Category: Promotion
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Pay to play vs. paid to play
At a conference, one person will pay $20,000 to get on stage and speak. Another person doing the same thing will get paid $20,000. What does the second person have that the first person doesn’t? There are at least three things: In other words, the organizers of the conference recognize the second person as a…
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Learning to talk to customers, directly
A little bit over a year ago, on the advice from a friend, I put together a philosophy of how I approached marketing. One of the key points was going direct. Here’s how I described it: Start where you are and work directly with your customers. Talk to them directly. Find metaphorically (and sometimes physically)…
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Say what needs to be said
It took Wattpad co-founder Allen Lau decades to learn to speak up, instead of stopping himself when something needed to be said. He writes, “For me, I kept telling myself I needed to err on the side of speaking up too much. Trust me, even with that, the end result is that on many occasions…
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From 0 to 3,000 book sales
I recently found out I’d sold over 3,000 copies of Creative Doing in under two years. My goal is to promote the book until I sell 10,000 copies, a number which represents the point where people are discussing it via word of mouth. I am well on my way towards it. I have been putting…
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On my 366th day at Figma
Today I ran a distribution workshop for the editorial team. To prepare, I also dropped in a dozen thought starters for promoting two posts in a distribution workshop I run. I also promoted a blog post for a feature that our team announced today. I was particularly hands on with this promotion and we tried…
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Stick around until you find the lightbulb moment
While Marques Brownlee is well-known for his influence in technology now, his first YouTube video wasn’t even about tech. It was a video of his golf swing, and a request for analysis. Marques eventually started filming tech tutorials though, and he saw a lightbulb moment a dozen videos in, when a video of him installing…
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Polished packaging vs. punk packaging
Last night, Donald Glover announced Atavista, the finished version of an album he had previously released. He released the original version, entitled 3.15.20, with no announcement at the beginning of the pandemic. On the original version, songs had timestamps for titles (e.g., a song might be entitled, “24.19”), making it more difficult for people to…
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Apple’s bad ad
Two words you don’t see together very often: Apple apologizes. Recently, Apple released a new commercial intended as a sequel to its iconic 1984 commercial. Instead, it completely fell flat. It’s not just that Apple made a misstep, which seems to be happening more often lately. It’s more that its usual defenders aren’t as vocal,…
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Be your own co-founder (or publisher, or distributor, etc.)
The most effective way to get something done is to do it yourself. Rely only on yourself, and pick up all the skills you need along the way. Scope things down. Paul Graham writes, “I’m skeptical when people tell me they’re very determined to make their startup succeed, but they can’t find a technical cofounder.…
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The database stance
Early into my career, I worked as an apprentice with Ryan Leslie. He saw social media algorithms shrink organic reach, he observed how every tour he went on required a press run, and he decided there was a better way. In marketing, these practices are known as renting an audience. He resolved to build direct…