Categories
Daily Life

24

As my vacation at an undisclosed location (for your safety, not mine) continues, I managed to go 24 hours straight with no technology. I can’t remember the last time I’ve done that. Unfortunately it’s end of month and that means the numbers have to go in, but the good news is that it’s bonus payout time. Vacation with cash, what a wonderful thing. I’ll be back soon…

Categories
Podcasting

Audio Explosion

So I have still been running around like crazy. The sales kickoff was last week and I’m also trying to get everything together for an event in Toronto, and vacation before that up in Northern Michigan.

I’d love to say that I haven’t been able to write in the blog because I’ve been so busy working on the Marketing Over Coffee book…. but that would be a lie. Everything else is eating up the time, including the last of the stuff I had to do to get over my lost cellphone, and a recall on my car that said the wheel may fall off.

That said, I did finally get a new Nano to replace the one that went through the wash, and that fits perfectly with the latest pile of audio that I have in progress and out:

There’s talk this week on the Beancast about Newsroom Neutrality, Tivo and 50 Cent defending his brand.

There’s a new M Show, although I have not yet unveiled my plans to close the show down on episode 200.

Marketing Over Coffee will be out Thursday with a 40 minute interview with David Meerman Scott.

Podcamp Boston 3 was a blast and I still have a ton of photos to upload to Flickr…

Categories
The Marketeer

Podcamp Boston Presentation

Thanks to everyone that to time to talk about Social Media and Marketing at Podcamp Boston. Here’s a link to the slide deck, please contact me if you have any other questions.

Podcamp Boston Slide Deck

Transcriptions were also mentioned in the session. My first choice is www.transcriptlibrary.com, if you give Shelly a call please tell her that I sent you.

Categories
Daily Life

The Fresh Air Fund Could Use Your Help

The Fresh Air Fund is looking for help to give inner-city children a chance to get away from New York for a summer vacation. If you’d like to help you can get more information here:

The Fresh Air Fund

Categories
Brain Buster

Why Blogging Changes Journalism

Boston Red Sox Pitcher Curt Schilling gives an amazing first person account of his shoulder surgery. It’s as if your your own brother played Major League Baseball and showed up at the family reunion with the tale of his latest surgery, and even some pictures to freak out the kids. Besides the surgery you get a glimpse into the business end of baseball with a bit of detail about how his contract defines the medical care he will get (third opinions?!).

This post stands toe-to-toe with the best stuff I’ve read in Sports Illustrated, which I consider some of the best writing you can find today. At a Podcamp session yesterday Mark Bernstein presented the idea that “Professional Journalism is a complete myth”. The only real requirement to being a journalist is that you can write. That’s it, it’s not like being a doctor or lawyer where you need years of education to be able to do the job. Granted, you can learn to write more gooder better and communicate more effectively, but no matter how well a journalist writes, it would be impossible to match what Curt himself has written about what he’s going through.

Oh, and the guy gets gaming too.

Categories
Podcasting

Roasting Scott Monty

Monty Roasters

Last Friday a group of Boston Professionals met to send Scott Monty off to Michigan for his new job with Ford. In the spirit of a classic roast, most of the jokes were at his expense or at Crayon’s (apologies in advance to the Crayonistas).

Please keep in mind this is explicit content, and not safe for work. Just to drive it home it opens with an F-bomb and a joke with no taste at all.

Here’s the audio program:

Intro: Scott Monty’s rotten Joke

01:18 John Wall lays downs the rules

02:04 The Roast begins

06:30 Len Edgerly steps up

12:08 Doug Haslam

17:15 Adam Zand

19:11 Todd Van Hoosear

24:36 Chris Brogan

27:50 Laura Fitton

34:10 The Guest of Honor – Scott Monty

Among the offended:

Susan Getgood (also in attendance), Christopher Penn, Crayon, Coca-Cola, Second Life – Linden Labs, ooVoo, Chip Griffin, Sarah Wurrey, Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson, Bryan Person, Maggie Fox, C.C. Chapman, Joseph Jaffe, Chris Abraham, Greg Verdino

Direct link to file

Get the file at: http://media.libsyn.com/media/themshow/RoastMonty.mp3

Categories
Podcasting

Hanging with the Mad Man

“It’s all over for you Mickey…”

I have not vanished off the face of the earth (although my cellphone did in New York City this weekend, but that’s a tale for another day).

Lots of interesting stuff over the past couple of days. I’m putting the final touches on the audio for the Scott Monty roast from last week, which was a fantastic time. I was then off to New York City to catch both Avenue Q on Broadway and Ricky Gervais at Madison Square Garden. Both were great.

I also got to finally check out B&H Photo after 3 unsuccessful tries, but couldn’t buy anything because I blew my extra cash replacing my lost phone.  Plenty more going on with Podcamp Boston coming up this weekend, if you are going please send me a line and we can catch up over a cool beverage in what is supposed to be a very humid weekend.

Here’s today’s Marketing Over Coffee:

Direct link to file

Categories
Lead Generation

Scoring and the Buying Cycle

Having worked with a scoring system for a couple of months, I’ve been watching closely to see what I can learn about how to set it up properly. I was fortunate enough to catch a great session at the MarketingProfs B2B event earlier this summer, and I have a co-worker that has hooked me up with a few recent articles. Some of the more interesting points:

  • Depreciation is Key: knowing how long your buying cycle should be will allow you to automatically downgrade leads, I’ve heard that best practice is that anything that is in 2x longer than the average should probably be discounted to 50% and gone by 4x
  • Identify the Tipping Points: In short order you should be able to identify buying signs, often in terms of website traffic patterns and resources requested. This is where the points pile up to prioritize leads.
  • Understand the Customer’s Buying Cycle: Knowing how long the cycle is between purchases will define the size database you will need to generate enough pipeline. Although a longer cycle tends to be more painful, it does allow you to build up momentum.
  • Generate Awareness for when the Prospect is Ready: This closes the loop. Ultimately your database is full and you’ll have to go back to generating awareness to make sure that the names you’ve worked so hard to gather continue to keep you at the front of their mind – and these actions may not generate points at all as they are not buying signs of any fashion.

Now to get on to email campaign A/B testing…

Categories
The Marketeer

July 11th – Roasting Scott Monty

The countdown is on for the Social Media Roast of Scott Monty. Come join us for a steak dinner and a chance to berate Scott. If you are unable to make it to Boston, feel free to send over any text, audio, or video you want to send. Depending on the virtual response we may add to the online side of the event, but we are limited by the tech infrastructure of Ken’s Steak House…

Categories
Daily Life

Lacking the Will to Write

It’s the weekend and I am. I really should be working on the book project, but the weather’s just too nice and I’m going outside to enjoy it.

I have tackled a bunch of paperwork, and just completed the monthly backup (and you should too).

Last night I watched Tin Man, which was excellent, if you were scared of the flying monkeys as a kid you should check it out. There’s also new shots up on Flickr.