Alan See
Is it Time to Hire a Social Media Marketing Expert?
There was breakdown in the assembly line and no one on Henry Ford's staff could fix it. As the story goes, his production lines were down for hours; hours turned into days, and Ford was frustrated. In desperation he called an electrical engineer friend...
Marketing Localization: What It Takes to be ‘Local-Ready’
Local markets are defined by the customers within them. Each market is different and subject to regional attitudes and cultures. In order to be effective, local marketing strategy needs to employ highly targeted marketing messages created by field sales agents and distributors who know...
Communication Strategies that Annoy People on Twitter
Do you fancy yourself a social media guru and communications expert? If so, you might want to make sure you are not using the following tactics because at best your audience is making fun of you, and at worst you are probably damaging your...
50 Marketing Leaders Over 50 You Should Know
Let's recognize that age has little to do with ability. You're never too young or too old if you've got talent. In the marketing world, Advertising Age and Direct Marketing News have their 40 Under 40 lists. Forbes has their 30 Under 30. This...
Who’s viewed your LinkedIn profile?
HaHa, made you look! When my kids were little they would taunt me with that phrase. It was intended as a playful insult because they tricked me into looking at something that didn't exist. With my business team, that phrase is code speak for...
Are You a Social Media Sledge Hammer?
In 1977 I failed my initial swimming test during Plebe Summer at the United States Naval Academy. During my remedial lessons with other sinkers I still remember my instructor yelling "Mr. See, you look like a sledge hammer going through butter!" My technique needed...
How to Pull Your Marketing Budget Up by Its Bootstraps
The term "bootstrap" is often used to describe situations of self-reliance. It means to develop something that takes significant effort with little or no assistance. In the world of marketing, this often equates to operating with a very limited budget. The economic ruckus created...
3 Tips For Avoiding The “Rational Ignorance” Of Social Media
Has rational ignorance impacted your organization's social media activity yet? Rational ignorance is the decision not to become more informed about something because the perceived cost of the additional intelligence — in terms of both effort and expense — is more than the expected...
Quality check: Is 99.9% good enough?
People are human and that means mistakes are bound to happen. In fact, few of us get through the workday without making a single error, so should 99.9% be considered good enough? Google the phrase "99.9% is good enough" and see...
Are you leveraging teachable moments, or shaming mistakes?
Mistakes were made. We've heard that before – many times. The phrase first made famous by the Nixon administration was later used and re-used by many politicians – Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, to name a few. People generally aren't fond of admitting their mistakes....
How do good leaders rally the troops?
I'm reading the book "The Blood of Heroes." It's about the Alamo, and if you're from the U.S., you know how that event ends. But let's not get ahead of the story. At the start of his Alamo siege, Santa Anna ordered the...
Learning to get one step in front of your competition
Do you remember HAL? I was reminded this week of an old story that once surfaced about the heuristically programmed algorithmic computer (HAL) in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey." The story suggests that HAL was so-named to indicate that he was one step...
Be ready for change
"I've been in this business for 30 years and I've never seen it like this." I can recall hearing that statement three times over the course of my adult working life. The first time I heard it was very early in my career. ...
Lake Wobegone Marketing Strategies
"Where all the solutions are best-of-breed, the ROI is proven, and employees are first-class." Sounds great, doesn't it? If you are a fan of Garrison Keillor who reports the news from Lake Wobegon – a fictional town in Minnesota – on the radio show...
Innovation as a competitive weapon
I grew up in Grinnell, Iowa, a small town in the rural Midwest. It's not exactly the place you would expect to find the most prolific scoring basketball team in the nation. Grinnell College's run-and-gun offense is considered unorthodox, even chaotic, but...
Organizational leadership and change
Although it occurred several years ago, I remember this faculty meeting as if it was yesterday. One of the presentations disclosed enrollment trends that disappointed many of my fellow faculty. An increasing number of students were enrolling in online as opposed to...
How to keep a new initiative alive
Bell Telephone developed the first automatic switchboard in 1910 after projections indicated that by 1925 every adult woman in America would be needed to staff the manual switchboards that were in place. Do you think the new innovative automatic system was an immediate...
Cross-training for business survival
When I was much younger, I worked as a "roughneck" in the West Texas oil fields. The guys I worked with dubbed me "college boy" because they knew I'd be heading back to school in the fall. As you might guess I...
No employee left behind
Enabling employees to succeed in a fast-changing business environment should be central to every organization's strategy. After all, when employees are properly equipped with the right set of skills, they're best positioned to add maximum value to both the organization and its customer...
I’d rather go to the dentist than do a performance review
As soon as I bit that piece of candy I knew it was trouble. Yes, I chipped a tooth and that meant a trip to the dentist. The process of getting a crown wasn't that bad though. Then again, I used...