Blogs

Companies spend a lot of time and money to get just the right look for their logo, website, and sales materials. The thinking is that by picking the right graphic, color, or design, you’ll capture the attention of your target customers and they’ll be unable to look away. If only it were that easy. It’s…

December is here, which means the holiday gift giving season is upon us. Retailers big and small have stocked their physical and virtual shelves with all sorts of goodies, gadgets, and other temptations for consumers, and all retail marketing is focused on one thing: bringing in the shoppers and their eager wallets and purses filled…

Time flies when you’re having fun, which means summer has come and gone and the holiday season has snuck up on us once again. Thanksgiving is next week, and then we’re on to Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and other winter holidays before we hit the homestretch toward New Year’s. For the Barrel O’Monkeyz family, we have…

Ask any web developer or web marketer whether Google Analytics is important and you’re likely to get similar replies—something along the lines of “it’s important” or “you should do it” or “you need to have the data.” But as the owner or marketing leader for your organization, you probably want a little more detail on…

When you read a review online do you really, really know for whence it came? Whether it’s a 5-star review or a negative Nancy (or Norm), can you rely on its veracity? After reading a recent Wall Street Journal article, I’m not so sure. In Have Online Reviews Lost All Value? author Rebecca Dolan wonders…

Message from the King Monkey about Influencer Marketing Influencer marketing is when a brand leverages influencers—celebrities, well-known experts/authorities, target audience peers with large social media followings, bloggers, reviewers, and others—in its field or industry to drive engagement. Now as technology and the reach of social media makes connecting with and influencing a large audience more…

I’m a firm believer that, tempting as it is, you simply can’t conduct all business from behind a desk or by phone or email. Sometimes you just have to get out and shake hands and meet people face-to-face. That’s why a few times each year this King Monkey hits the road to take advantage of…

I’ve written a lot in this blog about how every team needs to have a star performer—a certain someone who always seems to step up at just the right time with an extra effort to propel you and your efforts forward. While I firmly embrace the idea of a star performer, what happens to your…

I was watching a rebroadcast of the History Channel’s Forged in Fire the other day. In what is perhaps the least likely idea for a hit reality show ever, four bladesmiths compete in timed rounds of a few hours to forge workable blades and handles from scratch. Most of the time, the contestants are part-time…

In all relationships, there are three truths: my truth (the truth as I see it); your truth (the truth from your perspective); and the “real truth” (something in-between your perspective and mine, which is probably much closer to reality). In personal relationships, the hope is that the gap between one person’s truth and the other’s…

We’ve always known that people learn differently. Some prefer verbal interaction (using words, both in speech and writing), while some are more visual (they prefer to use pictures and images), and others prefer to learn through sound and music (aural). In fact, many experts agree there are seven learning styles that guide the way we…

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen a client’s eyes glaze over when I tell him or her that we’re going to be pushing out content—lots of content—on a weekly (or even more frequent) basis, I’d be a very rich man. No surprise there. Trying to wrap your mind around the amount…