Use Online Content to Judge Marketing Candidates You Are Considering Hiring

37 Signals book, Getting Real, recommends judging potential technology hires based upon their open source contributions. Using open source provides an unparalleled level of transparency that cannot be achieved by placing reference calls, reviewing prior work samples and verifying educational history. As I was reading this essay, I could not help but think that one should apply the same principle with marketing personnel, especially for roles which require content creation.

Getting Real – Must Read Book for Technology Marketing Professionals

Getting Real is a must read for all marketers. The impact Agile Development is having on product management is as revolutionary as the changes that social media are having on marketing communications. In my opinion, an alternative title for Getting Real could have been “The New Rules of Software Development,” because the strategy outlined is such a radical paradigm shift. Seth Godin stated “every once in a while, a book comes out of left field that changes just about everything. This is one of those books. Ignore it at your peril.” His comments could not be more true.

We’ve Got a Super Bowl Ad – Remembering the Dot Com Era

One of my fondest memories of the Dot Com era was the hype preceding Super Bowl 34 in 2000, which aired 10 years ago. I couldn’t tell you who won the game, or for that matter, even who played, but I will never forget the advertisements. Super Bowl 34 in January 2000 featured seventeen dot-com companies that each paid over two million dollars for a thirty-second spot. By contrast, in January 2001, just three dot-coms bought advertising spots during Super Bowl XXXV.

Why I like Yammer Ten Times Better than Twitter

Like many people I know I continue to struggle to find the value in Twitter (@smkeifer). But a few weeks ago I discovered another service called Yammer which has completely changed my perspective on the value of micro-blogging. Yammer describes itself as “a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: ‘What are you working on?’” But I think a simpler explanation of Yammer is an enterprise microblogging platform or in other words a Twitter for your company.