Articles by Ian Lurie

This is a tip that’ll either: Save you 20 minutes per blog post; or Lead to much better-looking blog posts. I write all of my blog posts using Textmate, a text editor for the Mac. I write them all using a very simple text formatting language called Textile. I recommend E-Text Editor for the same [...]

Everyone’s bleating about content marketing. Content marketing this. Content marketing that. For some of us, though, content’s been around since we, well, since we learned to read. Here’s the process I’ve put together over the last ten years. I presented this at Wappow Search & Social last week. Shockingly, it involves content. And marketing. With [...]

…and I’m damned excited. Our first legit logowear: I don’t know why I’m so excited, but somehow it makes me feel so… grown up. Gang pose courtesy of one of Portent’s fine SEO team.

Something a bit unusual today. On Monday I wrote 20 reasons you shouldn’t listen to a word I say. Today, I was delighted to receive a 20-item response to my 20 items from Angela Hansen. I liked it so much I asked her for permission to publish it here. And no, Angela is not giving [...]

In which I wax philosophical while discussing zombies, specialization and people who reek of cigarettes. This town needs an asteroid. Marketers are specializing our industry to death. Setting the stage: Stinky cigarette guy A few years ago, a guy who reeked of cigarette smoke handed me a smudged business card. He handed it to me [...]

I feel strongly about full disclosure. So, here it is—20 reasons I’m full of crap: I don’t have a best selling book. Nor, at this rate, will I ever. Major marketing conferences bark with laughter when I submit a speaker’s pitch. I haven’t made $10 million. I haven’t even made $1 million. I’m just a [...]

I’ve been building some custom reports for Portent in Google Spreadsheets. They do fun stuff like grab Google Analytics data, insert data from other APIs and such. One thing that nearly drove me batty, though, was figuring out how to automatically add a new row below the last row with data. Turns out, Google App [...]

I love my clients. Sometimes it’s hard to tell, I know. But once Portent signs on to work with someone, we’ve got one job: Help the client kick ass. We’re committed. That means we need to be pretty picky about clients and contracts. I use a special scale called the Potential Misery Index (PMI). You [...]

I tell you to write clear headlines, and you don’t listen. I tell you to try the blank sheet of paper test, and you ignore me. I suggest that you write fully descriptive headlines, and you snort. Well, now you can see what happens. 25 truly screwed up, hideous headlines written by folks who didn’t [...]

I’ve written 2,890 posts on Conversation Marketing now. I just crossed 10,000 (non-spam) comments, too. But I’ve never actually provided a definition of Conversation Marketing. Lots of other people have. Some did OK. Some are just ridiculous. So I figured I’d give it a shot. I’m not trying to define it in a “this is [...]