The Crossing of Marketing & IT: Where Marketing and Technology meet – Web + Search + Social Marketing, Teamwork, Leadership & More

Maximum Effective Range of an Excuse

by Elmer Boutin Leadership

During my time in Army Basic Training, our Senior Drill Instructor was someone very instrumental in our transition from civilian to soldier. I remember the first day hearing him yell at us to “Get off my bus!” Just a few days before I had watched “An Officer and a Gentleman” and this guy sounded just like Lou Gossett, Jr.

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Marketers Learning Tech – Start A Web Site

by Elmer Boutin Marketers Learning Tech

When talking with marketers who are working on how to improve their relations with their IT counterparts, they often ask what they can do to better communicate with those techie types. The easy answer is: become more technical. Ah, but the easy answer isn’t alway all that easy. Here’s the first tip in what I intend to be a series to help those less technical marketers get a little more technical: Start Your Own Web Site.

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Inconceivable

by Elmer Boutin General Marketing

Following up on my “A Tale Of Three Vendors” post from last week and “Why Do We Do This To Ourselves?” a few months ago, I present a tale so shocking, so outrageous, I’m still reeling from hearing about it. To my more sensitive readers: you might want to proceed with caution, this is a very ugly story.

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A Tale Of Three Vendors

by Elmer Boutin General Marketing

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … Vendor #1 did some work for us. It was very well done, but there was a small detail missing. The small detail probably wouldn’t have cost us any success. It may have been the result of a miscommunication on our part, but nevertheless when brought to the attention of our account manager he took immediate steps to fix the problem. No fuss, no muss, just done.

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Mobile Devices Dangerous? I Think Not

by Elmer Boutin General Tech Tips

There has been a lot of buzz in recent years about the possibility that cell phones could be hazardous to our health because of the radiation they emit in close proximity to our bodies. The recent announcement by the World Health Organization (WHO) that mobile devices are possibly carcinogenic has brought this issue to the fore once again. Since many of us web marketers and IT people use mobile devices daily, I thought it would be worthwhile to put on my radio-geek hat and offer some thoughts on this topic.

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Twitter A Waste? I Think Not

by Elmer Boutin Marketing

Every so often, I read an article in which the author claims Twitter is a waste of time for marketers compared to Facebook. The chief reason usually given is Twitter’s user numbers are much smaller in comparison to Facebook. While Twitter’s numbers certainly are smaller, I don’t think numbers alone paint the whole picture. Something I recently read confirmed that in my mind.

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Social Media Breakfast

by Elmer Boutin Marketing

Over the past several months I’ve been working with a team of talented folks in my area to start a Social Media Breakfast (SMB) group here in Central Texas. I had been thinking about this for a while because of the great experience I’ve had with the Waco SMB group. I love the Waco group, but it’s very hard for me to get up there on a regular basis on week days. There’s another group which meets in Killeen, which is a little closer, but still hard get to on workday mornings.

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Sleeping With The Enemy

by Elmer Boutin Marketing

The other day I was thinking about blogging programs in which a company gives away free product or service in exchange for reviews. The hope is that the reviews will be honest, but positive, and that the blogger will help generate some buzz around the product or brand. This kind of thing is done all the time. If pulled off well, it can generate a lot of good attention.

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When Life Hands You Lemons – Lemonade: Detroit

by Elmer Boutin Catchall

I went to visit the Detroit area this past January. It was hard to see all the empty buildings where businesses were thriving during my previous visit. The recent recession hit Detroit hard, just as the recession in the early 80s did – only harder. Despite all this, I could see glimmers of hope here and there. It wasn’t something I could quite put my finger on until just last week. It finally came together in a piece I wrote in a guest post on the Du Detroit site.

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