Pilgrimage - A Novel of the Sovereign Era

I don't often do this, but I feel like I owe it to Matthew Wayne Selznick to try and help support his Kickstarter campaign; his novel, Pilgrimage - A Novel of the Sovereign Era, is a sequel to Brave Men Run, one of the first podcast novels EVER!  I read the first one and have been a fan ever since!

Click below to watch the video trailer for the book and to read more about Kickstarter and crowdfunding.

How to interview

Will this bow tie help with my interviewing skills?

I want to mention a blog I read this morning that had some good advice on having Q&A-type discussions with other business professionals.  Click here to view the article.

The fact is, most people have NO IDEA how to conduct a quality interview; at least, I know I haven't

This party is MANDATORY!

I 'm a big fan of best-of lists, especially when they're funny.  This one's pretty good, and I'd also like it if there was a best-of-30-Rock list.

(P.S. Beware of SCAMS!)

As disaster clean-up continues around my neighborhood, I've been seeing more news vans than usual.  Unfortunately, no one has stopped to talk with me...until yesterday.  Below, I've posted the brief video.  I know it's a bit vain, but I'm fine with a little of that!

The best of James Bond, in ONE novel!

From an article in The Guardian:


In a shocking turn for the debut novel by Q.R. Markham, Assassin of Secrets, the US publisher is recalling all copies and offering refunds to those who have already purchased the book.  The UK publisher is taking back all copies of the book before it is released there this week.  Why are they doing it?

The answer is simple: plagiarism.

Void Your Warranty with STYLE!

I just read an article on Wired.com (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/09/iphone-mod-apple-logo/) that mentioned a mod, by iPatch, that will light up the Apple logo on the back of your iPhone.  If you check out this picture, it looks pretty cool!  They do mention at the end of the article that it will most definitely void your warranty, and that makes me pause and think:

WHY WOULD YOU EVER DO THIS?!

You spend a lot of money to get an iPhone, and it does so many cool things already, why void the warranty just so the back lights up?  Plus, it only has limited battery life.  This will, of course, drain the battery faster.  Is it worth having your phone die in the middle of a conversation?  For me, the answer is: NO FREAKIN' WAY!

The Marketing Take-away: Legal is always better!
Why would a company waste their time on making unauthorized mods?  Focus on making authorized mods instead.  Working with a company, especially one like Apple, is a huge advantage to your business, and provides much more industry clout than being "that company that makes mods."  I guarantee that iPatch doesn't have as high of a reputation as they might working WITH Apple.

-MJP

The Death of TechCrunch?

(AKA "Why AOL and Arianna Huffington are anti-social-media idiots!")

This may have changed by the time I post this article, but as of right now, I'm convinced that AOL and Arianna Huffington care more about their own power than in making sound business decisions.  They want to oust Michael Arrington and put in an editor-in-chief of their choosing.

It's another bone-headed move by AOL, in a long history of bone-headed moves, to stake a claim on one of its more successful web properties.  Huffington, I believe, is weighing in on the matter in order to mark her own territory on what she sees as her potential property at AOL, despite having no direct control over what goes on, currently, at TechCrunch.

See the article here: http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/06/the-end/.

Sorry about the J.K. Rowling video!

I'm sorry to everyone for the J.K. Rowling video post that seems to be covering up the widgets to the right of the video. I can't seen to get it any smaller!

-MJP

The Color of Money

No, I'm not talking about the movie with Tom Cruise and Paul Newman; I'm talking about something green - hence, the "color of money" reference - but also tasty.  It's a client I'm working for right now: Kicking Lizard.

Pictographs, and such...

At my core, I'm a marketer who likes to see results in simple formats, like graphs and charts.  It makes the world more simple to understand.  It's amazing what can be understood through visual representations.  The most basic of these is the pie chart.

A Helpful Reminder

I like email lists, sometimes, and have been known to sign up for A LOT of them.  Most get forwarded directly into folders so that they don't clutter my inbox, but there are a few that stay in front of my eyes.  One of my favorites is the BrandAid from Killian Branding, a marketing firm in Chicago.

"Problopportunities"

No, I didn't forget to hit the space bar, and, no, I didn't just have a brain spasm.  It was a BrandAid, which I get every so often from Killian Branding, a company whose mass emails I really enjoy.  Click on the title to go to their website; sign up there to get your own BrandAids.

Site Updates

To all my readers:

Over the next few months, the site will be going through some back-end changes that will cause change to its look fairly regularly. Don't worry though, because the content will still be here for your perusal. I've been taking some web design classes so I don't have to rely so heavily on Blogger to control my site layout. Keep reading, and don't forget to post comments on the posts you like, even if they're old; you never know what could spark a discussion!

-MJP

For Social Media Jugglers...

Click on the title to be re-directed to one company's take on juggling social media. The most relevant point for me was the suggestion to simplify. Yes, I can try to be on as many as possible, but when the possibilities are at the expense of quality, I should stop. When I have to decide between commenting on a friend's blog post or signing up on Digg, I should forget the latter.

Post a comment about your challenges juggling social media. I'd love to hear what you think!

- MJP

Blogging for Dollars, Part 2

Direct marketing is another popular method for bloggers to make money off of their blogs. This requires more work than just setting up an account with Google and smiling, or frowning, at whatever ads show up.

In this case, you need to either accept - assuming someone's offered - or look for a company to partner with. Then that company or individual pays you to place their ads directly on your blog. For the advertiser, they get to specifically target an audience - YOUR audience. For you, this option is great because you have a sure source of income from your blog that you've hand-picked. You no longer need to hope for the best with AdSense, although it IS pretty good about matching ads to fit your content.

Comments on Chaotics - Part 1

Philip Kotler, the marketing “expert” everyone seems to look to for inspiration, has written yet another book to garner praise for stating the obvious. This one, entitled, Chaotics: The Business of Managing and Marketing in The Age of Turbulence, centers around two forces that are driving the rapid changes in business today: globalization and technology.

In my opinion, this book is about five years too late, and will only be useful to C-level executives that have their heads so far up their own, or their CEOs’, rear ends that they can’t see what’s been developing over the past half decade.

These ideas can also be helpful, I suppose, to people who are new to the work force and have no clue how to form their own thoughts based on their surroundings.

I haven’t read the book yet – I probably won’t read it anyway – but from the interview Mr. Kotler gave in Deliver magazine, he seems confused. In the first part of the interview, he states that Chaotics isn’t about the current recession, but instead about the previously mentioned two forces (technology and globalization) that have increased the speed at which circumstances change in the current business environment. Then, in the very next question, he mentions technology again, but includes three MORE forces that can affect a company: social change, legal change and economic change. That’s now a total of FIVE forces that must be monitored.

In answering the next question, Kotler talks about Chaotics’ description of the current recessionary economics and how customers are responding to it. I hate to say it, but this story is nothing new. Since the great depression, there have been 12 recessions. In each one, people have responded by buying lower priced items, postponing big-ticket purchases and spending less on things like fuel and eating out. Customers’ reactions to tough times can really be boiled down to ONE thing: looking for ways to SAVE MONEY.

Three Things for Your Personal Brand

Personal branding is important for every marketer, if only to prove to potential clients that you understand what a brand is and how to build it.

According to an article I recently read in Deliver magazine, there are three main things that every personal brand needs. And frankly, I agree with all three. They are:

Expand your expertise
This is my favorite one of the three because it involves one of my favorite pastimes: learning to do new things. It’s the reason I manage a variety of groups on LinkedIn and the impetus behind me starting this and Bountiful® Wi-Fi’s blogs. It’s also the reason I’ve accepted so many different positions at my current company, from product design to quality assurance. I’m willing to do whatever they need me to do because it allows me to learn about several different parts of the business.

Boost your visibility
As a natural extension of expanding your expertise, your visibility will increase. You’ll meet new people who will therefore expand your network. Also, you should pick a few key places on the web to put information about yourself. I suggest LinkedIn, Facebook and one other, more industry-specific network. I like SocialMediaToday.com for the third one, personally. It's for social networking professionals only, so it's the perfect, industry-specific social networking site for me.

Protect your brand
With the additional visibility comes an increased danger. If someone does a search of your name, they’re bound to find the bad along with the good. Fortunately, this increased visibility also makes it easier for you to find and deal with threats. I’m not going to get into how to deal with affronts to your character in this post, but there are many ways to stop people from marring your otherwise reputable brand.

Blogging for Dollars, Part 1

Fifteen years ago, no one could have guessed that people would have FREE space on the Internet to write WHATEVER they wanted to write. And now, to top it off, people can make money off of these personal records on the web, called "weblogs" (now just called "blogs")! There are more ways than ever to make money off of the Internet. The plethora of companies that sell their products via electronic stores has grow exponentially, even in the past five years. Web 2.0 and it's usability have turned the web into a money making machine.

In addition to web carts, Google has enabled advertisers of all sizes through its service, AdSense. If you're unfamiliar with the products, it works like this:
- Bloggers sign up for free accounts.
- These authors choose where and how ads are displayed on their sites.
- Google uses its analytical tools to match up random ads with content found on sites.
- If visitors to these blogs click on ads, the authors get paid by the advertisers.
- Genius, no?

Granted, the money that most bloggers receive is pretty paltry, and to actually get a check, a blog has to have $100 worth of ad revenue. Considering that you need 100 or more hits on your blog to receive anywhere from 1 penny or more means that it could take a while. But still, it's an interesting idea that has paid off for people.