I’ve maintained some form of personal weblog since 1997. Here’s a collection of all the things I’ve published to my personal site, along with some highlights from other places I’ve been published.
Getting physical.
As we’ve been recruiting guests for season two of “The Build” I’ve found myself steering toward founders who share my bias for
Business Blogging for Results
What’s the result you’re trying to get when you post something to your blog? Many of my clients ask me to help
Who cares about your stories when there’s already too much content?
If there’s already “too much content,” why even bother to write anything new? It turns out, the average lifespan of a blog
The Zero Stack Startup
Most of the founders I talk with on my podcast, The Build, didn’t start their companies with huge investors behind them. Sometimes,
Scaling your business by buying in bulk.
Reflecting on the first season of my podcast, The Build, I listened again to our very first episode. Ben Levin told me
Three signs it’s time for you to upgrade your website
Even though your website anchors your “owned media,” you’re losing control of your audience’s experience a little more every day. For instance,
How we learned to love reanchoring our content’s key performance indicators
Ever since we expanded our team and hired an analytics specialist, we’ve been watching changes in how our clients’ audiences enjoy the
#TheNewPR for Startups: Early-Stage Public Relations
Philly Startup Leaders’ inaugural accelerator cohort invited me to speak about how we’ve been helping our clients navigate these changes, and about when it’s right for a small company to hire a public relations agency. I’ll convert this into a more polished video for our company site soon, but I wanted to share the deck and audio from our session.
Burgers and fries: how your customer experience and communications should work side-by-side.
“I never, ever want to get a phone call from a customer about an undercooked hamburger.” That quote’s from a former boss
The Build: Where entrepreneurs reveal their biggest challenges
We talk about being “in love” with our careers, but can we use skills from the job hunt to help find a
Seven things I learned about organizing tech events
Earlier this year, I wanted to learn more about why certain technology meetups and gatherings in Philadelphia tended to draw hundreds of
The world’s best content marketing campaign gave us Impressionist painting
Imagine you’re struggling to figure out how to move your family business forward in a crowded market. Your competitors are huge, entrenched
How to nail your next job interview
For my speaking engagement at Rosemont College, I put together a quick deck featuring six steps job seekers can use for successful
Capturing attention and building media relationships in “The New PR” environment
A client’s investor called me to check in on the status of a communications campaign. Having made it through both “Web 1.0”
Story Placement and “The New PR”
When I talk to business owners and company leaders about why they think their messages aren’t getting traction with public relations or
Five reasons to pick WordPress for your business website
Prospective clients often ask why I favor WordPress as our preferred content management system for business websites. I’ve got five reasons why
Cadence counts. Cadence converts.
Stop pretending your audience has burned out on your message. That’s the message I delivered at a recent seminar on content marketing
Forget 140 characters.
The first 11 letters of your headline determine whether someone’s going to digest your message. Jakob Nielsen summarized some of his group’s
Building your professional development plan.
For most of the past ten years, I’ve developed and delivered professional training courses for clients and internal teams at some of
Three key actions we take with every new WordPress business website
Although 2820 Press still hasn’t reached its first birthday, I’ve been developing sites on WordPress since it forked from b2 almost a
This room feels familiar.
Kickstarter looks and acts just like some of the 2.0 designs for public radio pledge interfaces I built for XPN back in
Fake Followers, Empty Calories
There’s a school of thought that believes you should pay about $14 to add 5,000 new Twitter followers to your account, so
Match your website to your in-person customer experience.
64 percent of American consumers in an Oracle survey said they’d stop doing business with a company after a bad customer experience.
Good search engine optimization costs less than secret strategies.
It’s cheaper to do good search engine optimization legitimately, than it is to use “black hat” SEO. That’s a paraphrase from a
Lead generation, thought leadership, and brand awareness named top content marketing goals.
Lead generation tops the list of goals for content marketing programs, according to IDG Enterprise. Researchers talked to over 700 professional marketers
Focus on your business instead of on your business blog.
At two of my early journalism gigs, I encountered assignment desk editors who would crumble press releases and three-point them into the
Cheap web content could cost you your search engine ranking.
A prospect recently asked me why she should spend so much money for original articles on her site, when she can just
Authorship and brand voice.
Ryan Smith has ignited a debate in newsrooms and marketing agencies across America, in the wake of exposing his (now former) employer,
On paying by the word for web copy.
For all the posturing we make about being casual and transparent online, web copywriters don’t always make their pricing clear. We’ve had
Surviving chaos.
Researching a freelance writing assignment for a client, I ended up on a website run by survivalists. I’m hesitant to even link
How Marty McFly’s sneakers help your credit card company prevent fraud
Maybe not those sneakers per se, but my latest column for Fox Business explores five of the most ridiculous credit card charges
Happy Independence Day.
Happy Fourth of July! Before I head out to enjoy some red velvet pancakes, parades, and fireworks, I’m going to explain what’s