Hippo Blog

By the time you finish reading this sentence, Google will have conducted more than 85,000 searches. And by the time you finish reading this one, there will be an additional 70,000 more. From old ladies looking up cross-stitching patterns to young men...

Ready for the most obvious statement of the day? OK, here it is: Unless you run a factory where you make nothing but hugs and sunshine, you’re in business to make money. Everything else you do is a matter of maximizing your cash intake. Plain a...

As I look up from my computer and glance around the office, I notice that about half the office has their headphones on or earbuds in while they’re plugging away at designing, coding or writing. And, assuredly, everyone’s listening to music and w...

What was life like before the printing press? Pretty lame. Let’s say you lost your pet cat in 14th century Europe and wanted to make some flyers to help people find it. You had to hand-write your message down hundreds of times. By the 50th flye...

“Micro,” in the most clinical of definitions, means one-one-millionth of something. But in the most practical, it just means “small.” But small doesn’t mean “unimportant” or “bad.” A beer from a m...

Everyone has a few heroes in their life. As of recently, anyone who creates Creative Commons artwork has become a hero in my book. Seriously, they’re heroes. All of them. While everyone can take a picture and upload it to Flickr, it takes a sp...

Email was the Wild West before 2003. Tumbleweeds, saloons, gunfights – the whole shebang. Companies could send as much email as they wanted, whenever they wanted and to whomever they pleased. Might made right in pretty much every case, and the lit...

Ah, fall. The leaves are changing, the air is cold and crisp and Christmas decorations are prematurely set out at Younkers. It’s also the time for playoff baseball, when Chicago and Milwaukee fans’ hopes are dashed for yet another year,...

If you’ve never seen the movie Rocky, I suggest you take some time to check it out. Aside from being a great film, there’s a great lesson for marketers buried deep inside – waiting for just the right time to strike can cost you dearly. In the ...

Last week, six members of Flying Hippo took a trip to Boston for Inbound 2014, one of the largest content marketing conferences in the world, drawing thousands of marketing and sales professionals from almost every industry imaginable and from all ...

Police officers have a fascinating way of talking to the public. You might notice this on TV news. For instance: Let’s say two people were fighting on a street corner one night and peeled off in their cars when the cops came. If the story en...

On the way home the other day, I heard a great story on the radio about mise-en-place, a French phrase that means, literally, “put in place.” It’s a chef’s regimen of making the ingredients and tools needed for cooking availa...