What’s On My Mind
How Small Businesses Should Approach Branding
Let’s say you’re running a small business and you’re not happy with your brand (logo, marketing materials, website, etc.). When you first started your business, you used a crowdsourcing website to create your logo and initial website design. The initial brand development process didn’t cost much money, and you kinda think it shows—and that it…
A Common Marketing Mistake (and how to avoid it)
One of the biggest challenges small medium sized, bootstrapped businesses (self-funded, no outside capital raised) face is balance. Let me say right up front that I’m not talking about work/life balance. You can kiss that goodbye the minute you decide to go out on your own. When you run your own business, your business is…
The Real Way to Manage Your Company’s Online Reputation
Recently, I received a media request from someone interested in discussing online reputation management. In composing a response, John Wooden’s words came to mind: “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” If your business doesn’t…
The Era of Mobile-Ready Marketing
This past week, I attended SMX East in New York. Gary Illyes, a webmaster trends analyst and search quality engineer at Google, spoke about the importance of making your website mobile-ready. By mobile-ready, he means that your content is accessible, legible, and usable by visitors on any mobile device. All the way back in 2007,…
How Did You Hear About Robin Williams’ Death?
Robin Williams, one of my favorite actors, died on August 11, 2014, but I’ll bet you didn’t just learn this via my blog. So, how did you hear about Robin Williams’ death? I found out that Robin Williams had died, in an apparent suicide, via Facebook. A few years ago, I would have ended that…
Seven Years and $11 Million Dollars Later
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” ― Søren Kierkegaard I don’t have many business regrets, but I do wish that, over the past seven years, I had stopped more frequently to reflect. The urgency, often artificial, to grow had me always trying to peek around the next corner. I…
The Far-Reaching Implications of Google’s Quiet Evolution
The other day I Googled Len The Plumber’s phone number. What I saw in the organic search results took me by surprise. At the top of the organic results was Len The Plumber’s phone number inside a white box with a subtle drop shadow. The number was underlined in blue, indicating that it might be…
Getting Ahead of Next with Digital Marketing
My first “real” job after college was as in sales for HotJobs.com in the Chicago office. As a recent college grad, I never once considered opening up a newspaper to find a job, so the concept behind HotJobs made complete sense to me. It was so much faster and easier to search and apply for…
Inbound, Content Marketing: The Advantages of Inventing an Industry
When it comes to online marketing success, I’m fond of saying—here and over on Blue Corona’s website—that your best long-term strategy is to work hard to establish and promote your company as THE authority for what you do in the markets you do it. But a lot of business owners make the mistake when it…
Technology Should Reduce Friction (Not Increase It)
With click-to-call, you can enter your phone number into a form on a company’s website and someone from the company calls you on the number you’ve entered someone. This may not sound like a big deal to you … unless of course, you’re shopping for a plumber when you’re supposed to be working! Live chat…
