While Facebook marketing continues to grow at lightning speed, it’s still relatively untapped territory for many high-tech marketers. Just because Facebook got its start with the college crowd in 2004 doesn’t mean B2B marketers shouldn’t be there in 2010. With that in mind, here are 4 ideas for getting more from your B2B Facebook Marketing. 1. [...]

One of the key messages of Content Rules—the book I’m writing with C.C. Chapman, to be published by Wiley this December—is that creating content as a cornerstone of your marketing offers your organization an enormous and unprecedented opportunity. Among them: • To engage directly with customers (or would-be customers) • To communicate with personality, empathy and real emotion • To create [...]

It’s no secret that modern B2B marketing is all about the web. B2B marketing is actively being shaped by the power of the Internet as a resource and researching tool for prospects and buyers alike. Add another layer of change when you consider the ability to share information in real time, and modern marketing can get [...]

These are interesting times in the fast food business. Fast food continues to be popular, but consumers are hungry for more options now. So, how about fast, cheap and healthier, or more ethnic, or a touch of “gourmet”? Hence the success of Panera, Chipotle, Baja Fresh, Quizno’s, etc. A recent Brandchannel blog post, “McDonald’s President Cooking [...]

Now more than ever, lead generation for the complex sale is a long process of developing relationships with your prospects. Gone are the days of just getting names and making calls. Since Twitter is a fantastic way to build new relationships, it makes sense that B2B adoption continues to grow. However, because it’s still a [...]

How something is presented has an effect on how it is received. “No duh.” Right? We’re marketers here. Our job is presenting things to create an effect. No wait, keep reading … Hear me out. We should be using these super persuasion powers of ours to help our companies be more innovative. So many innovative ideas get [...]

Now that Netflix can stream movies to computers and through the Wii, my kids are taking full advantage by watching some of the shows and movies I watched as a kid. At any given time in our home this summer, I have been serenaded by the eloquent dialogue of Hannibal from “The A-Team” and even [...]

One of the biggest issues companies continue to have about blogging (and social media in general) is: “How do we tell if it’s working?’ One way to greatly improve your ability to measure the effectiveness of your company’s blogging efforts is by tracking the right metrics. When you are creating the strategy for your company blog, [...]

Today’s advanced technology brings us virtual broadband autobahns that move data across the globe with speed and precision. In an attempt to capitalize on fast-moving data, some companies are using sophisticated applications and compute power to make decisions faster than competitors. However, when machines move millions of times faster than humans, there are some [...]

Want to be known as a go-to person? Then you better learn how to “Fame,” says Richard Laermer, co-founder of The Bad Pitch Blog, president of NYC-based RLM PR and founder of “How to Fame,” a program designed to inform and instruct us on how we can achieve Pragmatic Notoriety. No, not like Fame-the-TV-show (though those [...]

That's what makes it a monster.

In fact, when you look the monster in the eye, when you calmly and carefully inspect the actual monster, you discover that he's not so bad after all. It's just the shadow that's scary.

When in doubt, ignore the shadow.

Paco Underhill on women and retail.

Nancy Lublin on learning from causes.

Noah Boyd with an FBI thriller beach read. Better than the last Reacher novel, imho.

And stunningly elegant (and lovely to hold) pottery inspired by some of my work from Lori Koop.

100 people doing something at the same time has far more power than 300 people doing it over time.

We unconsciously amplify the power of coordination when we consider the impact of actions. If there's a thousand people waiting outside of a store, we instantly believe we're seeing a phenomenon.

While the internet makes it easier than ever to spread ideas, it makes it far more compelling to coordinate actions.

If everyone in your weekly meeting drops a pencil at precisely 12:03, you'll notice.

The wifi Kindle, $139. Drop the first digit and you're on to something. And it only took them six weeks!

If you work out on a weight machine that has a limit--where you have to push the bar until it stops--you're far more likely to to hit that limit than if you had left it to your own initiative to figure out how far is far enough.

People enjoy going to the max (or in the case of Spinal Tap, a little farther than max, to 11). But if there is no max, no limit, it's much easier to satisfy yourself and declare that you've done enough.

If you want your best users to do more, one way to do it is to announce the most they can do. While this may dissuade a few people from pushing ever farther, it will in fact motivate a large number of people to up their game.

"The maximum number of times a week you can dine here is three."

"The maximum bonus paid is $100k."

"The maximum number of tweets per day is 30."

The only problems you have left are the perfect ones. The imperfect ones, the ones with a clearly evident solution, well, if they were important, you've solved them already.

It's the perfect problems that keep us stuck.

Perfect because they have constraints, unbendable constraints, constraints that keep us trapped. I hate my job, I need this job, there's no way to quit, to get a promotion or to get a new boss, no way to move, my family is in town, etc.

We're human, that's what we do--we erect boundaries, constraints we can't ease, and we get trapped.

Or perhaps it's your product or service or brand. Our factory is only organized to make X, but the market doesn't want X as much, or there is regulation, or a new competitor is now offering X at half the price and the board won't do anything, etc.

There's no way to solve the perfect problem because every solution involves breaking an unbreakable constraint.

And there's your solution.

The way to solve the perfect problem is to make it imperfect. Don't just bend one of the constraints, eliminate it. Shut down the factory. Walk away from the job. Change your product completely. Ignore the board.

If the only alternative is slow and painful failure, the way to get unstuck is to blow up a constraint, deal with the pain and then run forward. Fast.

When a newspaper loses 15% of its readers or 15% of its advertisers, it goes out of business. There are still people who want to read it, still people who want to advertise, but it's gone.

When a technology company increases its sales by 15%, profits will double. The sales line doesn't have to increase that much for profits to soar.

It's so tempting to head for green fields with a new thing, a new market, a new business. But in fact, 15% right here and right now might be exactly what you need.

Every brand, every organization and every individual is either running away from something or running toward something (or working hard to stand still).

Are you chasing or being chased? Are you leading or following? Are you fleeing or climbing?

Defenders of the status quo at newspapers, book publishers and the magazine industry are in a panic. Some are even misguidedly asking for government regulation or a bailout.

All three industries are doomed (if doomed means that they will be unrecognizable in ten--probably three--years). And yet...

And yet there's no shortage of writing, or things to read. No shortage of news, either. And there doesn't appear to be one on the horizon. In fact, there's more news, more images and more writing available to more people more often than ever before in history.

No, just about all of the whining is about protecting paper, the stuff the ideas are printed on, not the ideas themselves.

It's paper that makes the economics of the newspaper industry work (or not work). It's paper that creates cost and slows things down and generates scarcity. And scarcity is what they sell.

It's paper that makes the book industry what it is. As soon as you remove paper from the equation, the costs change, the timing changes, the barriers to entry change, the risk changes. And defenders of the status quo don't like change.

Is there not enough paper in your life? Why are we wringing our hands about the demise of paper as the economic gating factor for ideas? In fact, some of the trees I know are delighted that we've found a better, faster, cheaper way to spread ideas.

If the demise of paper means that good people doing good work in important industries will have to find faster and better ways to do their jobs, I don't think that's a bad thing.

Carole Mallory was Norman Mailer's mistress. Seducing him probably wasn't that difficult, though, as he was already on his sixth wife at the time.

Marketers seek to seduce. So do painters, authors and job seekers. The most important thing to understand about seduction is this: it only works when the other person cooperates, contributes and is at some level interested in being seduced.

In short: it's a lot easier to seduce someone whose worldview and attitude makes them open to it. If you want to be successful at whatever form of seduction you have in mind, seek out the right people.

Some people were seduced by the iPad. Many ignored it. It wasn't that the iPad changed from person to person, what changed was the audience's worldview and openness.

And yet...

And yet as marketers we seem to want to treat everyone the same, want to please everyone, want to come up with the magic words that open every heart.

A mass marketer needs to reach the masses, and to do it in many ways, simultaneously. The mass marketer needs retail outlets and fliers and a website and public relations and tv ads and more more more and then... bam... critical mass is reached and success occurs.

Best Buy is a mass marketer, but so are Microsoft and the Red Cross. Ubiquity, once achieved, brings them revenue, which advances the cycle and they reach scale.

The direct marketer, on the other hand, must get it right in the small. That pitch letter can be tested on 100 houses and if it gets a 2% response rate, then it can be mailed to 100,000 houses with confidence. That business-to-business sales pitch can be honed on one or two or three prospects, and then when it works, can be taught to dozens or hundreds of other salespeople.

The key distinction is when you know it's going to work. The mass marketer doesn't know until the end. The direct marketer knows in the beginning.

The mass marketer is betting on thousands of tiny cues, little clues, and unrecorded (but vital) conversations. The direct marketer is measuring conversion rates from the first day.

That's the reason we often default to acting like mass marketers. We're putting off the day of reckoning, betting on the miracle around the corner, spending our time and energy on the early steps without the downside of admitting failure to the boss.

Of course, just because it's our default doesn't mean it's right. Business to business marketing is almost always better if you treat it like direct marketing. Most websites that do conversion as well. Same with non-profit fundraising. As well as marketing goods and services to the bottom of the pyramid, people who live in villages where mass media and mass distribution are difficult and have little impact.

Get it right for ten people before you rush around scaling up to a thousand. It's far less romantic than spending money at the start, but it's the reliable, proven way to get to scale if you care enough to do the work.

What story do you tell yourself about yourself?

I know that marketers tell stories. We tell them to clients, prospects, bosses, suppliers, partners and voters. If the stories resonate and spread and seduce, then we succeed.

But what about the story you tell yourself?

Do you have an elevator pitch that reminds you that you're a struggling fraud, certain to be caught and destined to fail? Are you marketing a perspective and an attitude of generosity? When you talk to yourself, what do you say? Is anyone listening?

You've learned through experience that frequency works. That minds can be changed. That powerful stories have impact.

I guess, then, the challenge is to use those very same tools on yourself.

Greetings have traditionally been an acknowledgment of the other person. "I see you." "Hello." "Greetings."

Then, we moved on to, "how are you?" or even, "how's business?"

Recently, though, our performance-obsessed, live-forever society has morphed the greeting into something like, "please list everything going on in your life that isn't as perfect as it should be."

In a business setting, this causes bad prioritization decisions. The owner of the bar says to the manager, "how was the night?" and the response is, "the cash register came up $8 short." Suddenly, there's an urgent problem to be solved. How to replace the eight dollars and who do we fire?

If the question instead had been, "what's up?" (as in literally up) the answer might have been, "well, there's a big party at table 12, another going away party. They've been buying champagne all night. And Mary told me she set a new record for tips. And the new beer we added on tap is..."

Highlighting what's working helps you make that happen more often.

Perfect is overrated. Perfect doesn't scale, either.

I'm not proposing you endorse theft or ignore the bad news. But it's clear that one more going away party on table 12 is going to make up for that one piece of bad news, every time.

isn't.

There are two things we can get better at:

1. Getting accurate signals from the world. Right now, we take in information from many places, but we're not particularly focused on filtering the information that might be false, and more important, what might be missing.

2. Sorting and ranking information based on importance. We often make the mistake of ranking things as urgent, which aren't, or true, which are false, or knowable, when they're not.

Dealing successfully with times of change (like now) requires that you simultaneously broaden your reach, focus on what's important and aggressively ignore things that are both loud and false.

Easier said than done.

Not all failures are the same. Here are five kinds, from frequency = good all the way to please-don't!

FAIL OFTEN: Ideas that challenge the status quo. Proposals. Brainstorms. Concepts that open doors.

FAIL FREQUENTLY: Prototypes. Spreadsheets. Sample ads and copy.

FAIL OCCASIONALLY: Working mockups. Playtesting sessions. Board meetings.

FAIL RARELY: Interactions with small groups of actual users and customers.

FAIL NEVER: Keeping promises to your constituents.

The thing is, in their rush to play it safe and then their urgency to salvage everything in the face of an emergency, most organizations do precisely the opposite. They throw their customers or their people under the bus ("we had no choice") but rarely take the pro-active steps necessary to fail quietly, and often, in private, in advance, when there's still time to make things better.

Better to have a difficult conversation now than a failed customer interaction later.

The first revolution hit when people who made stuff started to discover that information was often as valuable as the stuff itself. Knowing where something was or how it performed or how it interacted with you can be worth more than the item itself.

Frito Lay dominates the snack business because of the information infrastructure they built on top of their delivery model. 7 Eleven in Japan dominated for a decade or more because they used information to change their inventory. Zara in Europe is an information business that happens to sell clothes.

You've probably already guessed what's now: information about information. That's what Facebook and Google and Bloomberg do for a living. They create a meta-layer, a world of information about the information itself.

And why is this so valuable? Because it compounds. A tiny head start in access to this information gives you a huge advantage in the stock market. Or in marketing. Or in fundraising.

Many people and organizations are contributing to this mass of data, but few are taking advantage of the opportunity to collate it and present it to people who desperately need it. Think about how much needs to be sorted, compared, updated and presented to people who want to choose or learn or trade on it.

The race to deliver this essential scalable asset isn't over, it's just beginning.

Most of the time, we think of our job as a set of tasks that take place in a ---> [box] <---.

It turns out, though, that if we go upstream and alter the stuff that comes to us, it's a lot easier to do great work. And if we go downstream and teach people how to work with what we created, the final product is better as well. Now, it's more of a --> [ box ] <--.

A doctor can consider her work in the box of the examining room. But if she figures out how to get people to quit smoking before they come in, her results are better. If she figures out how to get people to take their meds after they leave, same thing.

A designer who receives a better project brief will deliver better work. A manufacturer who figures out how to teach users to use the object properly will get better word of mouth...

Marketers, of course, can have the biggest box of all. So the stuff we think of as 'marketing' can be altered long before the person ever sees an ad, and have an impact long after they've got the product.

The challenge lies in spending a lot of time and money on the upstream and downstream parts of the work, instead of always assuming that your [box] is just what happens inside your cubicle, or as a direct result of your actions.

Type 1. You can take a class where you learn technique, facts and procedures.

Type 2. You can take a class where you learn to see, learn to lead and learn to solve interesting problems.

The first type of teaching isn't particularly difficult to do, and it's something most of us are trained to absorb. The first type of schooling can even be accomplished with self-discipline and a Dummies book. The first type of class is important but not scarce.

The second kind, on the other hand, is where all real success comes from. It's really tricky to find and train people to do this sort of teaching, and anytime you can find some of it, you should grab it.

The sad thing is that we often conflate the two. We think we're hiring someone to do the second type, a once in a lifetime teacher, someone who will change the outlook of stellar students. But then we give them rules and procedures and feedback that turn them into a type 1 teacher.

Even worse, we often pay as if we're getting the scarce and valuable type 2 teachers but we end up hiring and managing type 1 teachers.

I spend a lot of time in colleges and other teaching institutions. Over and over I see the same thing--organizations that have painted themselves into a corner, keeping themselves busy but refusing to do the difficult work of teaching people to see. The dean of one college was so stuck in his type-1ness that he couldn't even bring himself to participate in a session run by a gifted type 2 teacher.

Is there anything more important to you and your organization (or your kids or your town) than figuring out how to obtain and share the wisdom that real teaching can deliver?

Kevin Kelly argues that the most important breakthrough in the history of mankind was the invention of language.

Before language, we were wild animals. After language, humans as a species took a huge leap forward. Language allowed us to coordinate, to teach and to learn.

The second great breakthrough on this axis was writing. Writing is language solidified. Writing permits language to travel through time or over distances. It ensures that ideas last more than one generation.

Now, we're on the cusp of the third breakthrough, one that is proving to be as powerful as the other two. And we're living through it, not reading about it history books...

We've taken the smartest and richest people on earth, hundreds of millions of them, and put them to work sorting and organizing and polishing data.

We're sorting everything. Not just which videos are imitations of other videos, but identifying local breakthroughs and spreading them around the world, highlighting problems or insights and leveraging them and connecting resources to each other in ways that create massive amounts of leverage.

Think about all those folks checking their Blackberry, upvoting Digg articles, retweeting links and connecting people to ideas online. Think about the human enabled filtering, a giant system working without obvious compensation.

Right now, the big sort focuses on finding clever viral videos, but it won't for long. The power of this coordination is so huge it won't stop with building Wikipedia and turning the founder of ChatRoulette into a millionaire. Instead, the big sort will relentlessly find and connect and spread ideas that generate productivity and impact.

If you want to get things moving at a meeting or in an online forum, start discussing what to order for lunch. Even the most reticent attendee has something to contribute.

Same thing when you start discussing the logo for your new venture, or what to call the subcommittee on committees... Have you noticed how many people are willing to weigh in on redecorating your office?

It's so easy to speak up on the things that are trivial, defensible, matters of taste. So easy to imagine that you're a valuable contributor because you're willing to share your personal taste on a matter that's beyond reproach.

If I want your opinion, I'm going to want it for something where you might be wrong, for something that actually makes a difference and most of all, for something where you are putting yourself at risk. Not lunch.

What’s the opposite of insubordinate? I guess it’s subordinate.

Which is better, I wonder. Is it preferred to do exactly what you’re told, to be clearly subordinate to the system, to the boss, to the short term demands of the organization--or are we better off doing the right thing instead?

As I think about the insubordinate people I’ve worked with over the last few decades, the answer is really clear to me.

I’ve written a personal addendum to Linchpin. Here it is, it's a free PDF. Insubordinate is a 40 page ebook, feel free to share. I couldn’t possibly include all the linchpins I’ve worked with over the years, but I think you’ll find that many of the examples in the ebook resonate.

Enjoy.

Just because you’re on vacation and lounging at the beach doesn’t mean your brand has to relax too. Here are ten ways you can promote your brand when you’re supposed to be relaxing: 1: Build a sand model of your store or office. 2: This one’s for the ladies. Get a one piece suit and using an exact-o [...]

Hi everyone I just wanted to take a few minutes and share something with you. I am sure you all have that someone in your life that you listen to. Make room for one more.Tony Robbins I have never listened to him that I didn`t get something useful out of it. Tomorrow night Tony starts [...]

The headline to this article is a quote from a client of mine – Belinda Bond. Belinda is the visionary behind the Celebrity Mama Tour. I thought it was the perfect bit of advice for entrepreneurs. How many times have you sat down for a chat with someone and they are pondering the age old [...]

We received news of these reports a few days ago and wanted to put the word out so you can take advantage of these business research reports by Aberdeen Group. The reports covers a wide variety of topics. We’ve been told these are time sensitive offers, many of them expire July 30th. After that, they are [...]

In our office, all long distance including calls out of the country are done via Skype. And why not. It is cheap and for the most part, gives you pretty clear calls. I also particularly like Skype for audio interviews because it means I don’t have to hook up extra hardware and deal with a tangle [...]

Building web sites is not rocket science, but it is job that requires many skills you can’t learn overnight. Not if you want a good looking, yet functional and efficient web site. It is certainly a full time job on its own. So having this important task outsourced is smart. On the other hand, when you’ve [...]

How fast do you return a telephone call or an email from a potential lead? I ask myself this every time a lead remarks to me, how quickly I responded. I wonder if perhaps most businesses do NOT return contacts as fast as they could. I try to respond the moment I get a contact. [...]

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Senate Republicans blocked a measure that would cut taxes and ease credit for small businesses, saying they objected that Democrats refused to consider their amendments to extend tax breaks and cap federal spending.

President Barack Obama is on the verge of creating as much as $300 billion in credit for small businesses as bankers raise doubt about whether there’s demand for new loans and how much will be repaid.

Head of Credit Union National Association urges Congress to lift cap on lending

President Barack Obama met privately with Democratic donors and made a pitch for his plan to aid small businesses on a trip that combined campaigning for his economic policies and raising money.

Morale and profit margins plunged when an entrepreneur gave his sons too much responsibility. To save the business, he must reassert authority

In this week's edition of Bloomberg Venture, Cris Valerio talks with baseball super-agent Scott Boras about his background, his firm's representation strategy, and George Steinbrenner's legacy.

In this week's edition of Bloomberg Venture, Cris Valerio talks with baseball super-agent Scott Boras about his background, his firm's representation strategy, and George Steinbrenner's legacy.

In this week's edition of Bloomberg Venture, Cris Valerio talks with baseball super-agent Scott Boras about his background, his firm's representation strategy, and George Steinbrenner's legacy.

In this week's edition of Bloomberg Venture, Cris Valerio talks with baseball super-agent Scott Boras about his background, his firm's representation strategy, and George Steinbrenner's legacy.

In this week's edition of Bloomberg Venture, Cris Valerio talks with Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh about the launch and growth of the online shoe and clothing retailer, its focus on customer service, and its sale to Amazon.

In this week's edition of Bloomberg Venture, Cris Valerio talks with Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh about the launch and growth of the online shoe and clothing retailer, its focus on customer service, and its sale to Amazon.

In this week's edition of Bloomberg Venture, Cris Valerio talks with Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh about the launch and growth of the online shoe and clothing retailer, its focus on customer service, and its sale to Amazon.