Going Crazy With GenAI: What Marketing Consultants Could Learn From Willy Nelson and Jelly Roll

September 18th, 2024

One of the big downfalls of GenAI is that it currently only draws from content it is trained on that already exists. So, the information it generates is “known.” GenAI can’t (yet) create new material; it can only consolidate and spew back what’s already been created by others. In other words, “it” cannot be innovative.

But you can!

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Navigating the Wild, Wild, West of GenAI and Copyright Issues

September 13th, 2024

I found a recent news story interesting because I was just writing a piece on impending copyright issues related to GenAI for my “Let’s Get Strategic” column in Information Today.

The makers of Star Wars’ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story are being sued over the use of Peter Cushing’s image. The use of the image occurred back in 2016—long before generative AI, or GenAI, hit the scene—but I’m sure GenAI and its sudden popularity had something to do with the renewed interest. Read the rest of this entry »

From Traffic to Income: A Comprehensive Guide to Monetizing Your Website—Part 3

August 27th, 2024

In Part 2 of this three-part series, we took a deep dive into successfully monetizing website content. Here, we take a look at some key considerations and best practice recommendations from digital marketing experts. Read the rest of this entry »

From Traffic to Income: A Comprehensive Guide to Monetizing Your Website—Part 2

August 22nd, 2024

In Part 1 of this three-part series, we took a look at how website content can be optimized to deliver a relevant audience as a first step to successfully monetizing that content. Here, we take a deeper dive into how to deliver content designed to be monetized. Read the rest of this entry »

From Traffic to Income: A Comprehensive Guide to Monetizing Your Website—Part 1

August 13th, 2024

While many people may not think of it this way, Amazon is likely one of the most successful—if not the most successful—websites from a monetization standpoint. Initially, it started as an online bookseller, but today, much of Amazon’s revenue comes through payments received from third parties selling products on its site—a practice referred to as affiliate marketing. Today, more than 60% of its sales come through independent sellers, the company reports.

Amazon, the gorilla in the room here, is the Read the rest of this entry »

10 Tips for Implementing Your Strategic Plan

August 7th, 2024

Chess player achieving success. Surreal and conceptual scene of a tiny person standing on the top of chessboard among huge chess pieces. Overcoming obstacles, victory and business leadership metaphorAs I work with people on strategic planning activities—once we get over the initial resistance to strategic planning—one of the biggest barriers I find is concern about implementation. Too often implementation just doesn’t happen and organizations find themselves in an endless loop of planning without achieving measurable results.

Part of the problem, I believe, is that Read the rest of this entry »

Crafting a Powerful USP: Lessons from Advertising Legend Rosser Reeves

July 29th, 2024

Rosser Reeves, an advertising guru, was active from the 1930s through the 1960s, with significant contributions in the 1950s and 1960s. His phrase “unique selling proposition” (or USP), is a concept that is still relevant today. A USP is exactly what it sounds like it isa unique selling proposition–something about you, or your product or service that is different from competing products and services in important ways that represent value for your potential customers. In addition to being unique, it’s important that your USP Read the rest of this entry »

Why Your B2B Content Team Needs to Be Good at Storytelling

July 22nd, 2024

Using GenAI for content marketing - tips and best practicesPopular wisdom has it that people like to read stories and that storytelling is a very important skill for content marketers to have—even if they work in the B2B realm. But what if your content team is hesitant about storytelling? How can you convince them of its importance?

This is a question I responded to recently on LinkedIn.

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Addressing Conflicting Feedback as a Content Marketer: The Ideal Review Process

July 17th, 2024

Creating marketing communications materials can be challenging. After decades in the business (yeah, I’m “seasoned”… ), I’ve had multiple experiences with review processes—some great, some good, some not so good, and some absolutely horrendous and extremely frustrating.

Over the years I’ve come to identify a number of best practices that can help to both streamline the content review process and minimize frustrations along the way—for both content creators and subject matter experts.

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X, Hoofbeat, Whatever: Does It Really Matter What You Call Your Brand?

July 11th, 2024

Loyal fans are loyal fans. The more loyal they are the more they feel a sense of ownership over the brands they’re loyal to. Just ask Harley motorcycle owners. Because of their loyalty and sense of ownership, they can often be quite put off when brands make changes they don’t like. Like changes to the brand names they’ve become accustomed to.

Case in point: Read the rest of this entry »