The Seth Godin Action Figure . NO joke.

I'm opinionated. I guess every blogger is. :-) But I have particularly strong feelings about the critical components to a scalable partner-led marketing engine. First, we don’t want to guess where the opportunities are. Nor do we want to guess which products...

What's the holy grail of marketing? To not spend any money and have your customers do your marketing for you. I call them " raving fans ." My buddies Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell call it " Citizen Marketers " After reading Ian Ayres book, Super Crunchers...

Michael Gerber's book The E-Myth Revisited offers up "an old Chinese proverb that says When you hear something, you will forget it. When you see something, you will remember it. But not until you do something, will you understand it." Which he uses to...

When you prepare a presentation, er performance, for any group, may I suggest this: Prep as if you were going to talk to a class of four year olds Adults need the same thing, though you won't get the same instantaneous feedback, in terms of involvement...

When we talk about a "community" of partners and how we want them to market with us, we need to understand that community and marketing go hand-in-hand. A breadth partner community, by definition is a 1:many relationship. These partners don't have the...

Here's the offer...help us redesign the masthead (pictured here) for our Pu blic Sector Partners Newsletter . (We think it needs a new look.) If we go with it, I'll include a link (and a write-up) about your skills/firm mention you on the next WIN Webcast...

Another way to make your events REMARKABLE? Think of them as PERFORMANCES. The Brand Autopsy blog has done it again .

We know a computer can beat a chess grandmaster. Can a computer more accurately predict how the Supreme Court will rule on cases than a group of Law School Deans, former Supreme Court Clerks, and Federal Judges? What about predicting better than a movie...

The ideal scenario, IMHO, of a partner community is where the partners themselves are involved in building the marketing and communications vehicles that they will use. So, when I see a glimmer of hope, I am PUMPED UP. Example #1. Fredrik read my post...

People OFTEN ask me about the value of LinkedIn Here's a testimonial from a guy whose entire business is based off of it. HT to Andy Sernovitz-it's his interview

Your web address is the easiest way for someone to find you...so why make it difficult. I can't stand when I see a URL like this one on a PowerPoint, http://www.msreadiness.com/competency.aspx?cid=500 where we tell people "Just go to this webpage to get...

An irate partner sent an email into Microsoft last week attacking us for sending out a " big plastic toy, with only one disc of information. It’s not as though you are going to start distributing training materials on view-master slides or anything, so...

A big call out to Liberty Mutual for reminding me why they are my insurance company. I got this letter today telling me that they owed me $141.65. It would be so easy for them to not tell me (like I would notice) and there are hundreds of ways they could...

Webcasts are notoriously broadcast events. A hallmark of community building is that there be two-way dialogue (trust and transparency are the other two). Well, lookie here, because Eric Robertson, Shawn Ammons, and Marjorie Givarz on the EDU side along...

I'm going to re-devote this blog to positive energy. As Andy Sernovitz writes in " Cheer Up Blogosphere " Blogs should celebrate. They should celebrate freedom and openness. They should revel in the joy of fresh ideas. They should be fun. Here we go....

An interesting post: Is a muzzle being tightened around Microsoft bloggers?

I think Best Buy is a pretty good store, so this isn't a rant, but a parable to demonstrate how, when it comes to the customer experience, there are so many angles to think about. All you can do is...keep asking your customers, whoever they are, what...

In building a Breadth business, one of the key things is to really dive into the data . With over 250k customers in State and Local Government and a boatload more in the Education realm, you need to, somehow, make sense of what is out there. This helps...

I have some data to back it up so I feel comfortable saying that, for most types of IT-related sales, doing a customer event (however you want to define that) is going to be one of the best ways to generate new business. Of course, you need to do the...

One of the risks that some perceive in terms of transparency and inviting the "community" in to help author ideas and debate them is: what happens when things go awry? when some jerk takes over? Yes, it's a risk. Here's a good post on how to deal with...

These guys do great work. For others, see: On RSS: http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english On Social Networking: http://commoncraft.com/video-social-networking On Social Bookmarking: http://www.commoncraft.com/bookmarking-plain-english Wiki: http...

I just love this post from Scoble about a more open, authentic, and honest approach to PR. One more step in the revolution! :-) Imagine getting your customers and partners involved this way.

A community needs to organize around something , or as Hugh MacLeod would say, " the social object ." So, what is the object around which Microsoft partners who sell into State & Local Governments and Academic might organize? If we can provide partners...

Sometimes you make mistakes, but when you do, what do you learn from them? I've gotten a fair amount of feedback (and a fair amount of fallout) on my post (since modified) about Microsoft logo policy . I admit, initially, I made a mistake and violated...