Distillations
As digital marketer, brand strategist, writer, and editor for more than a 15 years, I’m not used to being stumped by a question. But there it was, a high and tight fastball careening my way, courtesy of a coworker.“Do all small businesses need a...
In a few short days, a content-first web design project I’ve overseen for months will be completed and I will be a happy man. Not because it was daunting, mind you. It was challenging, yes, but what made it worthwhile was having a great team...
As I write this, I’m seated in a coffee shop, as I am on most mornings, reading a little, writing a lot and completing some strategy work for clients. You might think that the constant banter between baristas and patrons would become annoying after a...
Content should be an asset for your brand, not a chore. However, to make it work for your business, you must realize that content is everything. It’s also all-important, meaning that it helps to fuel all areas of your business, from sales and marketing to...
“How can you tell us that brand relevance is important, but I see numerous examples of nondescript, undifferentiated brands everywhere I look?” asked a small business owner during the Q&A for a small business conference I spoke at in Athens, Ga. She had a point....
In 2016, I was at Utah Olympic Park in Park City, Utah, on a daddy-daughter trip with my girls, when the limits of brand community hit me like a brick. I received a phone call from one of my clients; the person on the other...
One of the funnest activities I engage in with my clients is surreptitiously an exercise to highlight the importance of creating an indispensable brand. It begins with a series of questions about their brand. Who does it serve? What makes it special? How are their...
I still remember the first time I chose a domain name for my blog. It was the early aughts and I was laboring mightily to come up with a catchy name that adequately and accurately captured what my new business was about. Then, I had...
I first learned about Disruptive Innovation in the late 90’s after stumbling onto a nascent work by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, who, in his now-famous work “The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business,” detailed how small...
Looking for a way to simplify and document content strategy for your small business? A recent project I worked on for WordPress.com will be a boon, then. The content strategy template I wrote about and shared in the article will help you more easily ideate,...