Links for December 25 2011

• Technology Merely Facilitates by Jim Shamlin on Jim’s Notebook

  Quote: If you give an illiterate a typewriter, he can’t write a novel. He can’t write a sentence, and if he manages to bang out a string of characters that happen to spell out a word, it’s by random chance. If you set up a Facebook page for a socially inept brand, it doesn’t become develop and maintain positive relationships. If it happens to gain even one additional sale, it’s by random chance.

• The Five Marketing Lessons That Took Me a Long Time to Learn by Neil Patel on SEOmoz

  Quote: Good marketing means you look at what your competitor is doing, especially if he is the market leader, but you also look around them…you look for the opportunity that others are ignoring and, if it is there, taking advantage of it without having to take on the big guys.

• The IT department isn’t killing you – you are by Ian Lurie on Conversation Marketing

  Quote: Change your IT team’s priorities. Make them responsible for business goals, instead of glorified network janitors. Then team them up with marketing and turn them loose.

• When is a Failed Concept a Success? by Jeff Cornwall on The Entrepreneurial Mind

  Quote: The end of this story is that while her initial idea did not work out, the process helped her discover several new ideas and gave her the opportunity to make several new connections with people to add to her network.  She learned the lesson that while her idea may have failed, she was successful.