For more than a decade, I’ve been teaching about the power of curated content, and it occurred to me that I’ve never written about it on this blog. If you’re trying to find a powerful new way to stand out in this very noisy world, this might be an exceptional opportunity for you. Today, I’ll cover: What is curated content? The business case for curated content An inspirational case study The future of curated content What is curated content? According to my content marketing definition, curated content refers to a regularly-published summary of industry news, trends, and opinions. Typically ..read more

The other day a friend told me how she was planning to fight the encroachment of artificial intelligence tools replacing writing, graphic design, and other human creator skills. “It’s taking the heart and soul out of our work,” she proclaimed. “This is nothing less than an existential crisis presented by AI.” It took me an hour to talk her off her cliff. But perhaps you’re feeling some of this anxiety and sadness, too. I’ve thought about this a lot. HUMAN skills are being effortlessly replaced by AI. If you’re a creator, you’d have to be a sponge-like creature at the bottom of the Mariana Tre ..read more

BeReal By {grow} community member Fiona Lucas I was curious when I first heard of BeReal, the red-hot, French-created app built on spontaneous content. Could this be the end of overly curated, ego-driven social media posts? Today, I’ll share my experience with this new social media phenomenon. Working in the cyber-safety space for many years, I have seen the hurt caused by that need for a “perfect post.” I am haunted by the story of one young man who literally took more than 200 photos before he could even leave the house. BeReal sounded like a breath of fresh air, helping us to accept ourse ..read more

Today I bring you a few small observations on marketing that are a little too small for a full post. Let’s start with a toilet. I was in a hotel in Madrid last month and this was on top of the toilet in my room: I was haunted by this for two days. Why would somebody sign the top of the toilet? Who is this person? Did they make the thing? Is this a toilet influencer? I would not count myself as a toilet expert, but I suppose I’ve seen my share. There seemed to be nothing unusual about this commode. I looked it up, and this is an upscale Parisian brand. It made me think about the power of sign ..read more

I’ve been immersed in the world of measurement and influencers since the beginning. I wrote the first book on the subject. There has been a tremendous amount of progress in testing impact — a lot of money has been devoted to attribution models. But when it comes to finding relevant influencers, especially in the B2B space, it’s been disappointing. Today I will lament that we have made almost no progress in the last ten years. Influence based on breadcrumbs The first company to attempt assessing influencers was Klout. Around 2009, Joe Fernandez had his jaw wired shut after an operation and had ..read more

I have fun helping people with their business and marketing strategies, and more often than not, I recommend some easy tweaks to their website. Most people are missing the same five key ingredients on their site. I provide this advice so often that I thought I should put it a post. Are these changes you should be considering? 1. Tell them what you do and how you do it. If you’re lucky enough to have a potential customer visit your website, you only have a few seconds to grab their attention. So you need to do this by 1) creating a captivating visual element and 2) telling them what problem yo ..read more

Over the years, I have relentlessly laid out the business case for personal branding. It is the only sustainable competitive advantage any of us have in the long term. Today I am going to take this argument a step further. I can make an effective business case for personal branding in one picture. And it is going to scare the crap out of you. Here is the picture: Yes, this is a scary-looking fish. But that’s not the scariest part. This fish was created through an AI image creation program called DALL-E. My friend Jon Briggs of Food Fight Studios simply typed in the words on the right, and th ..read more

I’ve worked in marketing for about 40 years so I can say with some authority that it’s very difficult to succeed in our profession these days! In fact, this might be the most challenging time to be in marketing. Today I’m connecting a few dots to provide a perspective on why it seems so hard to be successful in marketing today. Before we get into these challenges, let me emphasize that I think marketing is an amazing field of work! I could not imagine a more rewarding career. But it is a challenging time to be in marketing … 1. Information density On June 24, 2009, an important milestone was ..read more

ABBA twisted reality to become their 1980s selves for a new tour On the latest episode of the Marketing Companion podcast, Brooke Sellas and I talk about Facebook trends, content trends, impulse purchases, ABBA, our favorite karaoke songs, Tom Cruise, and Anthony Bourdain … and somehow direct the conversation back to marketing. What a veritable thrill ride we have in store for you! The overarching theme of this show (serious) is how we are entering an era where twisted reality will be both good and bad. An example of good is how ABBA is going on a world tour … as holograms. Would you pay to ..read more

America is taking punch after punch these days. And it’s time for a rant. On top of the obvious crises, most of the country was recently knocked down by the winter storm of the century. Even the normally mild state of Texas had ice storms and record cold. Power was out for millions of people (including my brother!). No heat. No water. For days. James McIngvale, a Houston furniture store owner known as “Mattress Mack,” saw his fellow Texans cold and hungry, with little shelter from the winter storm that ravaged the state. So Mr. McIngvale, 70, opened his doors, and the people came. Thousands h ..read more