The All Inbound Blog

NOTE: I’m excited and proud to present my first guest blogger ever — and a future best-selling author to boot!  Brian Meeks is the author of Henry Wood Detective Agency (which you can get FREE from Amazon if you hurry) and the new Henry Wood: Time and Again. You can also read several of his novels on his engaging blog. His post is here because I got hooked on his blog, and then his novels, and I need you to read his stuff so we can discuss! 

by Brian Meeks

There is a type of person that is allowed to roam freely and, I believe, even pro-create. A person so vile, so hideous in every regard, that they should almost be considered another species. They live for only one purpose…to crush souls. I hate them.

Who are these people?

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Marketing doesn’t have to be as scary as other parts of building a new business

One of my favorite marketing blog posts was written in April 2009 by HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah. He called it Startup Marketing: Tactical Tips From The Trenches. 

“If I were starting a company today,” Dharmesh wrote, “here’s what I would do in the first ten days.”

In that same spirit, here’s a rough outline of steps I’d recommend for businesses just getting started. I hope someone who’s starting a business finds it useful. Credit where credit is due, some of these suggestions are pretty similar to what Dharmesh wrote nearly four years ago.

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Don’t be an evil robot

Geoff Reiner is one of the really outstanding folks I’ve met through blogging and Twitter. A few days ago, he posted “Does Social Media Automation Increase Engagement?”

For the moment, I’m not so concerned about that particular question. Social media automation is a tool. Like any other tool, it can be used for good or abused.

My question is, are you using it for good, or evil? Continue reading

The only Facebook company page I ever set up looks the same now as when I left the company three years ago. They’re down to 26 likes. Most are my relatives, who were nice enough to like the page at my request, just to see what happened.

I’m not really a Facebook guy. I have about 100 friends. My Facebook name (please don’t report this TOS violation) is Cousin Barrett. That’s because most of the 100 are cousins, aunts, uncles, other distant relations, people with whom I went to school and whose wedding I was in.

On the other hand, I was using social before it was called social.

I used AOL chat rooms in the early 90s for international soccer discussions and computer advice from Kim Komando. Continue reading

This post is about a social media conference, in Spokane, Washington.

And the guy who’s presenting it.

And a conference where you live.

And you.

Please read on.

This Tuesday, September 25, 2012, at Spokane’s Red Lion Hotel Convention Center, if you’re lucky enough to have a full day and $149 to invest in your vital continuing business education, you can attend Go Social,  hosted by Nectar Media.  Continue reading

For questions of marketing strategy, the answers usually begin with the customer.

But what if you’re asking the wrong questions?

Sometimes we’re forced to focus like a laser – on our own problems, objectives and processes. It’s understandable. But it can turn our point of view inward, when we should be focused on the customer.

Here are some inward-looking “we” questions that can lead to the wrong answers, followed by the kinds of questions – about “them,” the customers – that businesses ought to be asking.

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Blog Machine (Photo credit: digitalrob70)

It’s time for a new WordPress theme, and I need your help.

Maybe just some pointers will do.

This old theme has served me well for three years. It was free­ – and worth the price. But I’m taking my blogging a little more seriously now, and want an upgrade.

So I’m asking for your thoughts and advice, both general and specific. Continue reading

My Rolex-Submariner took a licking, then stopped ticking

Sorry to be so late.

Here’s your weekend, almost half over, and I’m just getting around to posting this week’s 5.

I come with lame excuses. First, my knock-off Rolex stopped. Then the nice folks at Arment-Dietrich’s Spin Sucks blog kept me tied up much of Friday. Thanks again to them, and their whole blog community.

Back to the matter at hand: This is unofficially Lady’s Weekend. Our first two links celebrate women pioneers in advertising. Not because they’re women, but because of what they accomplished.

And now, without further ado, the envelope please: Continue reading

No turkeys in this week’s “5″

Here in beautiful Spokane, our two-month summer unofficially ends with the approach of Labor Day. I saw a guy this morning in line for a cheese and sausage biscuit dressed in full ski regalia. The good times never last, do they?

(To you Virginians and North Carolinians: You’re jealous of our 75° days and 42° nights now… but you won’t be by October, believe me.)

With no further ado, here are five great marketing links for your long weekend reading pleasure.

So: Summer interns, for the last time, the envelope, please:  Continue reading

It’s an ad about education. Please, oh please, no typoes!

I just wanted to follow up my previous post about blogging – and how it’s not the end of the world if you occasionally make mistakes. Try to avoid them, of course. But don’t let the fear of mistakes keep you from posting content that’s vital to your strategy.  Most online mistakes are fixable. 

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