By Megan Totka
Missteps are increasingly becoming a part of the landscape for business social media. While unfortunate, those of us who run social media pages as businesses are still only human – and make human mistakes.
Some of these gaffes have more dire consequences than others. One of the most recent posts-gone-wrong was on the night of the first presidential debate. This particular post came from the KitchenAid brand and quickly became top business news. KitchenAid tweeted:
“Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president’. #nbcpolitics”
Many people found this tweet to be rather offensive. It was shocking, too, coming from such a neutral brand as KitchenAid. We don’t typically expect the company that manufactures stand mixers to have a particularly strong political view. This tweet was broadcast to about 24,000 of KitchenAid’s followers before it was deleted from the company page.
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By Alexandra Reid
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 ReadWriteWeb, Fast Company, Forbes and VentureBeat.
Why you can’t settle for the “minimum” in your minimum viable product
Many startups scramble to create a “minimum viable product,” or MVP, to get a version of their product to market quickly for testing. It’s a great way to cost-effectively test a website or app with real users. But be careful. If your MVP is too minimalist, it could torpedo your company’s future.
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By Alexandra Reid
In this podcast, originally created for IABC Ottawa’s The Voice, I explore the vast world of marketing with digital media and advertising rock star Mitch Joel. Mitch tells us that marketing is not dead but at a crossroads, and explains why businesses (both B2B and B2C) must shift to a “digital first posture” to create more powerful marketing engagements. From content marketing to advertising to more traditional marketing strategy, Mitch explains why marketing must move beyond the first “p” – promotion.
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By Alexandra Reid
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 Gabriel Weinberg, Mark Evans, David Crow, Amber Naslund, and James Carson.
Leaky bucket vs power law problems
Gabriel Weinberg offers a great analogy for the kinds of problems startups can face. Is your startup addressing a leaky bucket or a power law problem?
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By Francis Moran
When prospects approach us to talk about our helping them with their marketing, they almost always mean help with their marketing programs, the stuff they do to promote their company and product or service. And while we can certainly create greater value simply through the effective management of marketing programs, real marketing consists of much more than this. Real marketing consists in the first instance of identifying a high-value pain or need that your technology has the potential to address, and then building the right product to meet that need. Only after that can you start crafting a marketing program.
I have always referred to this approach to marketing as “capital-M marketing,” and so I was immediately drawn to a chapter in an e-book that’s been on my spike for a while but that I only just got around to reading. In their “The Secrets of Tuned In Leaders: How technology company CEOs create success (and why most fail),” authors Craig Stull, Phil Myers and David Meerman Scott use almost the same language in a section they title, “Marketing with a Big ‘M’.”
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By Megan Totka 
