Category: Marketing Trends/News

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice, Uncategorized

FreePress.net sent out this alert yesterday

Imagine having a fast connection to an open Internet wherever you go, without needing a telephone wire or cable modem.

The FCC could make this happen. Instead they’re on the verge of turning over our public Internet airwaves to the same giant phone and cable companies that control high-speed access for more than 96 percent of American users.

Don’t let the FCC give away our wireless Internet to these price-gouging giants. We need to use these public airwaves to connect more Americans to an open, neutral and affordable Internet.

And this is what I appended at the beginning of the comment field:

The idea of using the existing TV spectrum for widely available broadband is tremendously exciting. As a business owner, I could see that this might spark a wave of creative entrepreneurship like the original dotcom boom a decade ago, and create useful technologies we can only dream of currently. Open access is the way to do this, not tight control by a handful of companies.

If you’d like to comment on this, this link brings you to the webform.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in General Commentary, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, Publishing, Uncategorized

I kid you not–here’s the NY Times article.

Much as the cat may have been darling, and much as its authors ight do a great job, I find this absurd. And yet another indicator of the dumbing down of the American public via the media that controls what we see and read (except for those adventurous enough to seek their own sources).

Where are the big advances for books that shape how we actually think and act? that give us a lens to understand some of the craziness in the world.

OK, I like sweet stories about cats and might actually read this book (in a library copy) at some point. It’s not a book I expect I’ll need to own. But good heavens, most books that could change the culture receive paltry advances and paltry publicity, if they sell at all.

If this were now instead of then, would books like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, “Silent Spring”, or “Unsafe at Any Speed”–three among dozens of books that actually changed the world–have even been published, or found any significant audience if they had?

I hope one day to see my own Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First in someone’s list of books that changed the world. I didn’t even try for a mainstream publisher, figuring I’d go create an audience and then sell rights to a second edition.

But seriously, isn’t a book about how we got into the Iraq mess and are heading for trouble in Iran (not the subject of my book but of several recent ones) worth more attention than a book abut a cat? Or for that matter, the sordid and tawdry life of Anna Nicole Smith?

Priorities! As a society–we need to look at ours..

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in General Commentary, Marketing Trends/News, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized

Found in email in my spamfilter this morning that said, in part,

You are part of a select group of blog owner/publishers that we are inviting
to take an early “sneak peek” at lyro. We see your blog as a major
delivery vehicle for news and information and hope you’ll have a
willingness to cover our launch (good or bad).

Well…that’s certainly flattering! I think that’s the first time I’ve received a press release because I’m a blogger. I receive plenty as a newsletter publisher, book reviewer, etc. It would be nice to think that people are actually reading what I write here.

Lyro turns out to be a database of business cards. It presents a rather rigid format, but by putting one URL in the company field and another in the URL field, and by using the address2 line to talk about what I do, I made it marginally more useful. Still, there’s a lot more I’d like to say. And I find it absurd that there’s no way yet to upload a photo so everyone will have the same blank silhouette in the photo field.

No line for e-address, but on a searchable Web-based database, that’s a good thing–spambots would otherwise make this site a nightmare instantly. And there *is* a message system (hope it’s better than the awful one at MySpace).

I figure, what the hey–it’s links to two of my sites, it’ll probably get some viral traffic, and it took about three minutes to fill out. As long as they’re not charging, I’ll give it a whirl.

You can see mine at https://shelhorowitz.lyro.com/

Oh, and what else would I have put on the card?

My two or three most recent book titles (Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishersand Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World) as well as more of my nine URLs.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Marketing Trends/News, Publishing, Uncategorized

I’m quoting a short bit from Adam Sutton’s article in Mequoda Daily, an often-provocative marketing newsletter emphasizing fairly advanced concepts and products. I have felt this for many years but they articulate it so smoothly and well:

Supporters are law-abiding citizens that pay for products because
they love the company and want it to prosper.
Samplers get free products from Supporters or other Samplers. They
do not immediately buy a product, because they are unsure of the
product’s worth or do not have enough money. Samplers typically get a
free product, and if they like it, pay for others when cash is
available.
Thieves will happily pirate products and break DRM systems forever.
They consciously never pay for products and have no desire to support
artists. This group is best ignored because their will to circumvent
DRM–or any copyright protection–is unbreakable.

If you’re a Sampler who found this worth while, the link above to the full article presents the option to subscribe, no charge.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Marketing Trends/News, Uncategorized

He touches on three of the eight crucial factors in choosing a name for a product or business, and focuses particularly on creating a name that people will remember easily–with lots of examples from the corporate successes, as well as the story of how he transformed his own business identity.

https://www.michelfortin.com/how-to-make-your-name-memorable/

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Marketing Trends/News, Publishing, Uncategorized

Guy Kawasaki reviews Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days–and quotes some wonderful anecdotes from some of the biiig tech startups (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.)

What a hoot–even if he can’t spell “chutzpah” (he thinks it’s “hootspah”)

As an early Mac adopter, I’ve been following Kawasaki since 1984, and enjoyed “The Macintosh Way” back in those ancient days. I also love that Apple gave him the title of evangelist. In fact, that book–and that attitude–were among the influences that eventually led me to write my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, decades later.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, Publishing, Uncategorized

Alelujah! A journalism organization that understands that it is NOT the role of a free press to disseminate government propaganda without questioning it or evaluating the sources:

It is the policy of KSFR’s news department to ignore and not repeat any wire service or nationally published story about Iran, China, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia or any other foreign power that quotes an ‘unnamed’ U.S. official.

This was reported in Editor & Publisher, a well-respected trade journal for the media, and mentioned in the always interesting Weekly Spin e-newsletter.

I find this very refreshing–especially as the administration continues to ever-more-loudly beat the drum for war against Iran (apparently they have learned nothing from the Iraq debacle).

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Marketing Trends/News, Uncategorized

I’m a frequent reader of Chris MacDonald’s Business Ethics Blog, and through Chris, I found Joel Makower’s list of Top Green Business Stories of 2006.

This is must reading for those interested in sustainability and how the business world addresses it/markets around it.

Chris himself explored one of those 10 issues, Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Marketing Trends/News, Uncategorized

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) has in the last couple of months taken several steps to build ethics consciousness among its members.

This, of course, is something I applaud. It’s quite necessary, as word-of-mouth marketers include those who have (in the past) paid people to act as shills without disclosing their relationship.

I put a link up to WOMMA’s overall code of ethics some time back. Now, the group has released draft standards for marketers communicating with bloggers. (All of its ethics programs can be accessed from a single link–which, commendably, is a main link from the home page.

This is good. And Dell Computer has already become the first major company to sign on to WOMMA’s Ethics Adoption Toolkit.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Marketing Trends/News, Uncategorized

Tellman Knudson is conducting an experiment in list building and traffic building. He’s asking people to comment on at least one post per day on this one of his blogs, and to link back to each of our comments over a five day period. My first comment is to the post, Seminar Dos and Don’ts, where I added two tactics that have been successful for me in seminar networking.

This post will grow a bit over the next few days, as I will simply edit in new links.

Since tomorrow will be my try-to-be-weekly day off the computer, I’ve done two today. The second was on his post about long-term relationships with your list members–something I’m a big believer in.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail