In looking at the problem I presented in part one of this test, I’m pretty sure most of you decided to set up your stand first at the marathon, where there was a guaranteed market for your product. What you sacrificed in numbers you more than made up for in quality of prospect. In fact, you probably thought the whole test was a little ridiculous. Read the rest of this entry »

It is not easy to know where to start when it comes to social media. The stories of brands that have taken missteps with fake profiles, and become a lightning rod for negative comments are aplenty - causing more than one marketing team to take a big step back and wonder where and how best to get involved. Increased scrutiny by legal teams, the recession and a general fear of taking risks are also factors that are keeping brands from really digging deeply into using social media. Read the rest of this entry »

Lots of individuals and companies claim a proficiency in Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing, and the most common platform used in PPC is Google Adwords. This is because Google is the top search engine, by a wide margin, and its advertising platform lets you run ads for searches on Google, AOL, and many other sites. You can also run “content match” ads on millions of other sites, including big names like Facebook, and have your ad show up in context with topics related to what you sell. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the second in a three part series in conversation with Mark Rodgers, the Managing Director of Cipherion Translations where we discuss the opportunities that the internet presents to us if we wish to expand our business internationally.

In the first article we explored under what circumstances we should consider translating our website into another language.

I then went on to ask Mark what the three most common issues people have when looking to implement their website in a different language.

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One of the common refrains I hear from people is that “I don’t have time to blog.”

On the surface, this seems believable. What small business owner isn’t over-worked, whether it’s with marketing, sales, bookkeeping, managing people, making the coffee, buying the computers, sending out proposals, answering the phones, taking out the garbage, and every other task that fills our days from the moment we hit the office (whether in or out of our house) to the moment we shut down the computer for the day?

And still, I call “B.S.”

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Yesterday I posted two videos on my Facebook wall and realized that they both are great examples of how Social Media is allowing even the smallest business or individual stand eye to eye with large organizations or celebrities. Both are a true David versus the Goliath story. Or is it?

Case 1: AARP posted this video:

What I love about this video is how viral it has become with a positive message attached to a brand. But the beauty is any one person could create a video like this and help build their own personal brand that rivals the likes of AARP. Dollars are no longer needed to market effectively.

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Here’s an easy way to improve focus, concentration and productivity…

Turn off your email alerts. Yep. You heard me right. Turn off that little box or bell that signals you each time an email arrives in your Inbox. That way your concentration isn’t broken and you’re not tempted to stop what you’re doing to respond.

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As a lot of small business and non-profits know, social media sites like Facebook are a great place to connect with your audience and build your business or membership.  

There are a number of reasons for businesses, non-profits and just about any organization to be on Facebook:

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After the amazing reactions from yesterday’s blog post on Defining Knowledge Management and Enterprise 2.0 (Still catching up with some of the wonderful commentary, by the way, which I will certainly get back to shortly to keep adding further on to the various conversations) I thought I would put together a much shorter blog post where I will point out to you one of those follow up articles that I have found rather inspiring and incredibly accurate on how I myself perceive the power of social networking within the corporate environment, to say the least.

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If you have the budget resources the best time to hire an SEO is before you start your website projects. However, most people new to the web lack the cashflow needed to buy quality SEO services. Further if they don’t understand the complexities of the market and get bombarded with cheap (and low to no value) SEO package offers from web hosts, registrars, and email spammers they may think SEO should be cheap and easy, causing them to buy garbage - and become distrusting of the concept of SEO.

Your best bet (if you are new to the SEO field) is to do as many of the following as are practical

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