Favorite Links This Week

This week, let's start out with a great one! Check out Robert Rosenthal's Freaking Marketing blog post from earlier this week. Let us warn you, however, that the video sports some pretty explicit language, so if you're not into having to hear the F-bomb a lot, don't listen. It is a very funny piece from comic, Bill Hicks, who is on a major rant about why marketers should kill themselves. In the video, Bill outlines how we see opportunity in pretty much everything, then try to build a marketing strategy around it (my words, not his). This one will get you laughing for sure!

On a semi-kinder-gentler note (well, at least he doesn't mention killing anyone), Ron Shevlin's Marketing Whims blog post this week talks to how we tend to over-use whatever seems to be the word du jour. Ron specifically notes these three words that he sees marketers, and business-people overall, using way too much (in his humble opinion): death, disruption, and innovation. As usual, Ron provides his opinions with honesty, candor and a dry wit. His points are well taken, and the thing is, words do lose their true value when people over-use them. Remember when the concept of CRM was first introduced? Then, how it came to be used in every sentence? Pretty soon it came to mean everything -- not a specific discipline, solution, etc. Well, the reality is that CRM is different things to different people . . . but by making it a buzz-word, the idea of it becomes very blurred and diminished greatly in it's interpretation (i.e., everything is dubbed CRM and the word loses its value). So, as usual, Ron's right!

On a more positive note, Lead From Your Heart's blog-author, Lewis Green, tells us how to deal with the summer doldrums that occur in marketing every single year. In Lewis' post, "Friday Mornings in the Dead Zone," he talks about his strategy to combat the summer doldrums and how he plans on getting more than one email to come in at a time and his phone ringing robustly again. As entrepreneurs, I think we can probably all relate to this post, and it'll be interesting to follow the comments to see what ideas others have on bringing in more business in slower times.

We hope you enjoy these links . . . and Happy Weekends to all!