If you’re like me, LinkedIn is a place to highlight your professional experience and achievements. I maintain a polished profile with endorsements and recommendations. I publish articles and posts, and comment when others tag me. For the most part, I sit back and wait for people to find me.

Michaela Alexis thinks bigger. LinkedIn is a place for her to stand out in front of an audience of 600 million business professionals. It is a multimedia publishing platform to help her achieve business goals – new jobs, clients, opportunities.

Continue Reading

Picture a street map. To get from point A to point B, you chart a course. You might take the main thoroughfare through town, make a right on Main Street, then find your destination on the right.

Now consider a career map. It might start with an undergraduate degree in communications, followed by a turn into an entry-level job at an advertising agency. Industry experience leads to a turn as director of marketing at a software company. After helping that company to a successful initial public offering, a new road as the chief marketing officer is built.

Continue Reading

In November 2008, I read a new blog post from David Meerman Scott – “Downsized? Fired? Here Are the New Rules of Finding a Job.” A month later, I was laid off from my job. Returning home, I immediately reread the post.

The takeaway can be distilled into these two sentences:

You want to find a new job? You have to stop thinking like an advertiser of a product and start thinking like a publisher of information.

Continue Reading

From caveman drawings to silent movies, visual storytelling has been used to educate, engage, and motivate audiences for centuries.

The digital age, though, has ushered in a new set of tools and technologies for visual storytelling. Eric Goodstadt, president of Manifest, and Sacha Reeb, chief creative officer at the content marketing agency, tackled the topic in their Content Marketing World presentation, Five Very Different Examples of Stellar Visual Storytelling and Why They Are a Step Above the Marketplace.

Continue Reading

I was excited to attend a particular session at Content Marketing World. With 10 minutes to go, I picked up my pace down the hallway. When I arrived, the door was closed with a sign that read “FULL.”

Darn.

A missed opportunity for sure, but I made up for it by viewing the presentation later and writing about it for you here.

Continue Reading

Is reviewing site analytics something that’s always on your to-do list but never gets crossed off?

Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media says that doesn’t make sense. “The reason to use analytics is to stop wasting time and to abandon those tactics and processes that don’t make a difference. I use analytics because I’m busy,” he says.

Continue Reading

Bring up the topic of personalization and marketers undoubtedly reference Amazon and Netflix.

Amazon has an uncanny way to recommend related products to add to your shopping cart, while Netflix knows just the movie or show you’re in the mood for. While their personalization is indeed fantastic, they have a big advantage: your customer data. Amazon knows your detailed purchase history, while Netflix knows your detailed viewing history.

Continue Reading

A badge of honor is displayed on my Twitter profile: I joined in December 2007. Back then, we were still at 140 characters and link shortening tools didn’t exist. Retweets and replies were manual. That’s right: To retweet someone, you had to type “RT @[user],” then copy and paste their tweet.

Not the new kids on the block, Twitter and Facebook are teenagers. And Instagram? It is 10 this year.

Continue Reading