A client recently gave me a call about a pitch he received from a “business consulting group that was incorporating AI into a free analysis about the business.” Which, in practice, essentially means copy and pasting several paragraphs from a company’s website, plugging it into ChatGPT or Gemini, and generating the subsequent report. Some of … [Read more…]
I’ve become something of a point person for a lot of my clients when they’re pitched by various software vendors, point-of-sale systems, customer relationship management companies, and various companies that primarily sell to small businesses. It’s something I’m happy to do, especially since a lot of my clients tend to be very busy and appreciate … [Read more…]
This week I had the pleasure of onboarding a new local client who, despite having separated from their high-end digital marketing agency, were reasonably pleased at the work the agency had done despite the disagreements they had that lead to the split. The client eagerly showed me their blog, which was full of months of … [Read more…]
“Why does Google search suck so much these days?” This is a far from uncommon sentiment if you’ve ever asked it. Despite the value Google has and the near undisputed monopoly Google has on the search market, it’s become a war zone. It’s become a massive flood of AI-generated slop, affiliate spam, copy-pasted trend chasing articles … [Read more…]
Oh, Google. I had an article planned for a different topic, but that was before Google decided to do possibly the most Google thing imaginable – right on the heels of me criticizing their frustrating automated systems. A few people alerted me to a very strange issue – on February 8 (and likely even before … [Read more…]
I have 180 incredible small business and nonprofit clients as of this writing. When you have as many clients as I do, and you’ve been doing this as long as I have, see things. More importantly, you see recurring things. One thing in particular I’ve noticed lately is a very strange proliferation of what I can … [Read more…]
Why did you sign up for Facebook, or Instagram, or if you’re cool enough, perhaps even TikTok? It seems like a very straightforward question. Social media is designed for people to connect with one another. This is something that I think should be obvious to everyone regardless of your standpoint: User, creator, business owner, marketer, … [Read more…]