ION Digital

I knew I would struggle when I started blogging a few years ago. I blame my years of journalism work. Sentences had to be carefully crafted, and words chosen carefully. My first editor at BusinessWeek told me, “Magazine real estate is precious. Use it wisely.”

Now we live in a new world that is no longer shaped by printing presses and information scarcity. Yet everyday I see companies that make these mistakes: they want to launch the perfect blog, create the polished video, craft the right message.

They are suffering from the curse of the corporate perfectionist. (more…)

Sometimes I walk away from a conference with as many questions as answers. Such was the case at the recent Inbound Marketing Summit in SF. Great speakers, great content, great ideas– an idea-fest for social media types. But after the two day session ended, I couldn’t help but wonder: Why is this so hard? Why aren’t more companies getting it?

The answer is both simple and amazingly complex: It’s woven into the very fabric of the the way we think about marketing.

My company has worked with many companies the last three years on social media programs, from Fortune 100 giants to small shops, giving us ample experience to see how good intentions come up short in making the transition to the new marketing world. The mistakes usually fall into one or more of the following areas, the seven deadly blind spots of traditional marketers: (more…)

This week’s Inbound Marketing Summit provided a nice display of some of the best thinking on social media on the planet. They were preaching to the choir here, folks who believe the social media movement is long overdue.  So you didn’t get a lot of contention or debate. What you did get was some exhilarating ideas, strategies, tips and techniques.

Many of the sessions were only 20 minutes so speakers had to blaze through their material, but most pulled it off smoothly. It was an interesting mix of consultants, web types, businesspeople, freelancers, former journalists, marketing and PR people and others that I couldn’t quite categorize (I met two people out of work; jobless, well might as well hang out with the social media crowd).
The conference ended the second day as strong as it began, with Louis Gray providing tools to deal with the information overload and Tim O’Reilly giving a spirited speech based on “creating more value than you capture.” Along the way hosts Chris Brogan and Justin Levy kept the trains running on time and the mood upbeat.There were too many great sessions to cover all of them  but here’s a sampling of key takeaways for me. (more…)