What happened to Kodak?

The main thing that killed Kodak was an inability and unwillingness [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/should-you-assume-that-your-current-business-is-dying/

So we were recently turned onto a Nest thermostat and their gorgeous website. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a new product by a collection of ex apple and google employees who together coalesce into a dream team of functionality and design experts.

Right off the bat this site strikes you as [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/why-we-love-the-nest-thermostat-website/ It is now 2012 and it seems that the marketing landscape has changed even faster than I could have ever predicted (and that’s pretty fast). We’ve been helping lots of our clients plan ahead so that they can effectively deal with this change and stay a step ahead of the competition. Here are a few [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/big-trends-for-marketing-success-in-2012-top-10-list/ Most websites get built by someone like me, they look great, and they make an impact for the first couple of months, then they never get updated again, visitors and search engines stop caring, it slowly dies and then again the company hires someone like me to rebuild the site and the cycle [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/10-things-you-can-and-should-be-doing-with-your-wordpress-website/ We all know Microsoft has become synonymous with reactionary, slow, and a general lack of innovation. I mean how long did it take them to get into the smart phone game? Even now they are playing catchup in most markets they compete in. Lately, it seems, Facebook has been taking pages out of the Microsoft [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/is-facebook-the-new-microsoft/

As a business student I’ve been in the process of being groomed to meet the demands of the business world for the last four years. Or at least so I thought. To their credit, my professors taught me a great deal about business theory, ethics, problem solving, and communication. I always thought I would [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/what-they-dont-tell-you-in-business-school/ I don’t lose a lot of clients. We’re extremely good at what we do and we take care of the people we work for. However, it is inevitable that if you stay in the game long enough you will lose a client or two along the way.

Most of the people we currently work with [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/attn-web-designers-what-are-the-rules-for-stealing-a-client/ It seems like lately I see more and more examples of business partnerships that end up with one party ripping off or screwing the other. This is probably because I recently read the Steve Jobs biography and everyone in the computer industry has traditionally copied Apple whenever they create new trends. Here are a few [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/can-you-ever-fully-trust-a-business-relationship/ Maybe I’m getting older. Maybe I’m getting smarter or more sophisticated. Maybe my tastes are just changing… But I used to really love the concept of Netbooks, and now they really seem pretty useless.

Back in December of 2009, I wrote a post titled, ‘Why I Love My Netbook’. I mentioned its compact size and [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/the-death-of-the-netbook/ It’s been several years now since I read Seth Godin’s “Unleashing the Idea Virus”, and for the most part it still holds true. But that’s not what I want to talk about today…

What I want to talk about is unleashing an Execution Virus. And the reason for this is that almost every idea has already [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/unleashing-the-execution-virus/

As you’re doing your holiday shopping this year be aware of the malicious and nefarious corporations that are out to steal directly from your wallet. I know that sounds dramatic, but its true. What businesses am I talking about specifically? Best Buy of course.

Coming home for Thanksgiving means upgrading my parents computer and [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/the-big-bad-best-buy/

I popped on to Google+ today to find a dialog box stating that gchat had been added to the service. My first reaction was that it was pretty cool. It instantly added the conversation I was having in Gmail to Google+, which is kind of convenient… Your conversations go with you [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/g-chat-now-available-in-google-is-this-a-good-move/ I’ve been seeing tons of “buy local” ads lately, and honestly it makes me a little worried about the future of small business in America.

The fact is… with today’s technology, almost ANY small retailer should be able to EASILY compete with the big box stores. The other fact is… a lot of small retailers [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/10-ways-small-retailers-can-compete-with-big-box-stores-without-resorting-to-buy-local-pr-campaigns/ If you’re monitoring your website analytics closely (and you should be), the chances are good that you will win search engine traffic for things that you didn’t intend… especially if you blog regularly.

For example, right now I’m getting a lot of traffic for the term merry christmas. I don’t really sell any merry christmas [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/is-there-such-a-thing-as-bad-or-useless-website-traffic/ This is a follow-up post to my ‘top 10 productivity apps’ post that I wrote a few weeks ago. These are my top 7 apps that my team uses every single day and we couldn’t live without.

I wouldn’t have a business without wordpress. World class CMS, thousands of amazing [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/top-7-marketing-apps-i-couldnt-live-without/ Starting a business, running a business, managing people… it’s no walk in the park. It takes a crazy kind of person to even start something in the first place, let alone endure those months where you have little to no income and what can seem like a mountain of problems and worry.

It seems to [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/the-tougher-it-gets-the-tougher-you-get/ A few weeks ago I realized I needed a serious break. My phone was giving me a notification every 15 minutes for one reason or another. Email was out of control, and it seemed some sort of media had infiltrated every crack of my existence.

So I decided to unplug….

I packed up my wife [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/notes-on-coming-unplugged/

Seriously, thank god for dropbox! In an era all about cloud computing it takes the crown as the most insightful, useful, and downright innovative solution on the market. As a person who is constantly strung between multiple computers its vital I have access to the documents I’m working on wherever I am and with [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/dropbox/ Ten years ago, I never would have had been able to start Tribeswell (at least not that easily). Between the cost of web hosting, development tools, and all the other software that a business needs to run smoothly, it could have easily cost $10,000+. Because of all the great cheap and free technology out there [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/10-business-productivity-apps-i-couldnt-live-without/ This morning I finished installing Apple’s iOS 5 on my iPhone4. One of the features I was most excited about was the new “Reader” feature in Safari.

Now whenever you go to a web page you can hit the “Reader” button and it shows you just the text and images from the page. It looks [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/new-safari-mobile-reader-feature-means-you-need-a-mobile-website/ Seth Godin had a great post today about how the important foundational activities of a process are often the most important. He used the example of beginning sushi chefs who work under a master making rice, because if you can’t make rice then basically the whole thing is screwed from the beginning. According to [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/marketing-the-important-things-are-always-the-hardest-and-the-most-expensive/ Can you imagine such a world?

Ads still provide value. If they didn’t, then people wouldn’t buy them. The thing is, we actually live in a world where you don’t NEED to buy ads any more. Sure you can buy them, and they will be effective, but today there are a lot of alternatives.

Enough is enough. It has been months now and Google+ is still not available for my Google apps email. What is the deal, Google?

I set up a Google+ profile a while ago with my personal Gmail account, but unfortunately I can’t have both open in the same browser. So to use [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/so-basically-i-rarely-use-google-gmail-vs-google-apps/ I was thinking about how products and services are marketed online and it seems to me that there are basically two kinds of products… products that can be marketed using pictures, and products that can be marketed using words. My advice… figure out which kind of product you sell and hire really good photographers or [...]]]> http://tribeswell.com/is-it-sold-using-pictures-or-is-it-sold-using-words/