Tag Archives: Marketing

Are you a content curator?

Curator imageContent curation isn’t a new idea but the practice has exploded in popularity in the past year. Thanks to the never-ending flow of information on every subject imaginable in social media, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. There’s a lot of quality writing going on, but how do you keep up with what you need to know?

I rely on my favorite content curators to showcase information that’s relevant to me, and I try to do the same thing for my network of followers and connections.

What is content curation?

Simply put, it’s Continue reading

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Cybersecurity, content filtering, and Dad’s embarrassing moment

President Obama issued his much-anticipated cybersecurity executive order this month to slightly mixed reviews. It’s a hot topic, given the undeniable need to protect US critical infrastructure like electric grids, financial institutions, water supply systems, and air traffic control from cyber attacks. The executive order provides for the sharing of cyber threat information with companies that run those critical infrastructure networks.

Burger King Twitter Account  Hacked

Screen shot of hacked Burger King Twitter account

Cyber threats made the news last week on a less threatening level, comparatively, when Burger King’s and Jeep’s Twitter accounts were hacked. Hackers falsely proclaimed these companies had been sold to competitors and proceeded to tweet all sorts of unsavory comments. National security wasn’t at risk, but online reputation management was definitely top of mind in the marketing world.

In fact, those incidents provided enormous PR opportunities for the victims with an avalanche of free publicity and new social media followers. It’s theirs to capitalize on or miss, depending on how they play their response.

These stories from Pennsylvania Avenue and Wall Street remind us that each of us on Main Street need to be vigilant with our personal infrastructure as well.

And that reminds me of one of my most embarrassing moments as a Dad. Continue reading

Have your own domain yet?

All the cool kids do.

Which means I wasn’t cool until this weekend, I guess. Not that I am now, since I’m a little late to the game.

For the benefit of any beginners, a domain is a web address. When you first set up a blog with WordPress, its domain might be something like yourname.wordpress.com. If you want, it could be simply yourname.com.

Personal branding tool

I’d never given much thought to registering a domain until recently. Yet it’s an inexpensive personal branding tool that you might want to consider if you haven’t already done so. Especially if you’re blogging and want to promote your blog more effectively, or if you’re in the job market and want to build your personal brand. Setting up a blog is an excellent way to establish yourself as a subject matter expert in your line of work, and having your name as the web address is the icing on the cake.

For less than $20 a year you can have yourname.com as your domain. You can put it on your business card, add it to your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter profiles, and include it in any other marketing tactics you can think of.

Caution

There’s one thing to be aware of if you’re already blogging on wordpress.com and you map your new domain to your blog.  If you use widgets that count the number of Facebook likes you’d received, how many times you’ve been tweeted, +1, etc., those are going to be reset to zero. I had dozens of likes and tweets on some of my posts but now the count is gone. I swear.

The neat thing is now I own ChipMcCraw.com for as long as I want it and no one else named Chip McCraw can have it. You can grab your name now too if no one else already has.

How to survive unemployment with your sanity intact

There was a point in my career that I enjoyed a 5-month vacation between gigs. Well, “enjoyed” might be a stretch. OK, “vacation” isn’t the best description either.

You know the story. “There was a change in executive leadership in my company followed by a reorganization that resulted in several positions being eliminated in my department, mine included.” Thus I found myself looking for my next opportunity.

If this is you right now, you need to understand that it won’t last forever. After all, people get hired for new jobs every day. It may not seem that way while you’re in the middle of it, but trust me – if I can land in a good place (and I did), then so can you. Here are some of the things I learned along the way.

What do I do now? Continue reading

ConvergeSouth 2012

I attended ConvergeSouth for the first time on Friday, even though I admit I’ve known about the conference since it started about six years ago. Hopefully it won’t be my last time – it was packed full of great ideas from some great minds. My only regret is there were some sessions I didn’t get to attend because I was already toggling between two other equally great sessions.

I was about to put my conference notes into a doc for my boss (to prove I really was there) when I realized I could capture them in a blog post. Continue reading

Fake email invokes BBB name

The email looked legitimate and fishy at the same time. It had what appeared to be the URL of a legitimate chapter of the Better Business Bureau and was mostly well-written.  Yet it did have a single sentence with a grammatical error that should have raised a bigger red flag than it did. No genuine email would say, “Your emails is…”  At least I hope not; the grammar nazi in me would have a fit.

Fake BBB email

Against my better judgment I clicked on the link anyway.  Continue reading