The Art of Enchantment: How Guy Kawasaki Will Change Your Business
I recently interviewed Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of Alltop.com and the author of the bestselling book, The Art of the Start. His latest masterpiece is called Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions.
In this interview we talk about what makes for great content, how he came up with the title of his latest book, what Enchantment means for business, why businesses need to embrace nobodies and how he promoted his book. (Be sure to listen to the MP3 of this interview below.)
Mike: Most of our readers are marketers and business owners. Can you explain what Alltop does for them and why they might find it useful?
Guy: One of the functions of marketers, PR people and social media people is they need to keep on top of things.
The vision of Alltop was that we should aggregate RSS feeds for people by topic and create essentially an online magazine rack so that you could go to one place and say, “Okay, these are all the social media blogs and websites aggregated in one place.” It’s the five most recent stories from each source, and we give you a preview of the first paragraph of each story so you can see if you really want to click through. 
5 Twitter Tips for Building Your Business
Twitter is a great tool for conversations, building community, finding brand advocates and reading the latest news. That’s why celebrities, athletes, your competitors—and hopefully you—are on Twitter.
The growth and usage of Twitter is not surprising. Compete.com estimates approximately 21 million unique monthly visitors, and a quick search on Twitter yields a variety of conversations from music, sports, politics, events and products.
How Seth Godin Leveraged New Media To Create a Book Firestorm
I recently interviewed the world’s leading marketing expert Seth Godin, author of 11 books (many of them focused on marketing). Some of his more notable books include Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, and Tribes. His most recent bestseller is called Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
During this interview, you’ll learn how Seth employed new media to promote his latest book and his thoughts on marketing and social media. Note: Be sure to listen to the complete interview at the bottom of this article.
Mike: What exactly is a “linchpin” and how do I know if I’m one?
Seth: A linchpin is the person we can’t live without—the indispensable person who does work that matters, the person who is trying to stand out as opposed to fit in, the one who’s not easily replaceable, the low-paid cog in the giant industrial machine but, in fact, the person whom we seek out.
3 Tips for Managing a Social Media Community
Are you trying to build a community for your company or brand? Are you looking to go beyond just big numbers of Facebook fans or Twitter followers?
This article reveals three important tips you need to know to help build and manage communities.
What Is Community Management?
Previously I wrote examined the different roles for those who work with social media in business. Among the many roles, the community manager is by far the most important because he or she is on the front lines of communication. Here’s how I define community manager:
6 Powerful Social Media Persuasion Techniques
Let’s be honest, you don’t just want your voice to be added to the conversation; you want your voice to be heard, repeated, and valued—and your message to be influential. Ultimately, you’re after influence.
So what better way to understand social media than by looking at the fundamental principles of influence as taught by Dr. Robert Cialdini, professor of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University? In his seminal book, Influence, Cialdini covers six “weapons of influence” that are hardwired into our social and cognitive minds. In other words, we can’t help but behave in accordance with these laws of social interaction.
Does this sound like something useful to keep in mind during your social media engagements? Well, let’s take a look six powerful persuasion techniques:
7 Essential Design Elements for Great Business Blogs
When people hear the word design, they sometimes think only of making something look good, using colors and graphics to add interest. But on the web, and especially on a blog, design has a purpose: to grab readers when they arrive, make it easy for them to get what they want, and create trust through a consistent and professional look.
A well-designed business blog:
- Uses visual interest to make posts easy to read
- Brands your business in a consistent way
- Places useful information in places where it is easy to find
- Isn’t cluttered with things that aren’t helping you promote your business
- Makes it easy for readers to do what you want them to do
The Future of Social Media: Being Everywhere (a Steve Rubel Interview)
In this video I interview Steve Rubel, Senior Vice President at Edelman Digital. Steve advises some of the biggest names in the world, such as Dannon, Hewlett Packard, Pepsi and Microsoft, on social media.
Watch this video to pick up some of the nuggets of social media advice he gives his clients. One valuable tip Steve gives is about “shared mutual gain” and what it means. Steve also explains why he quit blogging.
