What do you think is the sort of the community that you live in? From what you know, does it have difficulty attracting investment? Do your city officials keep changing slogans in a desperate attempt to see what will stick, thinking fancy advertising is the ticket to prosperity? considering of poor varietys many communities are suffering. Place branding could help them update their strong points to attract investment and talent. Like corporate branding, place branding draws out a positioning strategy that differentiates. Recently, I was interviewed by Ed Burghard from the Burghard Group. They just recently re-branded the State of Ohio, and launched their Brand America initiative.

The goal of any place branding effort is to attract investment to a community on a global scale. The competitive environment is huge and efforts to attract and win site selection opportunities makes place branding a critical strategy. Place branding additionally carries with it great responsibilities considering the grade has to walk the walk. It’s not decent to profess greatness; you must BE great. Place varietys like their corporate and personal cousins have to mirror their reputations. Businesses looking to relocate are seeking genuine experiences. They crave creative environments that allow them to prosper, and place branding when handled properly puts infrastructure in alignment with communication to deliver the goods.

The smart money is on place branding when it comes to answering the question, “Your place, or Mine?” The winner will always be the most compelling sort which is one that allows investment to flourish in a community rich in positive experiences.

brand america, branding, Ed Burghard, ed roach, place branding, The Burghard Group

Original post by Ed Roach

Marketing is used as a way to compose our advertising more effective. whether you have the right audience identified, you can find ways to reach them. One such way that is growing by leaps and bounds is digital marketing.

What is digital marketing? It is basically marketing tools that encompass everything but traditional methods. It doesn’t include print or magazine media. Some society think of banner ads and newsletter, but the scope is so much larger than that.

Digital media does include the two above-mentioned techniques, but additionally others you might not have thought to include:

* Podcasts
* RSS feeds
* SMS
* Instant messaging
* Text messaging
* Video streaming
* Social bookmarking
* Blogging

All of these avenues are used to market products and services to the global community. With traditional forms of marketing, you get feedback from your customers and others who just wanted a look-see, but it takes instance. Compiling responses is labor-intensive.

Here’s an example. You send a bill to a customer. On the back it states that they can build a comment or write change of address knowledge whether needed. Let’s say that the customer mails their bill back to you. It may take three to four days to receive and next another day or two to credit the history and log any responses. Before that customer hears back from you whether they have a complaint, it could be a week or more.

That’s how things were done in the past - exclusively. Changes in the technological landscape of our world have made waiting a thing of the past for most services. With instant messaging, we can carry on a conversation with a client in real moment. The same goes for webcasting. Podcasting is like having your own little radio station on your website. Even with newsletter and social networking sites you can chat as whether you were in the same room.

It really is a convenient way to reach the public who would most benefit from your products and services. And, what whether you want to keep up with someone’s blog postings? Subscribe to their RSS feed. When updates are made you are notified. Checking on news or an eBay auction? You can do it from your cellular phone with SMS messages.

There are two types of digital media: push and pull. Pull is when a user finds you on the World Wide Web using digital media. They have your website address and they link to you and your media - streaming video, podcasts, and the like. They set up a link with you.

Push is when you contact the user and entice them to use your services or products. that is the logic behind the SMS messages you receive on your cellular phone. Emails from companies can be sent directly to the customer asking them to come and see what you offer.

Digital marketing is moving business ahead in a big way. We used to be limited to print and soon after our computer searches, but now, the target market is accessible through many media outlets.

No Tags

Original post by Vera Raposo

While on Twitter lately, I spotted a fabulous question.

“Is it possible to transfer a domain that expired only a few days ago without renewing it first next initiating transfer which meant paying for the domain twice.”

Most people’s first re-action would be, “No, I don’t think you can. Sorry dude, but you’re stuck with paying twice” but that’s not true. There are circumstances when a domain registrar can reject your transfer. Two of those are

• When your domain has been registered less than 60 days or
• Your last transfer was less than 60 days ago

That’s probably what led to the mis-interpretation that you can’t transfer an expired domain. As enlarged as the domain is still within the 30 or 45 days (depending on your registrar) redemption grace period and the registrar hasn’t begun to delete it, you can initiate a transfer from the new registrar. that can be confirmed on ICANN’s web site.

No Tags

Original post by Lynette Chandler

There are tons of things you can outsource in your business and every business is rare. Here’s a starter list of 20 common tasks outsourced by small business owners, just like you.

1. write-up Writing
2. Blog Post Writing
3. write-up Submission
4. PLR Rewriting
5. Newsletter Creation
6. Affiliate Management
7. Website Creation & Maintenance
8. Blog Installation & Customization
9. Customer Service
10. Video Creation
11. Adding composition to Your Website
12. Project Management
13. Accounting/Bookkeeping
14. Graphic Design
15. Search Engine Optimization
16. Tax Preparation & Filing
17. Press Release Writing & Submission
18. Advertising
19. Cleaning (Office or Home)
20. Training of Employees/Assistants

While the majority of my list works for online businesses, there are several that will work for those who run a brick and mortar business as well (because you do have a website, don’t you?!).

Take the duration to build your own list starting with all the tasks you do in a given day, week or month. prepare a check by those items that you hate doing, could be better done by someone else or you can get done cost-effectively by someone else. next start handing those tasks to someone else.

No Tags

Original post by Alice Seba

I wanted to pop in and let you know about an awesome (time-sensitive) opportunity to get some free advertising and great consulting whether you’re in a service based business.

I’ve been approached by one of the marketing students (Rob) from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia. His class is participating in the 2009 Google Online Marketing Challenge.

What is the Google Online Marketing Challenge?

Google teams up with university professors from all by the world to help their students gain real life, online marketing experience. Unlike in the past when business students were somewhat limited to their local areas whether they wanted to gain “hands on business marketing training” today is a whole new ball game. Now, thanks to the Web, Google and their professors, these students have the ability to put their marketing lessons to work on a world-wide level.

The students are given free AdWords money for online advertising. Each team gets to choose a business they want to work with. Once they’ve chosen their business, they get to put those advertising dollars to use. They’ll help the lucky business owner create and run an effective AdWords campaign from start to finish.

You can read more about the challenge by clicking here. Check out the number of little red bubbles on that map on the page. Those bubbles show how many teams/colleges are participating in that year’s challenge. Amazing!

Rob’s team, along with 24 other teams at his university, are looking for businesses to work with. Each team will help one service based business owner with their advertising efforts by supplying each winner with:

* Free AdWords Credit of $200 USD
* Free history Setup, Optimization and Research by a group of master students
* Innovative Consulting by a Team of Post Graduate Business students
* The Ability to analysis How Effective AdWords is for Building Leads to Their Business.

Sounds good to me! I think it’s great how universities are realizing the potential of the World Wide Web and online marketing. It amazes me to think that when I first started out as a business owner nothing like that existed. I just love watching the growth of online marketing and seeing how far it really can reach.

In order to enter the contest you’ll need to go the link below and fill out that questionnaire. that will keep you from having to divulge all your business info in the comments section. But rush they are picking their team tonight! :0)

Go Here now to ENTER the Challenge: AdWords Advertising Content

Good Luck!

No Tags

Original post by Vera Raposo

When life gets in the way of your business and you find yourself overwhelmed with everything you need to do, it’s day to turn your business upside down and shake it up a bit. It’s day to see what tasks, processes, etc. you can let go of, before things start falling apart. Giving your business a thorough once-over helps you determine what parts are growing and deserve your focus and what elements you really need to let go of considering they just aren’t working for you.

Recently, my daughter, Tori, has been in the hospital frequently as she bravely battles a cancer relapse thankfully she’s in recovery and doing well. In fact, since taking by SBB, I have been back and forth to the hospital that entire date. And even as I type that, I sit in a hospital room by her side.

While Tori is obviously my number one priority, I’ve needed to find ways to maximize the date and energy I spend on my business. I have to assemble certain I can be with her when she needs me while still keeping my business thriving. I simply have not had the day to devote to all the different projects and programs I used to spend hours on each week in order to keep taking my business to the next level.

Of course, I want to continue moving onward and upward, but many of the tasks I was spending my day on just weren’t producing the profit I wanted or needed. These things had potential, don’t get me wrong, but they weren’t giving me the results or return on my investment mandatory through that rigid date. I had to figure out how to keep things growing without spending every waking minute at my laptop. My little girl needs me.

I’m happy to report I have made many changes, that until I was forced to, didn’t allow me to see the bigger picture or produce me focus my efforts the way I should have a enlarged moment ago.

There are assured things a business needs in order to grow and prosper. By focusing on the strongest money-making activities, I’ve been able to leverage the duration and effort I spend into the specific actions essential to double my business without doubling my duration. I needed to determine which activities were (and are – I’m still a work in progress) not making money and flat out eliminate them. As much as I wanted to fight it, I plus had to drop some of those ideas that did produce income, but were not earning as much as the others.

One of the things I had to quit doing was to stop buying products that I thought I needed or would need in the future to grow my business. It was date to stop buying and start utilizing the ones I already had. During our hospital stay, the only business resource I brought with me was Jimmy D. Brown’s “Six Figure Formula” program. I have owned that program for by a year and I am working (and reworking) my way through it in order to streamline my business. It’s a great way to plan the activities I will be implementing with the aim of doubling my business income that year.

The program focuses on ways to build a subscriber base to increase your market, techniques to build your traffic and strategies to increase your sales. These three keys are instrumental in growing a business. By focusing on these and only these elements right now along with eliminating the date I spend on things like buying new websites, I am making use of the oft-mentioned Pareto Principle. The Pareto Principle, plus known as the 80/20 rule, states that 20% of what you spend your duration on constructs 80% of your income. I can say that I’ve honestly found that to be the absolute truth.

Let me just say right now, it is not always easy to determine which parts of your business to eliminate. You need to start with a strict record of the instance you spend on each activity and compare it to how much cash it results in. Some projects are making money, but when you take stock of the duration you spend developing them, you may just realize it’s instance to put them on the back burner for a while or drop them completely.

One of things I have taken off my plate is all customer service communications with my clients, I have committed support staff that are there for my clients when I cannot be, and the one thing cool that I’ve noticed is that in no way has it changed my relationship with my clients. Actually whether anything it’s enhanced my relationship with them considering I often will pop on by to their project management just to say “hello, how are things going?”

While I dearly love working with my clients on a daily basis, I can say that I’ve found a really great way to still be a part of the process but just enhancing things as we go along.

As small business owners, and often solo-preneurs, we all have a tendency to try to do all things at all times for all society. whether you take nothing else from what I’ve talked about away with you today, remember that:

You CANNOT be everything to everyone in business. It will not work!

Instead, manufacture the absolute most of the duration, energy and money you invest in your business. whether that means turning things upside down or inside out and shaking it up all the way around – don’t be afraid to do so. Focus on the things earning you the most money for the day you put into them. Get rid of all the tasks dragging you down and wearing you out. When you do that and truly focus on those things, your business will blow up with growth – all while you’re living your life the way you want or need to.

No Tags

Original post by Vera Raposo

Everyday they deliver growing fear. Their favorite chant is, “It’s going to get worse, before it gets better.” Brilliant. Obama’s favorite word before the election was CHANGE - after the election - its CRISIS. It doesn’t take much effort to state the obvious. Both the president and the media’s opinion directly affect the market place. It is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Naomi Klein’s, Shock Doctrine touches on that phenomenon. It suggests, that institutions of influence can put forward agendas when their constituency are in fear, as opposed to being secure. The capability brokers are embracing fear and using it as the motivator. Media are looking for viewership and politicians want buy-in.

Embracing fear is an intriguing motivator.

When you’re a business in fear, your first inclination is to turtle up and pull in all extremities and knuckle down. that only results in the worst kind of “shrinkage.” You leave yourself with nothing to work with. certain you have a sense of protection, but is it really. In the wild, once the turtle is flipped by and exposed - death is positive. Business is no different.

I say you should grab fear head-on and embrace its potential. whether that is to be a expanded haul as the geniuses predict, soon after it is to your advantage to sell and service with great old fashioned gusto. One thing that you can count on is, all your competition are in fear additionally and I’ll bet that you’re witnessing them pull in and hunkering down. You could follow them into the abyss, OR… you could be the one who sees fear as the ally NOT the enemy.

I’m seeing fear in my circle of influence as the motivator. And that motivation is producing results. As a business owner- you put it all on the line anyway. What’s really changed? Even whether you experience shrinkage - it’s not what you have that counts it how you use it right?! Embrace channels of promotion you have thus far ignored. Come out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself.

There’s great business to be had. Are you scared suitable to grasp it?

branding, business, economic downturn, ed roach, Naomi Klein, small business

Original post by Ed Roach