A friend sent me this picture from the park Manitou Springs, Colorado. It proves that even municipalities can have a sense of humor in getting their message across. Does this help keep the park clean? I have no idea, but I would expect so. If nothing else, it makes the message more memorable, and memorable helps create action.

Editor's Note:  The post below is from our summer intern, Anna, and highlights a view of the "real" from a full time college student and digital native.

As someone who grew up with technology basically being more of a right than a privilege I have found myself not only surrounded with wants for the newest gadget but a reliance on it. For our world has gone automatic, cutting edge, we use these gadgets to make our lives easier, we hardly ever consider the old way because it’s too time consuming or it simply takes too much effort.

Last week I was put in charge of doing biographies for a client’s web page. It was a simple enough task with simple enough questions to ask. It shouldn’t have been a problem at all. But I found myself faced with one. With technology at my disposal I chose not to go through the painstaking process of scribing the interviews and opted to simply record them on my iPhone.

Over the past 2 weeks I have inundated with information about how much the world has changed in the past 30 years. From trying to explain to young staff about the emergence business software needed to track and maintain inventory for manufacturers and distributors, to a great presentation by Scott Brinker discussion the almost impossible progression of marketing technology, to National Geographic’s series on the 80’s. Wow, I can’t believe I have lived through all of this and still have a mind to think!

The marketing guru’s have been writing about marketing automation and technology changing the average marketers life for several years now, but it was never as clear to me as it is now. Most growing businesses are trying hard to take advantage of the changes, but it is really to keep up. Even the guru’s find it hard!

When you run a small business, you need partners you can count on. That means customers that you can trust and who trust you. It requires employees that are pulling in the same direction. And it means vendors that you are truly jazzed to represent.

At Leading Results, I’ve gotta say, we do love our primary vendors – we have only two – but we are passionate supporters of them, because they are there for us and help us to be our best.

Once in a while I see a blog from someone who I like and respect, but that is SO TOTALLY WRONG, that I have to comment on it. This is one of those posts.

Scott Yates – an entrepreneur and writer I respect – recently posted on the Marketo blog this post on Amy Adams and why you must post blog articles that you may hate.

Scott summarizes his point this way “… the short version of how this relates to content marketing is simply this: You can't treat your business blog like a movie. It's fine to like or dislike an actress. What's not fine is to treat your business blog like a movie. The question isn't if you like it. Rather, the question is if the blog is helping you meet your business goals.

Similar to:  “I need to reach too many different types of people for buyer personas to work” or “Let’s fix my buyer personas after I get this (fill in the blank) marketing activity done.”

Your message or offer has to have a clearly identified target in order for your marketing to be effective. Or said differently, “anyone” or “everyone” automatically qualifies as “no target” and hence, attracts nobody.

You have this great client or customer. They would make a fabulous case study and they have already given you a nice short testimonial quote. They love you and your product or service. They compliment you all the time. And you can never get to write anything down, or even to give you time to work with them to develop the case study story. Because they are too busy.

March Madness has become a US cultural phenomenon for groups of (mostly) men in office pools around the country. Sometimes the outcomes are predictable, but in the NCAA tournament, nothing is ever 100% certain. Just like most marketing tactics.

Quick story for today’s post. I have had the privilege of being a guest or part time mentor for a entrepreneur incubator for the last couple of years. Every few months I get the opportunity to interface with some incredibly bright, creative and energetic folks launching the next great thing. Sometimes in tech, sometime in retail, sometimes in education. You never know what will come next.

One of the things I have noticed in all the one-on-one conversations I have with these teams is their need for information, and their failure to see one of the best sources of it, right in their grasp. It’s their customers!