It’s been a little while since I mentioned HubShots, the podcast I co-host with Ian Jacob. Here’s a few recent items of interest you may have missed: in episode 32 we discussed chatbots in episode 31 we discussed the morality of ghostwriting in episode 30 we discussed going old school with Facebook page like campaigns in episode 29 we discussed inbound sales certification I’d...
You might have seen posts like this one from Drift where companies discuss their amazing new idea about un-gating content ie no more forms to be filled out in order to access ebooks and the like. There’s a follow up here, and then an Inbound.org discussion where other marketers chime in. A few thoughts: if this works for Drift, that’s great, but don’t assume it will work for you...
Another of Google’s ‘do as we say, not as we do’ moments.
Do as we say: Payday loans are bad.
Not as we do: Aaron Wall sets the record straight. Again.
The masters of PR:
If you haven’t yet implemented Custom Web Audiences in Facebook, then you continue to miss out on an amazing marketing opportunity. And the recent updates (starting to roll out now) are even more useful. Jon Loomer has an excellent hands-on overview of the new CWA enhancements. In particular the ability to create audiences based on the number of times a visitor has been to your site (or a...
I liked Marco Arment’s thoughts about Apple’s dominant position in the podcast world. It was a response to this NYT article. Speaking about Apple’s role in podcasting Marco writes: Apple has only ever used its dominant position benevolently and benignly so far, and as the medium has diversified, Apple’s role has shrunk. The last thing podcasters need is for Apple to increase...
I give blood every 12 weeks at my local Red Cross blood donation centre. According to Red Cross a blood donation could save up to 3 lives. Which makes me feel good about myself. Which is why I do it. And why you should consider doing it too. To feel good about your self. If that sounds selfish it’s because it is. Last year I was looking for ways to feel good about myself, that actually did...
In this Gizmodo piece on Facebook’s trending news curation project we find out that:
Facebook hired a bunch of contractors (likely out-of-work journalists)
to do basic curation of trending news items
worked them really hard
replaced most of them with an algorithm
TL;DR Technology progress happened. As usual. No one is surprised.
See also John Gruber’s take.
Thanks to Elissa Hudson and HubSpot for the latest post on the XEN blog. An excellent overview for any marketing managers thinking through their Facebook strategy.
From a re/code article last week: But Twitter isn’t novel anymore, and brands and agencies who want to play with a new shiny object can go to Snapchat. and then: …sales on Twitter’s own properties — see how it’s dropping faster than the rest of Twitter’s revenue, which includes its third-party ad network? That’s brand advertisers pulling away from Twitter faster than direct...
A good piece by Lauren Ingram (at least I assume she wrote it :) on whether we need to start getting more transparent about the ghost writing that goes on in corporate content strategy. As you probably know much of the ‘thought leadership’ content produced by CEO and higher management in big enterprise is ghost written, often without any input or even signoff from them before it is...