New technology is providing a wide range of ways for people to make money. Social media is offering a special challenge, though, since it can be difficult to measure revenues and return on investment. This is precisely why three of the major social media companies, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, are offering new tools and features that focus on revenue implications.
The idea is that you can measure — sort of — the financial benefit of some social media networks. And these three social media sites are chomping at the bit to prove themselves worth an investment, since they are expected to …read more

When my husband and I go shopping for anything — especially expensive items — we like to do our homework. We are looking for more than the lowest price; we are also looking for good quality. So when we decided to buy an HD LCD TV, we looked around, read reviews, and went to my husband’s buying Bible, Consumer Reports. And, ultimately, we settled on a Sony Bravia. (Disclosure: Neither Sony, nor Consumer Reports pays me to say any of this.)It’s been good to us. We’ve had it for three years now, and not had any problems. Friends of ours …read more

As consumer spending rises, and as people feel better about the stability being shown in the jobs market, this holiday shopping season is shaping up to be fairly solid. And online retailers are hoping to get in on the action come the Monday after Thanksgiving. Cyber Monday is the biggest online shopping day of the year, and now you can stay fully alerted to hourly and daily deals with a little help from your cell phone. SoundBite sent me a press release about this service (which I do not intend to use):
Americans send 50,000 text messages per second. Ninety-five percent …read more

Small business owners wear many hats. They have to be chief company officers, project managers, lead generators and much more. When budgets are tight, it can be hard to find the money to hire a quality copywriter. And if you’re going to promote your business, you need good copywriting. Many small businesses just slap some copy into an ad or brochure and call it good. But with the right copy, you can garner a lot more attention and sales for your business.
And that’s where Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps by Susan Gunelius comes in. Step-by-step, Gunelius shows you how …read more

Has the economy hit your business hard to where your brand is suffering? Are you looking for ways to extend your brand so that you can grow your business? Then lets look at ways you can extend your brand.
Brand extension is the process of using different avenue to promote your business. According to Wikipedia.org…
Brand extension or brand stretching is a marketing strategy in which a firm marketing a product with a well-developed image uses the same brand name in a different product category.
So let’s look at a few example of companies who have been successful in creating a brand extension:

Eddie Bauer: clothes, automobile …read more

One of the problems created by the whole “politically correct” movement (other than that whole pesky First Amendment thing) is that by continually crying “three little domesticated porcine agrarian animals’ oppressor” every time someone makes fun of a particular group, we tend to become insensitive to real-life examples of racism, sexism and hack ethnic comedy.
I was at home the other evening, lounging on the futon with my extremely liberated, psychology doctorate toting wife when an ad came on for a local carpet store.
Normally, we might have done a fast channel surf. I say “we” since I am so enlightened and …read more

Having good branding habits for your business is important. Good branding habits should be incorporated into your business to help communicate your brand message and increase brand awareness.
Being able to piece together how you will communicate your brand to your target customers is important. Just as the image to the right shows, every piece counts. In branding, good habits count and can help you successfully communicate your brand.
Below are a list of good branding habits that can help as you communicate your brand message.

Incorporate your brand message on all your promotional items.
Have a common message when communicating with others
In your …read more

Are you a business owner who decided to partner up with another business owner to create a business? Did you keep your original business or merge it into the new business? It’s interesting to hear the answers to these two questions because I have found that some business owners don’t keep a separate identity from the combined business.
What I mean by this is that when you develop a partnership by merging with another business owner that you should try to work into the agreement that you will keep some type of autonomy for your original business. You can view this as a …read more

I think it was some famous economist — either John Maynard Keynes or Ice-T — who once said, “I’ll never go broke, I got property.”
That may be true, but only if you haven’t leveraged your real estate and can afford the increasing taxes which are likely as state and local governments look to tap any revenue source they can find.
With record foreclosures, plummeting prices and an overhang of supply in the housing market, another real estate crisis also appears to be imminent.
Builders are warning a new financial catastrophe may be looming in the commercial real estate market.
If the story sounds …read more

If you sell a product in retail stores, then your packaging is a large part of your marketing. How you present your product to potential customers is extremely important. You want your first impression to be favorable. And the last thing you want to do is offend your potential customers.
Which is why, when I went to our local warehouse store, I stopped in my tracks when I saw a package for neck cream. In big letters — a font you could see from several feet away — was the product’s catch phrase:

Got turkey neck?
I was flabbergasted. I had to wonder …read more