Always Interactive Blog

Free Privacy Policy Maker from Trustguard

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:25:00 GMT

Free Privacy Policy specializes in helping thousands of website owners create easy-to-read, highly effective, custom privacy policies.

www.freeprivacypolicy.com

Their intuitive system allows you to create either a basic policy using their free website privacy policy generator, or create an advanced policy using their Premium Service plan, allowing you to create UNLIMITED Professional Privacy Policies.

You can find out more about Privacy Law by going to:

www.privacy.gov.au/

Getting your business on Facebook

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:35:00 GMT

Chances are if you use the internet at all in your life, you've heard of the social networking giant Facebook. With over 500 million active users (50% of whom log in daily), Facebook is the second most visited website on the internet, only falling behind Google. Traditionally Facebook has been a place for users to connect with friends and share pictures/information about their lives, but more and more businesses are realising the massive potential of getting their brand name out there on Facebook. Big brands such as Starbucks, Coca-Cola and even Skittles were some of the first to get on the Facebook bandwagon, and the sheer number of Facebook users connected to them show this.

But what can having your business or brand name on facebook actually accomplish for you?

First off, it allows you to get your business out there to a global audience. There is no segregation on Facebook for different countries, everybody is in the one big Facebook website. This means anybody from anywhere can view your businesses Facebook page.
It's easy for users to share pages they like with their friends. For example, say you had a great product would make the life of a builder much easier. A builder comes across your Facebook page and realises how useful your product is. Suddenly, you're getting more visits to your Facebook page as the builder's friends see him 'liking' your product's page, or even posting updates about how great it is on his own Facebook page.
Allows you to provide updates and information relevant to your business and products in real time. Every update you make is sent out and displayed on every user's news page that has 'liked' your Facebook page.
Lets your customers or potential customers ask questions or post feedback about your business

If all of this hasn't convinced you, did we mention it's all free? Anybody can go in and make a Facebook page free of charge - so what do you have to lose?

How important is an online business presence?

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 05:19:00 GMT

These days it doesn't particularly matter what sort of a business you run or service you provide - customers will expect some form of online presence. If you don't provide it, chances are you are missing out on potential customers. More and more customers are searching for services and businesses online as oppose to using a traditional means such as a phone book.

The few main reasons for this are;

Ease of access - Just type in what you want and your search engine will find it right away. No more flicking through pages upon pages of a phone book to get to the right business category.

Additional ways to narrow down your search - Maybe you want to find the nearest business to your home. A phone book has locations of course, but it isn't very efficient to find where each business is and then work out which is closest. On the other hand, a quick "Hairdressers near Mooloolaba" search on Google Maps will bring up a map that has all the hairdressers near Mooloolaba marked, so you can easily find what you want.

More detailed information - A business that has a website can use this to show potential customers so much more information than any form of traditional advertising. Contact details, images of your product, customer testimonials, pricing, detailed product descriptions etc. all viewable at the customers leisure and convenience.

Can be access anywhere, anytime - With so many mobile devices having internet access, many customers use them to find out information on businesses and products while they are away from home. Consider if your car broke down and needed to be towed, but you didn't have the details for a towing company nearby. You could easily go online on your phone, do a quick search for towing companies in your area and get their contact information to call them.

Besides all of the above, the simple fact is that internet use is more widely spread than ever before (an estimated 80% of all Australians have internet access). Having an online business presence is a cost effective way of gaining new customers and getting your brand name out there, whether it's with a simple brochure type website or a fully fledged e-commerce shop website.

Online Retailer Expo and Conference 2010

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 22:47:00 GMT

Online Retailer is nothing less than the e-retailing industry's premier learning event of the year. Online Retailer is a four-day blizzard of new ideas, problem-solving solutions, career networking, cost-saving resources and quality learning. It's the most comprehensive curriculum on online and multichannel retailing in Asia Pacific, and it's one of the world's largest e-commerce and digital marketing events for retailers.

Who Attends?

Over 2,600 retail, marketing and e-commerce professionals gathered in 2009 to share secrets of success for the new world of retailing. They came from pure-play web merchants, big and small retailers, brand manufacturers, wholesalers, mail-order houses and consumer service companies. No matter your job title, company size, or level of experience, Online Retailer has what you need to sharpen your skills, improve results and increase your profits. One visit to Online Retailer is a year's worth of fresh ideas and endless inspiration!

Why Attend?

It's e-retailing Australia's #1 choice for education, training and solutions. Spend a few days at Online Retailer and you'll make smarter, more informed decisions about retailing online. You'll learn how to avoid costly mistakes by exchanging information with and collecting the 'lessons learned' from industry peers who face similar challenges. You'll get objective information about new methods, technologies and strategies being used by other online and multichannel retailers, and you'll develop relationships with other e-retailers and e-commerce professionals.

Attendees Love It!

Just how good is Online Retailer? Have a look at what previous attendees have to say. 98.3 per cent of attendees rated their overall conference experience as either excellent or good. Nine out of 10 rated the speaker quality as either excellent or good and 85.4 per cent rated the content quality as either excellent or good. And, 94.8 per cent said they'd be back in 2010.

Who Exhibits?

The leaders in e-retailing solutions because it's the biggest exhibition in Australia dedicated exclusively to selling online. From e-commerce technology, software and online marketing to payment processing, shipping and fulfillment, the Expo Hall offers the most complete resource of e-business suppliers anywhere.

What Will I Learn?

Everything you need to know to acquire new customers, optimise retail website performance, boost conversions, reduce abandonment, foster loyalty, improve marketing ROI and maximise business operations and profits. Create your own personalised learning program from a six-track agenda featuring dozens of in-depth sessions, international keynotes, content-focused intensives, problem-solving workshops and interactive, peer-to-peer roundtable sessions all led by master practitioners and subject matter experts on every topic.

Value For Money!

Nearly nine out of 10 attendees agree that Online Retailer offers great value for money. Other conferences start at around $3000 and deliver less than a third of the content Online Retailer offers. We break the typical conference mould and provide you with a world-class line-up of 100+ international and local speakers across six, content-rich learning tracks all for just $995. And if that's out of reach, we have free keynotes and free seminars in the Expo Hall to ensure everyone benefits from the Online Retailer experience.

What's New For 2010?

More than you can handle - we've upped-the-ante on everything, except the price! This year's event features extra learning tracks, more sessions, more events and more international speakers. There are more networking opportunities and more exhibitors to help you solve your problems and frustrations. Plus, we are excited to announce the debut of the highly anticipated Online Retail Industry Awards - will you be a winner?

Creating Strong Passwords

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 05:58:00 GMT

With so many services requiring passwords (especially online), it is more important than ever to have strong passwords to keep your important information safe. Think to yourself – if someone gained access to your password protected services what could they do? The answer for many is that it could be devastating to both your business and finances. Having a strong password is one simple way to prevent this problem.

What are bad passwords?

A lot of people make the mistake thinking that choosing a random word or sequence as your password is secure because who else would think of that? While it’s true that you or I would have an impossible time trying to guess it, cyber criminals aren’t just sitting there trying to guess random words for your password. They are running sophisticated computer software tools with databases of hundreds of thousands or even millions of entries that can be rapidly entered in an attempt to find your password. If your password is a dictionary word, a simple sequence or personal information this can be relatively easy to crack.

How do I make a strong password?

There are a few main ways to make a strong password that will be practically impossible to crack. It’s all about adding complexity in as many ways as possible. The more ways of complexity you add to your password the more secure it becomes. Ways to add complexity include:

Using both upper case and lower case characters (eg. mnLoTGc)
Increasing password length. A 10 character password will be much harder to crack than a 5 character password.
Using both numbers and letters (eg. mnLoT3G7c9)
Adding punctuation / symbols (eg. mn?LoT3G7%c9”)

As you use more of these features in your password, it becomes exponentially harder to crack. The most secure passwords use all of these features.

Find out how strong your password is with the free Microsoft password checker at https://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/checker.aspx

Social Network Marketing - An Online Business Strategy

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 05:51:00 GMT

Social networking is one of the biggest trends on the internet, with millions of users accessing their preferred social networking website every day of the year. Social networking gives casual internet users the ability to have their own page on the internet without the technical know-how, which is why they are growing so quickly as more and more people discover how easy it is to have a presence on the web.

What many business owners don’t realise is that social networking can also be a highly effective marketing tool for both big and small business.

Probably one of the most important reasons for this is being able to effectively target your audience. Advertising on TV or radio targets a very broad spectrum of viewers, many of whom won’t be interested in your product and additionally are used to being advertised to on these mediums and simply ignore most of it. Social networking allows you to get your product out there to groups of potential customers that are all interested in it. For example, you could write a blog post about 4WD off-road vehicles and share it with communities or groups interested in off-road driving.

Website owners especially can greatly benefit from social marketing. Submitting articles or information related to your website with a link back can give you substantially more traffic to your website in a short period of time. The important thing here is to make your content good. Useful articles and content will attract users back and link to your content to share it with others who have similar interests. These links into your website both increase your traffic and improve your page ranking on search engines.

For advertising purposes, using social networking for marketing your products is a very low risk investment compared to traditional advertising mediums. Big social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Digg are easy to use and share your messages / content on. Once you know how to use them effectively, the only real cost to you is time spent getting your message out there. You could spend thousands on a TV advertisement and end up out of pocket if it doesn’t bring more customers in, while posting updates on your Twitter or Facebook page costs nothing, and has the potential for a huge increase in your online visibility and in turn business.

Internet Explorer Security Risks

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:32:00 GMT

Some time during December of 2009 Chinese hackers made attacks on Google and other large internet based companies, in a bid to gain information on the accounts of prominent human rights activists. These attacks were made as an assault on Google and it’s movement to free china of it’s censorship laws. Though this issue doesn’t relate to the everyday person, what does relate is the way in which the hackers were able to get the information.

Using a security flaw within the Internet Explorer program, hackers are able to upload a program within IE on to your computer allowing them to see what keystrokes you are using. This means that they could potentially learn what your passwords, bank account details including internet banking login and transaction password, along with any other password you’ve typed while the program has been installed.

Have they fixed the issue?

Microsoft have released a patch for the browsers, however, as Microsoft have not had automatic updates for their Internet Explorer Programs you are required to download it and install it yourself from the Microsoft website. All of the IE versions had this security lapse. Therefore, as long as you are browsing using any version of Internet Explorer you are potentially at risk.

What does this mean for the user?

Many experts are advising that you switch to another browser. These include, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome. We personally recommend Firefox. These is due to it’s ability to automatically update itself. This takes the hassle out of having to worry about your security updates as far as your browser is concerned. If you are hell bent of staying with Internet Explorer you’re first point of action should be to download the latest version of Internet Explorer (If you don't know which version you have just go to the Microsoft site and download the latest version). At this current point that is IE 8. This should come with the latest security upgrade included. This will overwrite your current version of IE. If you’re unable to download Internet Explorer due to the fact that you have a pirated version of windows (we know you’re out there) do yourself a favor and use one of the other programs. Having someone steal your internet banking details is far more of a hassle then the five minuets it takes to download and install Firefox.

Effective Blogging - Contextual Linking

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:45:00 GMT

Briefly mentioned in our previous post, contextual linking is a great way to improve your blog’s rankings in SEO. Now, it’s common knowledge that links coming into your site hold a lot more weight then having links going through it’s own domain. Therefore, we tend to spend our time trying to get external links back to us without really looking at the power of internal contextual linking.

The strategy behind using contextual linking is a way of boosting your non-performing blog posts. By having people visit your site, and viewing your blog post you are not only creating yourself as the expert in the field but you’re also creating greater standings within the realms of SEO.

How do you go about contextual linking?

In it’s most basic form, contextual linking joins two of your blog posts together via a link. By linking a newer post to an older one you are increasing the number of backlinks for every interlinked post. Every time you link this way, you don’t have to write the details of the old topic again, rather, let the reader choose to go back to previous post. Therefore, it becomes imperative that your contextual link aligns with two principals.

Relevant Anchor Text - Where the link has been placed within the post becomes vital to letting the viewer know what they are going to be seeing when they click through to another post. Ideally you want to make the link only two or three words long and remember to include the main keyword within the link.

Content Relevancy - There should be a correlation between the text the viewer just read and the blog post linked to. The more relevant the text is, including the area around the link, to the previous blog post, the more value it will have in terms of SEO. The more relevant, the better the chance is of someone clicking on the link.

The steps to take

Asses your blog - A strategy behind contextual linking is to link your highly viewed posts, to you lesser viewed posts. Find out which of your posts as preforming well, and which aren’t. From here you will be able to work out what links can be made. If you’re only in the beginning stages of your blog, start looking at your up coming posts and what you can do to create contextual links within newer posts. This increases your backlinks but more importantly, helps bring older posts back into view.

This brings us to another point. How do you approach your contextual linking. There are many different ways to link your blog posts, however there are two methods which you would have figured out from this post already.

Horizontal Linking - This is the method of which you look over all of your blog posts, find the relevant articles and create links between them. This may take some time, especially if you have a large archive of blog posts. This may also require that you rewrite certain sections of your posts to allow a nicer link form an SEO stand point.

Vertical Linking - This is the method of where you don’t go back into your older posts, rather just create the links as you write new blog posts. You don’t alter the older posts, rather, create your post, then find what fits with other posts.
If you start linking through to other posts you should start seeing some more views on those posts that aren’t doing so well. When you start linking back to your previous posts, let us know how well it goes.

Top 5 Blog SEO Tips

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:46:00 GMT

Search Engine Optimisation has become such a large part of having a website now, that there are many companies out there that do nothing but help you develop your SEO rankings. Your website is created of many different sections, each with different requirements for SEO. Your blog is a great way of keeping the information on your website fresh and constantly changing, and therefore, we bring you our top 5 tips for search engine optimisation of your blog.

Link up
Keyword Your Title
Use and Optimise Images
Submit Your Blog
Update Your Blog and Stick With It

Link Up

Getting links is one of the most popular ways to get your site in the good books with search engines. For you blog this can be done in a variety of ways. The obvious is be creating posts that are for lack of a better word ‘link-worthy’. The most popular types of posts are the ‘how to’s’ and ‘Top 10 tips & hints’. These work really well so long as they are relevant to your blog. Linking to other blogs through your posts helps keep your information relevant, giving references for our post, along with increasing your SEO. Another way is by writing a review of another’s blog post, and putting a link of your blog post into the comments of the blog post you reviewed. Contextual internal linking will help get your previous blog posts some views which will also help with your SEO.

Keyword Your Posts

Creating a strong title that contains the words that most people will use to search for the topics will help get people looking at your post. To find out what keywords you should be looking at you could try looking at some of the keyword suggestion tools out in the world such as Overture and Wordtracker. Help feed the spiders by also placing your keywords within the body of your text. Don’t get too crazy with this though, putting your keywords in too much will cause the spiders to pull that page out of the searches.

Use and Optimise Images

Using images will make your blog look visually appealing, however they can also help your SEO ranking. Firstly, name your images with relevant names. For example if you have a jpeg image of a blue pen the name of the image should be ‘blue-pen.jpg’. If you have more information on the pen, put that in the name of it as well. Such as ‘Bic-blue-pen.jpg’. When people search images they will look for something specific, naming your images so will bring them to your blog’s door step. Also use the title tag of your bloging software. These title will be swallowed up by the search engine’s spiders, and indexed for searching purposes. Whatever you do, please do not leave the standard name created by you camera (ie. DSC00145).

Submit your blog to the major search engines

By submitting your blog to the search engine they are going to know that your site is out there. To do this all you have to do is go to the search engines that you want to submit to and type in ‘submit blog’. They will show you the rest of the way.

Update Your Blog and Stick With It

Changing your content is vital to creating a successful blog. A site that is active with changing information is going to rank higher then any site that is static, as there are many website out there in the world and the search engines are going to think that your site is doing nothing if... it’s doing nothing. Many websites and blogs are created and within three weeks they are abandoned. If you are consistently posting over the space of a year or two years, your blog’s rankings will go up.

Website Copy that increases Conversions and Inquiries

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:00:00 GMT

Different audiences find different things meaningful, and improving conversions on your website depends upon your understanding that there is no uniform way that people think and act, especially on the web. In this piece we’ll explore useful principles for connecting with audiences through copy as well as practical steps to better understand and act on your audience’s habits and practices.

Your Website copy should reflect your target market and their needs.

While there are many ways to create conversion-friendly web experiences with copy, a few principles are clear.

Content clarity – keep it simple!

Clarity of content about your product or service is the most important factor in determining whether a customer buys from you or not. Ask yourself the question: “Why should I buy from this site?” Say it loud and say it clear. Above the fold and keep it simple.

What sets you apart?

What differentiates you from your competitors? Free shipping, discounts, warranty, price protection, privacy, customer service, etc.? If you’ve got it, exhibit it! Researching your competitors is the key to determining these traits.

Write naturally

Write just as you would talk to a friend. State your key message clearly and concisely. Then, after the copy (content) is written, add in some relevant keywords. No one likes to read rigid copy. Make it interesting.

Keyword density – add keywords to your text

Your website is full of hot spots that search engine spiders check regularly. Use important keywords in headlines, subheadings and the body copy of your web pages; but use it sparingly. Keyword “loading” can actually have a negative effect on your ranking. The ideal keyword density should range from 4% to 6% of the total content. In other words, pick out your main keywords and make sure they are repeated 4-6 times on a page of 200+ words.

Update content regularly

Update your content regularly. This will make the search engine spiders come to index your site more regularly. If the search engines find your content unique and relevant, you stand a greater chance of having your site ranked higher. Make sure to link the keywords within your content to the other pages so as to guide both the spiders and readers.

Article writing

People generally come online for two reasons: to check their email or to look up for information about a given topic. They search for an answer to a question or seek a solution to a problem. You can then provide answers to their query through a series of short articles. Look for article ideas in the questions that you regularly hear your customers asking or about things you regularly see people doing wrong. Share tips on how to use the products you sell or talk about industry trends. A great way of coming up with article ideas is to use Google Alerts.

Appeal to your audience or risk losing them!

A broad and seemingly self-evident statement to be sure. But copy often plays second fiddle to other site elements, and I think this is a big mistake. From headlines to captions to your FAQs, the words on your site must be easily understood and play into the mind and habits of your audience. How do you do this? One strategy I recommend is avoiding words and phrases that do nothing to move your target audience to conversion. When you are writing verbiage for your site, try to think about each word and phrase that you use as products themselves; if your verbiage isn’t explicitly doing something meaningful for your audience they will soon stop “buying what you are selling” (reading your copy), and ultimately leave your site. Therefore, it helps for your copy to be as intentional and helpful as possible to your audience, as opposed to vague and neutral. Here’s an example.

Let’s say a manager at an auto parts store is looking for some cheap computer monitors, so they are researching local office technology companies. Which one of these statements on the office technology company homepage do you think is more enticing and motivating to the manager?

ACME Computers, Inc. provides customer-centric technology solutions that can help you expand your business at minimal investment to your company

ACME Computers, Inc. wants to help you find the best computer hardware at the lowest price to meet your specific needs

Bets are on the second statement for this particular customer. However, you might be inclined to vote for the first statement if the company was a national technology company and the potential customer worked at an investment firm. The key is to remember that your audience is first and foremost a human being before being a customer or prospect, and they have their own likes, dislikes, hobbies, and jobs that make them who they are. You need to respect this, even on something as simple as a company description.

Creating successful site copy isn’t just learning how to say something; many times it’s learning what to say. You might not be selling written content as your product, but having interesting writing on your site can be great for business, as long as it is meaningful for your audience. Blog posts, articles, case studies, white papers, and anything else written that you feature on a site needs to be something that someone from your target audience would find interesting, humorous, or engaging, and it never should turn them off to what you are selling or promoting.

One interesting example is EdRoman.com, the website for a popular high-end guitar store in Las Vegas. The site has a “Rants” section where the owner of the store Ed Roman writes long-winded and pointed diatribes on why large corporate guitar companies and their cheap guitars stink. This seems like a unadvisable or unprofessional strategy, but I actually think that it’s a brilliant move on his part. Ed knows that his wealthy older audience is primarily interested in custom-made high quality guitars and that they are more than willing to second his complaints. By fueling the fires of hatred towards large corporate guitar companies, Ed is building strong rapport with those who feel the same way he is and alienating no one that would actually buy anything from him.

Practical Steps

Get a Insight into your target market.

How does my audience browse the web? What types of color schemes, pictures, and copy do they prefer? What motivates them to convert? These questions would be answered differently depending on who you are talking to, and you need to know these answers before you start writing copy and deciding what your website should say. You could pay a consultant a ton of money to answer these questions for you, or you could start taking a these two steps to find out yourself:

1. Read what your audience Reads

Before you start a writing copy or go to a website meeting brief, take a few days and read (or watch) as many things as you can that were created for (not about) your audience. Whether its blog posts, magazine articles, or even YouTube videos, this firsthand perspective will be a great crash-course in discerning your audience’s tastes and learning their vocabulary. An exercise like this very well will give you a good insight into how your target audience thinks, what appeals to them and why this material is exciting and motivating for your audience. You have to respect the logic behind the choices that your target audience makes or you will lose them completely.

2. Learn from and improve on others who have already successfully learned your audience’s language

Let’s say we are building a site for an audience of brides and female newlyweds. I personally appreciate minimalist design elements and I like seeing one large in-depth piece of text per page. However, one look at successful wedding sites like TheKnot.com and WeddingChannel.com tells me that I have to rethink what I view as interesting and aesthetically pleasing when I’m working on this project. Just browsing through these sites tells me a lot about what some successful strategies might be (soft colors, lots of different text elements happening at once), and even though I’m not personally attracted to how the sites look or operate, I know that millions of brides-to-be and newlywed women love this stuff. I don’t need (or want) to copy anything that TheKnot.com or WeddingChannel.com has done, but I need to be aware of the commonalities between the sites and the web habits/culture that they are drawing from and building on themselves.

Thanks to: http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/improve-conversions-by-connecting-with-your-audience/

Twitter 101 - a special guide

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:33:00 GMT

[an excerpt from Twitter Business http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/ ]

Every day, millions of people use Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. Now, people are turning to Twitter as an effective way to reach out to businesses, too. From local stores to big brands, and from brick-and-mortar to internet-based or service sector, people are finding great value in the connections they make with businesses on Twitter.

When people working in the Empire State Building twittered that they were craving ice cream delivery, New York local chain Tasti D Lite was there to listen and meet their need. When electronics buyers look for good deals, the Dell Outlet Twitter account helps them save money with exclusive coupons. When Houston's coffee drinkers decide where to get their daily dose, many choose Coffee Groundz, which lets them order via Twitter. Read on to learn what Twitter is and to get detailed examples of how companies are using it. On these pages, we’ll also reveal how Twitter can help your business right now.

So what does Twitter do for businesses?

Twitter is a communication platform that helps businesses stay connected to their customers. As a business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company. As an individual user, you can use Twitter to tell a company (or anyone else) that you've had a great—or disappointing—experience with their business, offer product ideas, and learn about great offers.

So how does it work?

Twitter lets you write and read messages of up to 140 characters, or the very length of this sentence, including all punctuation and spaces. The messages are public and you decide what sort of messages you want to receive—Twitter being a recipient driven information network. In addition, you can send and receive Twitter messages, or tweets, equally well from your desktop or your mobile phone.

When you combine messages that are quick to write, easy to read, public, controlled by the recipient and exchangeable anywhere, you’ve got a powerful, real-time way to communicate. And real-time communication is turning out to be ground-breaking for users and businesses alike.

Tip: To listen in on the conversations happening right now, search Twitter for the name of your company, product or brand. If you have a Twitter account already, your home page has a handy search box on the right side. If you don’t yet have an account, try typing in the box below or go to search.twitter.com.

So how do businesses use Twitter?

Twitter connects you to your customers right now, in a way that was never before possible. For example, let’s say you work for a custom bike company. If you run a search for your brand, you may find people posting messages about how happy they are riding your bikes in the French Alps—giving you a chance to share tips about cyclist-friendly cafes along their route.

Others may post minor equipment complaints or desired features that they would never bother to contact you about—providing you with invaluable customer feedback that you can respond to right away or use for future planning. Still others may twitter about serious problems with your bikes—letting you offer customer service that can turn around a bad situation.

You don’t have to run a bike shop or a relatively small company to get good stuff out of Twitter. Businesses of all kinds, including major brands, increasingly find that listening and engaging on the service leads to happier customers, passionate advocates, key product improvements and, in many cases, more sales.

But Twitter isn’t just about useful immediacy. The conversational nature of the medium lets you build relationships with customers, partners and other people important to your business. Beyond transactions, Twitter gives your constituents direct access to employees and a way to contribute to your company; as marketers say, it shrinks the emotional distance between your company and your customers. Plus, the platform lends itself to integration with your existing communication channels and strategies. In combination, those factors can make Twitter a critical piece of your company’s bigger digital footprint.

For instance, let’s say you run a big retail website. In addition to learning more about what your customers want, you can provide exclusive Twitter coupon codes, link to key posts on your blog, share tips for shopping online, and announce specials at store locations. And you can take things a step further by occasionally posting messages about fun, quirky events at your HQ, giving others a small but valuable connection with the people in your company.

Why 140 characters?

SMS (i.e., texting on your phone) limits each message to 160 characters. Twitter takes that limit and reserves 20 characters for your username, leaving you 140 characters to play with. That’s how it started and we’ve stuck with it!

Tip: Twitter can be "ground-breaking” for businesses—a big claim. We truly believe it because we’ve seen lots of examples, many of which we share here. But if you’re new to Twitter and still wondering what all the fuss is about, hang around the site (or a good third-party client) for a week or two and give it a few minutes a day. Twitter almost always delivers “Aha!” moments for people, but it can take some getting used to before you have your moment of enlightenment.

Go deeper

These are just a few of the ways Twitter is helping businesses serve customers; you’ll discover more. If you’re new to Twitter, head over to Getting started for tips on twittering successfully. If you’re already on board, check out Best Practices and Case studies for ideas to get the most out of Twitter.

What’s In A Domain Name?

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:26:00 GMT

In the physical world, you can distinguish a business because of its structure, window displays, or signs. You can tell that a bank is a bank, or a clothing store is indeed a clothing store. Catalogs and brochures also establish the product line: a Finger Hut catalog can tell you that they are fashion retailers.

In the Internet, however, it is an entirely different story altogether. Your domain name is the only clue to your online business. You do not have visual clues: no location, no look, and no store design. Instead, they have to type in a word or a set of words to reach your site. Your prospective visitors has no way of knowing what your site is all about until they find it and read its contents. Who can ever tell that Amazon.com sells books? Or that Excite is a search engine? There are no clues to point that Eziba.com sells handcrafted goods from around the world. Unlike in the real world, a person can stand in a corner, and know instantly that the business in front is a watch store, or a record store is located at the right corner, and that a restaurant is located down the street. With no physical clues to offer, you only have your domain name to make your business distinguishable from all the rest.

Your domain name can spell your success on the Internet. A good domain name is the best asset you can ever have. It can make your business stand out in the crowd, or just float aimlessly in space. Your only weapon to ensure that people can find you, and best of all, remember you, is through your domain name. In the real world, people can forget the name, but can say "It's that bagel shop located between 1st and 2nd Streets." In the Internet, no one says, "I don't know the name of that site, but I know its IP address."

While weak business names are excusable in the real world (e.g. Vinnie's Shoe Repair Store), your branding and marketing success will depend on how good and how memorable your domain name is. The goal of every online marketer is to etch their names in the minds of their customers, so when people think of their product they would go to them. Yahoo! wants users to think of their site when searching for something on the Internet. AOL wants to be the first thing to come to mind when people think of an ISP.

Common Name vs. Proper Name

The need to provide immediate clues to an online business led to the prevalence of generic domain names. Generic names instantly provides the user with an idea of what a business is all about, what to expect and look for in a site. Etoys.com is a toy store. Women.com leaves you without a doubt that their site caters to women. MyFamily.com is about families, while SmallBusiness.com is for small businesses.

The lure of the generic has been so powerful; that some companies even paid absurdly high prices to get the name they want. Remember Business.com? A Los Angeles company paid $7.5 million to get the rights to that name. The domains Loans.com and Wines.com were both bought for $3 million. Telephone.com was acquired for $1.75 million, while Bingo.com sold for $1.1 million.

Thus, we see sites (and lots of them!) use generic domain
names, and all its possible iterations. Take a site on business planning. We have

Businessplan.com
Businessplans.com
Bplans.com
B-plan.com
Bizplan.com
Biz-plan.com
E-Bizplan.com
Keybusinessplans.com

And these are just dot.coms. The list does not include all the dot.nets, dot.orgs, and other domain wannabes. Majority simply want THE generic name for their business: tickets.com, movies.com, money.com, marketing.com, teens.com

But is it working? The problem with generic names, is well … it's generic! It's a common name. While such names could lead users to your site, it hardly creates the zing or magic that makes successful brands. Branding has always been about proper names: McDonald's did not name their store Hamburger. Hertz is not called Car Rental. FedEx is not Mail Carrier. Kodak is not Photographs. Microsoft is not Computer Software.

Even the early winners on the Internet have showed the power of using proper names as domain names. Yahoo is not a generic name. Same with AOL, Amazon, BlueMountain, Ashford.com, or even Priceline. Yet these sites have grown to become the biggest online businesses in their categories.

The right domain name can solidify your business identity, permanently imbed it in user's psyche and garner more attention than a 30-second spot in the Super Bowl. For better branding results, your domain name should be memorable and easy to remember.

Here are six guides on how to choose an effective domain name:

It should be short. When it comes to domain names, the rule is: the shorter, the better. Since users will have to type into the keyboard the domain name, it should be both short and easy to spell. Long generic names, in particular, can be confusing and hard to remember. The consulting firm PriceWaterHouse's ebusinessisbusiness.com is both complicated and long. Thus, it is not hard to imagine that the 65-character domain names never catched on. Who could remember (much less have the patience to type correctly) names such as learnthemarketingsecretsintheworld.com? Long names are simply too cumbersome for the Internet.
It should be simple. To increase recall, a domain name should be simple. Simple domain names are those that use few letters in the alphabets and arrange them in an easy to use way. While a domain name may be short, it does not necessarily mean that it is simple. Some also combine numbers with letters, resulting in hard-to-remember domain names such as Click2Asia.com and Opus360.com. Combining names and numbers makes it much more difficult to recall and these domain names usually make poor brand names.
It should be suggestive of the category. Some successful online businesses use domain name that use the best of both worlds: it is a proper name, but stops short of being generic. AOL or America Online is suggestive of its category - which is the Internet. CNET is short for computer network. PowerHomeBiz.com is play of the home business category.
It should be unique. Your domain name should be unique to be memorable. Examples of unique names are the search portals Altavista and Lycos. The name AskJeeves.com, manages to suggest the function of its site, while being memorable. Another example is the MySimon.com, a price comparison site. Common or generic names are not unique, and thus can hardly be memorable.
It should be easy to say. Similar to the offline world, word of mouth is a potent communication medium. Qbiquity.com, a relationship marketing application software provider, may be a short name but it is by no means simple and definitely not easy to say. Try pronouncing that name and remembering the spelling!
It should be personalized. If the situation allows it, you can name your site after an individual, maybe even you. Using a personal name for a domain assures that you will be using proper name and enhances the publicity potential of your site. DrKoop.com, for example, capitalized on the good name of the former U.S. Surgeon General. Dell.com is named after their founder Michael Dell's name. Even personal coach Lynn Berger uses her name for her lynnberger.com site.

While it may be hard for a domain name to embody all the six qualities above, choosing a name with these qualities in mind will help you develop an Internet brand that will lead to your online success. Remember, it all starts with the name.

by Nach M Maravilla
PowerHomebiz.com Publisher
http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol34/domain.htm

What's in a Business Name?

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:33:00 GMT

Products may come and go, but company names can last forever. When starting a new company, take the time to choose a name that distinguishes your business from the competition. Otherwise, even with the best idea or invention, your customers may have a difficult time finding you and your product in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

All entrepreneurs face a classic marketing dilemma: They want a company name that tells consumers exactly what they sell, but descriptively naming a new venue the Country Music Hall, Blues Center or Music Palace creates confusion with other similarly named businesses. Ironically, even companies that specialize in branding--The Brand Consultancy, Brand Design, and Name Development--fall victim to this misguided approach. Such descriptive names make it hard to stand out from the competition.

Indeed, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office won't even register a name that is merely descriptive unless it has acquired a reputation. The standard used by the USPTO in determining whether a name is descriptive is whether it describes an ingredient, quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose or use of the product. Keep this simple test in mind when choosing a new company name.

It's All in the Name

Successful company names are suggestive rather than descriptive. When applied to the product, they require imagination, thought or perception to determine the nature of the goods. A hypothetical example of a suggestive company name is the Sunshine Orange Juice Co. Sunshine suggests the nature of the orange juice that the company sells, without immediately describing it.

Even better than suggestive terms are arbitrary names that comprise common words, but when used to identify particular products, do not suggest or describe a significant ingredient, quality or characteristic of the goods. For example, Amazon has no meaning other than trademark significance when applied to book selling, much like Apple for computers and Camel for cigarettes.

Another approach is to pick a fanciful name--one that has been invented for the sole purpose of functioning as a trademark, such as Pepsi, Kodak and Exxon. What a company does today may not necessarily be what it does tomorrow, so choosing an arbitrary or fanciful name allows for future flexibility. Since Amazon has no significance in connection with books, Amazon.com was able to expand into selling music, electronics and most every other kind of product under the sun, using the same company name. Similarly, the name Google has unlimited flexibility as a brand because it isn't descriptive or suggestive of an internet search engine.

Even if one avoids choosing a descriptive company name, there's another issue to consider: Some names are so common that they lack any real marketing strength. Think of names like Strategic Solutions or Pro Express or Business Advantage for a consulting service. They share the same shortcoming--failing to resonate in the minds of consumers.

In today's crowded marketplace, compound marks work better than one-word marks. If one term is descriptive or common, the other term should help the overall name stand out. Indeed, the whole may be more than the sum of its parts--DoubleClick or RazorFish.

Have a Story

Using an arbitrary name can set apart even smaller and growing companies--not just large ones. Pangea3 (co-founded by one of this article’s authors) is a legal outsourcing services company that uses the story behind its name to get people to remember the company's services.

When consumers ask about the derivation of the name, they get a story: Pangea was the single supercontinent that existed before continental drift separated the world's continents. The second Pangea occurred when mass transportation reconnected people from the separated continents, enabling global commerce. In the third Pangea, the internet and global telecommunications systems have electronically reconnected the continents and their inhabitants, making continental and national borders irrelevant, creating, once again, a single supercontinent.

From this story, people remember what the company is all about. Plus, the company's application to register Pangea3 with the USPTO avoided conflict with other company names in a nascent but growing industry and saved the company legal fees.
Is there a story behind your new business name? If not, go back to the drawing board and think of some suggestive or fanciful names that will help your company stand out from the crowd. Finding a distinctive name that will interest consumers, will help brand your company identity and define itself in a congested marketplace. Support your unique name with some creative advertising and gain that competitive edge from the start.

original source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/startupbasics/article196954.html;

Writing an Effective Blog Post

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:13:00 GMT

Web logs or Blogs are quickly becoming one of the most effective tools within a business’s arsenal to successfully brand themselves as leaders in their industry, along with elevating their websites’ all important Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) rankings. An effective blog post is one that informs, references, discusses, captures interest, and is written well.

The following are some good rules to follow to make your blog post effective.

Get to the Point
Write for Humans and Machines
Use Descriptive and Interesting Headings
Write Honestly
Link Resources
Design the Page
Involve the Reader

Get to the Point

Put your most important information at the top of the blog post. If you are making your viewer eat the chocolate coating of your Mars bar before they can get to the sweet and gooey caramel nougat on the inside they are going to get impatient. If they really want your information they may stick through it but chances are they are going to find another blog to read. Let them bite into your chocolaty caramel from the beginning as they will grow fat from your knowledge and come back for more.

Write for Humans and Machines

Both humans and machines are going to be reading your blog post, therefore it is important to write for both. These means for humans write effectively, efficiently and write well. Proof read your blog post and make sure your spelling is correct (Oh god I hope I spell everything correct). The Machines will look at your blog post from an SOE perspective. A blog by nature constantly changes information, unlike a standard website, whoes content tends to remain static, requiring the search engines to revisit your site, and increase your rankings. As Rajeev Edmonds explains contextual linking is also able to enhance your blogs ranking. Though an external link from other sources carries more weight in the SEO game, internal contextual linking both allows the viewer to read closer on new topics arisen within the post, but contextual linking can help bost the SEO rankings of blog posts that aren’t performing well.

Use Descriptive and Interesting Headings

Let the reader know what they are getting into. Humans have learnt from newspapers to skim through large bodies of text by looking at the headings. If confronted by a large wall of text with no warning of what lies within, we will move onto something else. Also important to note is the use of your Heading tags. Within your blog’s WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) you will have to ability to apply Heading formats. These will make your headings look good but will also improve your SEO ratings.

Write Honestly

Write as though you were speaking. A blog is a way of communicating to your reader. Let them get to know you. How many times have you gone to a seminar or speech and just couldn’t pay attention to what they were saying no matter how hard you tried? Chances are you being talked too rather then talk with. Try to engage the reader by bringing your personality into the writing, even if it means using a popular chocolate confectionary as a analogy.

Link Resources

Should people take what you at your word because you say your an expert? Rajeev Edmonds would say... No. If you link to another blog or some other form of information or resource your reader will thank you.

Design the Page

No one wants to see a great wall of text. Let your inner graphic designer run free on your blog site. There are a couple of things you can add to your blog post to make it interesting to view.

Headings and Sub-Headings
Colour Changes Images
Graphs and Charts
Examples Quotes
Indented Notes
Icons
Bold and Italics
Bullet Points (see what I did there?)

This doesn’t mean that every post has to have these items, however, in moderation these simple options can turn Hyundai into a BWM.

Involve The Reader

Pose questions, open discussion on topics, create debates and build your blog into a community. Leave your comments section open to allow people to share there own opinions and experiences. Not only will you engage the reader but you may find out some information that you didn’t know.

Speaking of involving the reader, there are many factors to creating an effective blog post, have I missed anything that you would say is important for a blog post to have in order to be effective?