Brand identity is probably the most critical element of retail and business design. As a packaging designer you must be able to offer branding services as part of your design services package. Brand identity is the overall graphic representation that people will associate with a company or product.

In todays market, competition for customers is fierce, so you can see why a strong brand identity is crucial for companies.

Business owners rely on design professionals to invest time into researching, defining, and ultimately building a brand that people can trust. One could say that branding is the foundation of your design and marketing campaign.

For graphic designers who are new to building brand recognition this article will highlight the research process that experienced designers who are successful at building brands will implement in their graphic approach before offering up any directions. When building brands it’s not simply a matter of creativity it’s a matter of doing the right research.

Whether you’re branding a product or a company you will need to put in a good amount of time doing research.

Ask yourself some key questions such as:

* What kind of company are you trying to establish a graphic representation for?
* Who are their clients?
* What is the company’s target demographic?
* What services do they provide, etc.?

The same applies to product branding.

* What kind of product is it?
* Is the product targeted at males or females and what age group?
* How should the product be associated with the company that is selling the product?

Once you’ve collected your preliminary data from your initial questions, filter through and analyze your information to really hone in on your target audience. The ultimate goal of branding is to speak directly to your target audience in order to motivate them to action. In order to do this you better be sure that your target market is clearly defined.

Establishing your target market means identifying who your audience is specifically. To help you find out who your target audience is exactly ask questions like:

* Where is my audience located geographically?
* What colors should be associated with the product or company?
* Who is my brands direct competition?
* What elements have made my competition successful?
* Who are my competitors targeting?

You can do a large amount of this investigating on line. The more accurately you can assess your target market the more effective your brand will be.

If you spend enough time properly researching answers to your questions you will find that you have provided yourself with a guide to direct your creativity in the design process.

Remember, every element of your design is something that will be associated with the business or product you are branding. These elements should evoke emotion, create a reaction, and will not only define the company but be a part of it for as long as it exists.

These may seem like very simple questions, but the trick is making sure that you spend the time to answer them properly.

Many designers throw the term branding around without a true understanding of what that term means or how effective branding is accomplished.

A strong brand builds relevance, credibility and establishes trust. A strong brand speaks to your target market – it motivates customers to act. When done correctly it establishes the company or product as an industry leader.

By answering a few core questions you will be provided with a system of guides to help direct you when it comes to the actual design process. This is your map to an effective brand.

Author: Chris London

Video: Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization Part 1

So you want to develop a Web video campaign to put on your website and add to YouTube and all the other Web video directories. Maybe you even want to create a new video micro site to promote that hot new product or service you’re about to launch. You want it done right, professional, slick, and you want it to be effective. Well of course you do.

You know you need to hire a firm that has the creative staff capable of not just shooting video but professionals who can write, direct, edit, and add all the post production elements you need, including signature music, sound design and on screen text. But are there other things you need to be aware of in order to maximize the return on your investment? You bet there are.

There are lots of production companies that just want to crank out the work at the lowest cost without providing any marketing guidance as to what works and what doesn’t. Perhaps these firms don’t know the difference or perhaps they just don’t care. The company you hire should be willing to provide some advice as to the best way to present your message so that it delivers the best return on your investment. Too many Web videos are technically proficient but lack any marketing impact. The last thing you want is a bland, boring, lifeless presentation that goes in one ear and out the other.

When you’re ready to add video to your marketing and sales tool kit make sure you avoid the following seven deadly video development sins.

Doing It Wrong – 7 Web Video Mistakes To Avoid

1. The need to get it all in.MM
everybody wants his or her money’s worth. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that as a general principle, but getting your money’s worth means more than hiring the cheapest bidder or cramming every possible product, service, benefit and feature into a single video.

You’re better off creating a series of shorter videos each about two to three minutes in length, and each focusing on a particular aspect or sales point. Ten minutes is generally the maximum you can hold someone’s attention, but it will be more effective if you break that ten-minute presentation into a series of shorter segments. By creating a presentation that flows from one focused video to the next, you lead your audience logically through a voyage of discovery that is far more interesting and memorable than a single over-stuffed information-onslaught that overwhelms the audience. Each video becomes an chance to re-enforce your marketing image and embed your brand personality by consistent use of color, style, format, and message.

2. The desire to appeal to everybody.
Whatever you sell, not everybody is going to purchase it. No matter how good your offering is there are people that you aren’t ever going to convince. We believe a properly implemented video presentation is the most effective method of delivering a marketing message, but no matter what the evidence, there are some people who just won’t buy into the idea. If you try to appeal to everybody you will end-up appealing to no one and you will waste a lot of time, money and effort in the process. Trying to appeal to everybody merely dilutes your message.

By concentrating on the most appropriate market segments allows you to fine-tune your message. And if you create a series of videos each highlighting a different aspect of your offering as described earlier, people will be able to pick and choose what they are interested in and what they want to watch. In this way your audience won’t get bored or frustrated by listening to things they may already know, or are just not interested in hearing.

3. The fear of commitment.
Marketing is all about creating an identifiable, unique identity, a personality that people will recognize and remember: a brand. It’s what will set you apart from your rivals and give you a competitive edge; if done right, it’s the one thing your competitors can try to copy but won’t ever be able to duplicate.

Success requires a commitment to your brand image and to the marketing strategy from which it flows. Strategy is the big idea that guides everything related to your business, and it should not be confused with tactics. Tactics are the ways you implement strategy. If you confuse strategy and tactics, you will find yourself running in circles not accomplishing anything.

If you commit to and successfully target one market segment, you not only establish and enhance your brand image but you also create a ‘drag effect.’ For example, the success of Apple’s iTunes and iPods dragged their computer sales along with it. Once people became Apple customers for one product they were more likely to purchase another; and even though iPod advertising was originally aimed at a youth-oriented market, it’s success dragged both younger and older consumers along for the sales ride.

4. The need to accommodate everybody’s agenda.
As companies grow they hire new people, and wherever there are groups of people there are opposing opinions, and opinions can very easily turn into agendas. Your sales people want lower prices, your accountant wants higher prices, and your advertising people want something new; everybody has an agenda and they all conflict with each other. The result is compromise. And compromise kills brand personality and corporate identity.

Even big companies with deep pockets and access to any and every expert in the world are susceptible to agenda creep. Take the fast food giant McDonald’s for example. Their television advertising is all over the place. They use different themes, different approaches, and even different music in almost every commercial, each aimed at a different market with a different product offering. The only thing that seems to be consistent is the logo and signature jingle that is slapped on to the end of each spot. As individual commercials they my stand up, obviously they have high production qualities but as a marketing message strategy they become mere advertising noise rather than building on each other to form a coherent approach and brand message. What they seem to want to say is that McDonald’s is for everybody no matter what age or food preference, and that kind of approach only leads to a muddled message. McDonald’s may get away with it in the short term because they are McDonald’s and have a long history of effective advertising. Whether McDonald’s simultaneous multiple campaign approach is the result of a desire to accommodate different agendas, or just designed to appeal to everybody doesn’t matter, the result is the same – muddled messaging.

5. The lack of vision.
And speaking of corporate identity, do you have one? Do you have a vision, a point-of-view, an attitude; a perspective on how you can best serve your clients. The idea of a corporate vision is something that is easy to ignore, after all, how much is a corporate vision worth? It’s not like you can go on eBay or Amazon and download one for a few bucks.

I recall seeing a documentary on a very successful clothing manufacturer. The founder of the company was reviewing the company’s latest line of running shoes. He looked at the shoes, looked at the product manager, and said, “Where’s the logo?” to which the product manager answered, “We can add it anywhere.” The company CEO in no uncertain terms told the executive that that wasn’t good enough. The logo represented the company and the company represented a particular lifestyle. The shoe being presented was just another shoe and that was not acceptable. The shoe needed to fit the ideal for which the company stood. The CEO had a vision and everything the company did had to conform to that vision. Developing and presenting a unified corporate vision is how you create a brand and how you build a business.

Creating a “buzz” around products, services, businesses or events is a requirement from all clients. There is no social media marketing wand that someone will wave and target audience will automatically start coming to your site. And what works for one brand may not work for another.

The process of creating buzz doesn’t start from creating a Blog or creating a video, it’s a social media strategy that encompasses social media and word-of-mouth marketing. We have compiled a list of social media tools that companies use to build their social media marketing mixes.

1. Blogs

Blogs have become a great tool for social media marketing. That is first because, if optimised correctly, it can be used to drive traffic to a website. A good blog will help in creating internal links, fresh content, active community or non-search engine traffic.

Examples of popular blogs where you can create your account are: Wordpress, Blog.com, Bloggers.com, Typepad etc.

2. Microblogging

Just as blogs, microbloggs offer huge opportunities for business promotion. That is both through content consistency and good optimisation. Few of the most used are: Posterous or Twitter.

3. Online video

The importance of online videos has rapidly increased during the last years. To read more on this topic, have a look at our blog on the Growing importance of online video. Popular video sharing websites are: YouTube and Vimeo.

4. Photosharing

Social media is all about sharing! Therefore, there are numerous platforms that allow photo sharing with your friends. Some of them are: Flickr, Memeo, and Photobucket.

5. Podcasting

Podcasting is part of the new media tools that are offered to both promote your brand or your products/services. Check out Blip or RadioPodcast here.

6. Presentation sharing

Another great way to put your brand’s name in the spotlight is by offering presentations on topics of interest for your audience on presentations sharing websites. They are increasingly gaining in popularity nowadays. Some of them are: SlideShare, MyPlick, Scribd, AuthorSTREAM, or Myplick.

7. Social networks: applications, fan pages, groups, and personalities

Social networks are the place to present, promote yourself as well as to keep in touch with your targeted audience. You can read a list of most popular on our blog on Top social media network sites!

8. Crowd sourcing / Voting

Crowdsourcing is an effective model because it can be used for developing programs, marketing efforts, research, and education. For example Dell has used Crowdsourcing as a distributed problem-solving and production model and has reduced costs and increased their efficiency. Also look at the challenge for fNIH http://omopcup.orwik.com/ here to see crowd sourcing campaign.

9. Bookmarking/Tagging

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Examples of popular social bookmarking websites: Delicious, Digg, Diigo, Fark, Mixx, MyBlogLog, Newsvine, Propeller, Reddit, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, Yahoo! Buzz.

10. Discussion boards and forums

Online forums are a great way to market your products/ services and interact with other professionals or your audience. Engaging your audience in your niche forum can bring high value to your site and brand too.

11. Content aggregation

Content aggregation offers you the chance to bring all news and feeds around your online communities accounts in one place. Some say this is the future of social media. Emerging content aggregation websites: Bloglines, FriendFeed, Lifestream.fm, Lijit.

12. Brand monitoring

Social media is also offering a variety of tools that help businesses understand the positioning of their brand. Popular examples are: Buzzlogic, Radian6 or Reputation Defender.

13. Ratings and reviews

The best way to find out where your website stands or how your brand is perceived by others is through ratings and reviews. See Yelp, Getsatisfaction.

14. Widgets

For those who are trying to promote their own brands, they can create their personalise badges using interesting widgets on Facebook, Twitter and other networks or simply use WidgetBox or Spring Widgets.

15. Wikis

Wikis are our online encyclopaedia. A short list of wikis: Wikipedia, Citizendium, Aboutus, Pbwiki, or Wetpaint.

Along with all the new ways of publishing your content on networking sites, it is important to publish your articles on publishing sites like Ezinearticles, eHow, Google Docs, IdeaMarketers, Yahoo Articles Group and submit your press release on important specialised sites like i-Newswire, PR.com, PressReleasePoint, PRLog.org.

Social Media Marketing can be very confusing at times. There are lots of networks and channels to choose from, creating presence on all the channels is very time consuming and randomly choosing any network is not a good social media strategy. Companies are struggling to understand what social media marketing mix they should use to make their brand successful in the online world.

We suggest it is important to identify which channels are suitable for your business depending on your target audience. Businesses must plan a step by step online marketing strategy and brainstorm ideas with their online marketing agency that will work for their products/service.

Don’t exactly know what it is about starting a new year of marketing online, but I always stop and take a hard look at all my marketing tactics and methods. Article marketing is always at the top of my list, mainly because it is and has always been the cornerstone of everything I do on the web.

By cornerstone I mean it is the key to basically all of my online earnings. Without article marketing I wouldn’t be a full-time online marketer – it’s as simple as that. No articles, no income.

Articles bring in the targeted traffíc. Articles build those all important one-way backlinks. Articles build those even more important top rankings in Google for your chosen keywords. Articles build your online reputation and credibility in the eyes of your visitors.

I was struggling on the web for around three years before I wrote my first article. “10 Reasons To Put RSS On Your Site” which is still on around 8,000 sites around the web.

Writing was always a passion of mine, but it was more on the creative side, although I did work briefly as a reporter for a very small community newspaper. Looking back on it, I believe (perhaps falsely) that I had to gain all those years of experience before I could start writing articles about it.

Which was the totally wrong attitude to take since anyone can research a favorite subject or topic and write a short informative article on it. Most of us have been doing that since grade school – it is the same as writing a report or an essay.

Only with article writing you actually see monetary returns almost immediately. Surfers search for an answer in the search engines, your article pops up, they read it and then clíck the link to your webpage where you have conveniently placed your affiliate links or your products.

A Small Percentage of Those Article Readers Will Buy Your Products and You’re in Business.

Over time, all those backlinks in your resource box at the end of your article will make your keywords rise in the search engines, especially Google. Then as someone searches in Google – your site pops up, they click thru to your webpage and a small percentage of these visitors will buy your product or affiliate product displayed on your page.

Smart marketers will also start building a large list of prospective customers by offering a free guide, ecourse, ebook or software program to get those visitors to sign-up to your list. These marketers can then do follow-up with all these potential customers.

That in a nutshell is an article marketing model or funnel which thousands of online marketers and webmasters are using. And have been using for years.

But Will Article Marketing Remain Effective in 2010 and the Coming Years?

More than likely the answer would be yes but the web is constantly changing and there are other games worth playing. The same kind of marketing system could be done with Videos, Blogs, Social Networks and even with Twitter. Your options are more varied…

However, I find article marketing can be integrated into all these elements. For example, EzineArticles lets you Tweet your articles to all your followers. I turn my best articles into Videos and place them on YouTube which opens up a whole different flow of traffic to my webpages and affiliate links.

Likewise, you can place your articles or links to them on FaceBook, MySpace and the other social networks. I find getting your articles on Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon… can bring in a lot of traffic and improve your rankings.

But the Question Remains – is Article Marketing as Effective as It Once Was?

My own answer and personal opinion is no since it’s effectiveness has been watered down somewhat because every “tom dick and harry plus sally” is doing it. Everybody has discovered how writing short informative articles on the topic of your site can be very lucrative.

When I wrote that first article five years ago, I was ‘writer #1561′ with Ezinearticles. Now they have over 242,000 writers!

Back then, I found your article was placed on a lot more sites mostly because there wasn’t that many articles out there and competition was much, much less than it is now. More people writing more articles simply means your article falls into a bigger pool of other articles.

I believe video marketing is at the stage article marketing was at around five years ago. So turning your articles into short “how to” videos would probably be a wiser move and you would have a lot less competition. You can also place your marketing into the whole Video/Youtube craze that is still bringing in tons of traffic and interested customers.

However, the popularity of free article directories have grown and some of these sites have very high traffic numbers. Here are some of the main ones I use:

• EzineArticles
• GoArticles
• iSnare
• IdeaMarketers

And I also like to place my articles on important but perhaps lesser known sites such as:

• PromotionWorld
• SelfGrowth
• American Chronicle
• Buzzle

However, article marketing is still a very good way to get your site and name on the web. It can still bring in traffic and help build those all important backlinks and search engine rankings. This is one marketer who will not be giving up article marketing any time soon.

Some of my most effective techniques for article marketing are:
• Place your targeted keyword phrase in the title, usually at the beginning.

• Make sure your article is informative and supplies the information a reader is searching for – but always try to motivate the reader to click your links in the resource box for further information since your main objective is to get the reader to click thru to your site.

• Most experts say to keep your article short, around 400 – 700 words, but I have found longer articles of 800-1500 words do really well.

• Place your targeted keywords in the anchor text of your resource box links, that’s the underlined clickable part. Vary these keywords to avoid keyword spamming.

• For very important sites, try writing an exclusive unique article for that site alone.

• Always spell-check and proof-read your articles. Grammar hasn’t ever been my strong point so what I do for finding the correct usage of some tricky phrases or words – I do a search in Google with “quotation marks” to find out which one has the most links/usage… I go with one that has the most links, even if it’s wrong. Thousands of people are making the same mistake. Many marketers do the same thing with misspelled keywords.

While they can be expensive, I also like using paid article submission sites such as SubmitYourArticle, ThePhantomwriters and Isnare… mainly because article marketing has been so profitable for me, I don’t mind pouring some of those earnings back into those sites. It saves me time and extends the reach of my articles.

Article marketing will continue to be one of your best ways to build backlinks, raise your rankings and bring in potential customers to your site. It still works for me and hundreds of thousands of other webmasters – it should also work for you.

As a result, we’ve assembled a team of web experts to help you and your business keep on top of the most important trends on the web. Constructing a mobile website, creating social media campaigns and selling online are just some of the challenges businesses will face during 2010.

Here are top online trends for the next 12 months.

Mobile web

Every web-savvy business knows smartphone use is on the rise. But few are actively developing for mobiles by creating websites specifically used for handheld devices.

As more and more mobile users flock to gadgets with larger touchscreens and internet browsers, such as the iPhone or Google Nexus One, the mobile space will become bigger and SMEs need to get on board. If your website isn’t accessible through a smartphone or app, users will give up and go somewhere else – losing you traffic and potential sales.

Ovum analyst Nathan Burley says the number of people taking up smartphones instead of traditional handsets will require businesses to develop mobile websites.

“In our view there are two big trends that will occur in 2010. That is mobile broadband and the adoption of smartphones, and the impact of those two things on the industry. This is changing the way people access the internet, and that is in mobile.”

“The big change is that these smartphones are allowing people to use tools in the same way a laptop did in the past, which is opening more users to the internet on the go.”

Chris Thomas, chief executive of SEO firm Reseo, says 2010 will be “the year of the mobile”.

“I think mobile search is definitely here. Google is throwing a lot of money at mobile, and it’s going to be really interesting to see how businesses leverage that.”

SEO

Using search engine algorithms in order to get your site on “page one” has been a tactic used by online businesses for years. But SEO experts say the process of getting a website known will become even harder in 2010 with the rise of personalised and real-time search.

Social network Twitter sparked a trend when it designed the first popular real-time search engine. When users search for a term, the site would update that search with new “tweets” as they were being made.

Google has recently introduced a real-time search function of its own, complete with indexed tweets, while Microsoft Bing has made a deal to show tweets in search results. But Thomas says while 2010 will see a rise in real-time search traffic, businesses shouldn’t be too keen to pursue a dedicated real-time search strategy.

“I think people are still trying to figure out what to do with it. Perhaps if there’s a trending topic, such as Copenhagen or climate change, that’s where we could see real-time do some work because there’s an opportunity for someone selling solar panels to come in, using a message like “stop climate change” via solar panels or something. There is some real potential there.”

“This is where it could go, but it’s such an active industry, with optimisation and SEO changing. But I always say to our clients, stick to your knitting and don’t do anything silly.”

Jim Stewart, chief executive of Stewart Media, says real-time search will continue to grow but businesses need to be aware of the more subtle changes Google is making to its search algorithms.

“All of the normal SEO things still apply, even though Google is going forward with things like personalised search. That will surely play a part, but you still have to get on the front page at all before you get into someone’s personal search results.”

Stewart warns Google will be updating its speed-check feature, through which the engine checks how fast it takes for a user to connect to a website. If a business has any downtime, it could affect search rankings.

But Stewart also says Google could potentially lose its place as the top search engine, as users could migrate to other offerings or be wary of the company’s search power.

“I don’t believe the search engine is providing as relevant results as it did this time last year. I’m sure they know it, but it doesn’t seem to be working as well. I’d also love to think that people will begin to start using Bing more and more, but it has to become a better search engine before that happens.”

“The other thing is privacy. A lot of people already are pretty wary of Google and privacy issues, even to the point where Eric Schmidt said if you’re doing something on the web you don’t want people to know, then maybe you shouldn’t be doing it.”

Social Media

Facebook and Twitter were the standout social networks from 2009, and their popularity will surge in 2010 with both introducing new features, including paid accounts for business.

But businesses need to pay attention to the trends on these sites. Creating a social media strategy is no longer optional, it is vital to the health of a company and its ability to tap into an online user-base.

Some experts say if you aren’t engaging online, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to gain new customers and fans who will effectively market for you if given enough reason.

Thomas says 2010 will be the year in which businesses must jump on social media or risk being left behind by the competition.

“If you don’t have a Facebook fan page you should get in, and if you’re in a community-minded space, where you can offer things like competitions and such, then you’re set.”

James Griffin, founder and chief executive of online reputation management company SR7, says this year will see the rise of analysts who will begin to convince businesses to study, track and move operations into social media.

“Analysts will be versed in understanding and using social media, the quantitative and qualitative reports will empower businesses to implement researched social media strategies and gather market intelligence.”

Online retail

More and more Australian businesses are selling online, but compared to the US we have a lot of catching up to do. Online spending has grown from 1% to 3% of overall spending over the last 10 years, compared to the American equivalent of 7%.

Hal Pritchard, founder and chief executive of online kitchenware retailer Everton Online, says 2010 should be the year in which businesses start to realise they cannot operate without an eCommerce offering.

“The whole market in general is maturing. I think some of the people who didn’t want to do it originally are now deciding they have to do it, because if I count the number of competitors I have now compared to last year, there’s certainly a lot more out there.”

Pritchard says the biggest trend emerging in Australia is the growth of free shipping, which has allowed retailers in the US to stand out from the crowd.

“Freight is getting lower and is free in some places, which I suspect is going to be a general trend as competition hots up. Margins will get even tighter, and affording these things will be difficult, but I think it’s one of the things that are happening.”

“We seem to be following the US as we progress, and we’re less far behind and I think that free freight is the next thing. But it’s not just about that, it’s about pushing the boundaries and staying on the edge, not just having a good website. The people who can innovate and stay ahead will do well.”

Advertising

The internet advertising industry continued to grow in 2009 and will do the same in 2010, but the next 12 months is expected to see the ongoing development of mobile advertising.

Last year the Interactive Advertising Bureau forecast the online ad market to pass $2 billion by next month, representing a 27% increase from 2008. While the downturn forced spending down in 2009, it’s safe to assume that figure will rise in 2010.

The mobile advertising scene is fairly new, so naturally few SMEs are actually investing in the sector. But Apple’s recent acquisitions of Quattro, along with Google’s purchase of AdMob, shows the big players are serious about the mobile space.

But Thomas says businesses should think about advertising on prominent sites such as social networks, in order to keep up with the market.

“In the last 12 months we have started various campaigns using Facebook ads with quite good success, and it’s getting better. Businesses should be taking advantage of the solid targeting available through sites like Facebook.”

“We’re certainly seeing more advertising on Twitter. You have sites now which are allowing companies to hire someone with a million followers to tweet their messages. I mean, it’ll cost you, but the return on investment of that tweet could be huge.”

YouTube senior product manager David King says the growth of viral content, pieces of media published online which gain popularity in a short amount of time, are opening businesses up to new advertising models.

He says if a business finds a piece of content it created on a YouTube video, it can choose to place an in-video or AdWords advertisements rather than claim a copyright violation.

“These advertising structures are really geared towards taking control of what users upload. It’s only relevant if you’re uploading content, but if you are a small business and are doing that, this could be relevant for you.”

Reputation management

Most businesses are at least operating a website, but even those rejecting the online space need to be aware of how fast rumours and allegations can fly in the digital age. Several companies have had their reputations tarnished within hours from the activities of either rogue employees, or a botched advertising campaign.

Griffin says businesses need to control their reputation by monitoring what people are saying about them.

“The answer is, companies have been pushed into conducting a social media marketing campaigns without research and without adequately addressing the risk factors associated with social media.”

“2010 will see companies embracing the need to address the inherent risks of social media, with enterprises moving towards a scientific and empirically based approach to managing risk.”

Last year, Domino’s Pizza landed itself into trouble when two employees posted a video of themselves handling food unhygienically on the internet. Cotton On experienced backlash on Facebook when it continued to sell baby clothes with slogans such as “They Shake Me”.

Griffin says businesses can avoid such catastrophes by carefully monitoring who is talking about their brand, and being ready to address any situation as quickly as it appeared.

“The many and varied social media ‘fails’ of 2008-2009 will see companies and institutions take a measured, risk-based approach to these platforms.”

“Auditing, monitoring and analysing social media platforms along with risk mitigation strategies will become standard fare for those companies looking to protect and enhance their brand on social media platforms.”

Marketing

While mobile advertising may be taking awhile to heat up, many businesses are developing new and interesting mobile marketing campaigns to draw people into their stores.

Google has developed a system whereby users take a picture of a barcode with their mobile phone and use the search engine to find information. Closer to home, Hoyts Cinemas currently runs a promotion where movie goers with Bluetooth activated on their handsets sometimes receive discount offers via text messages when they walk into a lobby.

But it isn’t just big companies which are using mobiles for marketing. Peter Shipman, who owns a casual Mexican restaurant in the US, bought ads in university newspapers to advertise a barcode sent through text messages used to claim discounts.

US company Jagtag is now developing a technology used to identify barcodes through camera phones, when it is then sent via text message in order for the user to receive a discount code.

Thomas says this year will see a number of companies bring mobile marketing strategies to the forefront of their campaigns.

“There are going to be some really good creative ways people will start to get customers in store, and sending messages out like that… providing they don’t break any spam laws.”

“We’re going to see these companies start to realise how much activity is occurring through mobiles, and then we’re going to see them respond by commissioning campaigns of their own.”

Thomas also says a number of companies will begin to commission mobile apps, especially on the iPhone, purely for marketing purposes. Whether this will gain them revenue or purely open their brand to a new audience, the mobile apps market will become part of an online business’s marketing strategy in 2010.

Content

The growth of the internet has allowed businesses to publish content of their own, including blogs, pictures and even videos. King says SMEs should think about creating some sort of content on YouTube or similar sites such as a tutorial, and see a fan base grow.

“There are a lot of smaller to medium sized businesses which have really operated with a focus of specifically gearing themselves towards publishing on YouTube, and they really make a go of it – and we give them a global audience to do so.”

But King warns businesses they must be generating useful content, without the appearance of a blatant marketing pitch, and not be scared of entering a new area where they might not have experience.

“As these things become more commonplace, consumers love them, but unfortunately businesses which have been relying on older business models do not. I really think they need to get over that a little bit. Ultimately the consumer is right, and they are going to spend their time the way they spend it.”

“Businesses need to really stay focused on that consumer experience and not get hung up on the comfort of the way things used to be. The more businesses can try and anticipate where things can go as opposed to stopping it, I think that’s the best place to be for them.”

Open Source

Once upon a time, businesses wouldn’t trust open-source programs in favour of branded, more trustworthy software solutions. But now open-source has given SMEs a way of operating high-end programs without substantial costs.

With popular programs such as Mozilla Thunderbird, Open Office, WordPress and Joomla now gaining notoriety, organisations are beginning to realise open-source programs aren’t just technically inferior rip-offs, but legitimate alternatives.

A number of organisations, including the British Government and the French police force, have openly supported open-source, while Gartner research from late-2008 indicates the majority of businesses in the Asia/Pacific region took up open-source in 2009.

And with the development and popularity of open-source Android operating system continuing to grow, open-source is likely to play a major part in a business’s IT strategy in 2010.

Cloud computing

Two years ago “cloud computing” was viewed by many businesses as a buzzword with no particular meaning, used by tech-heads who didn’t quite know what they were talking about.

Now, using cloud services has become an essential for businesses. Whether they are backing up their data or using a piece of software hosted on external servers, cloud computing is now a part of everyday operations for many SMEs.

Cloud services have branched out into three main categories: applications, also known as software-as-a-service, infrastructure, used for data backups, and internal service providers for businesses with customised apps and programs.

Analyst firm Gartner recently named cloud computing as one of the top strategic technologies for 2010, saying it could be exploited in a number of different ways to customise programs and apps to a particular company’s needs.

“Using cloud resources does not eliminate the costs of IT solutions, but does rearrange some and reduce others. In addition, consuming cloud services enterprises will increasingly act as cloud providers and deliver application, information or business process services to customers and business partners.”

There’s one area that many entrepreneurs slip upon and that’s about knowing how effective their ads are.

It’s essential that you analyse your ads from front to back so you could answer that question immediately anyone asked it. You need to analyse your ads for each element in this list:

** What they say and how they say it

** The headline and sub head

** The pre head

** If your Unique Selling Point is really clearly presented

** What action you want the prospect, visitor or customer to take

So, you have done all that and that’s great. But it is even more important that you move to the next stage and start to monitor two things: first how much the ads cost you to run, and second the exact conversion rate into hard cash in terms of sales.

It’s all about control:

Thinking your ads are effective doesn’t cut it. You need to have exact figures because that gives you a control you can work with. What do I mean by that? Well in this context, a control is your basic offer, headline, and copy that has brought you some sort of return.

Having that information means you can now start to cut your cost per sale by testing different variations of each element. Now that doesn’t mean changing everything all at once, in fact it’s vital you don’t because then you are not going to know which particular item is working, or failing.

Best place to start? I always jump in and change just the headline. Just doing that and comparing it to the original headline gave us 16 times more results on one of our landing pages than the original headline did.

How often do you change your headlines? Check what you are currently using and then run a test with a new one, I will bet you can come up with an even better headline when you sit down and think about it.

That headline is the first thing a visitor sees so it has to have impact because it’s what you are going to be judged by. It doesn’t matter how experienced you are at marketing, it is easy to underestimate the poewr of having a hard hitting, attention grabbing headline.

You have got around 6 seconds to interest any visitor to your website before they decide to stay – or go. That’s why a killer headline is essential, and I suggest you also experiment with a pre head and a sub head.

For examples of what I am talking about, visit a few sites and look at their sales page and shopping cart and you will generally see how a mixture of attention grabbing headlines, sub heads and pre heads.

In our own business we definitely want to draw attention to specifics in the copy, so we have added in other text elements like bullets, lists, bold and italic and recently we have incorporated video as well.

Don’t stop there: Once you start using your control pages, there is so much you can test. Every single element of your sales page can be analysed, and your copy has six distinct area’s that you can test:

- The Headline

- Your Story or Pitch

- The Proposition

- The Offer

- The Guarantee

- The Call To Action

As I have said before, for me the best place to start is with your headline. It’s the simplest to do and can produce quick and substantial results. Having got that killer headline then you can begin writing alternative messages that you can include in the other five components of your sales copy.

So what do you have to do in order to get that 60 percent increase I talked about in the headline? Simple maths shows you that by repositioning each of the six components could each give you a 10% boost to your sales, and multiply that by the six elements and you could soon see a 60% increase in your success rate.

Actually, you could do even better than that because I have experienced increases of up to 16 times, not percentages but times improvement, by adjusting and monitoring all the copy elements in a sales page.

Once you compound all of the improvements that you have carried out to that page then you could very quickly see a very different profit picture on your business.

Article marketing is the act of writing an article and submitting it to article directories, ezines, and other online directories and publishers.

By including links back to your own websites or blogs you can generate direct surf through traffic while also building back links to your website that will help to improve search engine rankings for your specific keywords.

Writing the most appealing articles, submitting them to search engine friendly directories, and repeating the process on a regular basis can be the recipe for search engine success.

What Is Article Marketing?

All websites have a thirst for high quality, topical content that will be relevant to their readers but not all website owners and promoters are willing or able to create this content as part of their marketing routine.

By creating content articles that others can use for their websites you are rewarded with the opportunity to include one or two links back to your own website. As well as receiving a link from the article directory itself, which are often authoritative websites crawled regularly by search engine spiders, you also gain some benefit when other websites publish your article and links on their own site.

Why Do It?

Article marketing offers an effective and inexpensive way of building quality inbound links to a website. You know that the links generated are from contextually relevant pages because you have written the content that is used.

Furthermore, by using the most beneficial and SEO friendly directories you can dictate the keywords that are used in the anchor text; a critical component of a strong SEO link.

As well as the SEO benefits, you may also find your article published in ezines and newsletters that have a strong, dedicated, and loyal following driving direct traffic to your site.

Choosing Directories

There are literally hundreds of article directories online and choosing the right ones should be considered an integral part of article marketing success.

Directories should be SEO friendly so do not use nofollow tags in links or in robot files. They should allow you to use HTML code for your links and they should keep the number of links and advertisements on a page down to a minimum. They should also be crawled by search engines and be considered a strong SEO site in order to offer any real benefit.

Alternatively, they should generate a large number of visitors directly through the links in your articles.

Writing Articles

The most popular articles are well written and provide genuinely useful information. Good directories will not accept those that are little more than blatant self promotion and very few will accept articles with more than 2 or possibly 3 links to your website.

Ensure that your writing is not only appealing to other website owners but also to their own readership base because this will encourage more website owners to use your articles.

Including Links

Links to your site are typically added to the “Resource” or “About The Author” paragraph. Some directories will allow links in the body of the article and these too offer very good benefit especially in driving traffic directly to your pages.

Always try to use those directories that enable you to construct your own HTML link including anchor text because this will give you SEO benefit as well as potential surf through traffic. Always ensure that the link is relevant to the page you’ve written as well as to the page you direct readers too.

Submitting To Article Directories

Having written a useful piece on a relevant topic and having chosen SEO friendly directories you will need to submit the articles for consideration. Most directories use a number of anti-spam measures to ensure that they offer only very good quality articles to publishers. Manual submission of articles is, therefore, advised. While automated software does exist, you will still find that you need to complete a number of aspects of the submission yourself.

Using Article Submission Services

Manual article submission services do exist and can prove a beneficial method of building links and generating traffic especially if you do not have the time or resources to write and submit a large number of articles.

Try to see a good portfolio of articles that have been written by the service and always ensure they offer a manual and ethical submission service.

1. Sharing Links to Items of Interest

As soon as you read something online that you think is interesting, it is easy to share it on Twitter with all of your followers. Twitter is highly effective in this manner because it is such a quick way to be able to reach a large group of people. You can also get a lot of great ideas for blog posts from Twitter since many new ideas and stories are floating around that haven?t even made it to the blogosphere and definitely not to mainstream media.

2. Building Your Network

Using Twitter is a great way to build your network because it allows you to find and follow people with similar interests. You can use Steeple to find people who live in your geographical area. You can also use other tools that help you find new people to follow based upon who your Twitter friends follow.

3. Build Relationships within Your Current Network

People in different networks often use Twitter to connect with their contacts instantly rather than using instant messaging for that purpose. Furthermore, many people use Twitter to connect with their network during events like conferences.

4. Re-Distributing Content from Your Blog or Website

Twitter can be used to redistribute content from your blog or website. However, you should take care to do this thoughtfully since many of your Twitter followers may already read your blog. For that reason, you may want to avoid using a blog plug-in that automatically Tweets your posts. Your best bet is to Tweet your content manually and customize each Tweet so it doesn’t get old.

5. Get Involved in Live Tweeting Events

Twitter launched at SXSW last year, catapulting microblogging conferences to fame. Live Tweeting events are great because they are a form of citizen journalism that allow you to connect with several new people in your niche while making active and valuable contributions to current discussions in your community.

6. Pitching Stories to Journalists on Twitter

You can send a direct message to a journalist who is following you on Twitter to pitch a story idea.

7. Communicating with Your Team

You can use Twitter as a company intranet that connects all of your employees. Twitter can be particularly useful in this regard if you have a virtual business with employees in different geographical locations. You can set your updates to private for security reasons. Anytime you are working on group projects, you can stay in touch with your team members using Twitter.

8. Brand Monitoring

Stay up to date with any mentions of your business on Twitter. If there is anything negative, you will be able to counter it quickly. You can also use Twitter as a way to receive feedback from your customers and improve your business. Just ask your followers to give their opinion on something. For example, if you designed a new website, ask your followers what they think about it and get their constructive criticisms so you can make your site design even better.

9. Acquire More Votes on Social Media Websites

If you have submitted a story to Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, or any other social voting website, tweet a link to that submission to try to score more votes from your followers. If your followers like what they see, they are sure to vote for your content.

10. Hiring People

Looking for a programmer, designer, or writer? Whatever type of professional you seek, try finding them on Twitter. Simply send your followers a tweet telling them you are looking for someone for a job. They can either recommend someone to you or offer themselves for the job. Using Twitter in this way is ideal for finding qualified freelancers. It is much more convenient than putting out a classified ad.

11. Build Your Personal Brand

When you use Twitter to talk about things as mundane as what you ate for breakfast or how you are going to sleep early tonight, you make your followers feel like you are casual and approachable. Even those running a company that has a cold, corporate brand image could create more appeal and build a unique personal brand using Twitter.

12. Streamline Electronic Communications

When you use Twitter, you?re likely to find yourself using IM, email, and other electronic communication methods less. Twitter not only provides public chatting through Tweets, it also allows you to send direct messages. Twitter will help you streamline your electronic communications, allowing you to scale back online.

Author: Ron Knight

Real-time search is still an emerging concept. At this point, using a real-time search engine will bring you results by time/date. This doesn’t always cater to relevancy, which is why there is still a lot of work to be done in this field.

So, if real-time results are based upon time/date, and the user’s query, it stands to reason that time and those queries are the most important components in getting your content found in these types of searches.

1. Use Keywords

This seems obvious, but use keywords in not only your content, but in your titles, and your updates. If you’re writing an article, you have to consider what people are going to include in their updates if they share it on a social network, whether this be Facebook, Twitter, or anything else.

More often than not, they are going to include the title. If the right keywords are in the title, then those keywords are also more likely to appear in any ensuing tweets, Facebook updates, etc. If someone searches for those keywords, they will be more likely to find your content in a real-time search.

The same goes for your own Tweets/status updates. Even if you are not sharing an article, if you want your update to be found, use relevant keywords. Again, obvious, but true.

2. Talk About Timely Events

Simply mentioning events that are current will put you directly into the results for any searches having to do with that topic, provided the right keywords are in play. This is a method that could and (surely is) being exploited by spammers, but that doesn’t mean you can’t provide legitimate conversation and simply put yourself on more people’s radars, without throwing links at them every time.

3. Have a Lot of Followers

If you have a lot of followers or friends on social networks, or even just readers of your blog, you are going to get more people sharing your content. The more people sharing your content, the more impressions of your content will be making their way into real time searches.

There is no easy way to instantly get a bunch of legitimate readers/followers. It will take some promotion. Provide useful content that people will link to and it will spread virally. Provide clear ways for them to follow you (like links to Facebook pages and Twitter accounts on your blog).
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4. Promote Conversation

Whether on your blog or on a social network, spark conversations. Talk about topics that people are interested in. This is tied to number 2. The more conversations you are involved with, the more retweets (and equivalents on other networks) you are likely to get. And again, this means more impressions in real times searches.

5. Include Calls to Engagement

I recently talked about why there is more to retweeting than meets the eye for businesses. I mentioned the use of buttons like Tweetmeme’s and Digg’s. These are buttons you can put on articles that show the amount of retweets/diggs that article has. They kind of act as a meter for engagement.

These buttons are certainly not all-encompassing. They only represent the conversation on 2 channels, and not the web in general. I’m sure there are other buttons that can be used in addition.

More importantly though, they provide a “call to action” to share the content. People can digg or retweet a story with a simple click, and you’re one step closer to being found in somebody’s real-time search.

Wrapping Up

Real-time search is much more basic (at least so far) than say, Google Search. You’re not ranking for relevancy. Really, you could hardly call it ranking it all. It’s about visibility. That means, you have to get people talking about your content/updates.

Social media by nature is viral. Real-time search is nothing more than putting things in chronological order. You have to keep people talking to stay relevant to “right now.”

Search engine optimization (SEO) is more difficult than rocket science. Becoming a Jedi-level SEO master requires years of practice for most mere mortals, and like a Jedi, if one falls out of practice, one’s skills quickly wane.

This is not a static science. Search algorithms change constantly, and as they are carefully protected secrets, one can never know what those designing the search engines are really doing under the hood.

No, it’s not rocket science; A more apt analogy would be trying to reverse engineer a UFO that one can only see from afar, the specs of whose propulsion system constantly change.

Do not kid yourself: Becoming a genuine expert in this field is no easy task. In addition to all the knowledge needed, competition can literally be fierce. Your competitors may even actively sabotage you. One mistake can undo months of hard work.

If working on behalf of a client, you had better be darn sure that you keep your methods above board so that you do not get their site exiled to the far reaches of the Internet where it will never be found.

Meanwhile, some of your competitors will be using very underhanded techniques to try to make that happen. Like I said, it’s hard to reach Jedi level, and once you do, you have to take care to stay on the bright side of the Force.

If you are in business, it is extremely important to choose the right SEO company or employee.

If you want to become the right SEO company or employee, here are a few suggestions on ways to train yourself (and being self-taught is the only way to do this):

1. Build at least five websites and administer them for at least a year. Keep each one separarate from the others, its own little sanitary petri dish not to be sullied.

2. Go about it scientifically. Test hypotheses rigorously until you have a few bona fide theories. Keep good records and track results. Take special note of changes in search engine behavior and the keywords and descriptions that draw your visitors. Connect those changes to your SEO activities.

3. Learn how to identify effective keywords. Despite what you may have heard, this is not as easy as finding words that are both searched for and non-competitive. It’s best to be somewhat intuitive. What keyword combination are potential customers likely to use as opposed to bored or curious web surfers?

4. Use different tools until you find one that works. I have my favorite, but I’m not allowed to mention it in this article. Follow the link in my bio and surf around the blog. You should be able to determine what that tool is. Try it free.

5. Success before sales. Once you have at least 20 pages to the top for fairly competitive keywords, you can turn prospects into clients.

6. Play your cards somewhat close to your chest. Once you have some success, take a cue from the people who write the search algorithms and keep your exact methods to yourself. Also train and improve continuously so that your skills do not slip.

If you go through that training course, you will become a Jedi-level SEO expert who commands top dollar and deserves every penny.