Starting a business takes more than just a good idea for a product or a service. It is becoming increasingly important to have a solid grasp on how to engage customers online using everything from email to social media. Engaging customers online usually comes as an afterthought for most people…
Internet marketing has only been around for a little over 15 years while design and engineering have been around for far longer. Given the relative infancy of Internet marketing, there still isn’t a solid training/education available. That’s not to say that there isn’t a lot of information out there – you just need to be able to find the right resources by filtering through a lot of noise on the net…
Hearing constructive criticism about your startup is right on par with hearing someone talk crap about your baby. The unfortunate reality is that we need feedback in order to grow and sustain our businesses. Customer loyalty leads to sustainable profit margins and increases the chance that your product…
Creating strong video content for your business is a good way to reach a variety of markets and engage your audience. As the founder of a company that produces video content for some larger-than-life brands (ranging from RedBull to Coca-Cola), I can tell you that video is a very effective marketing tool…
I have a secret for you, though it’s hardly a revelation: most brands fail at what they are trying to accomplish. And the only thing more frustrating about how terrible so many brands are is how clueless many small businesses executives and entrepreneurs are about what branding is. Most people think of branding as simply “the logo,” but a logo is just the beginning of a brand’s visual aspect (which…
We have written the subject of an email as “Knock, Knock,” with the body containing a knock-knock joke. People delete emails all day, but spend hours on humorous websites. At the end of the day, humor always wins. Everyone wants to see how the joke ends — and to see the person who is brave enough to kick…
It’s a tired cliche, but they say a picture is worth a thousand words. Going off of that math, a video must be worth quite a bit then. According to Dr. James McQuivey from Forrester Research, 1 minute of video was worth approximately 1.8 million words. As a writer, I’m not so into this idea but as a consumer…
Remember the good old days of advertising when all you had to do was go to your local newspaper and pay a couple bucks for a spot in the advert section? Me either, but like prohibition and John Travolta being attractive, people tell me that yes this was once the case. Now customers have short attention…
In my first venture, there was a partnership divorce, forcing a much-needed rebranding. Because I am in the B2B space, it was not challenging to transition the name. We simply changed our marketing materials, made an announcement and continued on with business. We didn’t make a big deal of it or act panicked…
From the standpoint of startups and small businesses, Facebook has a tendency to be as helpful as it is frustrating. Within the past year and a half FB has stepped up its game a bit and has beefed-up the analytics it offers on pages created for businesses and marketing purposes. Even with these improvements…
Swanky Outlet opened its doors back in 2004. It started as a modest in-house operation and steadily grew into a successful brick-and-mortar retailer and eBay PowerSeller. Swanky Outlet carved a name out for itself by focusing on the needs of its customers, and by maintaining a personalized and boutique-like…
It seems like everybody is going organic these days. The idea of going organic isn’t just for soccer moms in grocery store anymore, business leaders are finding that getting organic web traffic can make or break customer outreach. Linkdex has spent the past three years working with industry leaders…
You’ve worked long and hard to get your startup going, and now that you’ve made it you want to shout it to the world! But how? If getting a startup up and running wasn’t hard enough, new entrepreneurs now face the challenge of getting the word out (and making it spread). Read on to discover 3 ways in…
The best way to build brand offline has been by engaging traditional media. Whether that means doing an interview for a paper or TV show about the topics that touch our business, or writing a piece ourselves for a relevant industry publication, it’s really worked wonders in building our brand and credibility…
What does a huge corporation have that you don’t? Ok, yeah – a break-room with a better snack selection and a horde of slaves interns to do their bidding. In addition to those notable perks, the big guys also have entire departments dedicated to research and development. What do you have that they don’t? Well…
I invest in signs and door hangers and try to blanket the town with them. If you want to stay top of mind for your core clients, you have to market to them offline as well. Not only will this drive them to your online campaign and reinforce what they see online, but it can also create direct leads by localizing…
I started “producing” my own videos when I was 8 years old. From the time my sister and I were deemed old enough to hold the family camera without breaking it, we were hooked on the wonders of video. Back then, polished videos were still a luxury. I never would have guessed that consumer-level cameras would…
The most important tip for success on Twitter is to actually interact with other members. Many CEOs use Twitter as a personal billboard to talk about themselves. The most effective way of building a following and actually seeing success from social media is to make sure the conversation is…
In the startup world there exists the myth of the “perfect idea.” Many entrepreneurs become so caught up in pursuit of this mythical event that they never take any action on the seemingly mundane or unoriginal ideas that they do have. The problem with this approach is that there is no such thing as the perfect…
To have something go viral and cut through all the nonsense that’s overflowing on the Internet these days, it must be interesting and shareable – i.e., a linkable asset. But how do you create such valuable content? Investing in your content is essential to create a community of engaged followers. Harness your…
