How to handle racism as a company
Imagine that you had a friend who kept poking you with a stick. With every poke, a mark was left on your skin. Sometimes the mark disappears and other times, […]
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Remembering Twitter
A eulogy, of sorts. At the end of 2008, I was finishing my first semester as a college senior. When I started undergrad, I’d already had a Xanga, LiveJournal, Tumblr, […]
I’m a lurker, you’re a lurker, we’re all lurkers
It is said that 90% of any online social readership are lurkers. Lurkers are those who consume the content but don’t respond to it. Nine percent are contributors and only […]
I hate video, a rant
Video killed the radio star, but who’s going to kill video?
Cultural competence & pop culture
Do you need to have a working knowledge of pop culture to be effective at marketing? I argue yes.
Why I’m a marketing specialist and not a generalist
A few times a month, I receive work inquiries about consulting with a company that is not in the coffee industry. They’ve sometimes found me through my writing on Sprout […]
10 Lessons from 10 years of freelancing
Today, I celebrate a decade of freelancing/self-employment. Something funny happens when you give notice at a job: people ask you what you’re going to do next. So when I put […]
Why you should still have a website
An argument could be made that because of the existence of Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google merchants, etc., there’s no longer a need for a standalone company website. It’s just another […]
Hyperbole & superlatives in marketing
My writing/journalism hat and marketing hat are sometimes at odds with each other and this is one of those times. In writing, especially academic, I was taught that superlatives and […]
Influencer disclosure basics
It’s been three years since I wrote about influencer tips so I thought it’d be a nice revisit on the basics. I’ve seen quite a few social media posts now […]
The nearly immeasurable brand metric of word-of-mouth marketing
Call it brand sentiment or trust barometer or dark social (for example, you screenshot a tweet and text it to a friend) — it’s all the same. Despite all the […]