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INC Magazine articles

My Latest Inc Post – Bringing a Company Back from the Brink?

Today I wrote about Wendy Tan White of Moonfruit, and how she helped bring her company back from the brink of disaster when investors pulled out earlier in the decade.

I met White at the Social Media Clubhouse, where I stayed at SXSW. Moonfruit sponsored one of the summit events at the house.  (Note: As I disclosed in the Inc. piece, I received no specific compensation from Wendy or MoonFruit, and SMC is a filed-for non-profit.)

Her story is really inspiring, as she had to take steps as radical as firing family members to keep the company solvent. I hope you enjoy the story.

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The Elevator Pitch In Action – My latest article on Inc.

As you know, I write weekly on Inc.com. This is an article I wrote on the INC. Start Up Blog on the Elevator Pitch in Action :

Last week I wrote about the Elevator Pitch, Reloaded. Today at the Expo, I got a hallway elevator pitch that hit many of the important points in that article. The person didn’t know I was a blogger for Inc., or that I wrote the article. She just gave a passionate pitch that really hit all the points for me, so I thought it’d be worthwhile to show you an example of someone doing it right.

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INC Magazine articles marketing

My Latest Inc.com Article: All you need is love…

Start Up

“Making love to customers is not a campaign, but a lifestyle,” says Saul in his talk. What does he mean? “Making love to your customers is not something that you can do for a certain amount of time–it is a company commitment. You can’t run this like an ad campaign–customers will sense when it is over and leave you. Over-exceeding expectations means treating your customers better than any other company relationship your customer has ever had.” This is something the Nordstrom executive or a manager at the Four Seasons would smile knowingly and nod at.

Saul’s company, Freshbooks.com, where he’s Chief of Magic, spends time, effort, people, and resources on creating relationships with customers. The central assumption in these relationships is that Freshbooks employees love their customers–even if the customers have something bad to say. Saul considers this a great opportunity to turn a detractor into someone who realizes how much Freshbooks loves him or her.

Read the rest over at Inc.

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Can Social Media Go Local?

My latest article at INC.com’s Start Up Blog:
Social media marketing campaigns are often intended to reach large audiences. Marketing pros usually talk about Facebook, YouTube and online groups as tools for reaching broad swaths of potential customers. But for a business I recently came across, the desired result was to reach a small group of urban professionals in New York and get them interested in renting some apartments (read the rest)

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My article on Twitter at INC Startup Blog

Start Up: A Twitter Success Story (How to Use Twitter as a Marketing Strategy)

Chances are, if you’re not an early adopter type, you may not have heard of Twitter, the online community that is a kind of instant-messaging social network. Users send updates of up to 140 character (about 2 sentences) out to their followers–people who choose to receive their messages–and read the messages of those they follow.

Read the rest at INC’s Startup Blog.