By Leo Valiquette
March break aside, we kept up the pace last month with a great lineup of content that featured some excellent posts from our guest bloggers. Hot topics included opportunities in the global smart TV market, criteria for hiring a worthy writer and the risks and rewards of having a product that is truly unique in the marketplace.
In case you missed any of it, here is a handy recap of our posts, as ranked by the enthusiasm of our readers:
March 20: Calling Canada’s startups: There’s a $200B TV market ripe for the taking, by Jason Flick
March 19: Is that writer worth the cost of the ink?, by Leo Valiquette
March 26: The ballad of the undifferentiated product, by Francis Moran
March 27: The ‘Accelerator Bubble’ will pop, but not for the reason you think it will, by Jesse Rodgers
March 25: Three (not so) simple strategies to avoid ‘losing the plot’ in marketing, by Rob Woyzbun
March 07: Oracles, shamans and storytellers, by Bob Bailly
March 13: It’s still rock and roll to me, by Francis Moran
March 21: Best of: My three buckets of customer segmentation, by Francis Moran
March 06: You can’t rely on the channel to grow sales in new markets, by Jeff Campbell
March 11: Drafting your own patent disclosure document, by David French
March 12: Don’t give your customers reasons to ask for apologies, by Leo Valiquette
March 18: Some dos and don’ts of governance, by Denzil Doyle
March 14: Before you jump on the content-marketing bandwagon …, by Leo Valiquette
March 05: From courting Hollywood’s A-list to navigating the Chinese New Year, by Leo Valiquette and John Hill
Image: March2013CalendarPrintable.com
By Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are copyblogger and Read Write Web and three great articles from Fast Company.
Forget the mission statement. What’s your mission question?
Questions (as opposed to statements) can provide a reality check to a business and are designed to keep a company focused on what matters most, writes Warren Berger.
Read More
By Leo Valiquette
When I worked in the newspaper business, there was a screening practice for job applicants that I wholeheartedly embraced – giving the strongest prospects freelance assignments on tight deadlines.
There is no better way to gauge someone’s abilities. Writing samples are all well and good, but there is no telling how much they have been cleaned up by a third party. The same approach was taken at our affiliated inmedia Public Relations practice, only in this context the assignment was a media release.
Read More
By Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Version One Ventures, Ventureburn, MarketingProfs, Techvibes and SmartBlog on Social Media.
Does your product pass the toothbrush test?
Are the products you are building important enough that people will use them at least twice a day? Boris Wertz of Version One Ventures uses the toothbrush as a metaphor for user engagement. He states that “High repeat usage = large potential business.”
Read More
By Leo Valiquette
As Francis wrote yesterday, content marketing is nothing new. It’s the way in which that content can be presented, distributed and promoted that has changed dramatically since the days when we had to use these dusty things called books to do research.
I define content marketing as a process to engage, inform, educate and otherwise woo a target audience with some kind of narrative. This narrative can be anything from a post on your corporate blog to a paid advertising spot that features a client case study (often referred to as an advertorial), or a thought leadership piece that has earned, rather than bought, its way into an influential industry publication.
Read More
