6 Ways Marketers Can Avoid Shooting Themselves In The Foot With Their Own Gun

The North Face didn’t need to own Wikipedia to be anything more than it already was, to anyone. Now, to many of its most ardent fans, it’s something less.

Marketing, Marketing AgenciesKit KieferJune 4, 2019marketing, North Face, blundersComment

Originality Is Dead. Long Live Originality?

The central conceit of any social network is that once you navigate outside of the hard circle of your close friends, you’re going to be presented with either what’s popular or what fits that channel’s algorithmic impression of you, or both, and that’s nothing if not unoriginal.

MarketingKit KieferMay 21, 2019Marketing, Social media, Instagram, Twitter Comment

Content Marketing Is An Abject Failure That Everyone Keeps Doing

Content marketing is awesome, except for one thing: It doesn’t jibe with the way humans actually behave.

MarketingKit KieferMay 8, 2019Content Marketing, Marketing, Blog, SEOComment

The Five Times Paid Search Is A Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea

Search is a fact of our collective marketing existence – but does paid search have to be?

MarketingKit KieferApril 23, 2019Google, Search, SEOComment

The Future Doesn't Need Facebook

Every major marketing development of the last decade, from social-media advertising to paid search to voice-activated ordering, has simply been a more efficient way of making consumers lazier.

Kit KieferApril 9, 2019Comment

Why A Social-Media Professor Quit Facebook – And Why You Should, Too

Facebook needs to go because it’s the worst kind of friend. You tell it everything and it doesn’t keep your secrets. You trust it and it betrays you.

Marketing, Social mediaKit KieferApril 2, 2019Facebook, Marketing, Social mediaComment

These Are Places That Are Gone

If you’re working with a client who thinks that you just throw up a website and start Facebooking and the world will beat a path to your door – and these clients still exist – you need to tell them now this is not how it works.

Marketing, JournalismKit KieferMarch 22, 2019marketing, magazines, startupsComment

Oh Great, Now It’s Link Manipulation

If something is working for you online, you have every right to ask why.

Marketing, Marketing AgenciesKit KieferMarch 8, 2019Marketing, SearchComment

The 7-Step Program To Kick Your Organization's Social-Media Habit

When is enough enough? At what point do you say “thank you, next” to social media and find some alternatives that aren’t so fundamentally reprehensible?

Marketing, CXKit KieferFebruary 28, 2019Social media, Facebook, TwitterComment

On BS – And Influencer Marketing

It’s hard to separate the truth from the BS these days, simply because there’s so much BS and so little truth.

Kit KieferFebruary 21, 2019 Comment

The 5 Things Most Organizations' Style Guides Get Wrong (And How To Fix Them)

Every style guide hits on many of the same points that in the wrong hands can produce writing that is unremittingly dull and soul-crushing – and detrimental to an organization besides.

Kit KieferFebruary 15, 2019Comment

At What Time Does ‘What Time Does The Super Bowl Start?’ End?

Good marketing is not and will never be playing the “What time does the Super Bowl start?” game, or hundreds of related games. This is bad marketing, and if you think this sort of dragon-chasing is good marketing, shame on you.

Kit KieferFebruary 5, 2019marketing, SEOComment

Eight Steps To Creating A Super-Bowl-Worthy White Paper

Most organizations that create white papers think they’ve created the Super Bowl, when in reality they’ve created the Pro Bowl — an unwatchable mess that barely maintains the forms of the genre. Why is that?

Kit KieferJanuary 29, 2019Comment

Five Great Places To Scrounge For CI Data

You learn to scrounge when you’re thrust into a competitive-intelligence role without a shred of CI training.

Kit KieferJanuary 21, 2019Comment

#VoiceFirst: How To Survive In The Brave New Marketing World

Voice-based marketing represents the death – or at least, the precipitous decline – of many types of marketing that many voice-based-marketing supporters also embrace.

Kit KieferJanuary 14, 2019Comment

(What Should Be) Your 2019 Marketing Resolutions

How do you make sure 2019 doesn’t repeat previous years’ mistakes?

Kit KieferDecember 31, 2018

Good News About Marketing! (For A Change)

The good news for organizations of all sizes is that your data doesn’t have to be BIG to be Big Data, and all your intelligence doesn’t have to be artificial.

Kit KieferDecember 21, 2018 Comment

Social-Media Reality Check: Calling It A Day On Spray-And-Pray (Part 2)

Supposing you’re a word type, how do you make your marketing more visual – and what if your organization isn’t particularly good-looking?

Kit KieferDecember 11, 2018

Social-Media Reality Check: Calling It A Day On Spray-And-Pray (Part 1)

As the year ends and a new year nears, it’s a good time to examine your core social-media approach and see if it still fits your organization.

Kit KieferDecember 4, 2018

Repeat After Me: Correlation Is Not Causation

If you assume that something you did from a marketing standpoint caused a business reaction, and it turns out they were merely correlated, you could be in big trouble.

Kit KieferNovember 27, 2018Comment

Blog

Wow. Now that's a surprise.