How Healthcare Systems Waste Money

It’s outrageous. People are losing jobs. Families are losing homes and health insurance. Yet this healthcare company is sending out 100 page coffee table books. Read more

How Clients De-value Expertise

I always try to establish myself as a “marketing partner.” I can’t stand being referred to as a “vendor.” It takes a lot of effort to move that perception of value in the minds of some people.

This parody video just made me sick to my stomach…. because it’s spot on. I’ve heard every one of these excuses so many times during my career. It’s incredibly frustrating and demoralizing how some people undervalue the expertise of others.

• “I want the highlights. But can only pay for the trim.”
• “I don’t want you to work for free. It’s just a test. You can roll the cost over next time.”
• “I’m not making any money either. You gotta work with me.”
• “We’ll make it up on the next one.”
• “I can cover your hard costs. But that’s as far as I can go.”
• “We need you to show us how you make it so we can do it in-house next time.”

My advice is to stick firmly to your position and don’t give it all away. Sure there are times you may want to barter or there could be some tangible benefit. But there’s no reason to be bullied into giving your skills away especially to someone who obviously has no respect for you.

What are your thoughts? How do you combat this behavior in your day-to-day business relationships?

Content Producers: Respect Your Audience

As a content producer, you will quickly learn to respect your audience in terms of what content you publish, the quality and tactics for consumption. Read more

Tutorial: How to Subscribe to a Podcast

Podcasts are a wonderful source of education and entertainment. Generally speaking, ordinary people like you and me decide that they have something to share and publish it online for others to enjoy. Community participation is what motivates podcasters to continue to publish content on niche topics. Read more

AOL’s 15 Minutes of Fame Video

AOL released a clever video bringing together unwitting stars of three popular online videos.

Here are the videos that inspired the commercial:

• The “Some U.S.-Americans don’t have maps” gal, Miss Teen South Carolina
• The “Leave Britney Alone” guy, Chris Crocker
• The “Don’t Tas me Bro” college student, Andrew Meyer

As entertaining as it might be to see all these people get an additional 15-minutes of fame, it might be hard to measure the recall value to AOL. AOL News isn’t even mentioned until the end – sixty seconds in. I would argue that most people won’t even recall this video was for AOL News.