-
3 simple reasons for simple
Mark MacDonald Religious CommunityI love recipes that contain three or four simple ingredients. Last night we had a taco soup that was easy to make, yet it tasted amazing. Just a few cans of this, spice, some ground beef, and voila. It's like a chef created it. Often the amazing results make us think it's much more than it actually was. The same is true for the best communication strategies. Simple is almost always better. I think we know that; but why don't we do it more?
-
Using Twitter to reach new customers
Mayur Kisani MarketingMost businesses think of Twitter as a promotional tool, a way to announce new products or to divert traffic to a website/blog. But it can also be used to reach new customers, and thus generate sales leads. The most important first step is to know what you want your tweets to accomplish. If you know your objective and your target audience, Twitter can be as effective for a small company as a large one.
-
Are book royalties fair?
Glenn Yeffeth CommunicationsE-book royalty rates have been an ongoing topic of ferocious debate. The industry standard has coalesced around 25 percent of net revenues, but this is far from a settled issue, with the Authors Guild and others challenging the fairness of this rate. Royalties on physical books, on the other hand, have been standardized for a longer period of time and are rarely challenged. But maybe they should be.
-
TV viewer choices — Cool vs. quality
Mitch Weinraub CommunicationsFor those who have spent years trying to make television pictures better (often with less bandwidth or fewer bits) and improve the quality of video services being delivered to pay customers homes, there seems to be a growing and disturbing trend.
-
101 bad business buzzwords — and why you should avoid them
Joe Latta MarketingToday’s marketing and proposal materials are littered with important-sounding words that have no real value. Seamless, top-notch, world-class, laser-focused, and best of breed. We've all been guilty of using terms like these in place of meaningful descriptors.
-
Making local access more accessible
Victor Blake CommunicationsIn recent years, we've seen the evolution of emergency systems to include both forward and reverse services for cellular networks and subscribers. Clearly mobile networks (when combined across all of the mobile service providers) are more geographically ubiquitous than any fixed-access network alone can be.
-
The death and rebirth of journalism: Digital revolution
Ryan Clark CommunicationsNow is the age of rapid-fire news. This is nothing new, but what is new is that we now have the tools to chronicle it all. No matter now minuscule or trivial, all news is good news. This is why CNN will have a story on the government lockdown on the same page as a story about the true paternity of Mia Farrow’s son. The mantra is now: We cover everything, because if we don’t, some 17-year-old with a Tumblr account will.
-
All it takes is a triple, but no new TV service has hit more than a double
Mitch Weinraub CommunicationsWe continue to see myriad new "smart TVs," OTT set-top boxes and/or services step up to the plate in the home entertainment market, but they all seem to be missing the mark. In order to reach mass-market status — in the U.S. at least — three key elements are required. Yet each new entrant to date has hit no more than a double.
-
The death and rebirth of journalism: Flaws exposed
Ryan ClarkSept. 11 changed a lot of things. At the time, I worked for a Washington, D.C., media company that specialized in providing compliance, regulatory, and market information to its subscribers and clients. It was my first job out of college and offered an eye-opening experience into the state of print media in the early 2000s. The best word I could choose to describe the atmosphere was panic.
-
What can we do about the post office?
Steve StanleyIt seems as though everyone and his brother has weighed in on the problems plaguing the U.S. Postal Service. I spent my entire adult life working in my family’s trucking and warehousing business, and I started and have run a multistate corrugated box business for a decade or so, so my perspective is probably different than most.
All Communications Articles