Articles by Ian Lurie

This is another great post by Bruce Lee, marketer and advertiser par excellence. Most graphic designers would be happier in ancient Egypt. Egyptologists disagree on whether this papyrus from the Eighteenth Dynasty promotes an energy drink (Red Ox) or a feminine hygiene product “with wings”. Due to the exclusive use of hieroglyphic symbols for communication, [...]

is to: Choose a dictator. Committees design camels and K-cars, not success. Meet. Talk about features. Sketch out the plan, in rough terms. Stop talking and start coding. Build what’s necessary, and no more. Design what’s necessary, and no more. Code for speed, simplicity, and graceful degradation or progressive enhancement. Write great stuff. A beautiful [...]

My latest Search Engine Land column is up: 9 Step SEO Checkup Using Google Webmaster Tools. SEO is about actually doing stuff that helps. It’s not about talking about all the stuff you could do. Hopefully, this column will help you find simple, doable stuff you can tweak to improve your search profile. Read: 9 [...]

Dear brands: Why are you so freaking anti-social? Companies and organizations put a ton of time, money and hard work into attracting potential customers to their web site. But then those big brands abandon you: They seem to say “buy now, or we’ll ignore you forever”. That’s not very friendly. The average Fortune 500 CEO [...]

Oh. God. It’s been one of those weeks that shakes my faith in marketing. And it’s Tuesday. So, second day of the week, and second ranty post. First off, if Google is so damned smart, how is this butthead exploiting negative feedback for fun and profit? This is a guy who’s calling people ‘bitch’, threatening [...]

Update: Thanks everyone for responding. Talk about too much of a good thing. I’ve got almost 100 people so far who are helping out. Please be patient if i don’t get to you for a bit. Today I get to rant, and you get to listen. You’re going to help me kick a bully’s ass. [...]

So, you’ve decided to hire an internet marketing company. Congratulations! Before you kick back your heels and say “go do it” to your newly hired partners, though, here are a few things you’ll need to know: You’ll have to change your web site. A lot. Search engine optimization will require changes to content, code and [...]

This is a guest post by Bruce Lee. Bruce is one of the best marketers and marketing writers I know, and I’m excited to have him writing for Conversation Marketing. Hopefully more from Bruce in the future. Critters respond to contrast. They tend to ignore conformity. In Jurassic Park, the tyrannosaurus seemed to see prey [...]

One of my team, Doug Anktowiak, wrote a fantastic tutorial on using LinkedIn’s new features for company pages. Here’s a taste: As the Facebook of the business world, LinkedIn has become the go-to social media scene for career movers and shakers, and now it’s more influential than ever. Once known as just a social network [...]

Whether you’re an internet marketing wonk, a top IT geek or an SEO pro, you need to know how to speak web server. Not fluently, of course. If you can do the equivalent of asking where the bathroom is, you’ll be in good shape. That’s what I’m going to go over now. When you visit [...]