A crisis reveals much about human nature as it changes aspects of how we live and conduct our daily routines.

Your business, and your customers’ businesses have been shut down for nearly four months now. Some, most or many of your customers are social distancing and don’t want to go into malls or stores. Some, probably many, of those retail stores won’t survive and many small retailers will not be able to reopen. 

But while retailers including J. Crew, JCPenney, and even Neiman Marcus hav...

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Thought For The Week

“It takes a good and creative person to do something simply.”
                                    ...Dick Newick, Sailboat Design Visionary

 
Site of The Week

The Utne Reader - "Cure Ignorance"
Want to gain a fresh perspective? Read stories that matter? Feel optimistic about the future? It's all here! Utne Reader offers provocative writing from diverse perspectives, insightful analysis of art and media, down-to-earth news and in-depth coverage of eye-opening issues ...

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I hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day holiday. As we took last Monday off here's an expanded edition of the Monday Morning Digest.

Thought For The Week

The thought for this week is an Op Ed by Charles Blow of the New York Times. As we consider what to do in the face of Bashar Al-Assad's horrendous use of gas that killed more than 400 innocent children it's a poignant reminder that, in Mr. Blow's words that there  "are the millions of other children who die each year on this planet wi...
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I want to pay special attention to two articles this week. One is a short video that I hope you'll share with everyone you know: 

One Easy Thing All White People Could Do That Would Make The World A Better Place
A Safeway clerk screwed up big time, but these two women handled it perfectly. Further proof that one person can have a huge impact.
WATCH THIS VIDEO: http://www.upworthy.com/one-easy-thing-all-white-people-could-do-that-would-make-the-world-a-better-place-5

The other is a VERY val...

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Digital Inbound Marketing - They're Your Organization's Assets and You Must Build and Guard Them Dearly

Are the days of SEO service providers numbered? I think so and I'll explain why.

Two articles hit my inbox last week that I think help better explain why I think the end of SEO firms is in sight.  Why so I think this? Because clients of all kinds will soon realize (if they haven't already) that outsourcing their SEO, Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing is dangerous to the f...

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Thought For The Week

This is the inspirational memo Apple employees receive on their first day.

"There's work and there's your life's work.

The kind of work that has your fingerprints all over it. The kind of work that you'd never compromise on. That you'd sacrifice a weekend for. You can do that kind of work at Apple. People don't come here to play it safe. They come here to swim in the deep end.

They want their work to add up to something.

Something big. Something that couldn't happen ...

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Two Thoughts For This Week

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
                                                             ....Beverly Sills

Dig dig a little deeper in the well boys
Dig a little deeper in the well
If you want a good cool drink of water
You gotta dig a little deeper in the well.
                             .....The Oak Ridge Boys
 
Site of The Week

The Gates Notes
The personal website of Bill Gates - on which he shares his thoughts on many subjects and lists his extensive ...
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Thought For The Week

The words from Apple’s infamous “Here’s to the crazy ones” advertising campaign…

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they chan...

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Way too many organizations, although they know they need a Website, don't know what it means to establish an effective online presence that brings new leads and customers and effectively nurtures sales.

I can't count the number of times that I've consulted with organizations who have spent way too much money building a site and then wonder why no one can find it. The answer is a simple one, so many people don't understand the very basic principles of building an online presence. This is quit...

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During the talks that I give I'm often asked "what is Inbound Marketing". Well, simply it's a combination of elements woven together into a system, a contextual marketing system, that is data-driven and produces superior ROI (Return on Investment). That's the short and easy answer.

I think that the term "Inbound Marketing" is misleading - and outdated. What we are really talking about here is "contextual marketing", a data-driven marketing system that turns traditional marketing on its hea...

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I recently heard a joke about Microsoft.

Two men are flying in a balloon above Seattle - but the pilot is lost. Drifting over a building the pilot draws a sign and holds it up. The sign says “WHERE AM I?” in large letters.

People looking out of the buildings windows quickly respond to the pilot by holding up a sign that says

“YOU'RE IN A BALLOON!”

The pilot smiles, waves, takes a look at his map and steers a course to his destination.

After their safe landing the passenger asks the p...

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You've heard it, "on the Internet, content is king". But it bears repeating, "on the Internet, content is king" - because it is, it really, really is!

But, there is content and then there is effective content.  Your organization must create effective content - content that communicates in a meaningful way. This is content that is carefully crafted based on what you already know that your customer finds compelling and useful, and most important, content that they want from you.

Because cont...

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Inbound Marketing is not a marketing tactic, a channel or a technology - it’s a strategy.

It's not enough to “do” Inbound Marketing. To see great results organizations must commit to the model, optimize it continually, and pursue it relentlessly. The result is a vastly diminished cost of customer acquisition provable by measuring ROI.

The difference is that Inbound Marketing integrates business process and technology to drive higher-value lead generation through data-driven demand cr...

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