Fire in the Belly?
The biggest problem we see with aspiring entrepreneurs who believe they want to be successful businesspeople is that they want to be successful business people but they don’t care much about their potential field of endeavour. Perhaps they are tired of working a day job, or they think they can earn a better living working [...]
16 Tips to Protect Your Online Privacy
Whether you are an aspiring entrepreneur seeking to impress a potential client, or a newly minted college grad seeking a substantial professional position, it is vital that you take active steps to protect your reputation and safety by carefully ensuring that your online life stays private. Here are some basic tips to help. Use multiple [...]
Blogging for Beginners
So, you have a brand-spanking-new blog and a million and one ideas and the energy to be a prolific blogger. Yet you pause, asking: “Do I really know what I’m doing?” Many media consultants now assume that clients have basic blogging skills, much like they assume clients know how to use a computer. That said, although anyone [...]
Dominos Pizza & Brand Resets
The marketing world is buzzing atwitter over the very public decision of Domino’s Pizza to overhaul its core identity through a massive revision to its pizza recipes. The decision is bold: The pizza chain, notorious for being consistently rated in the lowest-quality ranks of consumer preferences, is changing everything, from crust composition to sauce flavor [...]
Roadmap for Success
I recently had the opportunity to pull together some notes for a casual friend of mine, a college student who is an aspiring musician — one who actually seems to have the talent to pull off a career in music. He has been stressing a bit about how he will pull things together so that [...]
Is Quality Still King?
A colleague, Polly Traylor, recently reflected on the role of corporate-sponsored content in marketing, especially as social-media marketing becomes more mainstream. Her analysis was intriguing, and prompts a question about the diminution of high-quality substance in most commercial marketing materials these days. Businesses are starting to catch the “social-media marketing” buzz. Suddenly, Facebook fan pages and [...]
Understanding ROI
In a perfect world, a potential client will beg for your product or service, showing up at your office with large bags filled with unmarked currency and offering to loan his first-born child to you as free office help. Of course, the world is hardly perfect. These days, clients actually want something of value in [...]
Social Media 101
Twitter. Facebook. MySpace. LinkedIn. There are many social-networking tools, but how should your business engage with them? Here are a few thoughts about maximizing social media: Don’t do it just for the sake of doing it. A company that sells toner cartridges, for example, probably doesn’t have a compelling need for a Facebook page, and [...]
Communications Central
One of the toughest decisions an aspiring entrepreneur must face is whether he will be available 24x7x365 to clients and prospects. On one hand, unlimited availability sounds great — you are sending the message that you will stop at nothing to satisfy your client, right? Wrong. Unlimited availability sends the message that not only are [...]
Web Essentials
Most companies (or free agents) use a Web site as the central hub of their marketing program. This is a good thing; a well-designed Web site can not only add value for clients and help to “wow” prospects, but it can also be invaluable for the business, too — facilitating file transfers, payments, orders, and [...]