Over at the American Express OPEN blog, I posted an article called “The Art of the Tutorial.” If you have a product or service that needs explaining, you should read this article (I don’t know many companies that shouldn’t!). Good stuff from my buddies at Atelier Transfert. Please mark that you found the posting useful [...]
Over at the American Express Open Forum, I posted a continuation of an interview with Emanuel Rosen, author of The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited. In this post, he explains when to use Facebook and MySpace and offers advice about generating buzz for an online property like Alltop. Check it out if you’re interested in generating [...]
Over at the American Express OPEN blog I posted a story called “How to Get Retweeted” to explain why and how to get your tweets forwarded by people. Check it out if you want to get more out of Twitter. More about Twitter at Twitter.alltop and Twitterati.alltop.
I thought that because Harvard is so prestigious that it could sit back and let the best and brightest students come to it. I was wrong. In “How Harvard Gets Its Best and Brightest,” BusinessWeek reporter William Symonds explains the Harvard recruiting process. In the spring it starts recruiting juniors who will graduate in a [...]
Over at the American Express Open Forum I just posted an interview with Emanuel Rosen in which he explains the "Art of Generating Buzz."
Razorfish and CafeMom issued a “Digital Mom” report that examines the role of digital technology in modern moms. (Do yourself a favor and click on the download PDF icon to read the report. It’s the second to the last icon in the navigation bar.) Here is a quick summary to entice you to read the [...]
"The Social Pulpit" is a very interesting analysis of how the Barack Obama campaign used social media. The folks at Edelman compiled this report, and there are many lessons that businesses can also apply, so check it out.
In "Order vs. Disorder: Surroundings Matter" Roger Dooley explains how disorder can affect the behavior of people. He cites a study where 13% of the people snatched an envelope with clearly visible a five-Euro note in it from a mailbox. When the mailbox was covered with graffiti, 27% snatched the envelope. Does this mean that [...]
I took these pictures at the Stanford Shopping Center during the week after Christmas. Money sure talks now… There were a handful of stores without sales signs, but only one didn’t offer discounts and had lots of people in it. :-) We all definitely have our work cut out for ourselves in 2009. As a [...]
At 10:15 pm I discovered that I had not brought a Macbook power supply on the trip. I was in a hotel on Coronado Island, and early the next morning I was flying to an aircraft carrier off San Diego for an overnight visit. I doubted that the carrier had Macbook power supplies laying around, [...]
Over at the American Express Open Forum blog, I posted a report by Razorfish called “FEED: The Razorfish Consumer Experience Report.” The document examines the changes that Web 2.0 and social media are causing for companies. It's one of the best reports about this subject, and you can get it for free by clicking here.
No matter who you support in the upcoming election, you will appreciate the cleverness of customizing videos to get your friends and relatives to vote. Click here to see what I mean. Many companies could use custom, viral videos for their products and services. I would love to do something like this for Alltop. For [...]
Nothing warms my heart than an entrepreneur who seizes the day, and Kathryn Finney seized it in a world-class way. Step 1: Republican National Committee buys the Sarah Palin family $150,000 worth of duds. Step 2: Kathryn Finney of the Budget Fashionista shows how to outfit the Palins for $147,500 less. What did this take? [...]
I learned of the "mother of social media lists" and the "father of social media lists." Click here to see mom and here to see dad. These are the most comprehensive lists of examples of social media applications, videos, blogs, podcasts, widgets, crowdsourcing, bookmarking, microblogging, photosharing, wikis, mashups, brand monitoring ad nauseum. Check them out [...]
I posted an entry in American Express blog entitled the "The Art of Customer Surveys" based on some information sent to me by Dave Wanetick, the managing director of IncreMental Advantage. He points out deficiencies in typical customer surveys that you will find interesting, and he boils down effective surveys to one simple question.
"Dear Henry" certainly generated passionate comments. Here's another marketing thought: If people want the House to pass the bailout, all they'd have to ask is, "Do you want China and Abu Dhabi to come in and buy America at fire sale prices?" The bill would pass by this weekend. It's all about framing.
With nothing better to do on a Saturday night, I was browsing through this blog's archives, and I came upon this posting: "Frame or Be Framed." It examines the work of U.C. Berkeley professor George Lakoff--specifically, how Republicans are good framers and Democrats are lousy ones. It seems to me that the "bailout" of the [...]
A common assumption is that communicating face-to-face is more persuasive than email. That's not always true, according to a 2002 study. Researchers found that men are often more responsive to email because it downplays their competitive tendencies. On the other hand, women react better to in-person encounters because they are more relationship-oriented. These same researchers [...]
Over at the American Express Open Forum blog I posted an interview with Ori Brafman, the author of Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior. In this interview he explains how to resist irrational and dumb behavior. Click here to check it out. Not reading it would be irrational.
Psychologists dub the tendency to presume that others react to the world in the exact same way we do as "projection." For example, an entrepreneur is reluctant to schmooze and unwilling to discuss his company in social settings for fear of annoying potential customers and investors. According to Christopher R. Edgar, projecting can hold you [...]