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You’re bound to read plenty of articles about how to succeed this year. Some undoubtedly have great tips, but just as many have uninspired, absurdly upbeat ideas that you’ve read a hundred other times. So, I thought I’d mix it up a little with a primer on how to shoot yourself in the foot, create your own problems, and just plain screw up this year.

No, I don’t want you to follow my advice, but these not so gentle reminders will help you avoid some of the most common ways that so many of us fail. Enjoy! (more…)

Don’t trust any marketing firm or person that’s not great at marketing themselves.

I hear it all the friggin’ time: “Yeah, I know my (FILL IN WORD) sucks, but I guess it’s like the cobbler’s children with no shoes. Heh, heh.”

If a marketing “expert” has a lame web site, or a lame business card, or doesn’t carry a business card, or has @aol, @gmail, or @optonline as their email domain, or has no blog, or doesn’t really know what a blog is, or what “Web 2.0″ means, and isn’t on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, and has no G-Cred, then he or she should not be calling themselves a marketing expert and have no right to be advising you on your business.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/technology/personaltech/12pogue.html?_r=1&em

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Excerpted from the NY Times:

One of the many ways that the election of Barack Obama as president has echoed that of John F. Kennedy is his use of a new medium that will forever change politics. For Mr. Kennedy, it was television. For Mr. Obama, it is the Internet.

“Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president. Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee,” said Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post.

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How they helped a Black man with an Arab name win the US presidency.

Last month, a panel of top marketing experts, organized by Ad Age, gathered to select the ‘Marketer of the Year.’ Beating out the likes of Apple Computer, Burger King and Nike, the winner was “Team Obama.” Working with an unknown African-American candidate with an Arab name, they used a highly-organized, integrated, guerrilla marketing strategy utilizing many non-traditional social-media tactics.

Jon Fine, marketing and media columnist for BusinessWeek, pointed to Mr. Obama’s facility with engaging voters in social-media online channels. “It’s the fuckin’ Web 2.0 thing,” he said. Clearly Obama and his team understood the Internet better than McCain — and took advantage of that. From a broader perspective, however, Obama trusted the guidance of his top marketing advisor, David Axelrod.

Also, Obama invested almost twice what McCain spent on marketing — a fact suggesting that those who invest in marketing, and do it with the best help, have the best shot at winning.

Whether it’s selling a presidential candidate, or furniture, a successful effort depends on finding, and listening to, the best marketing help.

Learn more about effective marketing and social media

John discusses the media trends that are changing the marketing landscape and how you can take advantage of them.

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A fake blog (also known as a flog, or “flogging”) is a blog that appears to be written by a respected blog author or internal company rep but, in fact, is written by an outside ghost blogger. As social networking tools gain in popularity, corporations and special-interest groups legitimately use blogs to promote company agendas with transparency and honesty without cloaking their identities. Flogs are corrupted and deceptive forms of marketing that, if exposed, can do great damage to reputation.

One notorious example was when public relations firm Edelman Worldwide created a fake blog in 2006 called “Walmarting Across America.” It was purportedly written by two Wal-Mart “enthusiasts” who decided to journey across the United States in an RV, blogging about the experience as they visited Wal-Marts along the way. While two people actually did travel across the United States in an RV, the publicity stunt was revealed to be paid for by Wal-Mart, a client of Edelman. What was intended to be positive press ended up as much negative press.