The importance of a web division in a company

Since 2007 when Jeffrey Zeldman blogged about “Let there be web divisions“, I have yet to see many companies having a web division today.  It is still  either falling under marketing department or IT department.  In fact, web belongs to neither of them. Who should be in charge of the web? Both marketing department and IT [...]

Pareto 80/20 rule may no longer apply in sales and marketing today

When I was doing sales as well as my own businesses, I was taught by my mentors that I should focus on the 20% of my customers who are the best customers, and refer away 80% of my customers to other people who are wasting too much of my time.  This used to be a [...]

It may take a while for companies to change their focus to relationship building

For many years, people have been working professionally.  They are here to sell their products and services.  They are investing in something, and they are expecting a return out of it.  This is what they called “Return-on-Investment”.  But they are missing out something over here. Yesterday, our salespeople had trained us to be aware of [...]

Our iconic bookstore – Borders – is closing down at Wheelock Place

Initially, when I was listening to the news that Borders has closed down in other countries, the very first thing in my mind is whether our iconic bookstore at Wheelock Place is going to close down too.  It turned out to be true that Borders is closing down its flagship store at Wheelock Place. I [...]

I am now in the process of revamping my blog

Apologize if you are surfing the site while I am revamping my blog. I have just removed all the files in this blog, while retaining the contents that I have blogged since June 2007.  Now, I felt that it is a fresh new start for Charles Lau dot Com again.  I am using Genesis framework [...]

Revamping my sites for my personal brand

This recently, I have been looking through my domain names and projects that I have with my team.  There are a couple of things that I need to re-organize, and I have to get them out as soon as possible.  Even for this blog, I have been thinking if I should remove all my contents [...]

Charles is a change agent.

I simply love the Internet. As I keep striving to be better than yesterday, I have seen a couple of resistance due to the usual unspoken rules.  Nevertheless, I am here to change the situation and to make a better place for everybody.  It is a known fact that social media is here to stay, [...]

Catching up with the social media

While working on my full time job as a senior e-marketing executive, I have the opportunity to catch up with my social media endeavors.  It has led me to discover even more things for my colleagues to explore while they can focus on the more important things. I started writing a weekly update to my [...]

Are you still hiding behind your brand in the social media?

It is becoming obvious that you are all just human beings.  You are the ones who stand behind your brands, talking to us.  Your brands may have been talking to us through the various medias for many years.  In our mind, your brands are so perfect that it is not very humane. Since the birth [...]

You have no time to prepare ahead. You have to do it now. Real time.

For any events out there, or any newspaper/magazine printing, or any television commercial.  They tend to have a lead time to prepare everything properly before they are being made live.  Because of the nature that they are in, they have to be scheduled accordingly. The Internet waits for no one.  You either tell us right [...]