Articles by Ian Lurie

Every now and then I have these epiphanies so blindingly obvious that, when I point them out, people look at me like I’m a hapless dolt. I call these ‘stupiphanies.’ Most of mine relate to leadership, either as a parent or a CEO. A few I’ve had in the last month are particularly worth sharing: [...]

Marketing is what we do. Advertising is what we often make as a result. It sounds very fulfilling. Alas, the process usually looks something like this: The marketing team builds out brilliant messaging and brand story. They brainstorm some nifty ideas. Then, they pull together a completely incomprehensible collection of marketing platitudes creative brief around [...]

I love LinkedIn, but either someone’s playing a joke on me, or my kids are getting to have a say in their rankings, or something’s really wrong. I currently rank number one for the word ‘pest’: For ‘internet marketing,’ on the other hand, I’m not even in the top 10. My daughter just said, when [...]

I curse whoever first wrote “Have an image at the top of your blog post.” Ever since then it’s been a barrage of crappy stock photos slapped at the top of every half-assed blog post across the internet. Take this example. Am I supposed to believe there’s an company in the world that has this [...]

This is the somewhat annotated version of a talk I gave at this fantastic incubator here in Seattle called SURF. My main point: Marketing isn’t about interruption, trickery, SEO spam, etc. Marketing is about communicating true value and significance to your audience. Period. Anything else is just annoying. A brief expository interlude In 1992, I [...]

You can learn to manage your time, or you can end each day curled up in a ball under your desk. At least, those were my choices. I never found a pre-conceived time management system that worked for me as an internet marketer. GTD, Pomodoro, etc. all have great elements but couldn’t quite fit the [...]

I’m prepping for my Vocus webinar (can’t wait!) today at 11 Pacific. These are the slides I put together, with annotations: I’ll be going into more detail, though, so make it to the webinar if you can!

Or, if you’re a Republican: “What the hell just happened?!” The election was supposed to be close. Regardless of your party affiliation, you heard that for months: Maybe an electoral tie. Certainly with one candidate winning the electoral college and the other the popular vote. We wouldn’t know for days after November 6th… Oops. The [...]

AKA: ‘Because I said so’ doesn’t work This is a really long post. But before you TL;DR it, give it a quick skim. The first half is hand-waving stuff about answering ‘Why?’ The second half is specific tips on doing proposals that build imputed value. Writing a great proposal is hard. The question you’re trying [...]

Here’s the video from Josh Patrice’s excellent SEO for small business webinar last week. Enjoy: