October 2011
2 posts
4 tags
Reddit, A New Marketing Frontier?
For those of you who haven’t heard of Reddit, it is a website that people post things from the internet to that they find interesting or feel strongly about. You will find anything from pictures of adorable baby animals to political discussions. One of the things Reddit has is a subreddit (section of the website) called AMA, which stands for “Ask Me Anything”. People who are...
2 tags
To Like or Recommend, That Is the Question
What is the difference between the Facebook “Like” button and the “Recommend” button? Nothing, when it comes to functionality, but the message it send to the reader’s social network could be vastly changed. The Facebook “recommend” button was created after the “Like” button, the reason being that there are things in life that you wouldn’t...
September 2011
3 posts
3 tags
How To See Which Social Network Drives More...
If you use multiple social networks, there’s a chance you are like me and sometimes post similar things on all of them. For example, when I write a new post for Marketing with Michael, I post the link on my Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ account so people I’m connected with in all of my networks can see them. When doing social media marketing, it is very important to know which of your...
2 tags
What To Do When You Get a Bad, And Untrue, Review
Recently at work, one of our apps was given a bad review. This was extremely surprising, as I have been doing marketing for this particular application for a little over a year to see the app get a ton of press, none of it bad. When I read the review, I found that the negative things the reviewer had written were blatantly untrue. When you find yourself in this kind of scenario, here is what to...
5 tags
Facebook and Gowalla Smart to Check Out of...
How often do you check-in to a place you are at? If you do at all, you are one of few according to recent findings that say that only 4% of adults use location based check-in services. Nevertheless, competition has been fierce for which service people use to check-in with; that is, until recently when Facebook and Gowalla decided to let Foursquare win it, which was incredibly wise on their...
August 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Sometimes, Done is Better Than Perfect
When you go to a job interview, most people expect to be asked what they feel one of their weaknesses are, and they usually have a thing ready for a response. That thing for me is that I’m a bit perfectionist. This doesn’t mean that I think I’m perfect. I know for a fact that I’m not, and I do not believe anyone else is either. What it does mean is that once in awhile, I...
3 tags
When Opting-In is Inappropriate
As a rule of thumb, when it comes to having your users promoting your product in some way, or receiving some form of promotion of yours to their email, you let them opt-in to that. It’s common sense. Sometimes, you still see some companies trying to trick people—the ones that are taking a chance on their product or service—into promoting their company for them or receiving...
2 tags
Twitter Followers Are Not Pokemon Cards
Recently, there was a story in the news about how it is suspected that Newt Gingrich bought the vast majority of his Twitter followers. This conclusion has come after a report that only 8% of his 1.3 million followers are verified human beings, which is lower than most Twitter accounts. Newt denies that he paid for followers. Whether he did or not, I would recommend to anyone doing some sort of...
1 tag
Do Competitive Research like a Detective, Not a...
If you have a marketing degree, it is likely that you have done a competitive analysis. You have probably done more of them than you would care to remember. In my case, I have done some form of competitive analysis for almost every marketing class I had taken (they didn’t feel it was necessary to sneak one into market research). What was shocking to me when I got a job in the real world was...
July 2011
4 posts
3 tags
The What, Why, and How of Personal Branding
What is Personal Branding?
The other day, I heard a co-worker talking about someone he knew that was always tweeting. He scoffed, saying “he’s really into building his ‘personal brand’”, with quote fingers around “personal brand”. Personal branding is exactly what it sounds like—it’s a brand, like a company would have, but it’s for...
3 tags
It Just Works
Most of you know who the person is in the photo above is. I, like many, are inspired by his ingenuity. Now, I wouldn’t call myself an apple fan boy. I don’t even own an iPhone, I manage to get by with, dare I say it…a feature phone. But I do admire the style.
At this year’s WWDC keynote, one of the things Steve Jobs kept saying about the iCloud he was showing off is...
3 tags
Are You Selling or Performing?
Every once in awhile, in one of my marketing classes we would watch a TED talk video. I remember they always had a thought provoking message that made them great for class discussions afterwards. Always learned a lot.
Recently, there was this TED talk with Nathan Myhrvold about his photography of cross-sections of food cooking.
If you check out the comments, you can see that many people...
3 tags
Why Google+ is not the much awaited "Facebook...
You can’t get on Facebook or Twitter without reading a bunch of desperate people begging for Google+ invites. I am by no means judging, I am guilty of sending out status updates and tweets hoping that one of my friends had been graced by the Google gods with an account, and would want to pay it forward in the form of an invite. Eventually I got one from someone at work, and I was able to...
