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Big companies have rushed head long into the social media space creating social media departments and titles like Social Media Strategist, Community Manager, and Director of Conversation. You know, I’ve never been very big on job titles, but I also think stuffing social media participation into a department or job function limits the way organizations should be thinking about social media. Read More

Mostly I write about marketing here so when I seem to stray off topic you can bet it’s related to growing a small business and sometimes that takes getting your house in order so you can effectively market.

The most common reason business owners tell me they can’t get around to marketing, particularly some of the newer social tactics, is time. They’re already working 80 hours and week and Read More

Effective strategy, be it marketing related or otherwise, is what really sets one company apart from another. I’m not really saying that every successful company plans and implements better strategy, in some cases strategy just happens because a market and a product find each other and grow organically.

spiral strategyHowever, small businesses that understand the power of an overarching market Read More

Google has been gaining steam in the cloud based business application space with the evolution of Google Apps, Gmail, and Google Calendar. That evolut Read More

Marketing podcast with Andrew Mason (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes

This week’s guest on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Groupon founder Andrew Mason. Groupon is a very unique service that allows individuals to collectively buy discounted, local products and services as long an enough people do it. Read More

Getting a great write up in a publication your prospects and customers read is still one of the most powerful marketing opportunities going. From a trust standpoint few things beat the mention of your firm by what is seen as an unbiased 3rd party. In fact, and I can hear the PR folks cheering now, a well placed article just might be worth 5-10 times more than an ad in the same publication. Read More

Jason Fried37 Signals is a company that most online service providers would love to be like. From day one the creators of Basecamp, Backpack, Highrise and Campfire, made money, built a rabid word of mouth fan base, and perhaps more importantly, built the business they wanted to work in without taking outside funding. Along the way they became media darlings and a frequently cited use case for Read More

At the end of last year I wrote a prediction piece for AMEX OPENForum suggesting that 2010 would be the year that small businesses move more computing power online or, using the more trendy term, to the cloud.

boxnetGoogle and Microsoft are both working very hard to create adoption of online versions of the most commonly used software tools such as spreadsheets, word processors and databases. Read More

As a marketing tool Twitter gets much more interesting and useful when you can filter out 99% of the junk that doesn’t apply to your objectives Read More

I’ve always assumed that Google Maps (and other local search directories) would build up the free local directory, drive other for pay players out, get us hooked on their service, and then start charging to be listed in the prime spot. In this case the prime spot for local search is the Google Seven box shown below for a search for “Attorney Houston, Tx” Read More