“High Quality Content” is the Most Useless Phrase in Marketing; We Can Do Better
Did you watch the television program Ted Lasso? You probably did; it has the ubiquity of the 1980s’ The Golden Girls in an era…
AI-Generated Content is the New Floor
Anyone can make it. Most of it is at least OK. Some of it’s pretty good. A few folks are already sharpening their skills…
NEW: Custom Search & Custom Audiences Offer Incredible New Ways to Use SparkToro
Updated April 10, 2024: We relaunched SparkToro with new data sources. In that update, we also renamed “Custom Search” to “Advanced Search.” If you have a…
SparkToro’s Prices Are Going Up (but not for everyone)
Here’s the short version, friends: Starting February 9, 2023 (one week from now) we’re rolling out new, higher prices for each of SparkToro’s pricing…
You can’t hire ambitious people and then ask them to stop being ambitious.
Hiring managers, executives, CEOs—especially those in tech—are proud to say that we only consider applicants with an unrelenting drive for success and a track…
Too Few Marketers Grasp the Difference Between Strategy vs. Tactics; We Need to Fix That
Look, I get it. For (at least) the first decade of my career, I, too, foolishly conflated strategy and tactics. I’d say things like:…
The Creator Economy Is Far From Overblown
I came across Alex Kantrowitz’s The Creator Economy Was Way Overblown in my weekend reading. It’s well-written, but completely wrong. Here’s an excerpt of…
Why Marketers Should Follow Their Audiences, Not Predict the Future
It’s 2017, and you convince your executives to be early adopters of the #Web3 trend. Blockchain-based product investments, marketing with NFTs, perhaps your own…
Maybe Better Tools Make Us Better Creators
A couple weeks ago, I asked on Mastodon about getting a new, lightweight travel laptop. I got a bunch of kind replies, but it…
Why Marketers, Creators, and Brands Should Start Using Mastodon ASAP
I joined Twitter in June, 2007. It turned out to be a very smart move; over the next decade, that network had a massive…