The new rules. 

Back in the 90’s there was a book called the ‘The New Rules’ which was all about dating. I thought it was a bit corny at the time but it was very popular; it became a cult and was even updated recently. Content marketing is a lot like dating – you’re using your content to engage others, so it pays to know the rules and, unlike the book, they’re not all written down.   Read more

Don't spray and pray. 

When I first started in marketing, some marketers used the 'spray & pray' technique, which meant chucking anything out there, hoping some might hit the right target and stick. It wasn’t a method I advocated then and don’t now: it’s a bit like trying to get a spray tan in a gale. The result won’t be effective – or pretty.  Read more

Sales people who talk too much can kill the sale, but techies who can't talk at all or who blurt out 'facts' at inconvenient times can too. Discover how I learned from bitter experience (I was the former) why selling is a skill that both sales and technical teams need - and why we developed Soft Skills for Techies.   Read more

A New Year, a New Set of Rules from Big Brother. 

Google has been carefully tweaking its search algorithms with updates such as Panda and Penguin to penalise sites that engage in keyword stuffing and fake link building. For Google, it’s all about improving the quality of search results so it will continue to devalue derivative and filler website copy in favour of original content of real value.  Read more

A recipe with 8 essential ingredients. 

The concept of the  Elevator Pitch comes from Hollywood, where aspiring scriptwriters would jump into the elevator with a producer and pitch their new script idea in the time it took for the elevator to reach the penthouse suite. If you think that’s a tough task, MGM boss Louis B. Mayer used to ask scriptwriters to write their synopsis on the back of his business cards. By comparison, the 30-45 seconds you have in an elevator seem luxurious.  Read more

The good news is your competitors are far from perfect. 

Despite the many new ways to deliver your message, words are still the main currency of our communications. Mastering words is more crucial now because everybody is a writer and publisher: everyone has a Facebook page, a blog, a Twitter page and everyone writes emails.  Read more

Small glitches with grammar that cause big problems. 

Whatever you write or speak about and whoever your audience, the fastest ways to lose credibility is to make silly grammatical errors. Sure, you might say that content is far more important than a minor grammar slip, but you'd be wrong: little slips can turn into almighty clangers.  Read more

And 8 rules for making them work. 

Strong branding can make your company stand out in a crowded market from competitors. As in real estate, position is everything in marketing. Your tagline is part of your brand and, without one, your audience will be left in the dark. Taglines should work to define your brand, in the same way that clothes define a women: they reveal more about her character.To be effective, taglines must follow a few simple rules:  Read more

The bigger they are, the bigger their mistakes. 

We all see brand names or logos that make us shake our heads and ask: what were they thinking? Or smoking? Some make us cringe: Nissan Tiida and BenQ Joybook. Some make us laugh: Wii. Some make us frown and ask: they spent how many million on a that new logo and brand? A case in question was the  London 2012 Olympic logo. It looked like smashed pottery and the supporting mascots Wenlock and Mandeville were attracted deserved ridicule.  Read more

The most under-rated resource. 

Nothing is more convincing than a customer who’s happy to tell the world that your product solved a major problem in his business. You might say that case studies are a pain to create – especially with the often tedious, multi-layered, time consuming approval process – but we’d say the pain is more than worth the gain. Case studies (or success stories if you like) have multiple uses throughout the sales cycle and elsewhere:  Read more