Yearly Archives: 2015
User Experience Chris Lakin2 Sep, 2015
Your blog is boring. Upgrade to a hub
Let me start with a disclaimer. If you haven’t started blogging, get a plan together and start. Don’t write just for the sake of writing, but create a strategy around what you’ll write about and then actually do it. Publishing content on a regular basis benefits search engine visibility and audience building. If you are… Read More
User Experience Ian Lurie28 Aug, 2015
Pure Bragging: Two Cool New Portent Thingamabobs
Note: Right now I’m bragging, but Blake has promised he’ll soon write a post about how he actually did this stuff. So you might want to subscribe to the blog using that form on the right over there. See what I just did? Marketing!!! Our resident all-things-user-experience nerd just developed two new site feature/thingamabobs (that’s… Read More
PPC Ryan Moothart20 Aug, 2015
Maximize Profitability on Your Branded PPC
Alternate Title: How I doubled Return on Ad Spend in branded PPC PPC 101 – Branded Search The first rule of PPC is to make sure you bid on your branded search terms. Actually, scratch that – the first rule of PPC is that all must bow down to Earth’s future overlords, Google. Or was… Read More
Analytics Timothy Gillman18 Aug, 2015
Quick Guide to Google Tag Manager Fundamentals Exams
Now is the perfect time to learn more about website tag management. Google Analytics (GA) Academy recently released their new Google Tag Manager (GTM) Fundamentals course, an excellent way for anyone to learn more about using this free tool. Why should I care about understanding tag management? Don’t Care. Take me to the guide, man.… Read More
Random Ian Lurie13 Aug, 2015
10 Phrases That May Get You Fired (By Your Agency)
I periodically fire potential clients. It’s hard to walk away from the revenue. But clients hire Portent for our advice. It’s also hard work with clients who ignore that advice. And that kind of relationship typically starts with more than one of these statements: “I just want to crank out blog posts.” Basically, they’re hoping… Read More
Internet Marketing Ian Lurie10 Aug, 2015
Fast Research for Internet Marketers: Faking the T-Shaped Knowledge Set
Everyone knows I’m normally a diplomatic guy… HAHAHAHAHAHAHA SNIFF AHAHAHAHAHAHA SNORT AHAHAHAHA OK, now that you’ve sputtered coffee all over your keyboard: Somewhere, sometime in our professional lives, we’ve all been confronted with idiocy in the form of lazy ignorance: “Ignorance” = Not knowing the answer. Which happens to all of us. “Lazy” = An… Read More
Blog Kyle Eliason16 Jul, 2015
10 Tips for a Successful Post-Mortem
I love meetings. Actually, let me clarify. I like creative, strategy-focused meetings like a brainstorm or its emo cousin, the Post-Mortem. What is a post-mortem? To some, it’s an examination of a corpse in order to determine the correct cause of death. To other more well-adjusted individuals (no offense Dana Scully), it’s a discussion (usually… Read More
Copywriting Misty Weaver2 Jul, 2015
How Conflict Is Key To Creating Great User Experiences
Mr. Fisher Goes to Washington Steve Fisher, co-organizer Design & Content Conference recently visited Portent’s office in Seattle (Washington) to exchange brilliant ideas, but also to tell us some horror stories. For example: What do zombies have to do with content and design? Clearly, a lot. We Content Strategists are officially outpaced and outnumbered. So… Read More
Ian Lurie29 Jun, 2015
To my team, at 20
This is what I said at Portent’s 20th-anniversary party. It’s also a kind of open letter to my team. For posterity, I’m posting it here. If you really want to know what we’re all about, this is a really good place to start: 20 years ago when I started Portent, as my accountant filled out… Read More
Portent Staff26 Jun, 2015
Three Months at Portent: My Life as an Intern
My internship at Portent is ending, and although I am sad to be leaving, I want to take the time to reflect on my past three months. Here are some thoughts I want to share for anyone out there looking for an internship in social media or something related to digital advertising. To the best of… Read More
Ian Lurie18 Jun, 2015
Why not?
TL;DR: I wrote my very first Medium post ever. It’s about marketing leadership and getting to “Why not?” Click here to read it. Any smart organization has the risk-takers and the risk-averse. That’s a very necessary balance. If all you have are risk-takers you’ll probably run aground in a hurry. If everyone on your team… Read More
Design & Development Andy Schaff16 Jun, 2015
GitHub Auto-Deploy Setup Guide
In an effort to streamline development updates to a code base in a staging or production environment, we have created an auto-deploy setup guide for any GitHub (github.com) repository. What you will need: A server to host your site. Our example is a Ubuntu (Linux) server running either Apache or Nginx and PHP SSH access… Read More
Social Media Portent Staff10 Jun, 2015
Five Killer Tools for the Social Media Intern
Well, it’s been two months into my internship at Portent, and I’m beginning to get a firmer hold on my day-to-day workflow. I get the feeling that my friends still think I spend my entire day surfing Facebook and Twitter… and to be fair, I do spend a good chunk of my time each day on different social… Read More
Random Ian Lurie5 Jun, 2015
Holy shit. Portent is 20 years old.
Today Portent is 20 years old. I forgot until another Portent-ite reminded me. Which is painfully typical. Like a lot of CEOs, I tend to focus on the bad areas for improvement and mistakes instead of the milestones. We’re having our big party next week, but for today I’m going to: 1. Break protocol and… Read More
Internet Marketing Ian Lurie1 Jun, 2015
The Internet Marketing Stack: Channels
This is the very last post in the marketing stack series! Want to start from the beginning? Click here. Part 1: The marketing stack Part 2: Infrastructure Part 3: Analytics Part 4: Content Part 5: The channels – paid, earned and owned ← You are here Channels are like pipes. They’re the machinery that puts… Read More