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Guy Kawasaki Articles

Written by: Guy Kawasaki

What We Can Learn From Justin Bieber - Click To Read Article
You may find this hard to believe, but I wrote about “What We Can Learn From Justin Bieber” at the American Express Open Forum.

How About a Plan B for Fund Raising? - Click To Read Article
Over at the American Express Open Forum blog, I've posted a description of "Plan B" for fund raising.

How to enchant people with Facebook - Click To Read Article
Over at the American Express OPEN Forum, I posted instructions for how to enchant people with Facebook.

How to Persuade People - Click To Read Article
Just posted an article about how to persuade people at the American Express Open Forum. Click here to read it.

NPR with @KerriMPR and @GuyKawasaki - Click To Read Article
Loved appearing on Minnesota Public Radio with Kerri Miller

Enchantment hits the bestsellers lists - Click To Read Article
After one week of availability, Enchantment has hit three bestseller lists: New York Times (Advice, How-to, and Miscellaneous), Wall Street Journal (Hardcover Business), and Publishers Weekly (Hardcover Nonfiction).

FAQ: How to Autograph a Book - Click To Read Article
# Question: When you autograph a book, what does your message say? Answer: It says “Resisting you is futile.” # Question: Why do write this? Answer: Because I want my readers to feel good about themselves.

How do publish thee? Let me count the ways. - Click To Read Article
At long last my latest book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, is available. Here are the ways to order it. As an indication of what the critics think of it, this is the Kirkus review:

The Last Blog Post - Click To Read Article
There’s a group effort for bloggers to post their “last post” today. Here’s the premise: If you had one last blog post to send out, what would you say? This is based on The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.

Kirkus review of Enchantment - Click To Read Article
I’m all grins today because the Kirkus review of Enchantment just came out:

How to avoid the 7 deadly sins of business storytelling - Click To Read Article
Over in the American Express Open Forum I posted an interview with Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith about the “7 Deadly Sins of Busines Storytelling.” It will help you optimize the impact of storytelling in your marketing.

How to Enchant Your Customer - Click To Read Article
I love to do business with small businesses-in-store, online, for myself, for others, for pleasure, for work-it doesn’t matter to me. I love to find great products and services made by entrepreneurs who are trying to change the world. And I love to help small business owners because they aren’t flying around in corporate jets and lunching with investment bankers. American Express’s idea for Small Business Saturday is a marvelous one, and I’d like to help out by them explaining 10 ways that small businesses can enchant their customers.

Facebook Fan Page Or Website - Click To Read Article
Over at the American Express Open Forum, I answer the age-old question of whether a company should make a Facebook fan page or a website.

Get a free copy of The Macintosh Way by @guykawasaki - Click To Read Article
If you’d like to get a free copy of my first book, The Macintosh Way, just go here.

How to Make Paper.li and Flipboard Rock - Click To Read Article
In the last few weeks two companies have released services that enable you to take tweets and turn them into a newspaper or magazine format: Paper.li and Flipboard.

Need example of a personal story of enchantment - Click To Read Article
I would like to include a few personal stories of enchantment in my next book. I am looking for examples of how people, products, services, organizations, ideas, or causes swept you off your feet.

How to Find Freedom - Click To Read Article
Let me confess: I’m addicted to Twitter and email, and my addiction increases the more I have to do something important like write a book.

Example needed: How companies celebrate success - Click To Read Article
Looking for unusual and cool ways that companies celebrate success.

How to Fascinate People - Click To Read Article
If you ask me, the key to attracting more followers, fans, and “likes” is to post interesting stuff-that is, to fascinate people with the information you find.

Analysis of Twitter Buying Tweetie - Click To Read Article
I wrote an analysis of yesterday’s big news that Twitter bought Tweetie.

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint - Click To Read Article
I suffer from something called Ménière’s disease—don’t worry, you cannot get it from reading my blog. The symptoms of Ménière’s include hearing loss, tinnitus (a constant ringing sound), and vertigo. There are many medical theories about its cause: too much salt, caffeine, or alcohol in one’s diet, too much stress, and allergies. Thus, I’ve worked to limit control all these factors.

Ten Questions with Jeffrey Kalmikoff, Chief Creative Officer of skinnyCorp/Threadless - Click To Read Article
Threadless is a very interesting company because of how it has “community-sourced” its product design. If you had told me that a company could succeed by running weekly tshirt design contests and then selling the winning designs, I would have told you that you’re nuts. I met Jeffrey during my tour of the Threadless offices a few weeks ago and posed these questions to him after my most enjoyable visit.

Ten Tiny Apps That I'm Thankful For - Click To Read Article
This is Thanksgiving, so I’d like to show some gratitude for ten tiny apps that I use almost every day. If you’re a writer, blogger, speaker, or entrepreneur who uses a Macintosh, please give them a look because they will make you more productive.

The Art of Customer Service - Click To Read Article
This blog entry is a response to a topic suggestion by Douglas Hanna. It covers the art of customer service, a subject that is near and dear to my heart.

Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn - Click To Read Article
The average number of LinkedIn connections for people who work at Google is forty-seven.The average number for Harvard Business School grads is fifty-eight, so you could skip the MBA, work at Google, and probably get most of the connections you need. Later, you can hire Harvard MBAs to prepare your income taxes.

Ten Questions with Polly LaBarre - Click To Read Article
Polly LaBarre is the co-author (with Bill Taylor) of the newly released book called Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win. The strategies, tactics, and advice in Mavericks at Work grew out of in-depth access to a collection of forward-looking companies. These maverick companies are attracting millions of customers, creating thousands of jobs, and generating billions of dollars of wealth.

Counterpoint: Patents and Defensibility - Click To Read Article
Three of my buddies who are patent attorneys disagreed with my diatribe against patents as a key component of a startup’s defensibility. Being the open-minded Guy that I am, I offered to publish their counterpoint so that you can obtain a broader perspective of intellectual property issues for startups.

"How to Be Creative" by Hugh Macleod - Click To Read Article
My favorite book about creativity is If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit.

Ten Questions With Donald Trump - Click To Read Article
Donald J. Trump is a graduate of the Wharton School of Finance and started his business career in an office he shared with his father. In August of 2006, Mr. Trump was voted by BusinessWeek magazine as “the world’s most competitive businessperson.”

Disrupt-Then-Reframe Selling: How to Close a VC? - Click To Read Article
Have you heard of the concept called “disrupt-then-reframe”? The theory is that you introduce a non-sequitur or unexpected element into your pitch and then immediately inject a call-to-action. The disruption theoretically neutralizes critical thinking and makes a person more susceptible to agree.

Top Ten Leopard Tips - Click To Read Article
Here are the top-ten Leopard tips from my friends, Adam Engst et al, at Take Control Books. They’ve already released five ebooks to help people upgrade to Leopard. These books cost either $10 or $15, but you can save 30% if you buy all five. Take Control publishes minor updates for free, so the authors can revise their books on the fly.

The Five Most Important Lessons of Entrepreneurship - Click To Read Article
Over at the Sun Microsystems blog I've posted my list of the five most important lessons I've learned as an entrepreneur. #1 is "Focus on cash flow."

How to Kick Silicon Valley's Butt - Click To Read Article
From the fjords of Norway to the sands of Israel to the ice of Alberta to the waves of Honolulu, many regions of the world have Silicon Valley Envy. They look at the Valley as a place where people start cool companies that generate billions of dollars of wealth (and tax revenue), create thousands of jobs, and yet does not pollute the environment (at least compared with a smokestack). The question I hear over and over is, “How can we create our own Silicon Valley?”

Free Online Term Sheet Generator - Click To Read Article
If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it, but Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich, and Rosati, one of Silicon Valley’s dominant law firms (as in Apple, HP, etc), has created a free, online term sheet generator. This is the site’s description of the tool:

Are You an Egomaniac? Ten Questions with Steven Smith - Click To Read Article
Steven Smith has spent the past ten years exploring how great leaders use ego differently than everyone else—how they work, think, collaborate, and who they are. The result of his work is a book he co-authored with David Marcum called egonomics: What Makes Ego Our Greatest Asset (or Most Expensive Liability). His work has been featured by The Dallas Morning News, The Arizona Republic, The Irish Times, Cincinnati Enquirer, and Le Figaro. The topic of this interview is one of paramount importance to anyone who wants to change the world: Ego. Too much? Too little? How much is just enough?

How to Avoid Gullibility - Click To Read Article
We’ve all been sucked into doing something stupid, right?

How to Be Empathetic - Click To Read Article
By definition, good marketers are empathetic.

5 Social Media Tools for Small Businesses - Click To Read Article
Amber MacArthur provided a list of the five social-media tools that small business should begin with.

When You Care Enough to Aggregate the Very Best - Click To Read Article
There is no better way to please and impress people around Christmas time than to make them something. If you can cook, make them a meal. If you can paint, make them a painting. If you can sculpt, make them a sculpture-you get the picture.

How you can get retweeted - Holy Kaw! - Click To Read Article
Do you want to know what kind of tweets get spread? Dan Zarrella has the answers. For example, 70% of retweets contain links compared to 20% in “regular” tweets. Here are more interesting facts:

The Perfect Interview Test - Click To Read Article
Jonathan Littman and Marc Hershon, authors of I Hate People!, have figured out a quick way to interview job candidates.

How to Get Found - Click To Read Article
The reality is that people and technology is getting better and better a blocking out unwanted interruptions-aka, “marketing.”

How to Avoid Twitter Cluelessness - Click To Read Article
Over at the American Express Open Forum blog, I explain how to not look clueless on Twitter. The first five ways are:

You're Not Crazy--You're an Entrepreneur - Click To Read Article
Over at the American Express Open Forum, I posted an article called “You Aren’t Crazy, You’re Just an Entrepreneur” by Pamela Slim.

Why You Need Empathy to Be an Innovator - Click To Read Article
Over at the American Express Open Forum I posted an article called “Customer-Centric Design: Got Empathy?� by Matthew E. May (@matthewemay).

Why Smart People Do Dumb Things Like Not Backup Their Hard Disk - Click To Read Article
A strong mind masks immaturity. —Dr. Mortimer Feinberg and John J. Tarrant

Why Smart Companies Do Dumb Things - Click To Read Article
Not a day goes by when I don’t ask myself, “Why do smart companies do such dumb things?” We all know companies that cook the books and throw outrageous parties at one end of the spectrum to sell lousy products at the other. A sweeping answer is that companies are run by smart people, and smart people do dumb things as we’ve learned.

What Employers Want to See on Your Resume - Click To Read Article
Glenn Kelman is the CEO of Redfin, an online real estate brokerage firm. Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. Prior to starting Plumtree, Mr. Kelman worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a startup that IBM acquired. Mr. Kelman is a member of the Board of Directors for Naviance, a hosted service for schools and colleges. Mr. Kelman was raised in Seattle and was graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley.

Top Ten Myths of Entrepreneurship - Click To Read Article
This is a guest post by Scott Shane as a follow up to his entrepreneurship test. He is the A. Malachi Mixon Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of seven books, the latest of which is The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By. Many entrepreneurs believe a bunch of myths about entrepreneurship, so here are ten of the most common and the realities that bust them:

The Worlds Shortest Marketing Plan Version 20 - Click To Read Article
Two blog postings opened my eyes about marketing. The first deals with the new 4Ps by John Sviokla and Antony Paoni called "Marketing Remix."

The Top Ten Lies of Marketers (with bonus) - Click To Read Article
By popular demand, here are the top ten lies of marketers. Actually, it was too hard to stop at ten, so this list is a dirty dozen. As my mother used to say, "How can you tell if a marketer is lying? His lips are moving."

The Top Ten Lies of Corporate Partners - Click To Read Article
In a manner of speaking, I’m running out of lies to tell. So far I’ve taken care of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, engineers, and marketers. The target of this posting is “corporate partners.” (You might find a previous posting, "The Art of Partnering" interesting.)

The Top Sixteen Lies of CEOs - Click To Read Article
At the suggestion of, and with the help of, Glenn Kelman, here are more lies. These are the lies of CEOs running a companies that are beyond the startup phase. Startup phase lies you’ve read here before.

The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs - Click To Read Article
I get pitched dozens of times every year, and every pitch contains at least three or four of these lies. I provide them not because I believe I can increase the level of honesty of entrepreneurs as much as to help entrepreneurs come up with new lies. At least new lies indicate a modicum of creativity!

The Top Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists - Click To Read Article
Venture capitalists are simple people: we've either decided to invest, and we are convincing ourselves that our gut is right (aka, “due diligence”) or there's not a chance in hell. While we may be simple, we're not necessarily forthcoming, so if you think it's hard to get a “yes” out of venture capitalist, you should try to get a conclusive “no.”

The Top Ten Things I Love Most About Woz - Click To Read Article
Woz and I did a one-on one-chat for the Commonwealth Club on November 16, 2006 as part of his iWoz book tour. It was one of the most enjoyable gigs that I’ve ever done. After the event, I compiled this list of the “Top Ten Things I Love Most About Woz.”

The Stickiness Aptitude Test (SAT) and Ten Questions with Chip and Dan Heath - Click To Read Article
My prediction for Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die is that it will join The Tipping Point and Built to Last as a must-read for business people. The book explains why some ideas stick and some don’t--and I’ve been on both sides of this equation. A warning though: If you read this book, you’ll revamp a lot of your marketing material (as you probably should).

The Top Ten Stupid Ways to Hinder Market Adoption - Click To Read Article
Here’s a compilation of silly and stupid ways companies are hindering adoption of their products and services. I must admit, some of the companies that I’ve invested in have made these mistakes—in fact, that’s why I know these mistakes are (a) silly; (b) stupid; and (c) hinder adoption.

The Top Ten Reasons Why PR Doesn't Work - Click To Read Article
Margie Zable Fisher runs theprsite.com. Every day someone tells her that he or she has been “burned” by a PR firm, and Margie’s goal is to help small business find the right PR firm. I asked her to provide the top ten reasons why PR doesn’t work:

The Top Ten (Sixteen) Lies of Lawyers - Click To Read Article
Like CEOs, marketers, engineers, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists, lawyers tell their own specialized tales. Most of my experience is with lawyers who do work for tech entrepreneurs, so this is my focus.

The Ten Commandments of Fake Steve Jobs - Click To Read Article
All hail Carleen Hawn because she has written a fabulously funny analysis of the management style of (Fake) Steve Jobs. It’s called the “Ten Commandments of Fake Steve Jobs”

The Soul of Wit - Click To Read Article
According to a series of psychological studies discussed on Psychology Today, research participants are able to successfully communicate sarcasm and humor in a mere 56 percent of emails—and most of the senders had no idea their attemps were so ineffective.

The Seven Sins of Solutions - Click To Read Article
I introduced you to Matt May in January. He’s the author of The Elegant Solution and the ChangeThis manifesto called Elegant Solutions: Breakthrough Thinking the Toyota Way. He added a new manifesto called Mind of the Innovator: Taming the Traps of Traditional Thinking. Here’s an excerpt for you:

The Nine Biggest Myths of the Workplace by Penelope Trunk - Click To Read Article
I liked Penelop Trunk's interview so much that I asked her for more material. Here's her list of the nine biggest workplace myths:

The Nine Best Story Lines for Marketing - Click To Read Article
Lois Kelly is the author of Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing. This is her explanation of the top nine types of stories that people like to talk about. If you’re pitching your company to investors, customers, partners, journalists, vendors, or employees and you don’t use at least one of these story lines, you probably have a problem. And most likely you’re too close to what you’re doing, so you think that you’re uniquely “patent-pending, curve-jumping, and revolutionary.” :-)

The Mother of Name Change Reports - Click To Read Article
Continuing on the theme of naming companies, you should read “Company Naming Changes 2006” by Strategic Name Development. 1,900 name changes occurred last year. The company has identified nine categories of name changes:

The Magic of Marketing - Click To Read Article
A research team from Durham University and the University of British Columbia is investigating magic tricks to further understand how people's minds work. The key magician's techniques that the team investigated were misdirection and illusion.

The Myth of A Listers and Influencers - Click To Read Article
Continuing on the theme of Duncan Watts and the demise of influencers and A listers, CNET Networks conducted a three-part study called "The Influencer Study from CNET Networks: Challenging Perceptions." It explored the structure of social networks, the motivations for giving advice, and methods of acquiring information.

The Inside Word on Word-of-Mouth Marketing - Click To Read Article
In this interview Dave Balter explains word-of-mouth marketing. Balter founded BzzAgent in 2002. His company has provided word-of-mouth media services for dozens of Fortune 500 companies and has been featured in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and on National Public Radio.

"The Banality of Heroism" - Click To Read Article
My Stanford psychology professor, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, and Zeno Franco, a Ph.D. candidate in clinical psychology at Pacific Graduate School of Psychology wrote a terrific article called “The Banality of Heroism.”

Ten Questions with Seth Godin - Click To Read Article
Seth Godin is author of six books that have been bestsellers around the world and changed the way people think about marketing, entrepreneurship, and work. He is also a renowned speaker and a helluva nice guy. I cornered him and got him to answer ten (really eleven) questions about his latest book, Small is the New Big, and “life.”

The Art of Firing - Click To Read Article
A few weeks ago I covered the topic of laying people off. In a sense, this is an easier process because it usually happens in bad times, and it doesn’t single a person out. A firing, by contrast, can occur in good times as well as bad times, and it’s highly personal.

The Art of Driving Your Competition Crazy - Click To Read Article
“The purpose of competition is not to beat someone down, but to bring out the best in every player.” Walter Wheeler

The 120 Day Wonder: How to Evangelize a Blog - Click To Read Article
I know a fair amount about evangelism and a little bit about blogging, so I've combined the two in order to provide some insights into the evangelism of a blog. Granted, I've only been at blogging for 120 days or so, but marketing is marketing, right?

Ten Questions with Kathleen Gasperini - Click To Read Article
Kathleen Gasperini is the co-founder and senior vice president of Label Networks. We met in May, 2006 at the Surfing Industry Manufacturers Association conference in Cabo San Lucas. Her company helps leading brands such as Apple Computer, Verizon Wireless, Pepsi, Vans, Levi Straus, and Burton Snowboards understand the global youth culture.

Ten (Actually Fifteen) Questions with Dr. Sandor Gardos - Click To Read Article
This is an interview with Dr. Sandor Gardos, CEO and staff sexologist of MyPleasure. Sandor is a licensed clinical psychologist and sex therapist as well as a board-certified sexologist. We met recently at a San Francisco Entrepreneurs Organization dinner where I was the keynote speaker.

Ten Questions with David Sifry - Click To Read Article
Here is an interview with David Sifry, the founder and CEO of Technorati. In this interview he explains what Technorati does as well as the practices of good blogging. Here are his Favorites Ironically, he doesn't post to his blog too often! But, there are several interesting charts there.

The Art of Innovation - Click To Read Article
I'm getting tired of writing about lies, so today I'm covering truths. Specifically, the truths of innovation. I hold these truths to not be self-evident; hence we see so little innovation.

The Art of Distribution - Click To Read Article
One of the important insights that the Startups 2006 panel hammered home was the importance of distribution for consumer-facing startups. (By the way, an astounding 13,000 people watched this video during the first week.) Many people use the word “distribution” as if it were a tactic when in fact it is a goal. Any bozo can say the word as if it’s a magic bullet; the test is the ability to achieve distribution. Here are my thoughts.

The Big Dip: Ten Questions with Seth Godin - Click To Read Article
Seth Godin provided me with a copy of his new book, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick), and I think it will definitely get people to think about life. To give you a taste of what’s in the book, here’s an interview with Seth about the topics of perseverance and quitting.

The Essence of Duct Tape Marketing - Click To Read Article
Duct tape (the tape) is simple, effective, and affordable—it’s not always the prettiest solution, but it does always work. The central theme of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide by John Jantsch is that effective small business marketing is a system—not an event—composed of simple, effective, and affordable techniques.

The Art of Projections in a Dotcom 2.0 World - Click To Read Article
The world is running amok with entrepreneurs pitching every sort of Web 2.0, social networking, user-generated-content startup. It’s the attack of the bull-shiitake startup projections, so I’m losing my hearing; there’s a ringing in my head, and I get dizzy every once in a while. Before the world implodes (again), here is a top-tenish list of ways to create realistic projections in this Dotcom 2.0 world.

Ten Questions With Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell - Click To Read Article
Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell are the co-authors of Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message. Their first book was called Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force. As business advisors and speakers, McConnell and Huba have worked with Starbucks, Microsoft, Whirlpool, Discovery Education, PBS, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They are also the authors of the award-winning Church of the Customer blog.

Ten Questions With Aziza Mohmmand - Click To Read Article
What’s the most inspiring story of entrepreneurship that you’ve heard in 2006? My answer does not involve two guys in a garage who sell their company to Google for $1.6 billion. No way...my answer is a woman who runs a soccer-ball factory in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Ten Questions with Marti Nyman - Click To Read Article
Marti Nyman is “director of global innovation networks” for Best Buy. This means that his job is to find leading-edge, cool stuff for Best Buy—and yes, he gets paid to do this. Marti has held a diverse array of positions in strategic alliances, business development, mergers and acquisitions, business-unit leadership, sales and marketing, manufacturing, and international market development at a number of companies including General Electric, Ericsson, and ADC Telecommunications.

The Art of the Layoff - Click To Read Article
We’re in a bubble again. It’s not as frothy as last time, but hallelujah, this time we know what to do, right? One good thing about the dotcom implosion in 2000 is that we got lots of practice laying people off, and I’m afraid that this valuable knowledge may get lost.

Ten Questions With Michael Raynor - Click To Read Article
Michael Raynor has a doctorate of business administration from Harvard and works for a big-name consulting firm so I had to overcome several deep-seated prejudices to read his new book The Strategy Paradox: Why Committing to Success Leads to Failure (and What To Do About It).

Ten Questions With Penelope Trunk: Career Guidance for This Century - Click To Read Article
Penelope Trunk is the author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success. She is a career columnist at the Boston Globe and Yahoo Finance. Her syndicated column has run in more than 200 publications. Earlier, she was a software executive, and then she founded two companies. She has been through an IPO, an acquisition and a bankruptcy. Before that she played professional beach volleyball.

Ten Questions with Scott Berkun, Author of "The Myths of Innovation" - Click To Read Article
Scott Berkun worked on the Internet explorer team at Microsoft from 1994-1999. He is the author of a recently released book called The Myths of Innovation. He also wrote the 2005 bestseller, The Art of Project Management. He teaches a graduate course in creative thinking at the University of Washington, runs the sacred places architecture tour at NYC’s GEL conference, and writes about innovation, design and management.

Ten Questions with Jeffrey Pfeffer - Click To Read Article
Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is the author or co-author of twelve books.Dr. Pfeffer received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University and his Ph.D. from Stanford.

Ten Questions with Fred Greguras of Fenwick and West - Click To Read Article
Fred Greguras is a partner at the Silicon Valley law firm of Fenwick and West. He is also a buddy of mine, and I asked him to answer the most common questions of newbie entrepreneurs. His clients have included BioMarker Pharmaceuticals, Excite, Kintana, and Speedera Networks. It’s very important to make the right decisions in these areas at the start of a company, so I hope you’ll heed his answers.

Ten Questions with Compete - Click To Read Article
This interview features the chief marketing officer and product manager of Compete, Inc. They discuss how Compete competes with Alexa and Comscore, site metrics, and SEO practices.

Ten Questions With Garr Reynolds - Click To Read Article
All hail Garr Reynolds! He has written the definitive book about making great presentations: Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter). To give you a taste of his book (and increase my link count), here are ten questions (really thirteen) with Garr.

The Art of Sucking Up - Click To Read Article
There is an art to sucking up. Done too blatantly it will backfire. Done too weakly, you won't get what you want. The perfect suck up contains the following elements:

Ten Things You Didn't Know About Facebook - Click To Read Article
Jesse Stay is a social media guru. He is the co-author of I'm on Facebook--Now What???: How to Get Personal, Business, and Professional Value from Facebook with Jason Alba. This book helps individuals and business owners better manage their lives through Facebook The-New-Faces-at-Facebook . I asked him to provide ten Facebook power tips:

The Impact of Social Media on Sales, Support, Marketing, and Branding - Click To Read Article
Over at the Sun Microsystems small and medium business site, I published an interview with Josh Bernoff about his new book (co-authored with Charlene Li) called Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.

The Art of the Introduction - Click To Read Article
Just got back from Houston where I spoke for the Houston Technology Council. Houston has, by far, the funniest Web 2.0 babes in the world: Jenny Lawson of Good Mom/Bad Mom and The Bloggess; Laura Mayes of Digg for Chicks, aka Sk*rt; Erica O'Grady of Reinventing Erica; Tracey Lee Wallace of True Light Resources; and Carrie Pacini of OpMom. This is what Jenny was going to use to introduce me until she chickened out.

The Art of the Business Card - Click To Read Article
A few weeks ago I was in Charlotte to make a speech for Network Solutions, and I met Justin Ruckman. He handed me his business card--which I just loved.

The Art of Survival: An Interview with Jerry White - Click To Read Article
Jerry White is the co-founder of Survivor Corps (formerly Landmine Survivors Newwork). His life changed in 1984 when he lost his leg in a landmine explosion while visiting Israel. After this experience he has championed the cause of survivorship and became a leader in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. In 1997 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Jody Williams for his efforts. He recently published a book called I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis.

The Appeal of "New" is Hardwired - Click To Read Article
Dr. Bianca Wittman of University College London found that making novel choices activates the ventral striatum of the brain.

The Art of the Signup Page - Click To Read Article
A site's signup page is the second most important page on a site (the most important is the home page itself) because this is where you're asking for committment. Everyone worries about the home page (and still don't do a good job), but most companies do a poor job with the signup page. For example, HAMweather's is aesthetically-challenged, and Last.fm's doesn't convey enough information. This article about signup pages by Tim Bednar is a good read. His list of important signup-page elements is:

Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn to Find a Job - Click To Read Article
Searching for a job can suck if you constrain yourself to the typical tools such as online jobs boards, trade publications, CraigsList, and networking with only your close friends. In these kinds of times, you need to use all the weapons that you can, and one that many people don’t—or at least don’t use to the fullest extent, is LinkedIn.

Speaking as a Performing Art - Click To Read Article
My buddy Doug Lawrence has been a professional singer, music director, and speech coach. He is a highly respected concert artist having sung for almost forty years in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Hollywood Bowl, and throughout Europe with conductors like Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson-Thomas.

Social Entrepreneurship: Ten Questions with David Bornstein - Click To Read Article
David Bornstein is the author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas. He recently updated this book, and it’s now available for the first time in paperback.

Six More Crazy Stories - Click To Read Article
Many people requested more examples of companies driving their competition crazy. I found six more for you.

Science Daily Week: Which is more effective: bonuses or raises? - Click To Read Article
I recently learned about Science Daily. It is a treasure chest of interesting studies that has implications on business practices. I’ve collected so much material from it that this is going to be “Science Daily Week” in my blog.

Pure Evangelism: How to Get Great Candidates - Click To Read Article
Any article that starts off by advising you to tell potential employees that working at your company is a stepping stone to great jobs in other companies is okay by me. Penelope Trunk does this in "Memo to Human Resources: New Ways to Get Great Candidates." Her recommendations include:

Power 3.0: Kinder, Gentler, and Better - Click To Read Article
Choose your weapon: Power 1.0 = muscle and weapons Power 2.0 = money, market share, or brain power

One On One with Pierre Omidyar - Click To Read Article
My preview of Woz’s book, I, Woz, got me thinking of engineers who embody purity. Another outstanding example of this is Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay. On September 5, 2000, I did a “fireside chat” with Pierre at a Garage event in London. Here is a video of this interview:

Now You Can "Rule the Web" - Click To Read Article
Would you like to rule the web? Mark Frauenfelder’s new book will help you do exactly that. I thought I knew about most of the cool stuff on the web, but thirty pages into this book it was clear to me that I was deluding myself.

On the Other Hand: The Flip Side of Entrepreneurship by Glenn Kelman - Click To Read Article
This is a guest posting by Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, a company that enables people to buy homes online. He offers a counterpoint to my posting about how easy it is to make millions of dollars with "user-generated, long-tail, Web 2.0, social-networking, open-source content."

Money as a Social Barrier - Click To Read Article
Check out this study by Prof. Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota (Go Gophers!). She tested the hypothesis that thinking about money can create social barriers. Here is a description of what she did:

LinkedIn and the Art of Avoiding an Asshole Boss - Click To Read Article
Since blogging about Bob Sutton’s notorious book, The No Asshole Rule, I have received a constant flow of emails from readers sharing their own tales of lecherous bosses and indignities suffered.

Looking for Mr. Goodtweet: How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter - Click To Read Article
At 10:15 pm I discovered that I had not brought a Macbook power supply on the trip. I was in a hotel on Coronado Island, and early the next morning I was flying to an aircraft carrier off San Diego for an overnight visit. I doubted that the carrier had Macbook power supplies laying around, so I was in trouble. I posted a message to Twitter that I was in this predicament, and within ten minutes, five people offered to bring me a power supply. I took one of them up on the offer, and he delivered it to me within an hour.

Lessons from the Harvard Recruitment Process - Click To Read Article
I thought that because Harvard is so prestigious that it could sit back and let the best and brightest students come to it. I was wrong. In “How Harvard Gets Its Best and Brightest,” BusinessWeek reporter William Symonds explains the Harvard recruiting process.

Jajah Announces Free Calls - Click To Read Article
Jajah announced free long-distance calls yesterday. This offer is for landline and cell phone calls from and to the countries listed below. Just a reminder: Jajah is the Internet phone service that enables you to use any phone to call any phone without installing any software or being connected to the computer once the call is initiated.

Is Your Boss an Asshole? - Click To Read Article
Question: How many bosses does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer: One. He holds up the light bulb and expects the universe to revolve around him.

Interview of Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank - Click To Read Article
I found this interview of Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank. His idea to provide “micro loans” to poor people to jumpstart their entrepreneurship truly is changing the world. In fact, Yunus won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work.

In Search of Inexperience - Click To Read Article
TechCrunch published a great guest post by Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin, called “Entrepreneur 2.0.” It inspired me to piggyback on his idea that investing in “serial entrepeneurs” who have already been successful might not be all that it’s cracked up to be and write this post.

Imagine a Bigger Market and You'll See a Bigger Market - Click To Read Article
Scientists in two studies at the University of Virginia discovered that softball players and golfers who had good days perceived balls and golf holes as larger than the players who had bad days. The question is, Did this difference in perception cause the player to have better days or did the day's performance cause the players to perceive the ball and holes as bigger?

How to Write a Business Plan: Ten Questions with Tim Berry - Click To Read Article
I work in the surreal world of Silicon Valley where venture capitalists fund companies based on PowerPoint pitches and executive summaries. My friend Tim Berry rightfully pointed that business plans still serve an important role in "the rest of the world." He's right, and he should know because he's the president of Palo Alto Software, the principal creator of Business Plan Pro, and the author of a blog called Planning, Startups, Stories. He was recently named the US Association of Small Business & Entrepreneurship (USASBE) Corporate Entrepreneur of the Year for 2007.

How Twitter Made My Website Better - Click To Read Article
A few weeks ago Chris Brogan published a list of the 100 blog topics that he wished people would cover. One of them was, “How Twitter Improved My Blog,” and I accepted the challenge to write something along these lines. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with Twitter, you can read “The Tao of Twitter,” “Newbies Guide to Twitter,” or “Ode to Twitter.”) Here is my answer to Chris’s request.

If You Want Customers to Be Happy, Give Them Less Product Information - Click To Read Article
Here's a counter-intuitive thought: Shoppers with less information about a product are happier than those with more information. Researchers at the Tippie College of Business came to this conclusion after conducting a study in which people were asked their opinions of chocolate and hand lotion.

How to Tell If Your CEO Is Clueless - Click To Read Article
Pontificating, theorizing, and terrorizing abounds these days in tech startups. Here is a simple test to help you figure out if the startup you work for is in trouble. All you have to do is listen to your CEO talk to people for a week and determine if she uses these lines.

How to Use Twitter as a Twool - Click To Read Article
I may get more value out of Twitter than anyone else on the planet because I use Twitter as a tool—specifically as a marketing tool—for my website Alltop and my book, Reality Check. If the concept of using Twitter in a commercial manner interests you, keep reading. If it doesn’t, then you can continue to send and receive tweets about how cats are rolling over and the line at Starbucks.

How to Not Hire Someone Via Craigslist - Click To Read Article
After reading my posting about how to get a job on Craigslist, my buddy Danny Kay sent me a link to illustrate what employers do wrong. I was amazed by the example that he sent me from the New York edition of Craigslist:

How to Pickup a Venture Capitalist - Click To Read Article
I wrote a list of pickup/opening lines to use on venture capitalists for the Sun Microsystems small business blog.

How to Quit Your Job and Start a Company - Click To Read Article
Over at the American Express Open Forum I just posted this interview with Pamela Slim of Escape from Cubicle Nation.

How to Get a Standing Ovation - Click To Read Article
When I started public speaking in about 1986, I was deathly afraid of public speaking--for one thing, working for the division run by Steve Jobs was hugely intimidating: How could you possibly compete with Steve? It's taken me twenty years to get comfortable at it. I hope that many of you are are called upon to give speeches--it's the closest thing to being a professional athlete that many of us will achieve. The purpose of this blog entry is to help you give great speeches.

How to Get a Job on Craigslist - Click To Read Article
I recently ran a help-wanted ad on Craigslist. The position was a photo-editor job for a site that I dare not mention because some people will complain that I promote it too often. Here’s what I learned a lot from this experience—much of which you may apply to a job search if you respond to a Craigslist ad:

How to Get the Attention of a Venture Capitalist - Click To Read Article
At the Elite Retreat I gave an off-the-cuff answer to a question concerning getting the attention of venture capitalists. My buddy Wendy Piersall blogged about my answer, and it was a very popular. However, to truly help entrepreneurs, I’d like to provide a cogent list of the tips to get the attention of a venture capitalist.

How to Get a Free, Autographed Copy of The Art of the Start - Click To Read Article
Facebook reduced the number of people that a developer can invite to add an application. The limit went from infinity to ten; thus, it is much harder to achieve critical mass. However, if a developer can evangelize people to invite ten friends each, the outlook is brighter. The question is, “How do you get people to do this?”

How to Escape Corporate America - Click To Read Article
Pamela Skillings is the founder of Skillful Communications, a career and communications consulting firm in New York. Previously, Pamela spent more than twelve years as a marketing executive for companies including MasterCard International, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup. She recently published a book calledEscape from Corporate America: A Practical Guide to Creating the Career of Your Dreams.

How to Change the World: Defensibility - Click To Read Article
Blog reader Curtis Thompson asked me a very good question a few days ago: What should an entrepreneur say when she’s asked what makes her company defensible? This question is more and more common as more and more entrepreneurs start “Web 2.0 companies,” and investors torture themselves by wondering why they didn’t fund YouTube.

How I Tweet: Just the FAQs - Click To Read Article
Question: How can you follow so many people?

Guy's Index of Absurdity: The Top Ten Ways to Tell If Things Are Really Bad - Click To Read Article
The experts are promulgating many esoteric ways to determine the financial condition of the economy. It's irrational to base one's mood on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). After all, (a) what does that have to do with the real world? And (b) it reflects the buying (and selling) decisions of the same investment bankers who got us into this mess.

Guest Post: Memo from Kafka's Castle and What Employers Want to See on Your Resume - Click To Read Article
Glenn Kelman is the CEO of Redfin, an online real estate brokerage firm. Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. Prior to starting Plumtree, Mr. Kelman worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a startup that IBM acquired. Mr. Kelman is a member of the Board of Directors for Naviance, a hosted service for schools and colleges. Mr. Kelman was raised in Seattle and was graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley.

Geek Marketing 101 - Click To Read Article
I found a great blog entry that explains technology marketing. Here are the first three elements of this top-ten list:

Frame or Be Framed - Click To Read Article
George Lakoff is a professor at U.C. Berkeley Linguistics Department. He’s written a book called Don’t Think of an Elephant His message in this interview concerns how Republicans appear to be good “framers” and Democrats are lousy ones. Here are two questions from the interview:

Founders at Work - Click To Read Article
This is a picture of my copy of Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days. It has broken my record for the “book with most stickies.” My system is that the stickies on the top edge are ideas for my next book, and the ones on the side are ideas for this blog. As you can see, it’s a gold mine for great stories about entrepreneurship. Here is a list of some of my favorites.

Financial Models for Underachievers: Two Years of the Real Numbers of a Startup - Click To Read Article
My buddy at Redfin, Glenn Kelman, decided he wanted to bare his financial soul so that other entrepreneurs could get greater insight into the witchcraft called financial modeling. In this two-part posting, he reveals his numbers and his lessons. They are eye-opening for most entrepreneurs.

DIY PR - Click To Read Article
My buddy, Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin, had a strong reaction to last week’s post about PR by Marge Zable Fisher. So much so that he penned an alternate solution to the challenge of a good client-agency relationship: Don’t hire an agency and do it yourself. Here’s what he wrote.

Bite Your Tongue: Eight More Ways To Improve Your Presentations - Click To Read Article
There was such a positive response to the speaking tips of Doug Lawrence (email) that I asked him for more stuff. Taking a cue from the fact that “Bite your tongue” was the most popular tip, here are more:

Avenue A Razorfish 2008 Digital Outlook Report - Click To Read Article
Avenue A Razorfish released the 2008 Digital Outlook Report yesterday. The purpose of the report is to help Avenue A's clients understand consumer behavior in the digital space. In the report experts cover topics such as media spending, mobile web usage, social influence marketing, the state of search, and behavior targeting. Here are some tidbits from the report:

After the Honeymoon - Click To Read Article
Here’s some information about what happens after the honeymoon is over when the shiitake hits the fan. There are three parts to each section: the problem, how you got to this point, and what to do now.

5 Things to Avoid in a Demo - Click To Read Article
For technology companies, a product demonstration is the purest form of sales because you really have to wow your audience with your product.





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