For someone with only one head, I wear a lot of hats.  Most people have jobs they can explain in a sentence (“I’m a doctor / librarian / deep sea diver.”)  But I’m not one of those people: I’m an Account Strategist for Portent. As such, I find myself in all manner of situations, solving [...]

I’ve put in some time lately talking about what internet marketing is not. I thought I’d take a crack what internet marketing is, for a change. Internet marketing’s driven by three principles that are often in tension: Note that I didn’t say The three principles of internet marketing. These are principles of internet marketing. But [...]

I want to emphasize that this is a friendly discussion between Rand and I—we’re colleagues and friends, plus our companies are close enough together that he could bring his much more numerous minions to Portent and wipe us out in one afternoon of horrifying nerd slap-fighting. I’ve received a few comments I deleted because they [...]

And you thought it was kittens and porn!  (There’s plenty of that, too…) Funny people are popular people. How else can we explain an average-looking dude like Jason Sudekis scoring some of the hottest Betties in Hollywood?  But when X = funny, well, that’s another story. And as marketers – hockers of hope, deliverers of [...]

Rick Santorum throws up at JFK speeches. I throw up when someone says “We want to build an i[whatever] app!” I have one question. Why? Have you really, really considered why you’re building your app? Here’s 10 questions to help you decide: Can I afford it? I’m sorry, but you can’t build a quality mobile [...]

Marketing hubris will get you killed. Especially in search. I hate it when someone asks me “Have you worked with other companies like ours?” If I have, I consider it a vulnerability, not a strength, because I’ve got the a-word: Assumptions. Anyone starting a marketing campaign with assumptions is one step from failure. Why? Because [...]

The last week of February, search marketers from around the world assembled in sometimes-sunny San Jose, CA to geek out and discuss the latest internet marketing trends. Due to massive generosity from the Portent C-Suite I had the privilege of attending. For those of you who were unable to attend SMX West 2012, this post [...]

Once again, I get to subject you all to my utter lack of artistic skills. I’ve been working on a simpler diagram of the internet marketing lifecycle for about six months. It’s finally ready, I think, for a public glance. This one boils it all down to a less-pretty but hopefully more clear concept. BE [...]

Email marketing is a great tool for reaching out to potential clients and nurturing leads. Unfortunately, email marketing can be a double-edged sword. Some emails are so maddening that they make a person want to become physically violent. Thankfully we love our computers too much to do them any real harm. So take a deep [...]

Friends, SEOmans, eMad Men— LEND IAN YOUR EARS. Tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. (PST), Ian Lurie, CEO and Webfather of Portent, Inc., will give an exclusive webinar at SEOmoz.  His free-to-all-comers presentation “Data-Driven Content” will illuminate, educate, inform and otherwise rock your search marketing world.  (We hope.) Topics Ian will cover include: Why great content is [...]