 Creativity Gone Wild: Beware of Punctuation Marks and Special Keyboard Characters in Business Names: Recently I tried to order a documentary DVD called “Young at Heart” from a wholesale publishing site. Typing in the title of the DVD in the site search engine brought up nothing. This puzzled me, because the movie had been shown in theaters and won several awards. And it wasn’t brand new. Scratching my head, I went away and tried again a month later. It still didn’t show up in the database. Then somewhere deep in the back of my mind, I had a dim memory that there was an “@” sign in the title. Read more...
Focus On Your Strengths: Last year, I took over a small second office next to the one I
have now. I've had it painted and recarpeted. But setting it up
and getting my current office painted / recarpeted seems
overwhelming.
I know. I know. I've got to make the time to plan out how I want
it to all look, what I want to get out of it, where I want what,
etc. because my current office just feels too congested.
But I find it overwhelming. Read more...
Everything You Need To Know To Get Your Idea On The Web: If you want to get online and are wondering, "How can I get my
idea live on the Web in the form of a website?" you have three
choices: hire a Web vendor such as a Web designer to make it for
you, use an online template-based turnkey service or make it
yourself from scratch. This article is specifically for the Web
novice that simply needs a place to begin. Read more...
Business Turnaround: Reorganize Your Company and Focus on Its Profitable Areas: After you have determined the root cause of your company's
problems, you must now reorganize to make your company
profitable. All companies have strengths and weaknesses, and it
would be wise to recognize which areas are assets to you and
which need improvement.
Read more...
Social Media Management - Watching the Chick-fil-A Cows: Many What can you do as a small- or medium-sized business owner to
increase your reach with your customers? One smart idea is to
look at what the big guys are doing. One company that is
maximizing its marketing efforts online and offline is
Chick-fil-A, the second largest chicken-based fast-food
restaurant in the United States. Read more...
Top Ten Startup MistakesThat Almost Always Lead to Business Failure: Many startup ideas fail to ever be launched and many, many fail
within the first year or two. In most cases, the failure has
nothing to do with the business idea, but how the business side
is handled. The business of entrepreneurship is business first,
then operations (what your business actually does). The Top Ten
startup mistakes that lead to ultimate failure are:
Read more...
Use the Charm of Contrast for a Great Company Slogan or Advertising Tag Line: At the bottom of page 1 of my local small-town paper, the following headline for our hometown hospital caught my attention, "
Nationally Ranked. Locally Loved."
I read it a few times and smiled. This headline has so much going for it. It's a perfect illustration of how to use contrast effectively in an advertising slogan or tag line. Read more...
Learn to Avoid Basic SEO and Internet Marketing Mistakes: Frankly, the biggest search engine optimization mistake you can
make is not doing any SEO at all. It's amazing how many people
believe "if you build it, they will come." Marketing coaching
makes one thing clear. Just putting a site up on the Internet
won't get you the traffic you want or need. By the same token,
building a site and then thinking about SEO after the fact is a
bad plan too. SEO needs to be at the heart of your Web plans from
day one, and it's a job that's never "finished." Read more...
Business Turnaround: An Overview of How to Best Enhance Your Company's Finances: A successful business turnaround requires the owner to take
certain steps to become a profitable enterprise. By taking the
following actions, you can reorganize your company and produce
positive cash flow. Read more...
LISTEN UP LEADERS: The Frontline Makes Your Bottom Line: It happens all the time: A full-page ad is placed in a major monthly publication. The ad touts the service excellence of their product. Catchy phrases. Great promises. Major dollars are spent to create an implied image in the mind of the consumer. And it can vanish in a heartbeat if promises made are not promises kept-if the derived image cancels out the implied image.
Read more...
Does Your Web Site Pass the Title Tag Test?: You know those words in the top bar of the browser when you're
on a website? You may not have noticed them before now, but
you'll want to pay attention to what shows there for your site
from now on.
Those words are from the page's title meta tag, a part of the
code that makes up the page. And while the title tag is just one
small part of the code, it plays a really big role. Read more...
Why I Admire Bob the Builder: Today I want to talk about why I admire Bob the Builder.
Until recently, I never thought much about Bob the Builder. But
over the holidays, I spent some time watching different shows
with my 3 year old son.
He just loves the Wizard of Oz... and seeing Dorothy, the BAD
witch, the good witch, the tin man, the scarecrow, the lion and
the munchkins.
It's an amazing film and I'll talk about the messages in it on
another day. Read more...
Ten Tips for Quality Video SEO Results: Within one year of its launch, YouTube became the fourth most
popular website in the world, and is currently a multi-million
dollar enterprise. This fact alone should explain the utter
relevance and power of video content to the modern Web.
Widespread broadband internet access, increasingly capable video
recording hardware and editing software, and high-capacity data
storage have conspired to convert the web from predominantly
text-based to an increasingly audio-visual phenomenon. Read more...
Educate Your Customers: Educate them about what, you may be thinking. Well, consider
this, many businesses focus solely on attracting new customers,
but you NEED to spend a good chunk of your time retaining current
and former customers. These are people you already know to be a
good sales potential... they've already bought from you! Read more...
Internet Marketing - Why 2010 Will Be A White Knuckle Ride For Web Marketers: This year may just prove to be one of the most challenging times
for pursuing online or Internet marketing on the web. It may just
be a watershed moment for many marketers struggling to keep
abreast of all the different factors which have come into play in
recent months. Most of these changes will stem from two main
sources for potential upheaval: the first being the New FTC
(Federal Trade Commission) Guidelines regarding Testimonials and
Endorsements and the second being "ALL" the recent changes
within Google. Read more...
Obama Tells the Banks to Lend!: Any kind of real recovery and job creation is impossible without
access to credit by small to mid-sized businesses.
A newsletter from the Small Business Administration dated
September 2008 provides the following interesting figures about
U.S. small businesses. Read more...
Social Media Management - Setting Your Sights on the Right Sites: One of the most amazing features about the Web is that it allows
many people to take advantage of features they did not originate.
Livejournal, Twitter, Digg, Reddit and each of the many other
Social Media sites were proposed and implemented with a
relatively small cadre of people, yet thousands of businesses are
finding ways to use these sites for promotion and improvement
every day. These sites allow for communication with the nearly
captive audience that is any business' dream. Read more...
A Company Catchphrase: Creating a Motto or Slogan That Promotes Your Business: "Reach out and touch someone."
"The ultimate driving machine."
"Finger lickin' good."
Chances are, you not only know immediately that those slogans
come from AT&T, BMW and KFC, in that order. Those catchphrases
may also very well have persuaded someone you know to place more
long-distance calls, purchase a particular brand of car and
decide where to stop for supper.
Such slogans truly influence customers, and that's why you want
one for your own company. Read more...
Why Most Business Owners Aren't Productive: "One of the secrets of life is making stepping stones out of
stumbling blocks" And a number of people liked it, so I want to
talk about that now.
Recently, I lost my assistant for a few months over the festive
season due to personal and health reasons.
And that means I have been handed several hours of administration
tasks a week I wouldn't normally have to do.
That's painful because there are so many other areas of my
business that I want to focus on. Read more...
Use SEO Strategies to Increase Web Traffic: Every new technology adopted widely by society brings about a
number of new opportunities. The movable type printing press
created affordable print information, the telephone and radio
created the concept of instantaneous communication over great
distances. Today, the Internet has unified both of these concepts
into the information explosion that is the digital age. Read more...
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