Online Brand Management - 5 Benefits of Viral Videos: Viral video is simultaneously the most entertaining and the most infuriating element of online marketing. Let's clear the air quickly: No one can promise you a viral video success. Ever. Viral videos succeed because the audience likes them and spreads them on to other people. If the audience doesn't get it, the video doesn't go viral, and there is nothing that can guarantee the response you want.
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Online Brand Marketing - 4 Ways to Use Social Media in Promotions: Social media marketing has earned its place as one of the fastest-growing, most competitive marketing fields in the history of advertising. People are gathering online in record numbers, finding and socializing in groups that cater to their interests; often, these interests neatly intersect with marketing and branding opportunities. Read more...



Building Brand Identity - Five Reasons Your Blog Needs a Ghostwriter: A ghostwriter is any writer who creates content for a project that will be presented under another name. As you are traveling in a bookstore, you might marvel at the sheer volume of works certain names such as Tom Clancy put out. In many cases, these books weren't written by a single writer but rather many and then published under the big name.
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Building Brand Identity: How Wikipedia Defines Branding Success: It is instructive and inspiring to take a look at the people who have succeeded in your field. Whether it's an attempt to learn from their mistakes and victories or just a pause to reflect on the admirable accomplishments of another, studying the work of those who've set the benchmark can inspire reflection and spur us on to greater heights. Read more...



Working At Home Isn't Hard, But It is Work: There is no big secret when it comes to working at home. Websites and bookstores are filled with the how-to, step-by-step details of what it takes to find a telecommuting job or start home business. Ask to hear the success story of a person working at home and you'll hear pretty much the same thing from all of them … found a passion…did research… implemented a plan… kept at it… etc. The steps to work-at-home success are straight forward. Read more...



The Truth About Twitter's Promoted Tweets: Since Twitter's launch in 2007, it has seen huge growth and has become one of the dominant players when it comes to social media. If you're trying to establish an online presence, and have no idea what Twitter is - or aren't using it in some way to promote your brand - you haven't been paying attention. Shame on you."Twittering" has become a national phenomenon with its use trailing slightly behind Facebook's. Recently Twitter shared some interesting statistics at "Chirp", the Twitter developer conference: Read more...



In or Out - Choosing the Content Service for Your Brand: It's only a bit of an exaggeration to describe the debate over in-house writers vs. an outside content service as "raging." For any organization dedicated to producing written content as part of its brand, it is an important matter that eventually will need to be addressed. Each method, of course, has its advantages and disadvantages; there are no quick answers. But here are some considerations that should make the decision a little easier: Read more...



Online Brand Management - Follow the Tweeter: No one with any degree of sanity can safely dismiss the impact of Twitter. Everyone of note is using it, as are about half the people who aren't of note. Most of the latter category are either watching the people who are of note, or doing their best to become one of them. Other social media services may have equal popularity, but none has changed the fundamental way people communicate as much as this little service that forces them to compress their thoughts into 140 characters or less. Read more...



The Photocopier, The Firewall and Google: China, following on from its censorship of the Internet, has identified photocopiers in Tibet as a potential threat to the state. Fearing what BEIJING may class as demagogic machinations, a new law has been introduced that requires the owners of printing and photocopying shops to obtain a permit. They will be required to catalogue their clients and all material being copied or printed.
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The Most Commonly Overlooked Consideration That Impacts the Cost of Faxing Services: World-wide commerce continues to rely heavily on the use of facsimile transmissions. To be certain, the use of email has substantially reduced the use of fax machines and fax servers, but the use of fax continues to be widespread. And faxing technology continues to evolve to meet the increasingly sophisticated needs of organizations today. At the same time, however, many companies are under mounting pressure to cut capital investments - including new technology spending. Read more...



Building Brand Identity - Tag, You're It: Taglines are difficult things to pin down. Some taglines have a certain force, a certain efficacy that makes us remember them years or even half a century later. The best ones even stick in our minds long after everyone has forgotten what they were originally for. "Reach out and touch someone" remains a well-known expression today, despite the fact that it originated as a slogan for AT&T back in 1979.
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Creative Conjuring for Your Writing Team: Let us suppose for a moment that you have made the decision to hire a permanent, in-house writing team as opposed to seeking out writers on a more per-contract basis. The advantages of this decision are numerous, of course - for one, you get to grow a team with a focus on your business so they grow more and more aware of it as time goes on, benefiting from long-term exposure to what you have them writing about. Read more...



Online Brand Management - Deliver the Best of Your Brand with an Online Newsletter: Many organizations are replacing their hard copy, dead-tree-edition newsletter with an email publication. Emailed newsletters have the benefit of requiring fewer resources, going out faster, reaching a wider audience with less effort and being easier to correct if a mistake slips in. However, many of them end up being ignored just as much as their physical counterpart. Read more...



Online Fax Solutions For Your Small Home Business: Mainly because of these uncertain economic times, more and more individuals are starting their own small companies or operating a business from home. In most cases, their place of work has shifted from a large crowded office building to the comfort of their own home. And that as they say, has made all the difference in the world. Read more...



Building Brand Identity: The Shining Success of Penny Arcade: As brands go, few are as successful as Penny Arcade. Begun in 1998 as a web comic focused on videogame culture as seen through the eyes of the writer and artist, it has grown into a cultural touchstone and an example of how a brand can develop from humble roots into a true powerhouse.
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How To Build Your Offline Business With Online Local Directories: Every offline business wants more customers. That’s why you hang signs in your window and outside your door, to attract people’s attention and entice them to come in. But if you are focusing solely on the people who walk past every day, you’re missing out on the huge market that constantly looks for services online. There are 300 million internet searches performed every day and a whopping 3 billion of them are performed on a monthly basis! Read more...



Find Your Market On The Internet: An All-Too-Common Perspective. I was interviewing a new client recently and was running through the usual qualifying questions with him - the first of which was: "Can you tell me which market your products are targeting?" His response startled me. He said: "well that's easy, it's the Internet!" I paused, not quite sure, how to break the news to him. I'm sure he was thinking: Wow, this guy is really lame, I offer Internet services, who did he think my market would be? Read more...



Why Ker-chunk Needs to Proceed Ker-ching: This morning I was working with a client who was feeling some frustration around defining the niche for their business: It started as "small business coaching"... Got a little more specific as "small 'green' business coaching"... Took a 180-degree turn to "non-profit organization coaching"... And turn another 180-degrees back to "small business coaching"."Why is picking a niche so hard?" my client wanted to know. Read more...



How To Get Your Syndicated Articles Opened, Read And Published: Syndicated articles can be a very powerful promotion tool in the hands of the person who knows how to use them... This is the reason why article marketing is generally a hot topic of conversation... Unfortunately, not all of the conversation is positive, because the vast majority of people who attempt to utilize article marketing for the promotion of their online business are absolutely clueless as to how to use article marketing to its fullest potential... Read more...



Guerrilla Marketing: About Love Not War: About four times a year I fly to Chicago and visit with my extended family which includes catching up with my "Uncle Lou." Uncle Lou has sold just about everything under the sun at least once during his 50-odd years in sales. He's funny and street smart and has great stories. Uncle Lou has a big heart and I love him but he and I just don't see eye-to-eye on our definition of "effective" when it comes to sales and marketing. This became evident during a recent visit when my uncle asked me about "Guerrilla Marketing." Read more...