25 years of resources for lifelong creatives and independent publishers.
It was an honor to be back on  Media & the Machine , which has grown to be an un-skippable podcast — usually with guests who are much smarter than me. Check it out over on LinkedIn too. Rob Kelly puts a lot of work into these episodes –
Have you ever been mysteriously unsubscribed from an email newsletter?  It happens to me all the time. But I expect it. In fact, it’s how I can tell which “experts” are really beginners. I subscribe to a lot of newsletters and I use RSS to
Over in the  VIP Lounge , I published a small ebook of readers’ favorite quotes from 20+ years of publishing.  I started it last month because I thought it would be the easiest project ever — a nice extra for paid members, filtering my collection of ~2,000
A new algo dropped from Google and it appears to have the world of SEO in a tizzy. So what? If you’re like me, you’ve learned to recoil at the thought of playing by the rules of someone else’s game instead of serving your
AI’s weakness lies in technology that predates the web. AI is now  the single most-cited reason  for job cuts in the U.S.  CFOs expect  AI-driven cuts to be 9x higher this year, with 44% of all CFOs saying they’re
If you ever needed an example of the increasing importance of personal brands in the AI era, I’ve got a whopper.  Over the past few months, I’ve noticed something that construction professionals and jewelry makers on Etsy have in common: they’re always looking
Rob Kelly was nice enough to have me on his new podcast, Media and the Machine . Unlike most of the podcasts I’ve been on recently, this one goes deep into my actual job: content strategy for tech companies. Here’s a summary of what’s covered:
Tis the season for overwhelm.  Often, in times like these and when being pushed to their limits, creatives will seek help and hear this age-old advice about when to adjust their processes, “Fix your roof when it’s sunny.” This is not helpful. Here’
It’s Door Henge: For one week a year, the light hits the trees just right above my office. Then, poof, gone. Welcome to winter! I updated my principles for creating with AI to find out if anything’s changed since I wrote it in 2023. I got
Back in April 2023, I posted a list of principles for creating with AI , attempting to separate fact from fiction and find some universal truths about working with AI. How did it hold up?  For the most part, I think it stood up well. But there’s one
Let’s close out summer on a high note — a business doing it right. My wife signed us up for this summer camp-themed dinner at a local restaurant. We were greeted with Old Fashioneds, served with the chefs’ high-end interpretation of camp food, and read
NP Digital asked 200 companies about their employees’ personal brands. If you’re guessing that most companies said, “Huh? what?” you’re probably right. Over 80% of the companies didn’t support their employees’ personal brands. Only 18 of the companies reported that
The best things in life don’t scale. I wrote this past week about how the same is true in marketing . I’ve come up with a list of examples since writing that post, but I’d love to hear yours. Feel free to respond and I&
I get questions from marketers all the time about what to do as more and more of their work is eaten by AI. They see their clients happy with AI content, even if conversion rates and sales go way down. Why? The amount of cost-cutting involved is so massive,