In addition to writing about the bleeding edge of web technology, I also do some consulting for companies large and small. Consulting clients can purchase engagements in blocks by the hour and I often work with people for just one hour at a time. To inquire about my availability please send me an email at marshall@marshallk.com.

Here’s a description of the services I offer, along with some additional related resources. See also this FAQ about my consulting services.

Product Development Advising

My favorite thing to do with clients is to spend time looking at the websites, services and software they are building and offer advice about how that work could be improved. Our time together will begin with you showing me what you’re doing and telling me about your goals. I’ll take notes while you talk and then we’ll spend the rest of our time discussing ways I think your work could be more effective, examples of other companies I’ve seen succeed in similar work, and people and companies you should make sure to connect with or pay attention to. You’ll leave our session filled with links, ideas and excitement. These are fast paced sessions informed by my experience reviewing thousands of web apps over the last several years and consulting with scores of companies building apps.

Launch Planning

I’ve been on both sides of a lot of product launches, as a journalist being pitched for coverage and as a consultant preparing companies to seek out coverage. It can be simple, but it can be very complicated as well. I help clients identify the best bloggers for them to reach out to, prepare press materials, communicate strategically and then run a press embargo for maximum coverage. Every good launch strategy includes steps to maximize publicity impact not just for launch day but into the future as well. I don’t represent companies like a PR agent, I don’t contact bloggers or press myself at all and I don’t write about anyone I consult with on ReadWriteWeb.  I help clients develop the skills to stand tall on their own in the social media space.

Related links:
Thoughts on Product Launch Promotion – I’ve got a basic formula for launch planning that has come out of launching tens of products and writing up hundreds. This post outlines where that general formula was at the time I wrote it.
Social Media for Marketing – this post outlines what I did when working at the last startup software company I worked for, SplashCast. We had a hugely successful company blog and this post spells out how I recommend all companies consider using a company blog.
How and Why Embargoes Work in the Tech Blogosphere – this post from ReadWriteWeb has a title that speaks for itself. See the comments there for other peoples’ perspective on how good the advice is.

Content Aggregation & Competitive Intelligence

RSS has been my bread and butter for years. My essential message has been the same since I got into this industry: take in information through effective RSS reading practices and put it back out by publishing feeds strategically. I’ve written more about this than I could link to here, but here are two case studies in which I did this kind of work for consulting clients.

Related links:
How to Build and RSS and Blog News Site for Your Project – I built a blog-tracking news site for Sun Microsystems to highlight the latest and best blog coverage of their giant Java One conference this year. I also got to interview Neil Young at the conference! This post describes in near total detail how I built the site.
Softrax: Powering News for Financial Executives With RSS – technical and non-technical discussions of a project in which I built a research and publishing system for a financial services training company out of really inexpensive software. They report that time on site and return visitors climbed substantially upon implementation, which was the goal.

Give me a call

I’ve got very limited availability to do the kinds of work described above, most of my time is spent blogging and running the content strategy at one of the biggest tech blogs on the web. I do love consulting though so I hope you’ll contact me to discuss what we can do together in the time available. Thanks for taking the time to check out my site and good luck to you in your new media adventures!