Highlights from the Archives

posted in: Site-related | 0

As I work on some new posts, I wanted to point you to some of my best old ones; many of these I’ve reread and found to be useful recently myself.

How to Add Value to a Discussion

Join the conversation!, the Cluetrain Manifesto said. And every year new businesses / bloggers / young professionals hop eagerly aboard, charging into your blog comments / presentations / conferences to say:

“Hi! Great post / talk / point. Could you answer a question you already answered in it? Here’s something you said, restated in a slightly different way. Now, could you do something for me? This task, or that task, that has no clear benefit to you, and by the way, visit my website at www.mywebsite.com. Thanks! Great post! Bye!”

How to Hire a Good Marketer (for Startups)

Most founders have at least some marketing skills, and that works for a while. But they reach a point where they want to focus on what they’re great at, and don’t know how to determine if someone else is as good at marketing as the founder is at coding, business, etc. If you’re in that spot, or just in the unenviable position of trying to attract customers / users to an idling completed product, here’s your guide to choosing someone who can help turn up the heat.

Is Social Media Bullshit?

The Death of Blogging, Email, Newspapers, and Telephones

The truth is, old mediums rarely die, they just stop being interesting. New tools come along and steal the spotlight, bouncing around with their youth and vigor, and make the old tools look so still, rigor mortis might be setting in. ‘Death’, as announced by these articles, is really just a stupid way of trying to say ‘boring’.

More Signal, Less Noise: The Power of RSS Mashups

Blog feeds let you send information. Feed readers let you receive it. Pipes, PopFly, and GMashEd let you:

  • filter it.
  • visualize it.
  • combine it.
  • correlate it.
  • advertise it.
Hope you find these old gems valuable. Look forward to providing some new ones soon.