# 1stdegree-marketing.com ## Posts - [Tips and Advice for Marketing your Restaurant on Social Media](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/tips-advice-social-media-restaurant-marketing/): When it comes to running your restaurant, marketing is usually not top of mind. Between hiring and training staff, running the kitchen and managing food costs, getting word out about your wonderful menu and restaurant often takes a back seat. But outside of the most popular restaurants in the area, you really HAVE to do some online and digital marketing to keep your business in the mind-map of the dining audience. I’ve pulled together a list of recommendations and tips to help you lay down a foundational program. My background with social media? About 10,000 followers on my food blog […] - [The Benefits and Pitfalls of Social Media and Online Marketing for Restaurants](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/benefits-social-media-online-marketing-restaurants/): (Updated January 2018) Ok, so you’re a novice restaurant owner and trying to get your fledgling business off the ground. And you know it’s a challenge right? Estimates are that 50% of restaurants fail in their first three years and you don’t want to be in that statistic! And what about this social media stuff? How can I use it to market my restaurant and build my business? And how do I manage some of these online wacko’s who are out of control?! Well my friend, I know it’s not easy but here are some thoughts from somebody who’s online […] - [What do you say iPhone owners, time for a new relationship in 2018?](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/apple-iphone-or-samsung-galaxy-change/): When it comes to your smartphone, it’s probably the most emotional device in your life. Emotional because you carry it around all the time, rely on it so much and have such a connection with that silly device. So after years of living with iPhones, I finally decided to take the plunge into the Android world in February of 2017. Why? Even though I owned four different versions of the iPhone and loved my iPhone 5S, it was just time. I had gotten tired of the short battery life and being tethered to a power cord all the time. I […] - [Migrating TO Wordpress from Squarespace](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/migrating-to-wordpress-from-squarespace/): A while back I had posted some of the results and experience I had gotten moving my blog from WordPress to Squarespace. And it’s a painful process moving each individual post because it rarely comes over cleanly. While Squarespace definitely had a huge advantage from a design perspective, over time I realized what it could and couldn’t do, well. Flash-forward to October 2015 and I’ve decided now to move my blog BACK to WordPress. Given how much work any of these migrations are, why in the world did I feel compelled to take on this project? I had done my […] - [Add Balance to Your New Blog Through SEO, Design and Content!](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/2015813blogging-beauty-content-or-search-engine/): Like most marketing disciplines, launching and maintaining a blog is an act of balancing different needs with limited personal resources: your time and your brain-power! Do you spend your energy on writing content, improving design and usability of your blog platform or work on SEO and search engine needs? The answer as it usually is in marketing is: all of the above! But it really depends on where you are in the blogging life-cycle. Over the past 8 years, I’ve probably written over 1,200 posts for my blog, my work blog and online communities. So as you can guess, I’m all […] - [The Marketer's Dilemma- A Tidal Wave of Technology](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/201567the-marketers-dilemna-moving-forward-without-falling-behind/): In the world of professional marketing, time is typically one of the most limited resources. From customer meetings, sales enablement to competitive analysis, creating messaging and positioning, there’s no end to what a marketer can spend their time and energy on. But in the last 10 years, as marketing has moved to increasingly digital channels, our world has exploded into a tidal wave of technology. Platforms for marketing automation and a variety of other online marketing tools are becoming key revenue drivers for companies. Which recently prompted Gartner to make a very controversial prediction: By 2017, the CMO would out-spend the CIO on technology! […] - [Squarespace versus Wordpress](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/201537wordpress-vs-squarespace/): For those of you heavily invested in blogging, the natural platform of choice is WordPress.  Free and easily customizable, WordPress gives you so many options in terms of creating the look, feel and functionality of your blog and website.  But after four years of managing my SMB blog which gets about 8,500 unique visitors a month, I moved over to Squarespace in April 2015.  And for the most part it has gone well with some caveats.  My goal was to have a simpler administrative experience so I could focus on content which is what I got.  But that wasn’t without […] - [Content Marketing's Soft But Firm Push to Sales](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/2015427content-marketings-soft-push-sales/): Recently I got into an online discussion on LinkedIn about content marketing and it revolved around, what IS content marketing?  It’s a pretty simple concept and haven’t we been doing it forever?  And it’s a legitimate question so for clarity’s sake I wanted to give you my definition of content marketing:   Content marketing is offering customer-focused, value-add content (whitepapers, articles, webinars, videos, services) that introduces a potential customer to your organization, your expertise and indirectly, your product line.   Content marketing is not about a direct product pitch and serves to engage and warm up a prospect before they even start […] - [Marketing Zen: When Marketing Doesn't Even Feel Like Marketing](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/2015423hubspot-content-marketing-effectiveness/): When does marketing not even feel like marketing?  When it’s really well-done content marketing!  Have you ever looked at content marketing strategy from the prospect perspective? I’m talking about companies that do an exemplary job of content marketing to you or me, the professional marketer! And when I think of really effective content marketing, two companies immediately leap to mind:  Business Insider and Hubspot…  If you’re not familiar with Business Insider, think business website with marketing services and advertising as their revenue stream. In addition to their business news website, Business Insider runs extremely effective email newsletters and campaigns around their internal content and curated […] - [Buyer Personas by Adele Revella- Book Review](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/2015414buyer-personas-by-adele-revella-book-review/): (Re-posted from my LinkedIn page)  Buyer Personas continue to be a hot topic for marketing professionals and Adele Revella’s new book on Buyer Personas sheds a light for those of us looking for clarity.  While discussions with your sales reps and internet searches are a good start, a truly effective buyer persona hinges on one key action: getting in front of your customer and interviewing them.   Having just finished reading Adele’s Buyer Personas book, it breaks down this crucial and insightful marketing research into four very digestible sections for the busy professional.   Buyer Persona project launch- Getting organizational buy-in […] - [Managing Your Marketing Mix](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/201533managing-your-marketing-mix/): You know the old marketing discussions you hear at the watercooler and online: SEO is dead, social media is absolutely critical, you have to build an app for your company, and so on.  Oftentimes when we look at tactical marketing decisions, we approach them in a binary fashion.  Yes or no, good or bad, right or wrong.  But the reality of marketing today is that you’re one person, communicating and influencing thousands of prospects and potential customers.  And that means there are thousands of “right answers” to marketing.   What’s just as important is that your marketing strategy and tactics are […] - [The Art and Effectiveness of the Tech Interview](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/2015314the-art-of-the-interview/): Content marketing can be a key component of your outbound and inbound campaigns but what if you’re new to the product segment and don’t have internal expertise?  One possible solution is an interview with a recognized subject matter expert (SME)!  During my time marketing Hadoop and Big Data training, I was put in the difficult position of not having an internal subject matter expert when we launched.  But it was crucial that my company establish thought leadership and credibility in this new training market so I knew I would have to rely on my technology partner, Cloudera.  A leader in Hadoop […] - [The Challenges of Comparative Marketing](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/2015316the-challenges-of-comparative-marketing/): One request that you’ll often hear from your customer as a Product Marketer is why can’t you help me compare your product to the competition?  You have product sheets with screenshots, cool images, value propositions, positioning statements and bullet-pointed details but I need to do a direct comparison, Mr. (or Ms.) Marketer!   And as a customer-centric professional marketer, I’ve often scratched my head on this challenge, why don’t we do more comparative marketing?  It would help the customer, wouldn’t it?  But there are reasons why marketing professionals don’t often go down this path. Reason 1: If you’re the leader […] - [Getting Into the Flow with Content Marketing](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/2015318creating-marketing-content-flow/): You know the old saying, “it’s about quality, not quantity”!  But that adage isn’t entirely true with regards to content marketing in B2B or B2C spaces.  It’s about quality AND quantity!  Because your audience and people in general, are always looking for good stories and snippets that educate, entertain and inform.  And over time, as your content stream is recognized as being valuable and interesting, your prospects and customers will return and stay engaged when you have a more compelling call to action.  Case in point, during my last product marketing role I had two email streams, one for Microsoft and one […] - [Virality and The Power of 666? Uhm no....](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/201537the-power-of-666-uhm-no/): Virality is a term often bandied about in marketing.  It means that you come up with a phrase, an asset, a meme that becomes so popular, people spread it amongst their peers which organically increases your marketing reach.  And the reality is that it’s like trying to catch lightning in a bottle.  Whether your talking about a Gangnam style video or the ALS Ice Bucket challenge, coming up with a viral idea is tough sledding for most marketers.   But every now and then you do catch a little bit of lightning in your every day dealings.  I remember a […] - [The Impact of the Cloud-Subscription Model on B2B Software Marketing](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/201535the-impact-of-the-cloud-subscription-model-on-b2b-marketing/): When you talk about digital disruption on businesses, the music industry, television and movies usually come to mind.  You can subscribe to music services and subscribe to media channels to get your content on-demand and in a pay as you go model.  Which is all very friendly for the customer and end-user.   Think Spotify, Netflix and Hulu.  As enterprise software moves to the cloud, that same subscription model comes into play.  Enterprise customers pay as they go and can leave at any time.  Trying out cloud software is often a very easy proposition making the evaluation of an online application a five […] - [Persuading the Financial IT Buyer and Influencer Persona](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/2015225the-power-of-analyst-groups/): In the world of open-source software, you’ve got an interesting marketing challenge.  You’ve got a near commodity product that’s freely available online.  You add a layer of customer services and support on top of it to monetize the software for the business.  But as you can guess, the traditional open source customer is pretty frugal.  Linux often entered the workplace though the back-door with techies trying it out and as they test out the platform, it slowly embeds itself into the organization and becomes a valued part of the IT infrastructure.  At that point and time, Linux is now a production […] - [The Benefits of NOT Being the Smartest Person in the Room](https://1stdegree-marketing.com/2015227the-benefits-of-not-being-the-smartest-person-in-the-room/): Back when I was in business school at UNC Kenan-Flagler, I distinctly remember one day heading over to my locker to put away some of my gear.  Kneeling on the floor, next to my locker was one of my classmates and she had her head in hands, crying.  She had just gotten a C on an exam and it was the first time in her life.  And she was crushed.  Understand that in most business schools we’re talking about an academically competitive environment.  The average GMAT score at UNC KFBS was about a 660+ and the very top MBA programs average […] [comment]: # (Generated by Hostinger Tools Plugin)