Monthly contributor Chris Shaffer recently joined the team at Skirmish Strategies as their Chief Inbound Strategist. He has worked with a variety of businesses in the technology, medical, education, and small business sectors. He is also a regular contributor to the Skirmish Strategy Blog where he writes both standard content and a weekly column called Genius or Insanity. This column explores the latest and greatest in marketing tools and tactics. He can be found on Twitter: @CjShaffer1.
We all probably know the story of David and Goliath (or the story of Nestor in the Iliad, for you Greek History buffs). When everyone else is too frightened to take on the 800-pound gorilla in the room, it falls on the shoulders of the unexpected, the meek, and the small to take care of […]
One of the many hats I wear is as a marketing expert-in-residence for a business incubator. Couple that with running a consulting company, and you’ll understand that I get put in the room with a huge number of businesses. Sadly, an overwhelming number of these companies have one thing in common: poor marketing. They have […]
We’ve all seen or heard from a social media “guru” (that title in and of itself should scare you!) that your company can achieve social media success in an hour a day or less. I’m here to tell you that’s just plain BS. Can you maintain social media in under an hour a day? Sure, […]
You have put in your company logo and cover photo and invited all your friends and business contacts to join your Facebook fanpage, so you’re done setting up right? Well, maybe. You want to know the dirty secret very few people will be willing to tell you? If you use a tool like Shortstack (see screenshot […]
It seems like once or twice a month a new social media site grabs the collective attention of the marketing community, stealing not only our attention (and occasionally our hearts), but also our valuable money and time. We know we can’t possibly be everywhere at once, but we try anyway (often at the expense, and […]
Let’s be honest, marketing as a whole (marketing, sales, PR, advertising, social, etc.) is often treated as a second class citizen by businesses. We are the last place to get budgets and the first ones to lose them, and it’s kind of our fault. We have made things so hard for many businesses to understand […]
If the last few years have taught us anything about business in the 21st century, it’s that companies need to embrace the social media world if they want to survive and thrive. Many companies think simply being present in social is enough to bring them the great results and recognition that we keep hearing about, […]
If you think back to your Marketing 101 class, you will probably vaguely remember the concept of setting S.M.A.R.T. objectives (if you need a refresher on objectives versus goals/strategy/tactics, check that out here), and if you’re lucky, you will even remember your professor telling you that setting S.M.A.R.T. objectives is the basis for any successful […]
We all know we should be testing elements on our websites, like landing pages, navigation, and even the words we use on the page, but one thing dozens of marketers overlook is the importance of testing across all their marketing efforts. Testing our social media best practices to see what small changes we can make […]
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