Art feast

The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.Sun Tzu, The Art of War The Art of War is a book written around 500 BCE in ancient China. The author, Sun Tzu, was a military general, strategist and philosopher. As popular history would have it, the book has influenced many military operations and conquests over the years — from Japanese Samurai to France’s Napoleon Bonaparte. Today, the book continues to hold influence in various spheres of modern life. A quick Google search will reveal many tales of the book’s use in the business world. One story that sticks out is when the fledgling Snapchat resisted an acquisition by Facebook, and the CEO, Evan Spiegel, gave all of his staff copies of The Art of War as inspiration to finish the fight. Can lessons from military strategy really be used to inform our marketing and business … [Read more...] about Local SEO & The Art of War

Six months ago, Bing General Manager Emma Williams was sitting on the sofa with her mom, trying to find a Cary Grant movie, but neither could recall the name of the film they wanted to watch. “I started searching on my Tivo for Cary Grant. I went through my XBox, I spent 45-minutes trying to nail down the movie – which happened to be Arsenic and Old Lace,” says Williams, “We wasted 45-minutes of our togetherness time searching.” After being unable to find the one Cary Grant movie they couldn’t name, Williams returned to work determined to create a new experience around Bing movie searches. Tasked with building a deep emotional connection between Bing and its users across all devices and products, Williams leads the Bing Studio in her role as General Manager. “We have one billion entities; we know about people, places and things, so we darn well know about Cary Grant and his movies,” said Williams. She told her staff that she wanted to … [Read more...] about A Practice In Italian Renaissance Art & User Perspective

As SEO becomes more about good content and outreach becomes more about relationship building, the gap between link building and journalism continues to shrink. Where once I cursed my journalist background (because of the lack of job opportunities it brought me), I now adore it because it’s taught me how to tell great stories. Storytelling is an integral part of marketing. Great stories bring great links. Storytelling, like marketing, is both an art and a science. There are pieces that are inherently in you — copywriting and creativity — that can be fostered and sharpened, but not necessarily taught. That art is lost without scientific planning and executing. That’s what all journalists are first taught, and some of journalism’s finest — Ted Spiker, Mike Foley, Norm Lewis, Betty Cortina, Bill McKeen and many more — taught me how to tell great stories. Hopefully, you’ll find their and others’ advice as beneficial as I did. For my … [Read more...] about The Art & Science Of Storytelling As Told By Journalists

People don’t just want to be educated about what you offer. They want to be seduced. Yes, seduced. Being seduced is an exhilarating experience. (If you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend it.) Yes, we want to be educated and make rational decisions that optimize our goals. But we also yearn to be romanced, enchanted, in love. We seek brains and beauty. Is that an unrealistic paradox? It doesn’t have to be. First, recognize that seduction is not synonymous with deception. Being seduced is fun. Being deceived is not. It’s unfortunate that shady advertisers have conflated the two. But the world’s best brands pursue “honest seduction,” touching us emotionally as a way to begin a genuine, mutually rewarding relationship. For instance, Apple seduces consumers, and their customers love them for it. There’s plenty of educational content to be found deep in Apple’s website, but their home page, their retail stores, their emails, their … [Read more...] about The Art Of Seductive Landing Pages

A couple weeks back I wrote a LinkWeek column here titled “Your Site’s Manifest Linking Destiny“. At the end of that column I closed with the following thoughts… What if I told you that one of the sites was created, owned, and operated by a single mother who is an African American with locations in six cities across three southern states? None of these facts change the content of the sites. They remain nearly identical. But these facts can alter the manifest linking destiny of one of the sites dramatically, in a way that can impact everything from search rank to direct click traffic, for link builders who recognize why. Among the feedback I received both publicly and privately (you caught me sza :) ), a theme emerged. Any links a person can pursue and obtain just because that person has certain defining personal characteristics should not be able to positively affect search rank. In essence, such links are irrelevant to the site and products being sold and are … [Read more...] about The Art Of Opportunistic Linking