Marketing, Design, & Web Development

So, everyone knows that rock, paper, scissors is the tried and true way to make decisions. However, we know some people like to get creative. Fedex has decided to push the envelope (pun somewhat intended), and developed a whole new version of this classic game. Let us know if you venture out and test out these new moves. Maybe even post a video. We’re not picky.
Read the rest of this entry »

We live in a global word, and not just because the Internet has connected us. Our neighbors, co-workers, friends, and even family are from all over the globe and this presents some new marketing challenges. The City of Duluth, Georgia has been facing this challenge over the last couple of years as their Korean population has grown, but remains quite isolated.
Read the rest of this entry »

Good Morning Everyone, I just read a very interesting article. In my effort to try and keep everyone up-to-date, I am including a link to the paidcontent.org article SEO Is Dead, And The New King Is 'SMO', written by Ben Elowitz.
Read the rest of this entry »

"The Web itself needs a new facelift," said Jeff Levick, president of global advertising and strategy at AOL. "There hasn't been a fundamental redesign of content or Web pages." Project Devil includes new ad units that blur the line between content and advertising. Read more at AdWeeks Real Time Advertising Week.

A lot of businesses are getting themselves on the social networking bandwagon. Even we have a Facebook page. The problem with social networking is that it can get pretty time consuming. It’s like having another web page with its own set of content that needs to be updated frequently. Sure, it serves a purpose, and getting an additional web presence for free is a pretty good deal.

There is, however, the business owner’s need to get the most return for the smallest expenditure of resources.

Have a look at the minimalist social networking app: Twitter. So bare-bones that status updates are limited to 140 characters, twitter nonetheless offers a great deal of user-generated leverage. A twitter profile consists of the following: your user name, your actual name or business name (should you choose to publish it), your geographic location (be as vague or specific as you like), and your website address. The rest of the page is devoted entirely to content. You don’t need to include your age, religion, political alignments, or blood type. Just rich, hearty content. Twitter content is designed to be added from anywhere. Not just from any computer, but even from mobile SMS text messages, hence the 140 character limit.

So let’s say you own some type of business where people like to congregate: a diner for example. A twitter user (let’s call him “Dale”) goes there to lounge around for a little while and decides to tell everyone what great coffee you have. He may tweet “Having coffee at the Double R Diner – darn good cherry pie, too.” Promoting your business online for free, does it get any better? Yes, it does. Because you could have a twitter profile with the user name “DoubleR,” in which case Dale doesn’t tweet “Having coffee at the Double R …”

Instead he tweets “Having coffee at @DoubleR – darn good cherry pie, too.” The “@DoubleR” tells twitter that Dale has made a tweet about another twitter user, and that “@DoubleR” will show up as a link to your profile where people can see the link to your website as well as all the other complimentary tweets from other users. And you don’t necessarily have to tweet yourself (although it’s a lot more fun for other people if you do).  All you need to do is spend about four minutes and six seconds to go to Twitter and set up an account, then let people know you have it.

I was recently reading one of my favorite publications, FastCompany, and came across the perfect topic for a summer article: Baseball! For those of you not familiar with FastCompany, it is a publication for businesses, so for them to be talking about baseball just seemed like it would be fun.

No surprise, the article was talking about the business side of Major League Baseball, but what really got my interest was not that they were talking about the importance of general managers, but the current GM of the Rangers has not played on a team since he was in the 8th grade! Granted Jon Daniels is only 30 and landed an awesome internship with the Rangers a few years back that lined him up for the job. Daniels just loved the game, and even though he did not make the freshman team back in high school, he still found a way to do what he loves.

I am all about taking what you love and figuring out how to make it more than just a hobby. But the more I was thinking about Daniels that more I admired him. He did not get to have his dream job of playing baseball, but that did not mean he did not get the career of his dreams. The time that he did not get to play ball and he went did other things, like majoring in business, which helped give him a new perspective and expertise that makes him so good at what he does now. It is the perfect example of, if you get lemons make lemonade.

You never know how two very unique experiences can relate to one another. Not only is this a good life lesson, but it is a good business and marketing lesson. We learn from experiences even if they do not turn out the way we expect them to. Some of our greatest business ideas fall flat on their face, but what we have done in the past and what we do while we are recovering can set us up for opportunities that we could never imagine. So even though times may not be as lucrative as they have been in the past, the worst thing you can do it to stop trying. This is a great time to try new out new ideas – you never know where they can take you!