Yearly Archives: 2012

Random

Watching the argument over online piracy unfold in the US is like watching chimpanzees drive a car. They fight over direction but they don’t give a crap if they take the rest of us off a goddamned cliff with them. Here’s my problem with both sides in this Greek tragedy: SOPA = stupid If it… Read More

Random

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian speaks out against internet censorship January 18th was a big day in the fight against Internet censorship legislation. As you may have noticed, major websites like Wikipedia and Reddit took their content offline to protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). These two pieces… Read More

Internet Marketing

Portent’s starting a free webinar series, presented by yours truly. The first one is January 31, 2012 at 11 AM Pacific time. I’ll be doing a deep dive into inbound search content social media internet marketing strategy: The role of search engines, social media and other channels in your internet marketing campaign. What ‘inbound marketing’… Read More

SEO

Would you be surprised to learn that I’ve been writing Google Search+ recommendations and how-to guides for Portent clients this week? I plan to share my findings here on the blog, but before I dive into the new stuff I feel that it is important to cover some old ground first. Have you laid a… Read More

Internet Marketing

You send an e-mail to 40,000 people, and get 1 response. Or, you run a Groupon deal that brings 1,000 new customers, who never buy from you again. Wonder why? You got everyone’s attention. They just don’t care. Now you’ve got a choice: Rend your garments, tear your hair and whine about how stupid the… Read More

Social Media

In late December, Google announced the ability to delegate up to 50 named managers as administrators for a Google+ page, yet Google forgot to tell us one little secret. How the hell do you grant admin access to multiple users? If you’ve already created your Google+ page, use this simple tutorial to help others join… Read More

Social Media

When you run an ad campaign in Facebook to get more fans for your business page, you’re able to analyze your performance using Facebook Insights. Recently, Facebook completely removed the old version of Insights and made their new version mandatory. If you’re not familiar with the new Insights, they feature more in-depth and granular information… Read More

Random

Writing isn’t a talent—it’s a skill. You can get better at it through practice. If you want awesome verbal pectoral muscles: If you want to get better, you could write a novel, or a textbook. But there’s a much easier way: Freewriting Freewriting is like a verbal sprint. You write a lot, really fast, and… Read More

Random

Ever notice that companies mirror their leaders in personality, expectations and culture?  I had met Ian Lurie on several occasions over the last couple years and immediately learned to respect his unmatched knowledge, integrity and vision.  His company and, more importantly, the people at Portent mirror Ian. When the opportunity came to collaborate with him… Read More

Random

If I look at Portent’s growth over the last 16 years, we’ve had what my COO calls the Graph of Shame: Some of that might be due to economic poop hitting the fan. And some of it is natural turnover. But the Graph of Shame is a dead giveaway that a business isn’t scaling as… Read More

Random

As of yesterday, Portent officially has a President and a CEO, and they’re separate people. Why? Why would I bring in a business partner after all these years? That means I have to share the glory of running my own agency! Ian takes a brief pause to laugh, but bites it back before the giggles… Read More

Random

Portent’s had a fantastic run so far: 16 years in business, great clients and fascinating work, day in and day out. But there comes a point when one multi-tasking nerd (me) can’t further grow the company. So I’m thrilled that Steve Gahler has signed on as President and Partner at Portent, Inc. Steve’s going to… Read More

Analytics

If you’re in the SEO world, you’ve heard a lot about the ‘not provided’ statistic: Google is now hiding the key phrases logged-in Google users enter to find your site. So, if you go into Google Analytics (or any other analytics software), you’ll see something like this: Instead of a full keyword report, you get… Read More

Analytics

A long time ago, alchemists tried to turn lead into gold. They were pikers. Compared to digging keyword data out of the Google’s lovely (not provided) statistic, lead into gold woulda been a cinch. But I’m stubborn. So, I’ve pulled a bunch of keyword analytics data from Google Analytics, and the Search Queries report from… Read More