. Remember - share means that we can't read it at the same time.

It makes no sense to me that I can physically give Amy my Kindle to read a book on, but can't transfer the book to her to read on her Kindle. Oh - so very close.

(09/02/08 09:01 PM)

Every Blue Ocean Will Eventually Turn Red; Create an Unfair Advantage Instead. The vast red and blue oceans of the marketing world tsunamied into our awareness and vocabulary a few years ago, when two professors, W. Chan Kim and Ren?e Mauborgne, claimed that competition can be rendered irrelevant. Their book, Blue Ocean Strategy, heralded the news to marketing managers and CEOs all over the world: After years and years of surviving in red bloody oceans, swarming with murderous competitors, finally there's a better alternative! Let us consider an example of a company that supposedly followed the Blue Ocean strategy. (09/02/08 09:01 AM)

An In Depth e-Book Compilers. Ebook compilers are a vital part of creating the final and marketable product when you write an e-book. Thus, understanding their role, how they work, and even how to pick out the right one for you is... (08/29/08 09:00 PM)

Website Aids In The Online Bookselling Business. When you’re looking for a business to start, the book business probably isn’t the first business that comes to mind. With the growth in technology and the many attempts that have been made to wipe out the old fashioned book, nothing can seem to replace it. That is what makes the business so [...]
(08/27/08 09:00 PM)

Amazon Acquires Shelfari.

Congrats to Josh Hug and the gang at Shelfari for joining the Amazon.com family. I was an early angel investor in Shelfari and have been a long time avid user of the service. Amazon was an investor in the first round and the two companies fit naturally together.

I invested in three vertical social networks in 2006 - Shelfari (books), Dogster (dogs and cats), and Enthusiast Group (sports). So far I have one win (Shelfari) and one loss (Enthusiast Group). Dogster is doing great and looks like it'll be a nice winner also. I made these as small angel investments to learn about the dynamics around vertical social networks. I've learned a bunch from Josh and from Ted Rheingold at Dogster. It also looks like I'll have a nice "aggregate financial outcome" for my investments in this area.

Well done Shelfari!

(08/27/08 09:00 PM)

Amazon Snaps Up Book-Lover SocNet Shelfari. Amazon.com has acquired social library network Shelfari for an undisclosed amount. Shelfari lets users showcase books they've read on virtual bookshelves. Books can be reviewed and discussed among...

(08/26/08 09:01 PM)

10 Business and Money Things To Do Before You Die. Dave Freeman, co-author of the bestselling travel book 100 Things To Do Before You Die, just died in a freak accident in his own home. He was 47 years old. Nonetheless, reports say he lived his life to the fullest, traveling to exotic locales when he wasn’t busy with his job as an ad executive. [...] (08/26/08 09:00 AM)

Biz Resource: Promoting You and Your Online Biz in 140 Characters Or Less. Home Biz Notes: Geekpreneur offers a free Twitter ebook with a difference. If you want to get into using social media for business, this book is a great start. With huge companies like Zappos and SouthWestern using Twitter as major communication and marketing channels, it gives you an idea of the power of Twitter as a social [...]
(08/25/08 09:00 PM)

Summer Reading: Why More People Are Listening to Books.

So what did you read this summer? Chances are, more and more of you listened instead. According to the American Association of Publishers, audio book sales grew by 20 percent last year. The largest online seller of audiobooks is Audible, which was acquired by Amazon earlier this year for $300 million. Audible offers more than 80,000 downloadable programs from current best sellers to daily newspapers.

What is popular summer listening this year?

(08/21/08 09:01 PM)

Getting Serious About Getting Things Done. BusinessWeek: Productivity guru David Allen is the author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, the 2001 book that has sold more than a million copies and has been translated into 30 languages. His eponymous, $8 million time-management empire spans everything from $595 per-person public seminars to corporate speaking engagements that can earn him [...]
(08/21/08 09:00 AM)

The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. PRWeb: Mike Michalowicz knows business, and he knows aspiring entrepreneurs need a hard-core reality check if they’re ever going to get off their duff and start one. Founder of three multi-million dollar businesses, Michalowicz lets readers in on his proven “TPing” entrepreneurial strategies in his new book, “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.” “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur” pulls no [...]
(08/21/08 09:00 AM)

The Drudgery of About Me. What is it with the biography? I’m not talking about a book or movie, but my own. Specifically, for this very website. So far, the per-hour ROW (Return On Writing) my Business Pundit biography has been dismally low. I’ve stared at this screen for hours, with no blips of inspiration. Just the mocking glow of [...] (08/19/08 09:00 PM)

Saving the World at Work Podcast. This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Saving the World at Work Podcast Tim Sanders stopped by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast to talk about his new book - Saving the World at Work Tim has written two previous books that I really enjoyed - The Likability Factor and Love is the Killer App. These books argue that bringing [...]
(08/18/08 09:00 PM)

Patents, Commons, and Anti-Commons.

Yippee - the criticism of the software patent stupidity is starting to heat up and some really smart people are making both useful arguments about the issues and interesting proposals about the solution. In addition, there are some general articles starting to appear that explain that while patents (and property rights) have an important role in our society and in encouraging and supporting innovation and entrepreneurship, there are some well understood problems that emerge from patenting small components of complex systems - especially when the vector of innovation is steep (like - for example - with software or the Internet.)

James Surowiecki has a great short article in the New Yorker Magazine titled The Permission Problem. In it, he gives a great example of what Columbia law professor Michael Heller calls the "anti-commons" in his book The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives.

"In the second decade of the twentieth century, it was almost impossible to build an airplane in the United States. That was the result of a chaotic legal battle among the dozens of companies—including one owned by Orville Wright—that held patents on the various components that made a plane go. No one could manufacture aircraft without fear of being hauled into court. The First World War got the industry started again, because Congress realized that something needed to be done to get planes in the air. It created a “patent pool,” putting all the aircraft patents under the control of a new association and letting manufacturers license them for a fee. Had Congress not stepped in, we might still be flying around in blimps."

The anti-commons is a great reference point for what has happened with software patents. Simply put, if too many people own individual pieces of a valuable asset - especially if those pieces are overlapping and vaguely defined (e.g. software) - you can end up with gridlock instead of innovation. Surowiecki explains:

"When something you own is necessary to the success of a venture, even if its contribution is small, you’ll tend to ask for an amount close to the full value of the venture. And since everyone in your position also thinks he deserves a huge sum, the venture quickly becomes unviable."

So - we have (a) Google Sued For Patent Infringement For Keeping Track Of How Many Ads People Click On. At the same time, we have (b) U.S. Patent Office Rejects All Ninety-Five NeoMedia Patent Claims. For those of you uncertain about my perspective, (a) is bad. (b) is good. Hopefully (b) motivates the folks at Google to fight like hell to invalidate silly patents, rather than take a "let's retrench and patent everything in sight" position.

Finally, I read an article by Timothy Lee on Ars Technica last week titled Patent Office finds voice, calls for software patent sanity. We need smart people to step up, shout from the rooftop about how fubared the software patent system is, and provide real alternatives. I'm optimistic that this is finally starting to happen.

(08/05/08 09:01 PM)

Travel Guide Books Get a Redesign.

1. Ideo Eyes Open

The innovation-and-design firm brings its fresh eye to a travel book ($22.95) with 50 photo-saturated, offbeat experiences in a flip-chart format. The aim? To inspire travelers to look up from their sightseeing itineraries and explore their surroundings. "We decided to take all of our own photos," says author Fred Dust, an Ideo partner, "because the way you see is so reflective of the stories you tell." London and New York got Ideo-ized first; expect more cities ahead.

(08/03/08 09:01 AM)

Seth Reopens Triiibes. Few marketers can create a buzz like Seth Godin - the rest of us are just here to learn from him. He has created a quasi exclusive social network he’s called Triiibes and is reopening the membership come Aug 5th. Go get his book, send him the receipt and join triiibes, it’s a focused way to [...]

(08/02/08 09:01 PM)

25 Best Business Books Ever. What makes a business book the “best”? Best-selling? Most influential? Timelessness? Categorical relevance? Business Pundit sifted through numerous categories and resources to come up with this list of the 25 Best Business Books Ever. We didn’t concern ourselves with categories (management, sales, etc.) or timeliness of subject matter. Instead, we focused on the [...] (07/31/08 09:01 AM)

My podcast on lead generation with Dave Stein. I was was recently interviewed by Dave Stein, CEO and Founder of ES Research Group, and author of How Winners Sell (a great book by the way). During the interview we talk about the following topics: What works to get... (07/25/08 09:01 PM)

A Very Good String Of Books.

I had a week of "a book a day" where every single one I read was great. I'm now slogging through an "ok" book (The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism) so I thought I'd take a break and write quick reviews of the excellent ones that I have read lately.

The Last Lecture: Wow. Randy Pausch is just incredible. A well known CMU professor with a great zest for life, Randy was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer in September 2006. He broke into the mainstream with his awesome lecture titled "The Last Lecture" which was the final lecture he gave at CMU. It's a riveting 76 minute lecture that the book was subsequently based on. Both are worth every second you spend on them. As of today, Randy is still alive, but according to his blog he recently "has also taken a step down and is much sicker than he had been. He's now enrolled in hospice." (Added the morning of 7/25: Randy Pausch passed away last night.) I don't know Randy personally, but after hearing his lecture, reading as much of his as I could find on the web, and then reading The Last Lecture, I feel like a have a real sense for him. He teaches - and inspires - in a way and at a high level that few other do in this world.

The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood: I had a wide range of emotions after reading The Last Lecture, but I wasn't prepared for The Mascot. This is easily the best book of the year so far. Mark Kurzem writes a complex story about discovering his father's childhood as an "adopted Nazi." Kurzem discovers this as an adult in graduate school when his father, who has suppressed this knowledge from everyone his entire life, finally opens up to Kurzem. As his father starts telling the parts of his story that he can remember, the two of them explore his father's past (it turns out he's a jew), and try to put the many pieces of the puzzle of his father's childhood back together. On top of it all, the relationship between father and son is complex and evolves beautifully and unpredictably through the book. Fabulous, shocking, brutal, mysterious, complicated, sad, depressing, and intriguing at so many levels.

Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!): If you are a happily married couple living in Denver with two youngish daughters and you decided to embark on having sex every day for 100 days, what would it be like? Yup - that's what this book is about. It's extremely well written - has the appropriate amount of titillation and salacious stuff without being over the top while being an enjoyable romp through the complex life of a modern couple that I expect many people can relate to. Equal parts brain candy, philosophy, biography, and - well - sex.

The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine: I'm not an oeniphile so I didn't expect to love this book, but I did (thanks Frank for the recommendation.) I learned an incredible amount about the history of wine while getting a great look into the mysterious world of high priced "rare" wines - and what appears to be a massive fraud that evolved over a 20 year period surrounding a wide range of "rare" wines. The cast of characters is extensive and while this is clearly history (going back to Thomas Jefferson) it reads like a thriller. Yum.

Glasshouse: After that stretch of books I needed some mental floss. I loved the Charles Stross sci-fi book that I read last week and on a reader's recommendation went on Amazon and bought all of his books for my Kindle. This one was even better, and I've got another half dozen to go before I run out of things he's written in the past few years.

The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crash of 2008 and What It Means: I figured Soros would be a challenge after Glasshouse. Every other chapter (the philosophy part) was. I always enjoy reading Soros's books; I never completely understand them but I enjoy his blunt and cynical view about the markets and how people interact with them.

Now - this incredible stretch of great books couldn't continue. It doesn't. I read about half of The Pirate's Dilemma tonight. It's ok, but all the commentary between the examples are unnecessary as the examples are the meat (and stand on their own.) Fortunately, I know how to skim.

(07/25/08 09:01 AM)

I'm Speculating About The Speculation About Oil.

Having just finished reading George Soros's latest book The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crash of 2008 and What It Means my brain is now full of his theories around reflexivity. I have always instinctively agreed with Soros's philosophy even though I find it incredibly difficult and chewy to work my way through (but that's true of all philosophy for me.)

I'm a great fan of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which, according to my friend Wikipedia, "is the statement that locating a particle in a small region of space makes the velocity of the particle uncertain; and conversely, that measuring the velocity of a particle precisely makes the position uncertain." Wikipedia suggests that this is often conflated with the Observer Effect (when you observe a phenomenon, you change it), but I think the intersection of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Soros's Theory of Reflexivity reduce nicely in my brain to the Observer Effect.

That leads me to the real point of this post, which is the great short article in the New Yorker by James Surowiecki titled Oily Speculations (thanks Amy.) In the last month a new class of villain has emerged in the rapidly escalating price of oil - the "speculator." Surowiecki calls bullshit on this (not on the involvement of the speculator, but why this is both irrelevant and why the speculator is not the villain.)

The key sentence in the article is "Speculation has been a favorite target of politicians looking to mollify anxious voters since the time of ancient Greece, when the orator Lysias protested that wheat traders had reduced Athens to a state of siege.”

The conclusion, which Surowiecki bashes us (appropriately) over the head with is "The difficulty for Congress, of course, is that none of the problems that have driven up the price of oil lend themselves to a quick fix, and most, like the boom in global demand and the inaccessibility of certain oil fields, aren’t under our control at all. That’s what makes speculators a perfect target: by going after them, Congress can demonstrate to voters that it understands their pain, and at the same time avoid doing anything that might require real sacrifice from Americans. Our dependence on foreign oil, together with the fiscal fecklessness that has helped reduce the value of the dollar, means that there is no easy way out of where we are. But in an election year that’s hardly a message that anyone in Washington is going to deliver."

If you net it all out, it's the Observer Effect writ large.

(07/22/08 09:01 AM)

Marketing and Quantum Physics. My guest on this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is John Assaraf. You may recall the John was a central figure in the wildly popular - The Secret. John’s core message of bringing the principles of quantum physics to business through his new book The Answer is an important leap that small [...]
(07/21/08 09:01 PM)

A Book A Day Keeps The Sun Away.

While Amy assures me there is no correlation between "books" and "sun appearance", I have been reading a book each day and there has been no sun since we arrived in Homer 12 days ago. I was just using the same argument that the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster uses to explain global warming.

As is typical of my time in Homer, I've covered a lot of ground. This time I'm reading exclusively on my Kindle which I love; I haven't cracked open a physical book yet. That said, some of the books have been great and a few have been clunkers.

Inside Steve's Brain: In preparation for the launch of the iPhone 3G, I decided to try to get into Inside Steve's Brain. This recently became one of the trendy technology books, presumably due to everyone's desire to be as innovative as Steve Jobs (or at least learn some of his special tricks.) I had low expectations for the book (I generally dislike books like this); it surprised me by being pretty good. There were plenty of instructive Steve Jobs stories and interesting Apple history that I hadn't read in other places. The summaries / lessons at the end of the chapters were tedious and there were a few "extra" chapters that could have been edited out if the book industry could handle a business book less than 200 pages. But - overall - it's good, especially if you are an Apple fanboy.

The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company: In my "read all about Steve Jobs" theme, I consumed The Pixar Touch. If you are choosing between Inside Steve's Brain and The Pixar Touch, choose this one. It's an excellent history of Pixar. The first half is extraordinarily interesting as it details all the early people and research that formed the computer animation industry. This book also felt more balanced (e.g. "less sensational") in its coverage of all the twists and turns that Pixar went through along the way to success.

Halting State: Excellent "slightly in the future" science fiction incorporating all kinds of funky technology, a complex plot around virtual worlds virtual money, plenty of good guys, bad guys, a male nerd / female cop protagonist romantic plot twist, some irrational bad guys, and a few things you had to go back and read a second time to make sure you understood what had just happened. All of it is set in Scotland resulting in some entertaining dialog for this American boy.

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies: Boring, but then I had already knew of many of the examples in the book. If you are a corporate dude looking for examples of the use of "social technologies" in the enterprise, there are lots of useful stories here. If you like to read Forrester Research stuff, you are the target audience. Probably in the same category as Scoble and Israel's Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers - a skimmer if you are in the tech business but important and useful if you are in a large corporation and are trying to figure out what all this social networking stuff means.

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life: Perfect. I love Steve Martin. I was in junior high school when he reached the pinnacle of his stand up fame. I remember being a wild and crazy guy, strutting around while singing King Tut, and shouting out EXCUSE ME at the top of my lungs, much to my mother's annoyance. This is a great autobiography - I even learned that he was born in Waco, Texas.

American Nerd: The Story of My People: So so. I had high expectations for this book since it's about me. About 25% of it was great, 25% of it was boring, and 50% was filler. I think I'm going to start a book imprint called "Books in Under 100 pages", hire a few merciless editors, and make good books great by getting rid of 25% to 75% of them. While I didn't get any new and exciting insights into nerds (although you might, especially if you are not a nerd), I learned some interesting things about ethnicity and racism that hadn't previously crossed my mind. I'm glad I read this book and think it provides some useful insights into our culture, but damnit it didn't need to be over 200 pages.

Final Theory: A Novel: Loved it. A+ mental floss. I can't remember who recommended it to me, but thank you. Physics, murder, sexy smart women, a professor hero, explosions, fast cards, evil mad scientists disguised as pacifists, evil people, complex scientific theories that actually almost work, gratuitous almost sex, a really scary mean bad guy, and some hillbillies. What more could you want?

Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time: Boring. This could have been called "the biography of Keith Ferrazzi" with a bunch of anecdotes tossed in about how to treat people. I think I would have liked it better if it was called "the biography of Keith Ferrazzi" and I was interested in reading the biography of Keith Ferrazzi. Note to self - don't write an autobiography and position it as a self-help business book.

Wall Street Stories: Awesome. Clever, entertaining short stories about Wall Street. Written in 1901. All equally relevant today. While fiction, these could have easily been true stories (and I imagine they were based on real events.) I don't play the market and this book clearly explains the reason why.

If you are feeling depressed about your public stock portfolio, pick up a copy of Wall Street Stories - it'll at least make you laugh. If you need a real laugh, grab a copy of Born Standing Up. If you want to understand why you love your new iPhone so much, try out Inside Steve's Brain. If you get tired of reading, you can always watch the latest installment of David Cohen and I explaining TechStars on ColoradoBizTV.

Oh - and please send some sun to Homer, Alaska.

(07/15/08 09:01 AM)

Here Comes The Sun and More Daily Stuff.

If you follow my tweets you know that I am starting to get desperate for some sun. I could never live in Seattle. There's a rumor that we'll see the sun in Homer again later today - if it comes out to play I'll post a picture of it (did you hear that Mr. Sun - that's called a blibe ("blog bribe"). Here are some interesting things I've collected over the past few days of my cloud induced web reading.

Boulder Olympians weigh politics, pollution as they prep for Beijing: I'm really glad I didn't quality for the 2008 Olympic Marathon. If I had, I'd currently be struggling with whether or not to compete. I sure hope no one dies.

Frontier going under the knife: It looks like there might be more to the Frontier bankruptcy than Frontier getting shafted by First Data. Unlike Southwest, apparently Frontier didn't hedge oil prices (nor - apparently - did any of the other major airlines.) Oops. My prediction - Southwest cleans up in the Denver market and United goes bankrupt again.

Thank you, Adobe Reader 9: Here's a scathing review of everyone's favorite bloatware, Adobe Reader. Oh - it's also sort of a virus if you've ever gotten stuck in the "update - oops - didn't work - try again" infinite loop. I've switched to Foxit Reader - much nicer.

You Just Dont Get It: Outstanding short post from Mark Cuban. If you tell me that "I don't get it", you are either (a) being lazy or (b) being lazy. You are also indirectly calling me an idiot, which isn't necessarily a good way to get someone's attention for your idea.

Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis: I put this one in the "well duh" category. The real irony is that the World Bank - through a confidential report - suggests that global food prices are up by 75% due to biofuels, while the US claims the number is only 3%. Who knows what the real truth is - like most "economic indicators", we will only know what really is going on sometime in the future when we look at back and study the past. Regardless, don't believe everything you read and hear in the media or from our world leaders. "Well duh!"

Dispatches: A Post-Wimbledon Dialogue: I love tennis. I used to be really good (as a junior) - I'm now able to occasionally torture - but not beat - someone that is a 4.5. Watching Federer and Nadal play is a joy that harkens back to my childhood watching Borg and McEnroe play (I loved Borg because my game was like his but rooted for McEnroe because I was an angry and volatile tennis player.) This is a brilliant recap of some genius tennis.

Electronic Papyrus: The Digital Book, Unfurled: I love my Kindle (I haven't read a physical books since I left for Alaska last week.) I'm not sure that I love the Readius, but I'm definitely game to try it.

Time for a run. The sun is still not out.

(07/08/08 09:00 PM)

Learn Word of Mouth Marketing.

Always willing to post a shameless pitch for a good cause... here's an upcoming event that you won't want to miss!

Word of Mouth Marketing Crash Course - Chicago, July 30th

Learn Word of Mouth Marketing Our friend and WOM guru Andy Sernovitz is hosting a small-group word of mouth marketing seminar. Usually he only does private training for companies at a very large price, so this is a rare chance for 50 people to get the best introduction to word of mouth that there is.

We've arranged for a $250 discount for our clients. Use code "welovemarketingsavant" when you register.

This is a very practical, hands-on course. In one intense day, you will:

* Master the five steps of word of mouth marketing
* Construct an action plan that your company can start using the very next day
* Get the same training that big corporations (Microsoft, TiVo, eBay) have received -- for a fraction of what they paid
* Know how to translate word of mouth marketing into real ROI
* Participate in an active, intense day of practical brainstorming (not boring theory)
* Learn from Andy Sernovitz, the guy who literally wrote the book on word of mouth marketing

Andy promises you will learn a repeatable, proven marketing framework that is easy to execute, affordable, and provides measurable results within 60 days.

More information: http://events.gaspedal.com

(07/08/08 09:00 PM)

A Bad Ass Fucking Fractal.

Yes - those are the lyrics - buried at about 2:05. Who said mathematicians don't know how to rock.

Thanks Ryan. Cornell just went up a notch in my book.

(07/08/08 09:00 AM)

Early Computer Animated Movies.

I'm knee deep in reading The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company, listening to Pink Floyd, and enjoying a perfect Homer, Alaska evening with Amy. I was an undergraduate at MIT during the Lucasfilm days of what became Pixar and vaguely remember early Media Lab / Project Athena animation stuff and watching super cool computer graphics wizardry post-SIGGRAPHs at the Computer Museum in Boston. Fortunately, YouTube has all the old classic computer animations online, including The Adventures of Andre and Wally B.

Awesome! (the animations and the book). While sneak peaks of this one and other old Pixar shorts are available on the Pixar website, due to the magic of the Internet they are all available on YouTube.

(07/04/08 09:00 AM)

Learn Word of Mouth Marketing from the Guy Who Wrote the Book. Seriously, my friend Andy Sernovitz did write a great book called Word of Mouth Marketing. Now he’s hosting a small-group word of mouth marketing seminar. Usually he only does private training for companies at a very large price, so this is a rare chance for 50 people to get the best introduction to word of mouth [...]
(07/02/08 09:00 PM)

The Latest Pile of Books.

It's summer time and I've once again been powering through a bunch of books. Amy and I are heading to our place in Homer, Alaska tomorrow where I'll likely continue my pace of at least a book a day. Look for regularly updates and quick reviews here. In the meantime, here's the latest set from the last week.

The Turnaround Kid: What I Learned Rescuing America's Most Troubled Companies: This is the autobiography of Steve Miller, a well known turnaround executive. He started his career at GM and progressed to be part of Lee Iacocca's turnaround team at Chrysler (he was the CFO). After Chrysler, he has been involved in a number of turnarounds including Federal-Mogul, Morrisson-Knudson, Bethlehem Steel, Waste Management, and Delphi. Miller is a guy that's not afraid of a Chapter 11 filing and appears to have skin as thick as the steel that Bethlehem Steel produced. Good business history, especially if you enjoy reading about difficult situations.

Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide: This is an update of Hal Higdon's classic. I picked it up at the Grandma's Marathon Expo and wolfed it down. I got a few new ideas from it - if you are a marathoner - especially a beginning, or aspiring, one - it's definitely worth reading.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto: I read this one on a trip last week to Raleigh Durham (started on the flight out; finished on the flight back). As I ate my Balance Bar on the plane, I realized that everything that Michael Pollan was saying rang gigantic bells in my head. The first half of the book describes the devolution of "food" from "food" to "nutrients" and has a scathing analysis of how the food industry and our government have completely screwed the American diet. The second half of the book tells you what you can do about it. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. That's what I'm going to do for all of July - let's see what happens when I combine that strategy with > 40 miles / week of running.

My Life on the Run: The Wit, Wisdom, and Insights of a Road Racing Icon: A few weeks ago Dan Gannon at Newmerix told me to start running Yasso 800's to get my marathon times down. At Grandma's as I was wandering around the Expo (apparently buying books) I ran into Bart Yasso. I mumbled in a semi-star struck way something about Yasso 800's and bought his book. I also bought a copy for Dan that he should have by now. Yasso is a fucking running maniac / hero / star. I have a new running idol. The book is a great story for anyone that likes to run.

Masters Running: A Guide to Running and Staying Fit After 40: Yeah - I picked this up at the Grandma's Expo also. I'm 42 so the subtitle (something about running over the age of 40) appealed to me. This book was a no-op - Higdon seems to have slapped this one together and didn't really do anything substantive. I got nothing from it. Oh well - two out of three ain't bad.

Fear & Greed: After all the running books, I needed some mental floss. I can't remember when / why I bought this book (or maybe someone sent it to me) but it had reached the top of the infinite pile of unread books. I got to page 100 before I quit - it should have been called "Dumb & Stupid" with a subtitle of "Poorly Written Mental Floss".

(06/30/08 09:00 PM)

Month 1 of TechStars and Other Fun Things.

Month 1 of this year's TechStars program is over. Andrew Hyde captures the sights and the people of TechStars in a fun three minute video.

While you are at it, if you were a Lego fanatic take a ride down Lego Memory Lane.

Finally, in the continued emergence of the Kindle as a serious thing, Princeton University is now publishing Kindle textbooks. No more giant backpacks full of books and lecture notes.

(06/28/08 09:01 PM)

It's The Little Things - Or Why Windows Mobile Contact Search Sucks.

There is a great Bill Gates email from January 2003 titled Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame that is making the rounds on the web. I love a good rant and even though this one is dated, Gates says in great detail what a large number of Windows users have summarized over the years as "shit - why won't my damn computer do <blah>."

I'm a heavy computer user and have some variation of this thought on a daily basis. One of my special talents is finding bugs and breaking things - just ask any of the companies that I've invested in who their most "useful" (where useful is a euphemism for "annoying") alpha tester is. Think of me as helping improve software quality on planet earth.

Now - software quality is a complicated thing to measure. Not all bugs are overt ones. Let me give you an example of a particular pernicious Microsoft one that no one seems to ever prioritize to fix (no - I'm not going to pick on Windows Calculator again, although I could.)

I use a Windows Mobile-based Dash. I expect I'll try the iPhone again on July 11th now that it actually syncs with Exchange, but until then I'm tethered to my Dash. I love the form factor and have trained my muscle memory to deal with having to press multiple keys to do things that I should be able to do with one keystroke - mostly due to design flaws in Windows Mobile. I've used some variant of Windows Mobile for the past eighteen months (I think starting with Windows Mobile 5; I'm currently using Windows Mobile 6.1.) If I were Mr. Windows Mobile UI Designer, I'd change a bunch of things, but it works well for what I need it for, which is primarily email, calendar, tasks, contacts, phone calls, IM, and twitter. And sync. My data needs to transparently sync with my Exchange server without me having to do anything. Oh - and my BlueAnt bluetooth headset. And I'm sure there are a few other things.

Here's the problem - the sort algorithm on contact lookup is terrible. I have a large contact list (5048 as of today). Searching for "Stan Feld" should be immediate since that's how it's listed in the address book. Progressively typing S then T then A then N should bring up "Stan Feld" immediately. Typing "Stan Feld" into the To: field on the email program should be immediate.

Nope. The delay is anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds. At some point I decided to try to figure out the underlying algorithm. My guess is that it's doing a full table scan of first_name + last_name for each letter typed. There doesn't appear to be an index - either fixed or dynamic - and as a result the time for most searches is approximately linear based on the number of letters typed.

Now - if this problem was in Windows Mobile 5 but fixed in an update, I'd let it slide. I've done at least three (I think four) major updates of the software since I've had my Dash. There has been virtually no improvement in this feature.

Whenever someone asks me about my Dash / Windows Mobile, I tell them that I generally like it except for this one thing. I then describe the thing. Occasionally I'll show the thing. And then I feel stupid that I'm still using this phone since I spend so much time looking up contacts or completing names in email fields.

Having written my share of sort algorithms, I expect this is less than 50 lines of code regardless of which language it is written in. It is sophomore in college computer science type stuff, not PhD stuff. Optimizing this to improve performance by 10x - 100x is maybe a day or two of a single programmer's time.

This is not a Microsoft-specific problem. I could have picked on anyone. I've got a long list of Apple issues like this, plenty of Google issues including some remarkably silly ones, and - well - don't get me started on the Yahoo ones. All of the companies I invest in have problems like this. It's just an endemic part of software. And one that users shouldn't have to put up with.

It's also not limited to software. When filling up my car recently, the gas pump clicked off at $75. I'd noticed this happening periodically, but now it was happening every time. Gas is now over $4 / gallon. Each of my cars has a 20+ gallon gas tank. $75 doesn't fill up the tank in any of them (and in at least one it doesn't come close.) There was a point in time when I'm sure someone decided that a way to mitigate credit card fraud at the gas pump was to limit the amount of each transaction to $75. Now all that does is inconvenience a large number of customers with a mysterious cut off point.

If you develop products (especially software) for a living, never forget that people remember the little things.

(06/25/08 09:01 PM)

Talking Groudswell with Charlene Li. Charlene Li, senior analyst with Forrester, stopped by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast to discuss social media and her new book, co-authored with Josh Bernoff, Groundswell. Much of Li’s work at Forrester is in working with very large organizations to help them understand how to use social media, but the funny thing is that most [...]
(06/23/08 09:00 PM)

Amazon’s UGC Playground. Along with being one of the world’s biggest book stores, Amazon also offers some interesting user generated content avenues that could lead to a bit of exposure for small business owners who explore them. Amazon user profile - this is much like any social network profile and allows you to add a description of your business [...]
(06/19/08 09:00 AM)

How to Demonstrate Word of Mouth. So how do you demonstrate what a book is about? How do you create word of mouth as an experiment for how to create word of mouth? If you’re Dave Balter, creator of BuzzAgent, you write a book called The Word of Mouth Manual: Volume II. But, what’s really buzzworthy about that? First off, the book’s a [...]
(06/16/08 09:00 AM)

Michael Port on Small Business Marketing. Make sure to tune into the June Session of the Duct Tape Marketing Coaching Excellence Series. My guest will by Michael Port, fabulous speaker and author of Book Yourself Solid and Beyond Booked Solid. I think the thing I love so much about Michael’s work is that he not only helps people focus on getting more [...]
(06/13/08 09:00 PM)

How’s Your Personality?. I had a great interview with Rohit Bhargava over at the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. He is a founding member of the 360 Digital Influence team at OgilvyPR, award winning author of The Influential Marketing Blog and author of Personality Non Included, a book that urges business owners to find and communicate a unique voice [...]
(06/09/08 09:00 PM)

Help Room to Read - Get mystery business books.

The team over at 800-CEO-READ have an awesome project in the works that benefits one of my favorite causes, Room to Read.

Here's the deal:

For $20.00 we are putting together a MYSTERY BOX of three business books. In this box you are guaranteed one title that either won, or made the shortlist for best book of 2007 in its category, and 2 other titles that were submitted for the awards. 100% of the purchase will go directly to Room to Read, and we'll cover the shipping on all orders. Get on board and help us make a difference!

To take part in this special offer, visit The 800-CEO-READ Mystery Box page: http://800ceoread.com/mysterybox

(06/09/08 09:00 AM)

Up Your Cashflow. Harvey Goldstein a no-nonsense CPA and author of several books and software programs, including UpYourCashFlow stopped by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast to spread his small business cash flow gospel. UpYourCashFlow really isn’t financial software in the strict sense, it takes your real data and tells you where you are headed and where the cash [...]
(06/02/08 09:00 PM)

193 Creative Marketing Ideas. A few weeks ago I added a small link in one of my posts to my unpublished beginning of a book of 193 Clever Marketing Ideas. John Moore linked to it and it got some interest, so I thought I'd give a more formal promotion here. Plus I want to see how Scribd works in my blog! BTW, Scribd and Slideshare are very cool! 193 Creative Marketing Ideas - Upload a doc Read this doc on Scribd: 193 Creative Marketing Ideas (05/05/08 09:01 PM)

How to LIVE RICH. A good friend and ex-Dell colleague passed away on Friday, April 25, 2008, after a courageous and inspiring battle with brain cancer. I want to celebrate and share the piece of his life I knew, and the words of wisdom he left for all of us. Two months after I joined Dell in March 1999, a curly-haired Harvard grad moved into the cube next door. Over the next seven years Rich and I worked together to help build Dell’s consumer eBusiness to a $3.5B business, and then on Dell’s CRM and segmentation strategy (he worked on corporate strategy while I worked in Consumer division). But what he worked on is not as important as HOW he accomplished his goals. Rich exemplified leadership. In fact, he had the rare quality of being a Level 5 Leader, as outlined by Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great. He excelled through confident humility amidst a (typical) corporate environment of politics, ego and alpha aggression. He always put decision in terms of what was right for the business, and helped others grow in the process. Everyone loved to work with Rich or for him. So many of us were awestruck at Rich’s knowledge and wisdom. Rich often put up ‘observations’ on his small whiteboard in his cube. One time he made the observation that time and quality of mission statement are inversely related – graphed on the board, the more time spent on the mission statement the less it resonates. So true. And so funny.... (04/29/08 09:01 PM)

9 Guerrilla Marketing Answers. A few weeks ago I was on an Austin Technology Council panel for the topic of Guerilla Marketing (YouTube Videos here). I’ve always loved Guerrilla marketing, and wrote a book on Guerrilla and Word of Mouth Marketing in 1997 with foreword from Jay Conrad Levinson, the "father" of Guerilla Marketing. I also have this unpublished book of 193 Clever marketing ideas ... I’m not going to do anything with it, so I posted it to Scribd for people to read for free. I made a few notes to answer the questions the moderator was going to ask for the panel. I’m on a long flight back from London right now...a good time to expand these notes and publish them... 1. What criteria do you use to choose where to spend marketing dollars for new technology companies? Start with sales first. You need very little marketing in the beginning. They are the most productive form of research and recon for the market, because they're selling at the same time, adapting the message and learning what works. From this intelligence you build your foundation for the marketing plan and priorities. The bulls eye spend is on establishing outside credibility, typically through press and case studies. Also identify the customer objections from the sales team and work on overcoming those first. Finally, build and leverage partnerships. Leverage their spend and be associated with brands that are larger and more credible than yours (for now!). 2. What is the most efficient way to get... (04/21/08 09:01 AM)

Borders Books online. I typically buy my books from Amazon... way too many of them, but I digress. During a discussion the other day, the subject of Python (the programming language) came up and since I don't know Python I thought I'd see what I could find to learn more about it. I searched online and found a few good sources, however, I tend to learn best from books. I went to Amazon and found a couple of... (04/20/08 09:01 PM)

Which Proposal Would You Rather Evaluate?.

What do you see when you review your own proposals with an eye toward how they actually look (as opposed to how they read)? Do you have page after page of text without anything to break up lengthy series of paragraphs? How enticing can that be to the real reviewers who are going to decide whether or not your proposal will make the cut? Reading a proposal is not like reading a fascinating book. Because the language and content of a proposal is often dry and boring, you need to do whatever you can to get reviewers' attention and to make them want to keep reading. One of the best ways to do this is through the use of relevant and attractive graphics.

Some time ago, my friend Heidi wrote this post on "Getting Started With Proposal Graphics." She gives some good pointers about how to think about and use graphics in proposals even if you are not sure exactly what graphics you are going to use.

Now The Proposal Guys blog has an interview with the principal of a graphics design firm that specializes in proposal graphics. Years ago, such firms probably didn't even exist. But these days, we often have a limited number of pages in which to tell our proposal story and increased competition for funding. Thus, we need every edge we can get. And good proposal graphics in combination with a well-written proposal can give us that edge.

One of the things that I like best about this article is the graphic at the very top -- "which proposal would you rather evaluate?" If this doesn't make a compelling case for the use of graphics in proposals, I'm not sure what does.

So get out your crayons..

(04/18/08 09:01 AM)

New Book for Sales Leaders - and special offers.. time sensitive. My sales effectiveness colleague, and AllBusiness blogging colleague, Keith Rosen, has a great new book out today with a special promotion going on through 4/17. I heard about the book at the end of last year, and have been awaiting... (04/15/08 09:01 AM)

Government Grants and Free Money.

With the economy in bad shape like it is these days, many people are experiencing financial hardships. As a result, the scammers are out in force, advertising their books and CDs that promise free money from the government for everything from paying your bills to getting out of debt, and more.

I'm getting a boatload of emails from people who want me to help them write a letter to apply for a government free money grant. Many others write to say that they need the right form to apply for a grant or that they have written a proposal but don't know which government agency to send it to.

If you need help, you may be eligible for various types of government benefit programs, which are often called grants. Most of these programs are administered at the state and local levels. You don't need a special book to find them, and you don't need to write a letter or a proposal to apply. But you will probably have to meet certain income or other types of requirements, and you'll need to be realistic -- despite what the scammers and books tell you, the government is not going to give you a handful of free money to pay off your credit card bills.

Below is a list of categories of benefits and assistance offered by the government. You'll find this listing along with links to specific programs in your state as well as federal agency programs and other resources. Just click on the link to go to the website.

clipped from www.govbenefits.gov

Select categories of interest.

Select categories of interest. (Check all that apply)

Career Development Assistance Child care/Child support

Counsel/Counseling Disability assistance

Disaster relief Education/Training

Energy Assistance Food/Nutrition

Grants/Scholarships/Fellowships Healthcare

Housing Insurance

Living Assistance Loan/Loan repayment

Medicaid/Medicare Social Security

Tax Assistance Veterans-Active Duty

Volunteer opportunities

(04/14/08 09:00 AM)

Help Room to Read - Get mystery business books.

The team over at 800-CEO-READ have an awesome project in the works that benefits one of my favorite causes, Room to Read.

Here's the deal:

For $20.00 we are putting together a MYSTERY BOX of three business books. In this box you are guaranteed one title that either won, or made the shortlist for best book of 2007 in its category, and 2 other titles that were submitted for the awards. 100% of the purchase will go directly to Room to Read, and we'll cover the shipping on all orders. Get on board and help us make a difference!

To take part in this special offer, visit The 800-CEO-READ Mystery Box page: http://800ceoread.com/mysterybox

(04/04/08 09:00 PM)

Marketers and Automobile University.

I remember listening to a Zig Ziglar tape (yes, this was a while ago, college perhaps...~10 years ago) where he brought up the terms "automobile university". I've never forgotten that term and as I'm speaking to more and more diverse groups of marketers who tell me that they 'simply don't have time to read', I'm inclined to recommend that they too enroll in Automobile University.

Motivational speaker Zig Ziglar coined the term "Automobile University" to describe how time spent in traffic can be used to educate yourself on a variety of subjects. Using audiobooks in your car is a great way to learn almost anything from finance to philosophy, literature to languages. In a year, the average driver can learn about as much as a college student attending a year's worth of classes.

What's that, you ask? Well, if you're looking for the how-to, you can certainly read this super-helpful piece in e-how. Although, I think that by stating books on CD or podcasts and books on iPod are the likely the best learning devices for time-starved marketers and that listening to any of these in your car on the way to work, to a client or in the airport/on the plane is the best way to keep up on what's new in marketing.

The next question I get is "what should I be listening to?" Well, here's a few ideas:

1. Why don't more marketing authors release their books as audiobooks? Now, I'm not sure about the market dynamics of this (perhaps it's cost prohibitive?) but when you look for books with "Marketing" in the title in the audiobooks section of iTunes, you find only 39 titles. So, that's one place to start. Now, not every great marketing book has "marketing" in the title, but look at that list of books you should read that you've been sitting on for a while and see if you can't find a few of those in iTunes and download them.

2. There are GREAT marketing podcasts out there. There are over 200 podcasts on iTunes that are some how related to marketing, business or PR. You can only choose a few and still keep up a sane listening schedule. Here are a few good ones:
.....Joseph Jaffe's podcast
.....Duct Tape Marketing with John Jantsch
.....any of the other 200 or so podcasts in iTunes that trip your fancy

3. The AMA Marketing Matters Live radio show and podcasts. Great guests, a great host and solid interviews. Always timely and always helpful. A must listen!

(04/04/08 09:00 PM)

Purchase the Marketech '08 Marketing Technology Guide!.

$19.99

Marketech 08: Using Emerging Media in Marketing - eBook - $19.99

Today's service industry organizations depend on deeper and more relevant customer connections to drive loyalty, retention, referrals and reactivation within their coveted client base. These companies don't just need technology however, they need a systems perspective on how to integrate the ever changing world of social media, social networking and Web 2.0 into their core business infrastructure to meet their customers in their medium, now and in the future.

Purchase Now to Discover:

2008 Emerging Media Vehicles

How to Use New Media Vehicles to Your Advantage

The Latest Internet & Marketing Technologies that can Impact Your 2008 Marketing Plans

Your copy of the Marketech 08 Guide PDF will show you how to put these technologies to work for you.

This guide includes a service-organization perspective that will help you:

Utilize relevant marketing & customer service technologies that today's leading service organizations employ to connect with their customers. This includes an overview of tools from social networking via Facebook, organic corporate networks and customer community programs to communication vehicles like blogs, online video and podcasting.
Integrate with existing common customer loyalty, retention, referrals and reactivation initiatives.
Identify benefits and risks associated with these techniques and technologies such as lower cost to service and increased referrals vs. loss of central control and the increasing customer control of your brand reputation.
Discover who's doing this already examples and how is it working for them. We'll look at a myriad of case examples with learning's and action items than any organization can apply.

This eBook is available as an Instant Download in Adobe PDF *** Full disclosure: I wrote the e-book as part of a project for the AMA in late 2007 and retained the rights to publish. The response to the guide in my TechnoMarketing sessions and other speaking engagements has been so positive that I've decided to offer the item for sale.
(04/04/08 09:00 PM)

It's Done.

I finished my book proposal. Actually, it's not totally "my" proposal, since the book (if it ever comes about) will be written by me and a long-time colleague and friend. So we worked on it together and sent it off yesterday. We thought it looked pretty good, but what do we know? Neither of us has ever written a book proposal. It will be interesting to see what happens. I suspect it will be a while before we hear anything

This is a really busy time of year for us proposal people. The government's fiscal year ends on September 30, so agencies are often in a rush to spend their money. Thus, the release of many RFPs. I am getting numerous e-mails every day from people who need proposal help and, as usual, they are waiting until the last minute to get that help. I am already swamped with work, so I'm taking on very few new projects. In addition, I'm still waiting for three RFPs from two clients that I've committed time to. Plus, in a couple of weeks I'll be starting on the next phase of my workplan project. In the middle of all this, I'll be taking a few days off to go to Maine with my husband who will be attending a conference there. Lobster!!

Yesterday, a client who I haven't heard from for about 5 years called. In fact, she called four times. I wasn't answering the phone because I was working on the book proposal and didn't want to be interrupted. But she left messages. Apparently she needs a proposal done for a local government agency here in Maryland -- pretty much the same kind of thing that I've helped her with before. But she is somewhat difficult to work with, and with my current workload I don't know if I will really have the time. Still, I hate saying "no" to existing clients, although I'm not sure I would consider her an existing client after a gap of 5 years.

I just need to have more hours in a day.

(02/21/08 09:01 PM)

10 Elements of Sustained Greatness. Last week I attended and spoke at the Word of Mouth Marketing Summit hosted by WOMMA in Las Vegas (get the presentations here). The conference this year had great energy. Keynotes by Richard Tait of Cranium and Jeff Bell of Microsoft Xbox were inspirational. And it was much more executional-focused than previous years’, perhaps because of the focus on social technologies / online. Many conversations -- which I get very interested in -- were around the cultural aspects of word of mouth. What does it take to succeed years beyond ‘the launch’? One night, in the Rio hotel room, I watched a documentary on Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini (boxer), a champion boxer. He said, “It is very hard to get to the top, but it is even harder to stay there.” I would assert that the hype of ‘being on top’ or the ‘coolest new thing’ for a person, topic or company usually lasts no more than 2 years. Toys is the best example. Think of Cabbage Patch Dolls, Pet Rock, Tickle Me Elmo…the hype for these lasted less than two years. It is the rare entity that can sustain greatness. But it happens for companies like USAA and Costco who keep a watchful eye on customer satisfaction. Or for entertainers, like Madonna, who sustain their visibility and music through reinvention every two to three years. Or books like Blink and Good to Great stay on the best sellers list because of their timeless wisdom and application. The ingredients to... (11/19/07 09:01 PM)

Social Media for Small Business? Try Online Review Sites.

Last week a posted an article on the Perfect Patients blog on "Getting Your Practice In To Online Review Sites." This Tuesday during a presentation to the Milwaukee AMA I was asked about some of the quickest and easiest ways that small business customers can deploy social media (and leverage the power of their customers to help market their business).

Try asking your customers to review you online. Huh? How? What?

It's pretty straightforward. Here's a _ action plan.

1. Find out which websites that list local businesses in your area have review capability. This is easily done by searching for something like "cityname profession" such as "Green Bay Chiropractor". That will give a good look at what directories rank well for your city. (you'll usually see their results on page 1 or 2 of the results) For our local Green Bay, Wisconsin market, the breakdown looks like this:

Google Local

Yahoo Local

Switchboard.com (user reviews sourced from Judy's Book and Insider Pages)

Judy's Book

Insider Pages

Superpages.com (Verizon's yellow & whitepages site)

Citysearch.com (Green Bay version linked to)

2. Make up simple cards (postcard or index card size) with the URLs of the most popular review sites on one side an a couple quick points of instruction (like...visit the site, look for the "review" link, post your comments, save) to keep at your counter and to send out with all bills, statements, invoices and the like.

3. Link to the review sites (and perhaps mention a glowing review, with permission of course) in your e-newsletters that you send to customers.

4. Enjoy the positive word of mouth and energy that comes from having a great online reputation and a bushel full of great reviews!

(11/16/07 09:01 PM)

A Great Book Recommendation for Anyone in Sales. Excerpted from Selling Power's Sales Management Newsletter, 9/4/2007, Fifty Experts Share their Secrets, by Heather Baldwin - "Wouldn't it be great if you could tap into the expertise of 50 top sales gurus without the cost of hiring them all?... (10/12/07 09:01 AM)

SWEET! Amazon Recommendations Widget.

Check this out. Too bad there's no link between your book purchases (I could by a new bike or an economy car...) and this widget so that it auto-updates each time you make a book purchase. Hey, while you're at it, click on a bunch of these and buy something. I'm in need of one of these.

This is super easy to do through your Amazon Associates Central area...

My example is OK, but the one that we did for one of our customer's chiropractic websites looks even better. I needed to keep my pretty narrow while his is at a full 468 wide. Check out the Amazon Widget at Elk Grove Chiropractor, Peak Performance

(10/05/07 09:01 AM)

Marketing History Day and What I love about YouTube.

I'm in the middle of a book by Dr. Frank Lutz, "Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear", and came across a passage where he points to what he feels is one of the most effective political ads of all time, the "Daisy" ad for Lyndon Johnson's presidential run in 1964. It's a juxtaposition of a young child and nuclear war, which culminates in the statement "We must either love each other, or we must die." Wow. That pretty much spells it out.

I'm a big fan of marketing history, especially when I can see it on YouTube and I'm a bigger fan of seeing current marketers pay attention to marketing history in their current campaigns. Today's marketing is FULL of slogans, campaigns, and poor execution that, had the one who devised the strategy in the first place done a bit of historical due diligence, they would not have committed the same mistakes.

I was in a meeting recently where we were discussing a new marketing strategy (web 2.0 type stuff...) with a group of seasoned marketers around the table. I like to drag out historical marketing references from Marketing Classics in meetings like that, not because it makes me feel smart, but because so many of the current challenges we're trying to overcome and the prevailing 'new media' & new ideas are really rooted in time-tested ideals that if we just paid attention to, we'd be so much further ahead...

Anyway, I digress. The point is, I brought the discussion around to 'marketing myopia', or 'what business are you really in here'... None of the marketers around the table could identify w/ marketing myopia, though they did grasp the concept of 'what business are you really in.'

This type of disregard for marketing history is an issue. I'm thinking we need to coin a day "National Marketing History Day", perhaps Kotler's (May 27) or Levitt's (March 1) birthday or something. On that day, we'll read historical marketing articles and check out the 'marketing history' channel on you tube, and drink a bit of the The Real Thing (Coke - 1943).

What do you think?

(10/03/07 09:00 PM)

MarketingSherpa Demand Generation Summit 2007. Click here now to buy a ticket to the Demand Gen Summit and get a copy of my new book: "Lead Generation for the Complex Sale"Register by 9/28 For a $100 Discount You're invited to join me at MarketingSherpa’s Demand... (09/04/07 09:01 PM)

Five Classic Business Books and Others Worth Note. Todd, over at 1800CEOREAD offers this great post called, Five Business Book Classics - The Essay. Those five should certainly be on all our bookshelves. What, no cheese? (See below) On a somewhat related note - books - Dwayne offers... (08/30/07 09:01 AM)