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Feb26
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I'm a strategy junkie. Whether playing board games or doing business, I like to look at the big picture and decide on the best path. AlwaysOn has an interesting interview of Michael Raynor, a Deloitte consultant and author of The Strategy Paradox. What is the paradox you ask? "This is what I call the strategy paradox. That is, the same strategies that have the highest probability of extreme success also have the highest probability of extreme failure. In other words, everything we know about the linkage between strategy and success is true, but dangerously incomplete. Vision, commitment, focus...these are all in fact the defining elements of successful strategies, but they are also systematically connected with some of the greatest strategic disasters."
One might say that the strategy is at best a bold bet. You might win. You might lose. But betting bold is on a strong hand is how you get a shot at winning big. The book is definitely on my reading list.
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Feb26
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Feedburner released some fascinating stats about feed readership and engagement this morning. The highlights: Feedburner just keeps rolling. The company now serves up 604,533 feeds on behalf of 347,000 bloggers, podcasters and commericial publishers. MyYahoo!, Google, and Bloglines dominate audience...
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Feb23
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I've posted before about Google and Strategy, Marketing and Giving It All Away. This week there was another great example of that strategy when Google launched a paid version of its email, spreadsheet, calendar and document programs. Fortune came first...
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The Web Developer and Designer's Journal has a great article entitled Web 2.0 - Personal Branding Checklist. Personal branding is becoming more and more important in today's crowded online world and busy marketplace. Basically, your personal brand is the answer...
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Feb22
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Earlier, Paul Colligan posted about how PodcastPickle recently passed Podshow in terms of reach according to Alexa stats (which have some problems but stay with me for now). The key difference between the companies as Paul points out is that...
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Brad Feld (a Colorado-based venture capitalist) recently wrote a post entitled "Don't Be Casual" about a meeting between one of his portfolio companies and a fellow vc. The meeting turned out to be a disaster because serious preparation wasn't made...
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Feb21
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Mobile marketing is poised to explode in the US. The next generation lives, eats and sleeps via their mobile device (notice I didn't say phone). Today, I ran across a fascinating finding about SMS and I thought I'd share it...
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A few weeks ago, I wrote about my need for a new laptop and why I was steering away from Dell and HP due to previous bad experiences. Dell, which has been stung by bad blog buzz before, saw my...
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Feb19
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XBox has launched a new promotion in partnership with Old Spice. The deal is simple in its brilliance. Xbox live has something called a "gamerscore" which measures the progress you've made playing games on the platform. A full-price title (probably $60...
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Feb15
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I'm not a fan of Chinese Math any more than the next smart entrepreneur. But I think that immediately dismissing it is not good either. The fundamental truth is that it is incredibly hard to wrap your head around the...
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New York Magazine has a great article from Po Bronson on the peril of praising kids. There has been some remarkable research into the myth of self-esteem in the today's society and this article explores that. It's really fascinating stuff....
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Feb14
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The WSJ has an interesting article up entitled Wizards of Buzz that examines the power of certain users on Digg, MySpace and other social web 2.0 sites. Using technology from a company called Dapper, they analyzed more than 25,000 submissions...
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It's been widely reported across the blogosphere that only 6 of the 17 declared candidates in the 2008 presidential race have bought keyword-based ads on search engines.I don't get it. How can they not be marketing more intelligently online? They...
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Have you ever been making small talk at a party or networking event and when you ask what someone does they launch in a extremely technical description involving lots of specialized terms that mean nothing to you? Do your eyes...
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Feb 8
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Recently, Jesse James Garrett, the cofounder and President of Adaptive Path, interviewed Lou Carbone. Lou Carbone is one of the business world’s foremost advocates for the value of managing experiences. He was coauthor of the seminal 1994 article that introduced...
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Over at SeekingAlpha, Robert Ehrenberg recently wrote about Microsoft Vista's marketing/pr strategy, and the future of the Apple / MS rivalry. At one point, he highlights this Q&A with Bill Gates: NEWSWEEK: If one of our readers confronted you in...
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I've been shopping for a new laptop. As part of my research process, I've been chatting with a number of my technically-minded friends about the subject. Some are passionate Apple proponents and many work for Microsoft (and despite what you...
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Feb 7
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Seth Godin recently blogged about the 4 different levels of marketing effort: No Effort, Right Effort, Too Much Effort, and No (Apparent) Effort. Novice and hardworking entrepreneurs get through the no effort level fairly easily but they often overcompensate and...
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A good friend of mine recently moved down to the Valley to become an entrepreneur-in-residence at one of the top VC firms there. As part of settling in to the area, he's working on connecting with a lot of people...
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One of my core lessons for entrepreneurs that I chat with is that marketing cannot make a product that sucks suck less. Did you get that? Marketing is not a cure all. If your product or service doesn't deliver a...
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Feb 6
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Recently, I've been talking with a lot of people including some potential clients about SEO. I can't tell you how many times I've said: "Inbound links are the gold of online marketing."But how do you get those links? One method...
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Feb 5
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Mark Cuban just highlighted FanBoy culture and I thought I should point it out. Word-of-mouth aka buzz or community marketing is a popular subject in the marketing arena today. But it can have a dark side as Mark highlights by...
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Steve Rubel recently highlighted some findings by the eBiquity Research Group on the state of SPAM in the blogosphere. * 53% of all pings is spam, 64% of all pings from blogs in English is spam * 56% of all...
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Last week, the founder of Wikipedia supposedly warned PR agencies not write about their clients on the site. (I'd link to the real article but you'd have to be a subscriber of PR Week UK to see it).For now, let's...
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Feb 2
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Due to a couple of projects that are closing in on their launch dates, I've been thinking a lot about how to ensure that they have successful launches. Yesterday, I covered an old TechCrunch post on the subject and today,...
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I must admit that I'm not a huge fan of most mission statements in existence today. Most of them are a massive yawn. But I like the idea behind them. Missions are good. Purpose is good. Hugh of GapingVoid recently...
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One of the most interesting questions about advances in behavioral targeting and the increasing sophistication of personalized marketing is whether or not customers will embrace it. Many worry that customers will be less than enthusiastic due to security and privacy...
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John Cook of the Seattle P-I recently covered the opening of The Branding Foundary; an interesting new business from Rowland Hanson, the former Microsoft marketing guru who came up with the name Windows. According to their website: TBF is a full-circle...
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Feb 1
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Alarm:Clock recently reported that "Silicon Valley’s Bessemer Venture Partners and the European Founders Fund invested $12.8M in LinkedIn placing a value of more than $250M on the business social network."AC goes on hypothesize that: There are two groups of people...
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Paypal is commanding force in the payments and online finance space. They manage over 123 million accounts in 53 countries. And being owned by eBay doesn't exactly hurt. But Google Checkout is a burgeoning force to be reckoned with. Google...
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One of the interesting dynamics of the blogosphere and long tail of content is that so much great new content is created everyday that it's hard to go back to the archives and find the great old content. Recently, Michael...
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Let's imagine you're interviewing for a job. Doesn't matter if it's a large company or small. At some point, you being interviewed by a senior executive. You answer his or her questions with ease and confidence. Suddenly it's your turn....
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