“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…
Psychology
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:…
Should You Raise Your Rates and Only Take Paid Speaking Gigs? Not So Fast…
Over on Mastodon, SparkToro CEO Rand Fishkin and Seer Interactive CEO Wil Reynolds were chatting about the blind advice of “Raise your rates!” and…
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…
Zero-Click Content: The Counterintuitive Way to Succeed in a Platform-Native World
Zero Click Marketing is now a book! You can preorder it today, and you’ll get it in the fall. It could be a chicken…
Google, Apple, and Amazon Stifle Innovation When They Favor Their Own Products
The SparkToro team got an exciting surprise on Sunday evening: a mention of our research on Last Week Tonight by John Oliver. The full…
SparkToro’s Mission, Vision, and Values: BELUX
Those skilled in the art of BS detection can tell you that 99% of company mission, vision, and values statements are meaningless. For corporate…
8 Counterintuitive Marketing Strategies That Actually Work
Cold outreach is typically seen as a numbers game: hit as many inboxes as you can, assuming 5% or fewer will convert. But I’ve…
What Your Marketing Needs is a Bad Guy
If you’re a big brand, already established, conservative in your ways and happy with your performance, this advice isn’t for you. But, if you’re…