Archive For The “State of the Industry” Category
A colleague, Polly Traylor, recently reflected on the role of corporate-sponsored content in marketing, especially as social-media marketing becomes more mainstream. Her analysis was intriguing, and prompts a question about the diminution of high-quality substance in most commercial marketing materials these days. Businesses are starting to catch the “social-media marketing” buzz. Suddenly, Facebook fan pages and [...]
In a perfect world, a potential client will beg for your product or service, showing up at your office with large bags filled with unmarked currency and offering to loan his first-born child to you as free office help. Of course, the world is hardly perfect. These days, clients actually want something of value in [...]
There is some discussion among business experts that today’s anemic economy will (and should) push more and more citizens into moonlighting on the side. Some laid-off white-collar folks may well freelance out of necessity and never return to the 9-to-5 corporate world. Whether this is true or not is irrelevant. What is important is that [...]
So far, 2009 has not been kind to the newspaper industry. High-profile publications including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are folding after a century or more of continuous operation. Layoffs are proceeding apace, and subscriber rates are plummeting. There have been plenty of post-mortems about this, ranging from the spread of the New Media to cutbacks in [...]
The market is soft … businesses are laying off employees or closing their doors … credit is tight … major projects are being canceled left and right. A bad time to strike out as a business consultant, right? Well, maybe no – if you are trying to sell a prospect on something that might have made [...]
The trend grows, and it grows wearisome. Blogging — an excellent tool for mass communication — is turning into a vanity production of epic proportions among those whose ego ought to remain shrouded by their press passes. It’s one thing for Joe Sixpack to keep an online diary. It’s quite another for seasoned veterans of [...]
Nothing on the Web is private. I am a member of an online politics discussion forum that spans several Yahoo! Groups. From the outset, some of the groups had message archives that were open to the public, and some were closed. Recently, it was debated internally whether to open some of those closed groups — [...]
One of the joys of being an independent writer and communication consultant is the privilege of helping new and aspiring writers to find their voice. Yesterday, I enjoyed a wonderful meal and extended conversation with the first editor to give me a chance; he has been out of the industry since leaving his job with [...]
Recent Comments