One company has proven itself up to the task of indiscriminately bombarding me with irrelevant and really awful press releases — Meltwater Press. Today, I ridicule them and their credulous clients. I’ve been conducting a science experiment. When I started this blog, I also created a new email address. I never use it to sign up for…
If you are an author, you need to promote yourself on social media. There ought to be a manual on how to do that, and now there is. It’s Chris Syme’s book “SMART Social Media for Authors,” and at $3.99 for the Kindle edition, you really ought to get a copy. This is the book…
It’s better to excite a whole bunch of people and piss off a few, rather than trying to be nice to everyone. I have proof. I want to thank my friends at WriterAccess for finding that proof. I had agreed to do a Webinar for their audience of freelance writers and the people who hire…
As an analyst, I told stories about complex technology, but I learned to tell them simply. When you’re trying to get your point across, that’s essential. One night in 1999 I was giving my three-year-old a bath. My kid was bright, good with language, and, like Dad, a bit of a smartass. And like many three-year-olds…
Shel Israel wrote a followup to his book with Robert Scoble, The Age of Context. Lethal Generosity: Contextual Technology & The Competitive Edge explains what companies need to do now that everything in the world is getting smarter. You really should read it. Shel and I have been on parallel paths for about eight years. He…
There’s been a little trouble over at United Airlines. But new CEO Oscar Munoz’s platitudinous email to frequent flyers makes it sound like everything’s great. He missed the opportunity to transform the airline and tell the truth about it. United is the worst major U.S. airline, which, given the pathetic state of US air travel, is…
Around 14,000 people came to Boston for HubSpot’s #INBOUND15 conference this week. Fourteen thousand. For a company that helps you run your Web site more effectively. What’s going on here? This is what disruption without the swagger looks like. And it ought to be a model for every startup from now on. “Inbound” is a…
My comments on the death of social media marketing generated a lot of reaction, both on my blog and on Augie Ray’s. I was wrong to suggest that it’s completely dead. It’s only mostly dead. Here’s some context. My work on social media began in 2008 with large corporate clients who hoped to use social media like blogs…
Business writers are boring. It’s tedious to read their email, Web sites, and white papers. Standing out from this grey background just takes a little color, and it will boost, not harm, your professional reputation. Boring text is not only dull to read, it’s dreary to write. Your readers are seeking information, but you’ve still got a responsibility…