Kilroy is Here… And Here… And Here

Hop around on the Web (especially Twitter) and you’ll see a common design trend: Cropped head shots–cropped for bios, avatars, for a lot.
If eyes are the window into the soul, a photo of a cropped human face is the window into Web 2.0 personal, digital branding.
Consider:
There’s the famous top half of a head (Seth Godin, [...]

Twitter: Chaotic Addiction

So much has been written about Twitter, it’s a bit silly. Here’s a small private company with annual revenue surely south of $100 million, and headcount well below 100.
Many companies meet these criteria. Many companies are barely known.
Twitter is not one of those. It fits a perfect profile. It’s about talking, sharing and spreading ideas. [...]

Boy, I’m Glad Someone Said It

Back when newspapers ruled, being first and being original truly mattered. You broke the story. The competition couldn’t match or pass you until it published (a) in the afternoon or (b) next morning. TV and radio had the edge on follows, and re-wrote with the best of today’s bloggers.
Now it’s almost impossible to know who [...]

The Original Twitter Qs: WWJJD?

I’ll take Jeff Jarvis at his word that he did not see these two Twitter @ questions posed to him by me @mootsman this week.
This may be a first: Posting old Tweets on a blog. Note times, dates and methods. 
Credit due to Jeff for responding rapidly to blog post/critique.
Odd that a blog post was faster [...]

WWJJD? (What Would Jeff Jarvis Do?)

It’s a brave new world full of a billion voices, tapping away, sounding off, getting snarky, demanding their due. Anyone with a computer or smartphone can jump in and say something. And somewhere, someone is listening, if just for a nanosecond. 
So does traditional “media” including newsprint still matter?
Simple test:
When I sent an @ Twitter message [...]

People Will Talk

If HP can revive fortunes by making the the Windows-based computer “Personal Again” through lush visuals and marketing campaigns featuring Gwen Stephani, so can Dell.
Or can the brand pull off the difficult job of making a laptop sexy?
We’ll have to wait and see. It’s managed to get people talking about a possible contender to the [...]

Online Marketing: What Works?

Two interesting reports supported by interesting data.
Not the same conclusions.
Fred Wilson, high-profile VC whose firm invested in Twitter, posted that online banners work, just differently from search, according to comScore.
Meanwhile, this story in the NYT looks at brand advertisers’ challenges to engage folks in social networks such as Facebook. The writer opened up an account [...]

Personal Brand & First Amendment Blogging

Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester’s social media analyst, posed a question this week on how corporations respond to personal brands.
The two most interesting parts of the post:

Are there risks associated with personal brands?
Do you have a First Amendment right to blog?

The first idea of possible “risks” for the corporation made me immediately think of Dan Pink’s book, Free [...]

What Will Sell in 2009

Get out your yellow wristband. Lance Armstrong’s on the bike and will race in 2009.
He’s doing it to raise awareness for cancer research through his Livestrong organization. He shares his training on Twitter, often with a dozen or more funny and inspiring missives per day. 
But Lance retired in 2005. How, you might ask, did this happen?
There [...]

Marketing in Difficult Times

If you work in marketing, you know the drill: Times get tough, leadership grows cautious, budgets–and usually people–are let go.
So if everybody does it, should we assume it’s the right approach?
If you make full-size Hummers at GM in Detroit, probably. But if you make simple home budgeting software or provide resume-writing services, no way. There [...]