Ralph Crosby, founder and CEO of one of the nation's leading marketing communications firms, has written a new book; It's The Customer, Stupid! Lessons Learned in a Lifetime of Marketing. Â In it, Crosby says that any organization's success starts and ends with the customer, not with its products or services. Â Using examples and stories of both marketing success and failure, It's The Customer ...

11:21 a.m. -- Encore! "I think we're finished," Martin says. "Is Steve around to tell me what to do?" The audience asks for an encore. "I'm afraid I've played all the hits," he said. "Now we'll do the misses." He makes some good jokes about a song with new chords "that even our closest rivals don't know anything about." "It's called i Minor," he says. 11:10 a.m. - Wrapping it up with Coldplay ...

Before you get into the nitty-gritty of how to use a tool, you need to pick the right suite of tools. Even more important, the question you have to answer isn't just "which tool?" but "which tool when?" ...

Need help deciding where to invest your limited time in social media? Use these tips on how and where to create online conversations about your SMB. ...

You can't manage what you don't measure. When it comes to building a sustainable link building process, measurement is everything. ...

A few tips and guidelines that will help you in your search for a quality search engine optimization partner. Also, five warning signs of bad SEOs. ...

From the Dining@Large blog:

Real-time search has introduced new experiences to standard search. Are these new result types causing a shift in user behavior? This Explido/Search Engine Watch eye-tracking study analyzes the SERPs and search engines by the numbers. ...

Catch up on the latest: Google Reports, Google Campaign Experiments, and Facebook's "Broad Match Targeting." ...

I try to blog on the widest possible range of subjects within the technology and politics of renewables.

Social networks are breaking new ground in marketing & targeted advertising every day, as vast numbers of people share information and express pre ...

These seven common types of prospect keywords will expand how you think about link prospecting and help you become a smarter, more strategically agile link builder. ...

KNOXVILLE -- Atlanta-based Half Off Depot has tapped a Knoxville marketing firm to help the company as it moves forward with rapid expansion plans.

Ben Fritz covers the business of show business for the Los Angeles Times and the Company Town blog and is a familiar byline here at the Hero Complex. Today he looks at the weekend fizzle of "Scott Pilgrim vs. the...

Looking for investment ideas? In this corner: Founded in 1902 and relocated to Duluth, Minnesota, in 1905, this was an unsuccessful mining company at first, but found early wins in areas like the first waterproof sandpaper and a little invention called masking tape. Now the legendary producer of products like Scotch Transparent Duct Tape, the company [...]

In the U.S., real estate search sites like Zillow have attracted huge enormous user bases and record venture capital funding rounds. This was an idea whose time had come, given the widespread consumer distaste with having real estate sales information controlled by the Multiple Listings Service. A far cry from the Internet’s open ethos. Not quite [...]

On a recent trip to Italy, I was struck by the pricing gap between “insider deals” you might get if you were a local, and the prices paid by harried newbies who just got off the plane. It’s price discrimination against the “rich,” or anyone who is new to the scene. It extends to everything from real [...]