Jumping Outside The Norm

I love the idea of bringing people to your business in new and different ways.  The web has changed marketing since its inception, and still today the classical marketers are trying to catch up.  One place where more and more of these groups are working in is through inbound marketing.

Now I could take a moment to brown nose and say that my favorite example of inbound marketing is HubSpot TV, but I’m not that guy.  I will admit that the reason for this post is the hope of winning a ticket to the Inbound Marketing Summit in April, but it’s an honor to just be nominated.

Are Comment Spammers Even Trying?

First of all let me say that I hate spam as much as the next guy.  I despise the fact that people (or bots or whatever) attempt to use my comment space, my email, or my cell phone (yes, I consider telemarketers the worst kind of spammers) to attempt to shill their crap.  But are the spammers, and specifically the comment spammers, even really trying anymore?

I’m sure there are a few people who don’t use Akismet or some other spam detection software on their blog.  I even know an SEO company (who shall remain unnamed) that uses this to increase traffic to their clients’ sites.  (They also use these non-spam filtering sites because they typically allow rel=”FOLLOW” in links in the comments.)

I know spammers will probably never go away.  For some reason completely beyond me, spamming is still, sadly, a profitable marketing technique.  Yes, people actually click on those links and go to those sites that are obviously scams.  But you’d think that the spammers themselves would learn from the failures they have.

I Was Told To Stop Twittering

I was talking with a friend of mine recently about work, school, etc.  “School is ok, work is fine, but they told me to stop using Twitter to help customers.”  What?  This sounds familiar.  Delving further in, he had this story to tell.

I was asked by my bosses to stop Twittering people about their support issues today.  I’m not angry about it.  I’m going to adhere to the bosses’ request and stop doing so.  I even fully understand why they want me to stop.  So I will.

Why was I asked to stop?  Mainly because we don’t currently have a policy in place on using outside applications to assist our clients.  Like I said, perfectly understandable.  But it’s frustrating because I want to help people.  That’s why I work where I work and do what I do.

Tags, Tags, And More Tags

So I’ve never really tagged my posts in the past.  I started looking through my search history and the inlinks to other areas of my blog and really thinking about it.

Waking Up My Brain

I don’t know about anyone else out there, but if I don’t have my cup of coffee in the morning my brain doesn’t work.  I get a headache and I can’t think or comprehend anything that is going on around me.

So I start each and every day with that lovely black fluid.  Sometimes I make it at home, but usually I hit the Starbucks on the way into the office.  I grab my Venti Coffee (no room) and head for the train and off to work.

2009 Looking Back And Looking Forward

Well, 2009 is here leaving 2008 in its dust. So I feel it appropriate to take a look back at the past year and my goals for 2008 and see how it all went. As well, I think it’s time to look forward to the new year and make some plans for the next 12 months.

First a look at what I hoped to achieve in 2008:

1. Finish College — Hey, I actually got that one done. So far so good.
2. Build Out the Main Site — I have to admit failure here. I started and stopped and reworked and restarted and never quite got it done. So this will probably be added to the next list.