A Marketing Career

Years ago I wanted to get into “Sales and Marketing” primarily because I felt that the opportunities to earn what you truly deserve are more prevalent in sales positions than in traditional corporate management positions. Plus, sales is very optimistic, upbeat, forward thinking and you when you make a sale it is reason to celebrate your accomplishment. In corporate management, it is a lot of negativity, screwing people over and self serving. The only real reason a CEO has to celebrate is receipt of a fat bonus check earned off the sweat and sacrifice of all the worker bees.

In the early days when i was exploring the sales and marketing route, I asked a lot of my contemporaries, including other successful sale people and vendors, “What is the difference between “sales” and “marketing”? None of them gave me a good answer. It was only on my own exploration of the sales process and corporate structures that I discovered and embraced marketing. Over the years I’ve mastered quite a bit of the marketing principles and techniques in a variety of corporate settings. Now I am ready to step into the new millenium and learn more about internet marketing and search engine optimization.

Obviously I will make use of the internet for a lot of this effort. I have found some good articles about search engine optimization and internet marketing. One interesting aspect of the new marketing is that most of the traditional marketing logic does not apply. You have to shift mental gears into “geek think” instead of what works in the real world, because often they are very different and mistakes on your website can prove very costly and difficult to correct or overcome.

Technology for Technology

When the chemists or scientists invented the clear plastic film to protect the military’s helicopter blades, I’m sure they had no idea that there would be a new commercial use for the product. As it turns out, this particular film is ideal for covering handheld electronic devices like my new iPhone. The film is clear, scratch proof, flexible, and practically indestructible. This film covers the whole iPhone to protect it from getting scratched, dirty, or even dropped, as the film has a grippy feel that makes the iPhone less likely to slip out of your hand.

FB at Work?

A survey by Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project was released todaythat measured the attitudes by Americans toward using Facebook at work.

The responses indicated that 56 percent say “it is irresponsible” to be friends with a boss.

On the other hand, 62 percent said it is wrong to be friends with an employee.

Among workplace peers, 76 percent claimed it is acceptable to be Facebook friends with a coworker.

And with a rising practice in the Human Resources departments, Americans are almost evenly split on whether companies should review a job candidate’s Facebook or MySpace personal profile. From those surveyed, 52 percent said it is appropriate for the HR people and 48 percent said it is unacceptable.

Peek at Tomorrow’s Cell Phone

Some of the new things coming out later this year for cell phones doesn’t have so much to do with service or features but it will be the packaging.

That goes with the old merchant’s rule of thumb: if you can’t offer a new product, change the packaging.

The current models are coming out in new colors. Someone had the bright idea that women must love the color pink, so they came out with a pink phone case.

What will be coming out later include textured cases and other packaging “improvements.”

Blogs Junkie

Each morning I try to read the online versions versions of 3-4 newspapers and then I try to reach 5-6 blogs of people or groups that I like. My very first exposure to a blog was just a couple of years ago when I accidentally came across a dot com that was a blog and I read it out of curiosity. I was hooked immediately.

When I decided to write my own blog I looked into the various formats and decided on using WordPress. It is easy to learn and use, and it is free to download and install. If you are looking for help with blogs, start with WordPress.