Business Blogs: Trends, tips, and real-life anecdotes from industry experts.

Twitter, http://twitter.com/, is a great way to build buzz about your products and services. But if you are using it for media relations activities, here are a few tips to keep in mind:
1. Keep it professional.
Although you want to reach out to followers on a personal level, keep it professional and provide valuable information. Your followers [...]

Referencing my prior post on Creative Capitalism, here is another business with a 1 for 1 model.
A new project by California eco-urban design firm LJ Urban aims to make giving more concrete—quite literally—by matching its sales of homes domestically with funds to build homes in the impoverished African nation of Burkina Faso.

Urban has designed a [...]

On Tuesday, we heard from SEO guru, Heather Lloyd-Martin of SuccessWorks Search Marketing http://www.seocopywriting.com. Here are more of her valuable tips:
What is the best way for entrepreneurs to learn SEO and start using it?
The best possible scenario is if the entrepreneur can hire a SEO consultant to teach them the ins and outs. It is [...]

Looks like the Obama’s should have registered their last name to enjoy ongoing royalties. Some interesting examples of halo branding. Where businesses capitolize on the brand elements of another entity. Examples: ATT + TOMs Shoes, Obama Red Wine (below)
Maybe I should pick up some Obama Red to wash down my Freedom Fries…
From Speigel Online:
French Vintner [...]

When you consider your business model (which includes your marketing efforts), you generally concentrate on these core components:

Why will people pay you? (money, votes, donations)
What does it cost you to sell your item…margins?
What protects you from competition, price-feature battles?
How will you turn an agnostic audience into loyal customers?

Early on when transactions had no costs, doing [...]

I picked up a book in the airport recently: Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher. It’s a fast read and has enough tabloid photos to keep you interested. Her come-sit-by-me-and-dish point of view is disarming and I genuinely enjoyed her tales, her vulnerability and her wit. More importantly, I respect what she is doing.

Wishful Drinking

Carrie Fisher [...]

Recently, I was contacted by a PR firm (Attention) and asked if I would profile Blake Mycoskie on my blog(s). I’m ashamed to say how long it’s taken me to turn this piece around, however seeing the latest ATT commercial featuring Blake after a long day of meetings (at my day job) shamed me into finishing. My [...]

Usually, the acronym, ROI (”Return on Investment”) is reserved for use in characterizing how much money you get out of a deal as an investor. It’s basically a financial stat.
But the ROI for us at StartupNation is something quite different, which I realized as soon as I received this unsolicited email at 7:41pm. Beyond the [...]

Sometimes, being “widely aware” is as important as being “narrowly focused.”
Thought you folks would benefit from this audio-visual snapshot of what’s happened over the past two hundred years in the world and why it’s so seismic relative to the history/future of humankind and the planet we inhabit. While this isn’t specifically about business, it is [...]

Do it once a year. Do it once a month. Do it twice a week.
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Pro Bono, I mean…what were you thinking?
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Especially in this time, when things are tight for everyone, time is valuable. Give it freely. Find a way to connect with those in your community. I’ve noticed messages being targeted to boomers [...]