Many types of cuisine are award winners and require a variety of special ingredients to be flavorful. It would be easy if one award-winning recipe existed for all newsletters, but newsletters, too, are as different as Creole gumbo is from Korean dumplings. One recipe won’t do the trick. Fortunately, two newsletters can be opposite in … Read more
Stock investors always say, “Diversify!” Imagine if you had all of your stock in one company and it went bankrupt. This scenario is what happened after the dot com crash. Putting all your eggs into one basket labeled “email newsletters” can also spell disaster. The eggs might meet the same fate as Humpty Dumpty. But … Read more
I want to thank the folks especially Sally H. behind ChangeThis for accepting and publishing It’s a Big Blog World Out There: Five Quick Tips to Building a Better Blog. I’ve been nervous about its release because I feared the manifesto was too simple, not forward-thinking, and not a true manifesto — three areas that … Read more
Customers drive marketing, not the other way around. No longer do customers accept products as designed. They expect and demand products to be molded to their needs. Just like you can’t turn a cat into a dog; marketers can’t turn a customer into a buyer by convincing them that they need product or service “as … Read more
I love brainstorming ideas for a new company name. I guess you could call me a name freak. 🙂 Every case is different, but here are the basic tips I tend to follow when hunting for inspiration: * Randomly flip through the dictionary. * Take words and mixing or subbing letters. * Say names out … Read more
I never wanted to start a business. The thought of managing all the administrative stuff like accounting, legal, and other stuff turned me off. I like doing my job and focusing all of my energies there. Surprising as that’s what I am doing today… managing my own business. It’s a one-person business and I manage … Read more
This entry is prompted by the recent flurry of emails requesting a link exchange. I don’t do link exchanges period. They’re meaningless. Well, except that it helps search engine optimization for both sites, they’re meaningless as content. People exchange them without thought to the quality of each other’s sites. So you’re wasting your Web page … Read more
Lulu.com did a study of book titles and determined what makes a good title. The company looked at every title of nonfiction and fiction books from 1955 to 2004 and analyzed what works. But of course, the title doesn’t guarantee failure or success since the analysis says The DaVinci Code is considered less likely to … Read more
No matter what business a company is in, it can make its site useful for its visitors and turn them into eventual buyers. Cashing In with Content shows how to do that with 20 case studies of types businesses — ecommerce, business-to-business, nonprofits, healthcare, education and politics. Every case study includes an interview with an … Read more
Until recent years, I never thought seriously about starting my own business because I didn’t want to deal with the bookkeeping and the marketing. After all, no marketing equals no clients. I’m no sales person. But I love the work and believe it’s worth doing the “I’d rather not do” activities. It’s easy to get … Read more