Facebook Tips for Businesses

Erin Glass, West Palm Beach, Fla. Examiner, offers three Facebook tips for entrepreneurs.

1. Categorize your friends
2. Do targeted searches
3. Don't spam

Read the complete article and check out Erin's other articles on her Examiner home page.

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Stay at a Hotel and Get a Free Flip Video to Use

According to Springwise, hotels are an ideal setting for many "tryvertising" campaigns, approximating as they do consumers' domestic milieu. Much the way Starwood recently began giving its guests a free taste of Zinio's "digital newsstand," so Omni Hotels now offers patrons a free camcorder for the weekend.

"Through the Omni Flips for Summer campaign, which runs through Sept. 6, families staying at any of the chain's hotels and resorts in North America can borrow a pocket-sized video camcorder for free and use it to record their most memorable moments. The camcorder provided is the new Flip Ultra video camcorder, launched this spring by Pure Digital, and it's available to guests who purchase any "Omni Flips for Summer" weekend package.

"Along with the simple-to-use camcorders, families can also start their holiday with a complimentary breakfast for four featuring “Flip-jacks” on their first day. A “Summer Fun Counselor” will also be on hand with advice on local attractions. When their weekend filming is complete, guests can upload their video memories to their own laptop or use the Omni Hotels Business Center at no charge to transfer the footage to a thumb drive to take home.

"Guests are also encouraged to upload a three-minute video to Omni’s Local Scoop social networking Web site as part of the Omni Flips for Summer Video Contest, the winner of which—announced in September—will get a free trip for four to the Omni Bedford Springs Resort in Pennsylvania."

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Advertisers Much More Likely Than Consumers to Believe in Power of Twitter

In a new LinkedIn Research Network/Harris Poll of 1,015 advertisers from agencies or corporations who are involved in the advertising decision making process, just under half of advertisers (45%) say that Twitter is something is in its infancy and its use will grow exponentially over the next few years.

One in five (21%) believe Twitter will not move into the mainstream and is something mostly young people and the media will use. Just under one in five advertisers (17%) believe Twitter is already over and it’s time to find the next best thing while 17% of advertisers say they don’t know enough about Twitter to have an opinion on it.

Among consumers it is a different story altogether, as over two-thirds (69%) say they do not know enough about Twitter to have an opinion about it. Just over one in ten say it is just at its infancy (12%), 12% also say it is just something that young people and the media will use and 8% of consumers say it is already over and it’s time to find the next best thing.

Among advertisers, just 8% say Twitter is very effective for promoting products and ideas while half (50%) say it is somewhat effective. One-third (34%) of advertisers say it is not that effective and 8% believe it is not at all effective for promoting products and ideas. Among consumers, 8% also say it is very effective for promoting ideas and products and 42% believe it is just somewhat effective.

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Don't Let Tough Economic Times Hold You Back from Starting Your Own Company

Worried about starting a business during these tough economic times? It's good to be concerned, but here's a good article for you to read.

Did you know that companies/brands like Rice Krispies, FedEx and even the iPod have taken advantage of downturns to launch brands that enjoyed success for decades?

Lean about nine companies that got their start during economic tough times and lived to tell about it!

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How Can Skype Help Your Business?

Here's a good article from Mashable on the Open Forum from American Express.

"With more than 400 million users globally, Skype is perhaps the biggest online communication network of them all. Although Skype’s original claim to fame was free phone calls over a broadband connection, the service has since emerged into much more, with the latest major upgrade, Skype 4.0 (and subsequently 4.1) adding features, upgrading usability, and improving call quality to a point where the software is now reliable enough to be a persistent part of your business communications.

"So what can you do with Skype these days? Read the article for a rundown of both the basic functionality and some of the newer enhancements that your business might find useful."

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Free Mocha Mondays at McDonald's

From the folks at Springwise...

"No sooner did we post our story about the free car charging available at the new McDonald's restaurant in North Carolina than we saw the chain launch yet another free love initiative: Free Mocha Mondays.

"As part of a campaign to promote its new McCafé line, McDonald's is now offering U.S. consumers the chance to sample a free Hot Mocha or Iced Mocha at any participating McDonald's restaurant. The offer is available on any Monday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Aug. 3, and the complimentary drinks come in special, promotional sizes: 7 oz. for the iced version, or 8 oz. for the hot variety."

Two reasons for this post. First, get a free McCafé this coming Monday. Second, think about your business. Is there some type of promotion you could run with a free giveaway? Think about, and get those entrepreneurial juices flowing!

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CDC Provides Free Content for Information Entrepreneurs

Here's a great, free, resource -- from the federal government -- that will be helpful for information entrepreneurs.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides free formatted articles for download and use in newsletters, newspapers, magazines, community publications, Web sites and more. The articles cover a variety of health topics and are ready for use in any publication.

Anyone can sign up to receive e-mail notification when new articles are added. An RSS feed has also been established for this section of the CDC Online Newsroom.

Articles such as “What You Should Know About Novel H1N1 (Swine Flu)” and “Stay Safe and Healthy This Summer” are now available and the page is updated regularly with new articles and seasonal health messages.

So if you're in the health niche, this is a great free content resource for you.

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Five Link Building Sins to Avoid

If you've done any research into search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, you know that one of the most important keys to getting good placement in search engines is to get other Web sites to link to your site. And, if you've ever tried getting other sites to link to yours, you know it's a whole lot easier to talk about the importance of link building than it is to acquire relevant, high-quality inbound links.

In fact, says author Janet Attard, looking for appropriate sites to ask for links, trying to convince them to link to you, and tracking the whole process, is a tedious, time-consuming task, leading some small business owners to take short cuts. But some of these short cuts can actually cost you good placement in the search engines.

Attard offers five link building tactics you should avoid:

1. Using form letters to solicit links.
2. Buying links from any company that spams publishers with canned pitches telling them they’ll make thousands of dollars by placing paid links on their Web site.
3. Trying to "sell" your page rank in a link swap request.
4. Soliciting links from sites that have nothing in common with yours.
5. Soliciting links from sites that are in a different country, and then asking them to run a geographically specific text ad with your link.

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Wireless Internet Use in America

Majority of American Adults Have Used Wireless Internet

An April 2009 survey released yesterday by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project shows that 56% of adult Americans have accessed the Internet by wireless means, such as using a laptop, mobile device, game console, or MP3 player. The most prevalent way people get online using a wireless network is with a laptop computer; 39% of adults have done this.

The report also finds rising levels of Americans using the Internet on a mobile handset. One-third of Americans (32%) have used a cell phone or Smartphone to access the Internet for e-mailing, instant-messaging, or information-seeking. This level of mobile Internet is up by one-third since December 2007, when 24% of Americans had ever used the Internet on a mobile device.

On a typical day, nearly one-fifth (19%) of Americans use the Internet on a mobile device, up substantially from the 11% level recorded in December 2007. That’s a growth of 73% in the 16 month interval between surveys.

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6 Tips to Increase Your Video Production Success

According to Leap Frog Solutions, with the advent of digital imaging, video production has become an enormously complex undertaking. Just a few years ago, "producing a video," – for training, informational or promotional purposes – involved fairly well-defined steps. They revolved around budgeting, research, scripting, production, editing, packaging and distribution.

Now, according to Lisa Martin, "the video images you create or capture may be used in a variety of ways. They may be used in a traditional industrial training video, in Web-based distance learning, interactive CD, as part of the material on an interactive kiosk, or as both still and dynamic images in a multi-media program."

Here are some tips from Leap Frog that take into account the wide variety of end products which may result from your video production:

• Pre-Production
• Production
• Post Production
• Authoring
• Compression
• Fulfillment

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Use Your iPhone or Your Computer to Send Personalized Postcards

Here's a Web site, PrintYourLife.com that has created an iPhoneapp called goPostal, a free iPhone application. iPhone users can then take a photo or choose one they've already taken, write a message and send that picture as a postcard to someone from their phone's address book. PrintYourLife prints the postcard and delivers it by U.S.P.S. mail to anywhere within the United States for just $1.29 -- and that fee includes postage and printing.

Three observations...

First, this would be a great app to purchase for your iPhone (and no we don't make a commission) if you own your own small business. Think of the possibilities:

• You talk a picture of your product in action at a prospect's competitor and send it to him with a personal message.
• You grab a picture of one of your best customers during the charity golf tournament and send him a memento.
• Or maybe you take a picture of prospects at your trade show booth and use the postcard mailing service as a follow-up in a week or so.

Second... you don't have to have an iPhone to use this service. You can use PrintYourLife right from your own computer.

And finally... why couldn't we have thought of something like this!

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Entrepreneurs Need to Learn the Importance of Listening

Seasoned management consultant Harry Levinson wrote a book called "Ready, Fire, Aim: Avoiding Management By Impulse."

According to Forbes, "its core message: Only after considering a series of options--and not just the ones apparent in the heat of the moment--can you hope to make consistently decent decisions. In short, it's about the importance of listening.

"Entrepreneurs by nature are anti-authoritarian juvenile delinquents. Taking advice isn't their thing. Pile those instincts on top of a natural inability to listen that comes from being, well, human. Scores of studies have demonstrated that people accurately comprehend or internalize a dismal 25%-50% of what they hear.

"As a rule, entrepreneurs are "doers" rather than "thinkers." This innate bias toward action, effective in some regards, can also short circuit their problem-solving processes. Their version of active listening amounts to hearing someone's initial remarks, assuming they've understood the gist and then immediately attacking the problem at hand."

Read the complete article.

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Test Your E-mail Marketing Campaigns for Better Results

According to the Vertical Response blog, testing something new or changing something seemingly small in your e-mail campaigns can definitely tell you something about how your recipients will respond. Testing something new can SEEM like a lot of work but it's really not.

If you're going to create an e-mail marketing campaign anyway, it's just three more tiny steps.

• One: Make a copy of the campaign you're creating
• Two: Change a little part of the campaign (see below)
• Three: Test with a small portion of your list or split your list in two

According to the blog post, these three simple steps could get you a better response to your next e-mail campaign and it takes just minutes for you to do.

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Using Social Media to Raise Funds and In-Kind Gifts

While geared towards nonprofits, any entrepreneur should be able to get value out of this quick video interview that aired recently on NewsChannel 8 in Washington, D.C. The story shows how one D.C. area nonprofit was able to use FaceBook and Twitter to increase their fundraising and receive much needed in-kind donations.



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If You Need a Web Host, Check This Out

Whether you're already online or looking to establish your Internet presence, you'll need reliable Web hosting. And if you're like us, you don't want to pay an arm and a leg for it.

Entrepreneur's Tips recommends BlueHost. Prices start at just $6.95 a month and you get unlimited hosting space as well as unlimited domains and unlimited file transfer. Also included is a site promotion package, free eCommerce/cart, free blog, forum and bulletin board, as well as 2,500 POP/Imap e-mail accounts, unlimited e-mail autoresponders and gigs of site transfer!

If you don't yet have a Web site, they offer and free "drag and drop" site builder tool. And if you already have a host somewhere, you'll definitely want to consider transferring to BlueHost.

From the business owner to the individual who desires full functionality on a small budget, Bluehost provides your complete Web hosting solution.

Unbelievably low price for a world of services. Check 'em out today. You'll be glad you did.

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99% of all Information Products will be Digital by the Year 2025

The Mequoda Group says that by 2025, nearly 100% of information products will be digital.

According to an article in their Mequoda Daily e-mail newsletter, "The last 15 years in the publishing industry have seen a revolution in marketing channels. Publishers now sell more products and generate more revenue on the Internet than from any other source.

"Here’s the Mequoda Manifesto: Over the next 15 years, publishers will transition to delivering exclusively digital products. And that transformation will be twice as gut-wrenching as the shift to online marketing.

"If you want to make more money selling your editorial content online, you need to start creating more digital products right now. It’s that simple."

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Buyers Twice as Likely to Look for Open House Listings Online than in Print

More bad news for newspapers, but an opportunity for enterprising real estate agents and brokers.

According to Trulia.com, U.S. home buyers are twice as likely to use online sources than print sources to find open house information. 62 percent of U.S. home buyers reported using/planning to use online sites to find open houses, compared to 53 percent who use/plan to use information from real estate agents, 36 percent who use/plan to use neighborhood signs and less than one-third (31 percent), who reported using/planning to use print sources, including newspapers and local flyers to find open houses.

• 41 percent of home buyers cited online sources as their primary resource, 14 percent cited print sources as their primary resource.
• 91 percent of home buyers attended/plan to attend open houses during the home buying process.

The survey was conducted by Harris Interactive®

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Need to Sell Products Online? Join Here for Free

Click Here to Sell Your Products or Become a Super Affiliate

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Average Online American Spent 189 Minues Watching Online Video in May

Nielsen Online Video Census says the average online American spent nearly 189 minutes viewing Internet video in May; a 49% increase since last May. Most of this viewing took place on YouTube.

Google’s YouTube continues to hold the undisputed #1 position in terms of video streams in May 2009, with more than six billion videos viewed. Hulu, which is being fueled by middle-aged viewers, remains on a growth trajectory and is holding steady at #2. Yahoo, Fox Interactive and ABC.com round out the top five.

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Social Media Not Finding Widespread Use Among Fortune 100 CEOs

Marketing Charts reports that America’s top CEOs appear to be mostly absent from the social media community, according to an analysis by UberCEO, which discovered that only two of 2009’s Fortune 100 CEOs have Twitter accounts, none have personal blogs, 13 have LinkedIn profiles and only 19 have a personal Facebook page.

"UberCEO noted in a blog post that these results point to a “miserable” level of engagement among top execs, who 'appear to be disconnected from the way their own customers are communicating' and are 'giving the impression that they’re disconnected, disengaged and disinterested.'

"Twitter is the least used service by Fortune 100 CEOs, despite being one of the fastest growing social media networks, the study found. Of the two CEOs who have Twitter accounts, one has more than 7,000 followers but is not following anyone. The other has never posted an update."

Read the complete article here.

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How to Download Embedded Flash Files using your Browser

From the folks at MakeUseOf.com comes a good article on how to download embedded flash files using your browser.

"Today, Flash is everywhere," says author Saikat Basu. "Animations, music, games, advertisements or even streaming presentations. Speaking of games, here’s a list of site with the best flash games.

"The use of Flash plug-ins in browsers is now almost obligatory. Yes, it’s easy to view and enjoy the rich media content delivered by interactive Flash embedded pages. But what if I want to download some of these files as keepsakes? The greatest benefit – I can watch them offline in my own jolly time. Convert them to a format of my choice. Or embed them again in a PowerPoint presentation. Or even transfer them to my mobile phone.

"Flash animation files are embedded as SWF (Small Web Format) files in webpages. Rather than depending on any software or a third-party website, downloading Flash content is dead simple. The only tool required is a browser and a bit of patience to do the rummaging around."

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Six Easy Steps to Be Succesful Using Twitter

According to Penny Sansevieri of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., there are six quick tips to ensure success with Twitter. According to Penny:

1. A bio is a must. A recent Harvard Business Review study showed that 82% of unsuccessful Twitter accounts have little or no bio information.
2. You should provide more than 3 links per 20 tweets and you should update more than once a day.
3. If you don’t provide links in your tweets, you should plan to post more often (studies suggest as much as six times a day). You should have no more than 15 updates a day.
4. Twitter names are becoming like URL’s were in the early years of the Internet. Make sure and grab all your branding and your name.
5. Don’t use underscores_ when you’re creating a user name. Not only does it look amateurish but a number of spammers have hacked into Twitter that way. You don’t want to look like a spammer.
6. Always engage and reply to the @reply responses on Twitter. Why? Well first off it’s important to engage your followers but second, those @replies help with your Twitter ranking.

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How to Create Compelling Content for Your E-Mail Newsletter

Here's a good article from Larry Chase, who publishes "Search Engine for Marketers," on how to create compelling content for your e-mail newsletter.

Now as Chase notes, "E-mail Marketing isn't hip, like Social Media, or edgy like Mobile Marketing (both of which we cover extensively in Web Digest For Marketers). But, you know what? E-mail Marketing works."

Among the tips:

• Spend Money on Outstanding Content
• Invest in Editing and Proofreading
• Invite Other Voices
• "Chunkify"your content

Click here to read the complete article on how to create great content for your e-mail newsletter.

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A Simple Explanation of Branding for the Small Business

John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing offers this simple definition of branding for the small business.



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Start Producing Screen Capture Video for Free

Want to start adding some screen capture video to your blog or Web page but don't want to spend a fortune? How about if you could do it for free?!

ScreenToaster is a free Web-based screen recorder designed to capture screen activity in real-time to rapidly create and share tutorials, demos, training, lectures and more. No software to buy or freeware to install. Just visit the ScreenToaster Web site and go from there.

To record videos just click on "Start recording." You can add audio and embed a webcam while you are recording. When you're finished, you can add subtitles, choose your thumbnail, and describe and tag your video so other users can easily find your screencasts.

ScreenToaster is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux. But the best part is, it's free!

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Get a Free White Paper on Google Adsense from the Mequoda Group

Size, in terms of traffic or the number of site pages, doesn't really matter as to whether a publisher can, or should, become a Google AdSense partner. Quality content is the defining feature. In fact, the program is a great opportunity for publishers with quality content, but limited or light traffic and/or few site pages.

Google encourages any publisher to try AdSense for ther web advertising strategy, and since it's free with no contracts or obligations, there's no reason why a publisher should ignore the potential. You simply sign up, use their very simple ad wizard, grab the code they give you, and implement it on your page.

Google says you should "watch it work and compare it to other revenue alternatives. In most cases, publishers have found that Google AdSense exceeds the revenue that they can earn through any other source, and they opt to keep us on."

Inside this Web Advertising Tips for Google Adsense white paper from the fine folks at Mequoda Group you'll learn how to optimize your Web advertising strategy with Google Adsense best practices. Among the tips -- ad placement is key, relevant ads are fundamental and following the rules is not an option. Get your free White paper here.

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