Ann Handley

Ann Handley is one of the most respected voices in marketing and the world’s first Chief Content Officer. She’s a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of three books, keynote speaker, and entrepreneur who has built two multimillion-dollar companies.

She’s a partner at MarketingProfs, a LinkedIn Influencer with 496K followers, and the author of a popular fortnightly newsletter with 51K subscribers. With more than 1 million social followers, Ann was named by IBM as one of seven people shaping the future of marketing.

Ann lives in Boston, loves dogs, and collects vintage typewriters. Her fourth book will be published in 2027.

4 x 4 Secrets About Me, And Why I’m Uncomfortable Talking About Myself

Over the weekend, my friends Peter Kim and BL Ochman independently tagged me “It” in two blog games (called memes). The object of each is for the tagged writer to reveal personal bits about themselves that you wouldn’t know otherwise, and then to tag other blog authors to similarly spill their guts. BL (who had been tagged by Toby Bloomberg) asked for “8 secrets,” and Peter (himself tagged by Shiv Singh) asked for four details about four topics of esoteric “things about me”; Peter called it a 4 x 4, which I kind of liked. Truth is, I’ve been tagged lots of times in the past. But I’ve rarely played along, in part because I didn’t have the right forum: I feel a little weird talking about myself on the MarketingProfs group blog. Or so I thought. Now that I have my own blog here, I’m surprisingly just as uncomfortable.

4 x 4 Secrets About Me, And Why I’m Uncomfortable Talking About Myself Read More »

Alpha Females

Two or three years ago, I found myself on a list of people who take turns cooking in a soup kitchen. And so, every few months, I do. I can’t say I particularly look forward to it. But to beg off the list at this point would require a phone call to the organizer. I imagine the hypothetical exit interview: “So in what other ways do you help the homeless?” And then I imagine my lame stammer—so, when my number comes up, I again show up at the shelter. As much as my turn behind the stove never seems to come at a good time, once I’m there, with my hands as two of the several helping to knead 30 pounds of ground beef into 10 meatloaves, it’s not so bad. Actually, it’s pretty gratifying, and it makes me appreciate the basic necessities that I and those around me take

Alpha Females Read More »

A Virgin in Hollister

Being a parent for the better part of two decades, I’ve gotten used to accepting the fact that my kids are attracted to things that I don’t like. When my son Evan was about four, he was shopping with me in a second-hand children’s shop. Rummaging in the forgotten bits at the bottom of one of those boxes of toys that shopkeepers sometimes keep in the corner to keep kids occupied, he eventually unearthed a shopworn plastic figurine of Hulk Hogan. It wasn’t for sale, but we bought it anyway, and the minuscule Hogan, which innocent Evan sweetly named Kimby, instigated a love of larger-than-life heroes, rangers and comic book characters that has stayed with him in various expressions, even now, as he enters the downside of his teen years. In other words, no matter how much I advocated early on for Pooh Bear, he had his own ideas. The

A Virgin in Hollister Read More »