Inbound Marketing Blog

Corey Smith Corey Smith is the founder of Tribute Media and serves as the Managing Director for Tribute Media. He is also the VP of Web & Creative for Hawke Media.

Strategic thinking requires tactical understanding

Posted by Corey Smith on Jul 6, 2023 9:00:00 AM

When I built my first proper website in 2005, it was okay at best. It was a simple Wordpress website that was mostly a blog. Early 2007, I was working for a technology company and I was able to help our agency create the website for our company. While I didn’t understand at the time, there was no strategic forethought to how that website should have been organized. 

The Tribute Media Evolution

Posted by Corey Smith on Jun 22, 2023 8:30:00 AM

In 2007, I was working for a local company in Boise, Idaho, and really wasn’t happy in my role. I was working for Fisher’s Technology (at the time, it was called Fisher’s Document Systems) as their VP of Innovation. When I was first promoted to that position, I loved it. I was able to use my passion for new things and technology to bring new products and services to the table. I brought document management to their sales team (among other things).

Understanding the Domain Name System (DNS)

Posted by Corey Smith on Feb 3, 2020 7:20:00 PM

DNS stands for the Domain Name System. The DNS records tell the internet where to send your internet traffic. The most common are address (A) records, CNAME records, name server (NS) records, and mail exchange (MX) records. This article will take a look at each of these. 

Many web developers simply tell their clients to point the Name Server Record to the new host and you let the web developer manage that for you.

So, what does this mean for you? How do you know what you should do to maintain functionality of your site and your email? Bear in mind that my descriptions below are what I tell my my clients, but I think everyone should understand these details.

5 Compelling Reasons to Outsource Web Marketing

Posted by Corey Smith on Sep 3, 2019 3:27:00 PM

Making the decision to outsource your business’s marketing efforts can be very difficult. Handing off the reins to an outside company can be scary, especially for small businesses that don’t have the resources to put a ton of money into their marketing efforts. We can’t all afford to run campaigns like Coca-Cola, Sony or Starbucks. However, there are many things to be learned from these big brands.

How Your Company's Focus on a Primary Objective Contributes to Success

Posted by Corey Smith on Apr 5, 2019 3:46:00 PM

When I look at the successes and failures in business, I think I have found consistency between them.

The successful businesses remember their primary objective and the businesses that fail have forgotten what they are working for. Their efforts are misplaced because they forgot the reasoning and goals behind their efforts.

Let's put a practical example with this concept.

18 Hubspot Academy Certifications: The Rundown

Posted by Corey Smith on Jan 29, 2018 2:45:39 PM

Tribute Media has been a HubSpot Agency Partner for about three years now. During that time, we've learned a lot. When we started with HubSpot, there were, if I remember correctly, only four certifications from HubSpot Academy. HubSpot has worked very hard to improve their training offerings for their clients and their agency partners.

When we first signed up as an agency partner early in 2015, I knew that the only way we'd be successful was to embrace HubSpot fully. It's paid off in spades for us and for our clients who have done the same. The Inbound Methodology is paramount to that success.

The most important question that I'm hoping to answer is: Is it worth your time to invest in attaining HubSpot Certifications?

The Death of the 8-hour Workday

Posted by Corey Smith on Dec 26, 2017 7:17:43 PM

The eight-hour workday is a tired and old concept. It's time to put aside this tired, arcane way of thinking about work. In order to understand how to fix it, we have to understand why we have the eight-hour workday to begin with.

In the late 1800s, full-time manufacturing employees would work around 100 hours per week. Death and injury were commonplace.  It wasn't uncommon for children to put in far more hours than we think reasonable today in the factories, fields, mills, and mines.

Why Working Remotely is Harder than You Think

Posted by Corey Smith on Nov 3, 2017 3:20:41 PM

Last year we tested, and then made official, Office Free Friday. It's been a very cool thing for us as a company because it's provided us some much-needed focus time each week where our customers expect us to be a little less available.

If you aren't interested in clicking through to that announcement link, I'll give you the simple gist here. On Fridays, we officially close our office and our phones go directly to voicemail. It's still a working day, but because the office is closed, our employees have an option to work wherever they want.