All Blog Posts - Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}

Ten social media and technology mega-trends to watch

I just read a fascinating (and lengthy!) report from McKinsey on tech-enabled business trends to watch and thought it was important enough to summarize for our community. Here are some […]

Can you answer the most painful question in marketing?

The other night I was having a beer with a friend who is a beginner blogger. He was lamenting that he was not attracting many new readers or comments. I […]

The Douchebag Manifesto

You probably know by now that I like to shake it up with something light-hearted on Fridays but I think today’s video sends {grow} into an entirely new orbit. A […]

The Anatomy of a Blog Post

I frequently receive questions about how I blog. Where do I get the ideas? How long does it take? Where do I come up with the graphics? The process I […]

Should you write your blog or engineer it?

I think I figured out why nearly every social media blogger sounds exactly the same — commonly referred to as the “echo chamber.” I’m learning that copying and pasting can be profitable. […]

The clash of the social media know-nothings

The know-nothings. You know who I’m talking about right? Social media “marketers” who have never practiced marketing. Maybe have never even had a sales job or a college-level marketing class. […]

An interesting interview with SAP’s social media director

I pleased to present today an interview with William Robb, Director, Social Media Marketing for SAP. SAP is the world’s largest provider of business software and the social media role […]

Twitter time-savers: Tweet success in just 20 minutes a day

“How much time should I spend on Twitter?” is a question I get asked repeatedly. And last week one person upped the game by asking, “But what if I only […]

This is what happens when Barbie joins Twitter

This week Mattel announced a new video Barbie that has a tiny camera embedded in her chest (YouBoob?). The iconic doll has fully joined the social media movement by leading […]

Can The Shirtless Old Spice Guy pull off a marketing miracle?

Unless you’ve been in a cave this week, it would have been hard to avoid the splendid, amazing and entertaining Old Spice media blitz, which includes brilliant ads and one […]

Why your company may not need social media

Let’s have some fun with my buns. Cinnamon buns, that is. One of the myths we recently discussed on {grow} was the claim that every business needs to use social […]

The 20 craziest things you can do on Twitter

OK, we’ve heard all the great business success stories about connecting and learning through Twitter. But the human race is made up of all kinds of people and some of […]

Creating a content marketing plan — without any content

When somebody talks about “content marketing,” they’re really talking about “content engineering” — scientifically optimizing documents such as blogs, case studies and white papers to create search engine results and […]

Can the social web play a role in customer retention?

The recession has culled the weak from the pack but it’s likely that your competition is still fierce. Is there a way to attract and retain B2B customers without lowering […]

Why it’s ridiculous to argue about ghost blogging

It seems like “ghost blogging” — the practice of penning posts for others — is always under attack. Jon Buscall wrote a fine piece about it recently as did Mitch […]