Category Article
Would You Sleep While Riding A Horse? The Dangers Of Lazy AI Use In Small Business
Would you ride a horse asleep? Not many people put their hand up to that one. A horse is a huge, powerful animal. It will absolutely get you somewhere, but if you’re not holding the reins, it decides where. That’s…
You Can’t Read the Label From Inside the Radio Booth
What community radio taught me about connection, and what marketing can teach community radio back. I recently addressed the South Australian Community Broadcasters Association, bringing my marketing hat to a room full of volunteers, presenters, and station managers who give…
The Anatomy Of A Blog: Updated Insights From 20 Years Of Blogging
Lead with the insight your reader can use today. Prove it with one real story. Stop when the point is made. That’s the whole method. Everything below is that sentence, dissected. Twenty years of writing blog posts, and a fair…
From Concierge To Contact Forms: 10 Principles Of Website Development
Your homepage is not a brochure. It is a concierge. A good concierge does not explain the entire hotel to you the moment you walk in. They read the situation, ask what you need, and point you toward the right…
AI Ready: The Small Business Guide to Being the Answer
Your website is losing business to visitors who never see it. Not because your prices are wrong, or your photos are poor, or your copy needs a polish. Because AI is answering your potential customers’ questions before they reach you,…
Applying The Brain’s Four Characters To Responding To Reviews
You open a one-star review. You read the first sentence. Something tightens in your chest before you finish the second. By the third, you are already composing a response in your head that you will almost certainly regret sending. Every…
A Super-cali-fragilistic-expi-ali-docious Marketing Insight From A Māori – As Inspiring As A Glow Worm In The Dark
I’m just back from a fascinating trip to New Zealand ahead of MCing the South Australian Visitor Information Service Conference later this month, and one offhanded comment by a Kiwi tourist operator has stuck with me. As we were driving…
Blog With Expertise And Authority – AI Search Tools Have No Appetite For Fluff In The Age Of SGE
A client just showed me a draft blog post one of his outsourced workers “wrote” and it was an atrocious waste of time that gives blogging (and outsourced workers) a bad name. It was a bland collection of sweet terms…
The Ghost in the Bottle: Why Your Best Prospects Might Be Hitting a Dead End
We often say you can’t read the label from inside the bottle. Today, I had to take my own advice. While interrogating our own analytics, I found something startling. Our most “engaging” content, the piece people were spending minutes reading,…
Why You Can’t Read the Label from Inside the Bottle
There’s an old saying in marketing: “It’s impossible to read the label when you’re sitting inside the bottle.” As a business owner, you are too close to your own work. You know the nuances, the history, and the effort. But…