Hump Day Reads

Keeping up with the latest, most valuable thought leadership content on the Internet is always difficult. Luckily, I've curated five articles that I think every marketer needs to read. What do you think?


22 Ways to Create Content and Beat Writer’s Block- Business 2 Community

A Better Way to Measure Your Ad Campaign- Harvard Business Review

The Great Eight: Trillion-Dollar Growth Trends to 2020 - Bain & Company

Content Repurposing Is the New Way of the World - Duck Tape Marketing

Avoid These Three Deadly Sins of Sales Messaging - MarketingProfs


As always, if you like to learn more about Honeycomb, have a chat about your marketing plans for 2013, visit our website, send me an email or just call me at 202-497-8333

Google Reader is Dead

Google announced the other day that Google Reader is being killed off. I'm not sure if you know of this fine program, but I use it several times a day to review and read many, many RSS feeds and websites. Combined with Flipboard on my iPad, it is one the best ways to consume content, I  think.

I have 380 feeds in my Reader, which I have collected over the years. I've been told that all of the other competing services are inferior and that they all basically crashed yesterday due to the crush of Reader users suddenly arriving to sign up.

I would happily pay money for this, until now, free service, but Google thinks that they have to focus scarce resources on other projects, which I understand.

I just seems to me that they could have generated some goodwill by releasing the source code as an open source project and let the users manage it.

Change.org petition to keep Google Reader alive attracts over 47K signatures - Venture Beat

Four alternatives to Google Reader - USA Today

The Fuhrer is not pleased...as you can imagine.

Hump Day Reads

Wow,  what a busy week...here are few items that caught my eye...mostly, marketing and social media stuff, but a few other items to keep the brain fit.


Open Source Entrepreneurship- Steve Blank blog

5 Psychological Triggers to Increase Social Engagement- Social Media Today

Social Media Marketing Can Get Out of Sync with Consumers - eMarketer

Do You Question Social Media Culture? You Should - Nick Kellet

Deflecting the Assault on Social Media - MarketingProfs

10 Lessons From Digital Pioneers on How To Become a Digital Success - MarketingProfs

The Landscape Architect’s Guide to WASHINGTON, D.C. - American Society of Landscape Architects

D.C. Is Weird, in Charts - Washington City Paper

The Insourcing Boom - The Atlantic

Warp Drive May Be More Feasible Than Thought, Scientists Say - Yahoo News


Content infographic courtesy of Eloqua. Full Size version here: http://blog.eloqua.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/The_Content_Grid_Eloqua_JESS31.jpg

Weekend Reading

Six articles I'm reading this weekend. Anything catch your eye, that you think I should read? Let me know...

1. 10 Lessons From Digital Pioneers on How To Become a Digital Success


2. Marketing Resources for Startups – Go from Zero to Traction in 90 days


3. Recession Forecasting Ensemble (RFE) and market timing


4. 30+ Ideas To Create Great Content For Your Customers


5. Write E-Mails That People Won't Ignore


6. How To Improve The ROI Of Your New Product Launch 

Oh, and today was the Nationals' first spring training game. Giddyup!

Aligning Sales and Business Goals...Even Possible?

I've providing b2b marketing services to technology companies since 1999 or so. In that time, I've heard a lot of the same issues pop up at many firms. One of the them is the pain that is generated when a company is making a change in strategy, direction or focus- and the sales team becomes reactionary and resistant.

A common example of this is when a product based company realizes that its products are becoming commodities and attempts to re-position itself as a solutions or services company. This change always seems to cause consternation with the folks who have been happily selling the products. With good reason...lol.

I just read a very good article by Steve Blank, a Silicon Valley luminary about just this issue. It is a very good read, and you should read the whole thing...but here is a snippet...

The Land of the Living Dead 

I see this same pattern in early stage startups. Early sales look fine, but often plateau. Engineering comes into a staff meeting with several innovative ideas and the head of sales and/or marketing shoot them down with the cry of “It will kill our current sales.” 

The irony is that “killing our current sales” is often what you need to do. Most startups don’t fail outright, they end up in “the land of living dead” where sales are consistently just OK but never breakout into a profitable and scalable company. This is usually due to a failure of the CEO and board in forcing the entire organization to Pivot. The goal of a scalable startup isn’t optimizing the comp plan for the sales team but optimizing the long-term outcome of the company. At times they will conflict. And startup CEO’s need a way to move everyone out of their comfort zone to the bigger prize. 

Burn The Boats 

In 1519 Hernando Cortes landed in the Yucatan peninsula to conquer the Aztec Empire and bring their treasure back to Spain. His small army arrived in 11 boats. As they landed Cortes solved the problem of getting his team focused on what was ahead of them – he ordered them to burn the boats they came in. Now the only way home was to succeed in their new venture or die. Pivots that involve radical changes to the business model may at times require burning the boats at the shore.