Reviews Archives - Bluewire Media

Posted on Apr 20, 2018 by Adam Franklin

89 Web Tools for Everyday Business (p.s. most are free!)

While web marketing is often the first discussion we have with clients when it comes to web strategy, marketing is the thin edge of the wedge when it comes to creating value for businesses on the web. What about recruitment, customer service, communications, business intelligence, accounting, financial modelling, bookkeeping, note-taking? There are so many tools now available to make life easier and create much more value for businesses in all of these areas.

At Bluewire Media, we’ve moved towards web based products and the cloud. Why? For 3 reasons:

To build a “work from anywhere” philosophy (Google Apps and Skype means we’ll never again be stranded as we were with the Brisbane Floods last year, not to mention working from Brisbane, Sydney, Bali and San Francisco or indeed anywhere in the world)
To access information and expertise that is as current as possible (accounting with Saasu has live bank feeds for up to the minute cash flows)
To benefit from fantastic products that often require little or no training and are much cheaper than their traditional software counterparts (like 37signals’ CRM called Highrise and Basecamp, their project management system).

Posted on Nov 20, 2015 by Toby Jenkins

The Olympic story I reluctantly shared

I wanted to share a story that’s close to my heart.

You may know that I’m a water polo player and I went to the Athens Olympics in 2004 but it’s not something that I’ve written about much. Why? I’ve told myself over the years that it doesn’t always tie into web marketing and so I’ve avoided it. Also I’ve been afraid that it might be misconstrued as blowing my own trumpet so I’ve been reluctant to share my stories.

But when Kevin Kruse, a NYT best selling author, reached out to me in April to ask for my best time management/productivity tip as an Olympian and entrepreneur, I realised it was an incredible opportunity to share my experience.…

Posted on Jul 6, 2015 by Adam Franklin

Content Chemistry by Andy Crestodina [Book review]

Today I want to share with you my take on Andy Crestodina’s book ‘Content Chemistry’.

In this video I give a short and sweet summary on what Andy calls ‘Content Hubs‘ – your shortcut to page one of a Google search for some pretty competitive keyword phrases.

Here are the key takeouts from this book review;

You can get in on Kindle, but I highly recommend getting a hard copy so it can sit beside you at your desk.
It’s an illustrated guide to content marketing – there are lots of pictures, illustrations and graphics – making it super-easy to take in.

Posted on Sep 16, 2014 by Toby Jenkins

The New Rules of Sales And Service – David Meerman Scott [Book Review]

The New Rules of Sales and Service is David Meerman Scott’s 10th (!!) book and an important extension of his best seller The New Rules of Marketing and PR.

Adam and I have been big fans of David Meerman Scott’s work since The New Rules of Marketing and PR gave us the marketing language we desperately needed in 2007 and ultimately led to our collaboration on the Web Strategy Planning Template.

The New Rules of Sales and Service is going to help define the language we need to discuss the changes that we are seeing all around us in the world of sales and customer service.…

Posted on Apr 12, 2013 by Ann-Maree Lee

Neuroplasticity and the Digital Dinosaur

Good news – “Adult brains are plastic”. That doesn’t mean they’re cheap, we lose the lids and then throw them away. It means they aren’t rigid; the grey matter isn’t set in stone. There’s elasticity, movement and amazing possibilities for learning and rewiring.

The world we now live in – virtually

It’s more than a modern world. It’s a virtual world. It’s no longer about what we can see, touch, taste, hear and smell. The focus is on everything outside and beyond the tactile world.

For the Digital Dinosaurs it’s like living inside a gyroscope – with an overload of information flinging at us from every angle, simultaneously, with that data moving too fast to read the fine print and, even if it slowed down (and it won’t), the dinos would struggle to understand because half of it is a new vernacular and no one believes in writing stuff down anymore so you won’t find the terms in a dictionary until they’re outdated, and that still won’t help because everything will be misspelt.…

Posted on Feb 22, 2013 by Toby Jenkins

3 Lessons from Quiet – The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

Quiet - the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking book cover

Have you ever lingered in the bathroom at a social event to take a few extra minutes to re-gather yourself?

Have you ever found that working alone was much more productive?

Or, on the flip side, that working alone was much less productive?

I can definitely answer “Yes” to all three.

If you’re looking to understand why you answered these questions the way you did, then “Quiet – The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” might help.

I first saw Quiet’s author, Susan Cain, speak in Boston at Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing conference.…

Posted on Jan 29, 2013 by Adam Franklin

Your website is your best business investment – Bob Bloom

Buyers no longer care who they buy from. And customer loyalty is dead. So true. So confronting! Bob Bloom’s book The New Experts reminds us that marketing has changed forever and takes us on the journey of understanding how today’s buyers make their decisions. The solution? Get a good website. And turn off your Seller Mind and turn on your Buyer Mind. It’s simple but surprisingly difficult.

The 4 Decisive Moments you must address are:

1. Now-or Never Moment (your first fleeting contact, usually via the web) 2.…

Posted on Jan 28, 2013 by Adam Franklin

Fire Your Sales Team Today. Yes, really!

Fire Your Sales Team Today is a very provocative title for a book. But the sub-title …Then Rehire Them Again As Sales Guides In Your New Revenue Department brings the idea full circle.

Mike Lieberman and Eric Keiles highlight how much the Internet has transformed the Sales Process and how business owners need a revised approach. In this books, the authors have built upon their first book Reality Marketing Revolution.

Why Fire Your Sales Team?

Sales is no longer a separate function to Marketing. Since the emergence of the Internet, the power now resides with the buyer because they have all the knowledge they need BEFORE they even contact your company.…

Posted on Aug 23, 2012 by Lesley Hays

Three checks for moving beyond the checklist

Anyone who’s worked with me should know how much I love a good system, so I was just a little bit excited when Angela handed me a copy of The Checklist Manefesto by Atul Gawande. She reviewed this insightful book on this blog back in April, covering its vital message that checklists should only include the most important and often-missed points in a process.

But this book goes even further in discussing the system around the checklist: how to make sure it gets used and how it handles unexpected situations.…

Posted on Aug 21, 2012 by Toby Jenkins

You’ll Never Silence The Voice of the Voiceless – The impact of media regulations in Australia on Blogging Sites

You’ll never silence the voice of the voiceless.

“Voice of the Voiceless” – Rage Against The Machine – Battle of Los Angeles, Oct 1999

When I was asked to give a presentation entitled “You’ll never silence the blog – the impact of media regulations on blogging sites” (slides) at the Inaugural Media Regulations Forum in Sydney, I immediately thought of the Rage Against The Machine lyrics.

The agenda was put together on the back of the proposed media regulation changes detailed in the Finkelstein Report [PDF] which meant that blogs would fall under the jurisdiction of a government oversight body if they exceeded 15,000 “hits” per year.…

Here are the key takeouts from this book review;

The world we now live in – virtually

The 4 Decisive Moments you must address are:

Why Fire Your Sales Team?

How to find remarkable content

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