Posts About Strategy

Up until I was about 27, this mantra was all that I needed:

Life is all about showing up.

This statement is true, but it’s only half-true in some situations. There’s more to it than that.

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There are 2 extremes to choosing how to brand your product. You can either use plain-speak to describe it or make up a mystical brand name that may have little to do with the product itself. There are trade-offs to each approach, especially when SEO is concerned.

Let’s explore the options and see how it affects SEO

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As many fields, products, and services are becoming commoditized, it’s become increasingly important to plan and implement a great customer experience. Much of this involves planning and gauging how your business makes your customer feel. Creating those “wow” moments aligned with your strategy is key.

Read on to find out what I’ve been learning from E-myth and Adaptive Path about how prototyping can be an effective tool for meeting these ends.

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In my first major attempt to show, not tell, I’ve been working on a screencast series for the ColdFusion on Wheels framework. Once a week, I sit down for a couple hours to record and edit a 5-10 minute screencast demonstrating a feature of the project.

This series has led to quite a few compliments, and people are watching and subscribing to the videos on our site, on YouTube, and on Vimeo.

Read on for more details.

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I wrote last week about showing, not telling. But I didn’t give any examples. Well, here you go.

1. Silverback by Clearleft

They give us a sentence, 6 bullet points, and a dead-simple diagram showing what it does. They even show us a video demo that was created using the product itself. Brilliant.

Read on for 2 more examples.

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Time and time again, I’ve been able to increase website performance simply by showing, not telling. Showing is a lot harder than telling. Presentations, graphics, videos, Flash animations, and demos are a lot harder than writing words.

Don’t get me wrong: the words are important. They’re what search engines see. People still need to read some.

But in this visual YouTube generation, people need to see that your product or service meets their needs, not just read about it.

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Sometimes there just isn’t room for you at the top. If you’re in a field with experts and join late, then you’re going to have a hell of a time getting to authority status. It’s not impossible, but you’re setting yourself up for a tough fight.

I’ve been finding myself in that spot over the past couple days. I’ll talk a little about the options I have available and where I want to go. (Maybe you’ll pick an idea up too.)

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A friend back in college always used to reminisce about the old days of playing with GI Joes as a kid. Why am I bringing this up on a blog about marketing? I think it’s interesting to compare the story to project planning, particularly in technology projects.

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You may be unaware that you actually do pay for free services on the Web. The form of payment isn’t always obvious: your personal information.

There are a couple lessons to be learned here. Read on.

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I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the business of software and how it’s changing. It’s expensive to produce software, but the rewards are there if you produce something special.

But what happens when your software becomes a commodity? It’s not quite as special as it used to be. I believe that you should release it as open source.

Read on to see my reasoning. You may still be able to pull ideas from this post, even if you don’t necessarily sell software. Other things can be “open sourced” as well.

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