I had a great time at this morning’s Social Media Breakfast. There was a lot of good discussion about using social media to engage your customers. First, Bob O’Brien, vice president of Noyes, Hall & Allen Insurance, spoke about the tools he used to reach out to customers even though not all his customers could […]
Carl Natale
James Murdoch, head of News Corp’s operations in Europe and Asia, created a lot of worrying last week by saying the iPad is cannabalizing print. Bloggers and journalists ran with it and quoted him extensively. All in all, it’s much attribution about nothing. In all the coverage and quoting, I didn’t see a single fact. […]
I knew that title would get you to read this. Why? Well first consider this tweet I saw this week: [blackbirdpie id=”4179926110445568″] Honestly, I’m not surprised. Tim Horton’s sells caffeine, sugar and fat – which are major mood elevators. That’s why people have such strong attachments to coffee shops. So Tim Horton’s (and Dunkin Donuts) […]
I hoard domain names. At this moment, I own 46 domain names. Some of those are .net, .me and .biz versions of the .coms I own. For example, CarlNatale.net. But generally what happens is that I get an idea and rush to my computer to grab the domain name. Then it sits for me to […]
You need to stop trying to be perfect. It’s keeping you from writing. It’s an excuse not to write. People set incredibly high standards that they can’t meet. Then they don’t have to write. Even when they decide to match the standards, they spend too much time worrying about their writing. It turns writing into […]
I’m doing my best to avoid using the word expert. It’s got too much baggage. I understand there’s a lot to gain by being seen as an expert. Notice that when you follow this approach, your audience views you as an expert, not simply as a pushy vendor. Your audience will be disposed to do […]
Most publications use an editorial calendar to plan out their stories and features. An editorial calendar is published at the end of each year for the next year. It is developed by the editorial staff of magazines and details the planned coverage for the following year. Some newspapers and Internet sites are developing editorial calendars […]
For awhile I had a block of Google Ads on the left side of this page. But I just took them out. Why? I really wasn’t making any money. (Google owes me $2.62) I didn’t put any effort into them They were taking valuable real estate They were kind of ugly This isn’t meant as […]
I was raised by a middle school librarian. Along with a love of books, she passed along a love for categorization. It seems almost obvious. You put books about the same subjects together. So when I started blogging, it seemed natural to put posts about the same subjects together. The blog as a library seemed […]
The problem with newspapers is aggregation. Talk to a news publisher and you will hear a rant about the aggregators who capture the news and insert it into their advertising supported web sites. I find this a bit disingenuous because newspapers have been doing this for centuries. Yes, I know they employ armies of reporters […]