Archive for Jim
4 P’s of Social Intelligence
Seth Speaks for the Trees
You can count on Seth Godin to be thought-provoking. The post below appeared on Seth’s blog on July 23.
Defenders of the status quo at newspapers, book publishers and the magazine industry are in a panic. Some are even misguidedly asking for government regulation or a bailout.
Popularity: 1%
Facebook Social Plug-ins & The Marketer’s Plight
Unless you think 400 million (and growing) deluded people are wrong to have joined an online community called Facebook, you should pay attention to what Facebook says the future will look like. Watching some f8 video coverage is a good place to start.
Popularity: 14%
Good Blogging Hygiene
Good blogging is more than good content. Presentation matters. The food might taste good, but if I can’t cut it, lift it, chew it, swallow it, and digest it…that’s a problem.
Popularity: 14%
Timing is Everything
A childhood friend of mine grew up to be Chief Technology Officer at a large software company. He was always the smartest kid in the room. 800 on his math SATs. You know the type.
Despite the big brain, he was and is a humble person. So whenever he said something that struck me as controversial, I paid close attention because I knew he wasn’t doing it to draw attention to himself. He was fond of saying that commercial research and development organizations can control only three things:
- Features — what does it do?
- Dates — when is it available?
- Quality — how bullet-proof is it?
And of these three, Dates are the most important. Why? Because a good product or service in the market that’s generating some revenue and feedback is always better than “perfection” that never sees the light of day.
You can probably guess his favorite corollary to this Truth. When an R&D team is fighting the calendar and in grave danger of missing a delivery date, the answer is to simply deliver early. Take what you got and get it to market.
As you can see, speed-to-market was his primary focus. What’s yours?
Popularity: 20%
Abbott Label Joins Four51′s Preferred Supplier Program
Four51 and Abbott Label, Inc. – “See For Yourself and Make More Money”
Make more money…wouldn’t that be nice? There is a great new opportunity to do so through the team of experts at Abbott Label. We challenge you to ‘see for yourself’ how Abbott Label can get you in a better position with your label business. In turn, we will help you make-more-money!
Popularity: 20%
Social Media ROI
There’s been some heated discussion recently about social media ROI on various Print Service Provider listservs. Michael Neubarth, a Contributing Editor to CIOZone.com, assembled some opinions and insights regarding the ROI question. We’ve published them below. Neubarth chose quotes that support his thesis: if social media ROI was ever a relevant question, it isn’t any longer. With 350,000,000+ people on Facebook alone, social media is well on its way from novelty to communications infrastructure.
Popularity: 26%
A Good System Exposes Bad People
In the last 18 months, Four51 has completed many integrated business management system implementations. We’ve helped large and small Print Service Providers replace software like e-Quantum, DemandBridge and Kramer with Four51′s e-commerce front-end and SAP’s Business One accounting back-end.
Some of these projects went very smoothly. Some less so. Among the latter, we were reminded that good systems expose bad people.
Popularity: 23%
He’s Got a Great Face for Radio
The Did You Know? editorial staff thought it was time to get out from behind email and go Hollywood. Hollywood probably wishes we would stick to email. As the song goes: “…headed for Los Angeles, only made it out to Needles.”
Popularity: 33%
Will You Be Ready?
Is your business looking backward or forward? Are you indulging yourself by dwelling on better times gone by, or are you investing for the day when the economy starts humming again?
Popularity: 21%
