I recently blurted out during a webinar that company leaders should think beyond the role of fractional Chief Marketing Officer (fCMO) — and instead consider other fractional roles. Someone followed up to ask me about the downsides to fCMOs, and then I suddenly remembered my past experiences in working with a few of them. They
NEW: Custom Search & Custom Audiences Offer Incredible New Ways to Use SparkToro
By 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 paid SparkToro account, you can access Advanced Search in your dashboard. — Three years ago, if you wanted to uncover which podcasts Data Scientists listened to, or find out which social accounts
A Crash Course in Speaking at Conferences
By Out of curiosity, I Googled, “public speaking tips” and the first piece of advice I saw was: “Breathe.” After my eyes rolled out of my head and I plopped them back into their sockets, I started typing this. This isn’t an “ultimate guide.” This isn’t going to be 5,000 words containing every single thing you
SparkToro’s Prices Are Going Up (but not for everyone)
By Here’s the short version, friends: Read on for the details… Comparison of New vs. Old Subscription Tiers and Costs Below, you’ll see a screenshot of our existing pricing (which might be easier to view at the plans & pricing URL here): At every level (including the free tier), we’re making these plans considerably more generous.
You can’t hire ambitious people and then ask them to stop being ambitious.
By 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 record of impressive accomplishments. These qualities often correlate with what we perceive (accurately or not) to be our own reasons for success, and we want to find people like us: individuals
Too Few Marketers Grasp the Difference Between Strategy vs. Tactics; We Need to Fix That
By 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: “we need to be strategic with our paid search spend,” or “let’s get tactical with the pricing tiers.” Did I sound smart? No. Did I *think* I sounded smart? Yeah, probably.
The Creator Economy Is Far From Overblown
By 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 the core arguments: “After years of hype, the Creator Economy is slamming into reality. Influencer programs are shuttering. Investment is drying up. And worsening economic conditions are threatening to crush creators and the
Why Marketers Should Follow Their Audiences, Not Predict the Future
By 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 crypto coin. It’s fun, interesting, and it feels like you’re ahead of your competition on a rising tide that will lift all ships. Only trouble is, your target audience—the people you
Should You Raise Your Rates and Only Take Paid Speaking Gigs? Not So Fast…
By Over on Mastodon, SparkToro CEO Rand Fishkin and Seer Interactive CEO Wil Reynolds were chatting about the blind advice of “Raise your rates!” and “Don’t speak for free!” They floated the idea of a co-authored blog post, and I (SparkToro’s VP Marketing Amanda Natividad) promptly chimed in. This blog post was written by all of
Maybe Better Tools Make Us Better Creators
By A couple weeks ago, I asked on Mastodon about getting a new, lightweight travel laptop. I got a bunch of kind replies, but it was Trevor Longino who first suggested Microsoft’s Surface series. I’d never played with one, but a few glowing reviews later, I took the leap. The laptop is very, very nice to