Boost Your Site's Productivity with 3 Easy Updates

Thursday 4 Mar 2010 by Jesse | No Comments
Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Small Business Tags: , ,

I realized the other day that I've now spent over ten years working with small business web sites. Has the internet even been around 10 years?! Was it really 13 years ago that I was ducking class and hiding in the school's computer lab so I could "email" the fellow geek sitting at the computer next to me? (Apparently yes, it has been over ten years.)

Over the last decade, I've built, rebuilt, optimized, launched, tracked, and torn down some pretty great (and pretty bad) sites. And I've learned a thing or two about how to... 
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The Slow Marketing Movement: A Social Media Presentation

Monday 1 Mar 2010 by Jesse | No Comments
Filed under: Book Publishing, Marketing, Presentations, Social Media Tags: , ,

Last week, Kat Meyer and I had the privilege and opportunity to lead a workshop at O'Reilly Media's Tools of Change Conference in Times Square. Kat titled it wonderfully: The Slow Marketing Movement: A Social Media Workshop for the Bookish.

The benefits for book publishers and other companies that participate in the world of social media are well known at this point: community, word-of-mouth promotion, instant market research, etc. So we didn't want to simply rehash the tired "Pie in the Sky"... 
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Follow the Reader: A Twitter Interview

Monday 15 Feb 2010 by Jesse | No Comments
Filed under: Book Publishing, Social Media Tags: , , ,

For all the time I've spent on Twitter, I had never done a Twitter interview until Friday when I participated in Charlotte Abbott's & Kat Meyer's Follow the Reader weekly #followreader chat. Every week these two book mavens ask other industry folks to sign on to Twitter and drink from a fire hose of 140-character questions. It was a thrilling experience and, despite the furious pace, amazingly info-rich.

Here's my quick summary breakdown.

The pace: furious.
The line of questioning: non-linear.
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Cory Doctorow and the Corporate Destruction of Books

Thursday 31 Dec 2009 by Jesse | No Comments
Filed under: Book Publishing Tags: , , ,

A tall, well-armed Scotsman once told me that people with Scottish blood in their veins only feel two emotions, "Weepin' and Anger." I see evidence of this all throughout my family. I am part of a hot-blooded and emotional tribe, and therefore I am prone to hyperbole—both dishing it out (OMG! These pizza Hot Pockets are the best thing ever!) and being taken in by it (Plaid pajamas are the cruelest injustice of our time!). My reaction to such statements is usually to grab my broadsword, paint my face, and charge off to slay all the plaid pajamas in the land...until, of course, it's time for Hot Pockets.

I tell... 
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Apple's iSlate: The Kindle Killer

Wednesday 30 Dec 2009 by Jesse | 5 Comments
Filed under: Book Publishing Tags: , , , ,

When it comes to the launch of new and exciting techno-gadgets, I—and perhaps, we all—have been spoiled by Apple. Yes, they've gotten it wrong on occasion, but so often, they get it so right. They've repeatedly raised the bar, and our expectations. Perhaps that's why, when I first saw the unauthorized, leaked images of Amazon's first Kindle on the web all those years ago, I thought surely they... 
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The Official Pronunciation of "Scribd"

Monday 14 Dec 2009 by Jesse | No Comments
Filed under: Social Media Tags:

Scribd provides an awesome service for sharing and displaying documents. They've been hailed as the "YouTube of Documents." And, for the sake of the good folks who run Scribd, I hope that's right. I often speak with folks in the publishing industry about Scribd, and the conversation usually begin something like this:

"Have you heard of 'Scriiiibed' or 'Scrib-dee' or however they pronounce that...?"

I tell them that yes, I had and that I had not a clue how to pronounce it either. We end up settling on a workable pronunciation and continue our discussion of how the service can be of use to... 
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Ten Tweetable Twitter Tips for Book Publishers

Sunday 13 Dec 2009 by Jesse | No Comments
Filed under: Book Publishing, Marketing, Social Media Tags: , , ,

Book Business Magazine recently asked me if I would provide them with a few Twitter tips for book publishers. I was flattered, of course, and happily obliged. I put together the first five tips in the following list for them—which... 
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Jeff Rutherford's Book Marketing Podcast: The Value in Social Media

Saturday 14 Nov 2009 by Jesse | No Comments
Filed under: Book Publishing, Marketing Tags: , ,

Jeff Rutherford, from the popular Reading And Writing Podcast, has launched a new podcast series dedicated to book marketing. He was kind enough to invite me to speak with him in his second show. We spoke about the current and future role of social media in book marketing, some specific examples of strategies that work, and some places where there's room for growth.

Here's an excerpt:

JR: In what you're seeing—not only with what you've been doing personally—but also... 
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Three Reasons Book Publishers are Perfect for Social Media

Saturday 7 Nov 2009 by Jesse | No Comments
Filed under: Book Publishing, Marketing, Social Media Tags: , ,

Yes. I admit that I may be biased. My life-long interest in book publishing, my background in the industry, and my general love for books, may make me an unsuitable person to declare a particular industry most-suited to participate in the world of social media. I'll make my quick points and leave it up to you to determine whether or not I'm out of my gourd.

And so I humbly present the following list:

Jesse (WHIZZ BANG) McDougall's Three ¡Wicked! Reasons Why ***Book Publishers*** are the... 
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Your Web Site: The Essential Hub of Your Social Media Strategy

Thursday 5 Nov 2009 by Jesse | No Comments
Filed under: Marketing, Social Media Tags: , ,

The world is all a-buzz right now (at least my corner of the world) about social media marketing and how to make Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or LinkedIn or Digg or Bloopt work for your business. I happen to think that these services—except for Bloopt, which I just made up—CAN work for businesses in a variety of valuable ways: community building, market research, word-of-mouth marketing, and so on. Much of the peripheral benefits have been, or will be, covered here elsewhere, so I won't go into those now. In this article, I'd like to address the most important part of any company's social media strategy: the company's... 
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