Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 109

EXCLUSIVE: The True Story Of The Making Of Likeonomics

This is an exclusive presentation I just launched which will take you behind the scenes of my new book, give you a sneak peek at the new website which I'll be launching on Monday, and details on how to download your FREE EXCERPT from the book. Check it out:

The Making of Likeonomics - How To Sell And Write A Book

View more presentations from Rohit Bhargava

How Case Studies Can Set You Up To Fail

My life would be a lot easier if I loved case studies. After all, they are all around me. In our agency, we produce case studies for our most successful work. Clients share case studies of previous work or industry standards with us all the time. In the educational world case studies are plentiful, and the majority of "practical" marketing and business courses are built entirely on using them to teach principles. So why don't I love them like so many of my peers do?

It's not that I don't...

How Whiskey Inspired The Making Of Likeonomics

The "fourth best island in the world" (according to National Geographic) isn't warm and rarely sunny. Yet the Isle of Skye is a celebrated part of Scotland and a popular tourist destination. If you ever happen to find yourself traveling there, one of the most popular places on the island is a unique distillery that produces some of the world's finest whiskey: the Talisker Whiskey Distillery. 

Though it has been more than a decade since I first visited there, I can still remember the tour...

5 Insights From The 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report

Earlier this morning the team at SocialMediaExaminer.com released their annual report on the state of Social Media Marketing. Based on the responses of over 3800 surveyed marketers, the report offers an interesting look at how businesses are using social media to grow and promote their businesses. As with any surveys of this type, you have to remember that the people who responded are already a self selected audience of business owners who care about social media.  So it's not surprising...

The Upside of Being Ordinary And Obvious

How much time do you spend trying to be ordinary or obvious? Probably not a lot. In fact, most marketing people actively avoid talking about the ordinary or obvious qualities of their business. Instead we spend days in creative brainstorms trying to create new messages find that brilliant unique thing that no one else has. We want to use new and sexy social media tools and find a winning creative idea that will get everyone's attention. And we forget the ordinary and obvious stuff.  

But...

5 Things Deepak Chopra Can Teach You About Leadership & Marketing

The last thing I expected to do as I headed down to Austin last week for the SXSW Interactive Festival was to see a film. As a marketer, the fact that SXSW is actually a huge Film and Music festival is a point that I have often easily forgotten. Amongst the sea of startups promoting everything from "social weather" apps (that let you share your mood when it rains), to new indestructible iPhone cases - it is easy to get lost in the hype.

But on Sunday morning at SXSW, I made my way out to the...

How United Could Have Avoided Frustrating Staff And Alienating Customers

This might surprise you, but Zappos doesn't offer standard overnight shipping. But for years customers of the site have been getting overnight shipping even though they didn't ask for or even pay extra for it. The reasoning is simple, if your customers have lower expectations - it is easy to consistently exceed them. We feel delight at getting the product overnight because it is faster than we thought it would be. 

This simple behavioral insight is something that most companies have done a...

How To Find The Perfect Diagram For Your Presentation

My life would be a lot easier if I could give the same talk to everyone. I would just show up at an event or a client site, or get onto my webcam, and say the exact same thing to everyone. But I know I'll never do that. One of the main reasons is because I obsess over any presentation I work on. I spend hours thinking about the flow. I have a personal library of hundreds of images purchased from various places like iStockPhoto. Anytime I find an interesting marketing idea or website, I take...

A Marketing Lesson From The Most Depressing Magazine Ever

I'm not really sure when I started getting Reader's Digest delivered to my home, or even if I subscribed to it. I am a sucker for magazines and always have been. So chances are I subscribed thanks to some sort of Grouponesque deal that I found online. Call it a marketing weakness, but if I get a magazine in the mail I can't help opening it. I always flip through - and I look mainly at the advertising.

The problem when I did that looking through Reader's Digest is that I started to get...

50 SXSW 2012 Panels Worth Getting Excited About

Here's a sad fact about SXSW - at any given time there are at least 16 other talks, events or meetups that you could be attending besides the one that you do make it to.  That's assuming you even make it to any events at all.  But whether you are ambitiously aiming to make it to a long list of events, or not going to SXSW at all ... the fact is that the range of talks offers a really interesting spotlight into trends and insights for anyone working in a digital or business role today. 

Some...