I read an article the other day that said that marketers in demand today have to know how to do so much more than marketing. Especially if you are working with a small business who just doesn't have the budget to hire out graphic designers or webmasters for instance, to create cool content for You Tube or other platforms.

Last week a perfect example of this occurred when I was asked to edit a PDF file that I personally didn't create. ... << MORE >>

This morning I listened in online to the Mark Zuckerberg keynote from the f8 conference. Here's a quick video showing the changes: Watch the Facebook Timeline Video on You Tube.

You may have heard by now that the biggest enhancement coming soon is called "Timeline". I have to admit I'm pretty excited to see it live and am looking forward to adding new apps to my Facebook profile to making sharing my stories more fun and interactive.

You have ... << MORE >>

In a few weeks time I am heading to San Diego to attend the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit, but that's not the point of this post...It's the keynote speaker that has me so excited!

Tom Peters wrote a book called The Little Big Things - 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence. Honestly, I did purchase the book in anticipation of the ... << MORE >>

The other day I was chatting with someone who gave me the best time saving tip for completing pesky expense reports. I've already tried this out and it definitely falls into the "Why didn't I think of that" category!

Try taking a picture with your phone of your gas, meals or travel receipts.

If you just need to email them, no more scanning and saving images that are too dark to be printed - just plug in your phone and retrieve the images, rename them, and submit as normal ... << MORE >>

I recently completed HubSpot's Inbound Marketing Specialist course. 16 online sessions focused on all of the basics (and some advanced) topics like SEO, analytics, calls to action, blogging, social media & much, much more. The content was outstanding and the professionals lined up to present the content were first class. Hats off to HubSpot for such a great initiative.

Companies such as Constant Contact talked about email marketing - people like David Meerman Scott explained viral marketing ... << MORE >>

I remember years ago taking a sales course where the instructor told us never, ever, ever, call a customer to follow up. The rational was that you'll never hear the good stuff, you'll only hear about all of the things then went wrong and at that point, you've probably already lost any potential future business from them. I disagree.

There are two very valuable pieces of information you can gather from performing regular follow up phone calls, emails or surveys.

The Bad: If the product or service you provided was really terrible, we ... << MORE >>

If you work for a company who didn't strike out the budget for the company holiday party this year, chances the big night is just around the corner. If you've been charged with planning the party this year, bless you! It's not an easy task and if your company is large, you've got lots of people to please and are quite possibly swearing off putting your hand up for any such future duties! However, it  may not be too late to incorporate some of these tips into your event in hopes of a seamless evening, avoiding some sensitive ... << MORE >>

One of the biggest pet peeves of frequent conference attendees is the poor quality of name badges. This is an area that can quickly see even the best, most carefully planned networking session, fall flat on it's face. If you want your attendees to network, help them out by making it easy for them to make introductions to each other. The name badge should make the first name and company name easy to see. Here are some tips I've come to live by when designing name badges for my events:

1. The bigger the font, ...

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For years I've been looking for an easy way to get a set of dates from an Excel spreadsheet into my Outlook calendar other than cutting and pasting each line. Usually, by the time I get around to doing it, the schedule is half over. I'm sure if you are a programmer or something, this is pretty basic stuff, but for the rest of us out there, I hope this helps you out!

Here goes:

Open up a new Excel spreadsheet
Create headings in individual columns for each of the following items:

• Subject
• Start Date
• Start Time
• End Date
• End Time
• Location

From whatever source you have, begin to paste ...<< MORE >>

How important are your customers to you? Well, without your customers, you're out of business, so I'd say they are pretty important. I bet that whatever industry you are in, you keep up on the latest news right? Why not translate that news into a non-salesy monthly newsletter and send it out to your existing customers? By delivering relevant information to them, they'll feel like you value their business (you do, don't you?) and you'll naturally become the first company they think of when the opportunity arises for them to upgrade, buy a new service or product, or even better, tell a ...<< MORE >>