Consumers have never before had such power to reach literally thousands of like-minded individuals with their opinions of a product or service. Where before a bad experience would have been told of to a handful of people, usually family and friends, today those same family and friends too will have hundreds of connections that they can pass the news on to instantly.

Even worse for businesses, anyone can now create a concerted campaign using a cheap video camera and the power of services like YouTube. Ann Minch started a ‘Debtors Revolt’ in exactly this way against the Bank of America when they raised the interest on her credit card. She created a short, 5 minute video stating her case to Bank of America and made the video publicly available to view. The campaign took off rapidly as the link to the video started appearing on blogs, social networks and Twitter. The video, below, has had over 240,000 views since September.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The bank reacted the only way it could without the publicity getting worse – it reversed the hike after attempting to negotiate another rate – Ann Minch refused and made the bank reinstate the original interest rate.

Such stories are going to become mainstream as more and more consumers realise the power they have at their fingertips.  Businesses have only ever had to worry about a small percentage of customers coming back to them with returns and complaints, A small customer service department would suffice in dealing with the low rate of complaints. Feedback involved polling the customer base where typically only a small percentage would respond, never providing a true picture of what customers felt.

Now, a business needs to be more on the ball with how their customers perceive the service or product. They need to feel  the real-time pulse of the marketplace in order to prevent a small number of customers from negatively influencing a larger number of potential customers.

Customer service departments need to become more involved in the marketplace by becoming part of the conversations their customers are having. This will not only enable gathering of real, emotional feedback but allow the business to gauge the direction the marketplace is moving in to give them an advantage over competitors who are not involved in the social media space. If a business engages with it’s customer base where they are most active they have the ability to influence perception in a positive way and increase business as a result.

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Check out the announcement video from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman -

Click here to view the embedded video.

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3. Why you should build a Positive Personal Brand

In this ever-connected world, everyone is a brand, and this gives each of us great power and opportunity to really sell ourselves. If you use social networks or blog or participate in online forums then you are already in the public eye to some degree. Anyone can Google you and find out all kinds of information by reading your tweets, your blog posts and the conversations you’re involved in anywhere on the ‘net. 
Of course, the flip side of this is that if you’re not active in the digital realm then your personal brand profile is going to be pretty small and in today’s world that’s probably going to work against you in the long run. The Internet has enabled transparency and the less transparent you are the less desirable you become, especially as other personal brands around you become more prominent.

The question is, is your personal brand Positive or Negative?

Today, practically anyone who is likely to interact with you at almost any level of your life is going to Google you and find out everything they can. Employers already do this, as do recruitment agents when checking on potential matches for jobs. If you want someone to collaborate or partner up on a project they’re going to check out the ‘digital’ you first for suitability. 

What many people don’t realize is that almost anything they put out on the Internet is likely to remain available to view for all posterity. This includes Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, comments on blogs, personal videos on Youtube and Vimeo – anything and everything, and if even some of that stuff is ‘bad’ it’s going to work against you to some degree. As Gary Vaynerchuk likes to say, “your grandkids are going to be able to check out everything you’ve ever done”! A good example of how negative content can come back to bite is when a few Virgin Atlantic staff were laid off last year for making derogatory comments about their employer on their Facebook pages.
So you want to make sure everything you do in this digital landscape is positive. Anything that can be found out about your interactions need to show you in the best possible light.

Do that and you’re already on your way to building a strong personal brand.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

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This logo here and this one are two of my favorites…

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With billions of web sites populating the Internet it’s really no wonder ICANN are doing this – I can’t remember the last time I registered the exact domain that I or a client wanted. Practically every good top level domain has been snapped up, a lot of these by cyber-squatterswho register a domain early on and sell it to the highest bidder.

The new rules will allow the registration of ‘anything’ as a TLD e.g. .ny for New York or .ldn for London. I could register .chandeshparekh as long as I had a good enough ‘business’ reason for doing so.

As the TechRadar.com article notes, it’s hard to know whether this will improve the Internet or hinder it; consider the number of yet to come ‘dead’ websites that will litter the Internet landscape as a result of the new rules.

Read more about this on the ICANN site…

Read the TechRadar.com article…

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In the example, we’ll use www.oneandonlymadonna.com, which is the site we have set up for our friend Evelyne Brink, who is currently on her way to winning the BBC1 prime time show hosted by Graham Norton: “The One and Only”. When she wins, she’ll have the opportunity to take her Madonna tribute show to Las Vegas for three months!

Here’s a 10 step plan on how you can create your very own site just like it…

Step #1: Get A Domain Name

Think up a domain name that you know people will be searching for. In our case, we chose www.oneandonlymadonna.com because our intention was to promote Evelyne Brink and help her get to Vegas, and the phrase “one and only madonna” was certainly catching on – Evelyne is most certainly the “one and only Madonna” on that show! See our article on Descriptive Domain Names for guidance.

Then go to GoDaddy.com and purchase the domain name that you think is ideal for your promotional campaign. You can pick one up for about £5. Sometimes you can even get a discount of 10% by searching Google for “godaddy promo code“and entering that code when you make your purchase. Hey, every penny counts!

While you’re getting this domain, you’ll need to point it to an external web host such as Dreamhost, by entering the relevant name servers – in this instance, you’ll need ns1.dreamhost.com. ns2.dreamhost.com, and ns3.dreamhost.com

Step #2: Get A Hosting Account

Next you need a place to actually host your website. We recommended Dreamhost for their hosting package, and you can get a terrific deal of approximately £60 for a year’s worth of hosting an unlimited number of domains.

Step #3: Add Your Domain To Your Hosting Account

Once you have opened your hosting account, you can add your new domain to be hosted at your new Dreamhost account. At this time, also create a new FTP account to upload files where necessary, and an email address to receive email correspondence specific to this campaign.

Step #4: Load Up Your Content Management System

The next step is to install the application on your host that lets you design and add content to your website quickly – for this you’ll be installing WordPress, which is commonly used for blogs.

When logged into WordPress, along the left hand menu, select Goodies –> One-Click Installs, and proceed with the instructions for setting up your new WordPress site on your domain.

Once installed, you’ll want to log in to your new WordPress website and set up the permalinks to show URLs with the full date and post name, as well as set the title and description for the site.

Step # 5: Install A Decent Looking Revenue Generating Theme

Now that you have the core website set up, you want it to look good and set up in a way that it generates revenue for you through contextual adverts such as AdSense and Amazon Associates – you’ll need to sign up with these services and enter the codes it generates into your theme.

The quickest way to find a decent theme that achieves this is by searching “adsense optimized wordpress theme” in Google, downloading a theme you like, and following the instructions given to you on how you can install the theme on your site.

Another way to make further revenue is to sell affiliated products – i.e. products that other people have either created or are distributing, and you are simply referring people to them and making an affiliate commission on each sale.   You can set up your very own affiliate store by signing up as a My Affiliate Store member.

Step #6: Add A Mailing List

Set up a mailing list on the site that can capture your visitors’ name and email addresses so that you may keep in touch with them and send them regular updates by email about the artist, to keep them engaged on the site. We recommend you use Professional Cart Solutions.

Step #7: Add Quality Content

When the look and feel of the site is set up, you’ll want to start adding relevant content. In our case, we located videos from YouTube, pictures of Evelyne as Madonna from Flickr, and Diva Eve’s music from the Last.fm playlist.

Evelyne has many fans around the world, so we have also been in touch with some of her most dedicated fans who are more than happy to write about Evelyne and how she progresses in BBC1′s The One and Only show with Graham Norton to be selected to perform as Madonna in Las Vegas for three months.

If you’re asking other writers for content, you may even want to create an account for them on your site so that they can contribute content as and when they are inspired to write.

Step #8: Help Visitors And Search Engines Find Your Site

To let search engines know that your site exists and ask them to list you, simply send them a request to add your site to their database. With Google, just go to their Add URL page.

You’ll also want to further optimise your site so that your description and keywords meta tags have something useful in them for search engines to pick up when visitors are searching for your content. The plugin we recommend that you download, install and configure is the Add Meta Tags WordPress Plugin.

Step #9: Get Fans To Rave About The Site

Finally you want fans raving about this promotional fansite by telling all their friends about it on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Help them do this by installing the I Love Social Bookmarking Plugin.

When fans are on your site, you can build stronger relationships with them by leveraging comments. Read our article on 6 WordPress Comment Plugins To Build Stronger Relationships With Site Visitors.

Step #10: Sit Back And Enjoy

So there you have it – get your very own buzzing money making promotional website like www.OneAndOnlyMadonna.com up and running within a day. Now sit back, watch your favourite performer being helped along the way by their fans, and see some money coming in to make up for the time you spent building the site.

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This is yet another promotion being run in the US by Chick-fil-A®, a fast food restaurant, where the visitor can register to be sent a coupon for a free Chick-fil-A® Chicken Biscuit in the mail.

When the site visitor goes to www.freebreakfastnow.com, they arrive at a landing page which asks them to click on an image to enter and register. When they click the ‘enter button’, the visitor gets taken to a form that asks them for their key details such as first and last name, email address, telephone number, full address, date of birth, and gender – and to top if off, they are ALL mandatory questions.

What the company gets from this is vital information about their target market – i.e. where they live, how old they are, what gender – as well as specific contact information so that further promotional material can be sent to them by post, by email, and over the phone.

Beneath these mandatory questions, there are the optional survey questions. Now HERE’s where they get really clever. They start by asking a couple of simple basic questions such as “Have you ever eaten at a Chick-fil-A® restaurant?” and “Have you ever eaten breakfast at Chick-fil-A®?”, which are most likely there to conceal the more sneakier items that follow…

Here come the subtle yet powerful marketing messages disguised as questions: “Please check which Chick-fil-A® Breakfast items you have tried:”. The page then allows the visitor to place a check mark next to any of the 5 items on the list that they may have tried for breakfast. Also, there’s the “Did you know Chick-fil-A® offers reloadable gift cards?” What this does is that even though these survey questions are optional, the visitor will still scan through them (even if they don’t answer) and even if they haven’t tried it, they will probably want to make a special trip into that fast food restaurant to have a taste of one of the other breakfast items, or even purchase a gift card.

Don’t you know, there’s no such thing as a free breakfast!?

In your business or community organisation, how can you model the promotional campaign that Chick-fil-A® have used to:

1. build your database of customers to directly promote to via email / post / telephone,
2. learn more about your target market, and
3. give your customers a subtle message about other products and services that are available?

What will be YOUR free breakfast?

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Check out www.goodurlbadurl.com before purchasing your next domain name for your online marketing campaign.

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The official website is packed with the movie trailers, info about the story about the movie but the better site is the games site sponsored by Mercedes Benz here. However, rather than the usual dull advertising banners, Mercedes Benz have advertised within the games.

For example, there are 2 games based in London; in one, the action game called Thames River Race, you drive a Mercedes Benz along the Victoria Embankment avoiding buses, black-cabs and other obstacles.
The puzzle game called Break Into Buckingham, a game very much like Tetris, involves destroying symbols to unlock the gates to Buckingham Palace. One of these symbols is the Mercedes Benz star.

The prizes are impressive, with a chance to win $50,000 in the London games and for all 5 city games the chance to win the $50,00 plus a Mercedes Benz!
The site is viral as one of the other cities is unlocked every week, revealing the games specific to that location. This week, running to the 24th of October, is London and the other cities are Cairo, Paris, New York and Washington D.C.

All in all, a great fun site packed with fairly unobtrusive branding and great viral games.

Let us know if you win the Merc!

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Whilst I’m out here in Kenya, I’m using a Celtel SIM, and it turns out that Celtel Kenya’s parent firm, MTC Group has recently changed its name to Zain.

This was a name selected from a list of over 400 after extensive research was conducted across many countries and cultures, which validated its broad global appeal.  In Arabic, Zain means “beautiful, good and wonderful.”

When you’re naming your next company or finding a suitable name for your business, who are you reaching out to, who are you serving, and when the company grows, are you sure that the name will make sense to those in other countries and cultures?

Also, when you’re selecting a suitable domain name for your business, consider this while you read our article on Descriptive Domain Names.

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Because such social network sites make it easy most of the marketing is done, primarily, through them and this is foolhardy.

Whatever reason your web site exists; to sell products, raise awareness of your services etc, it needs to be at the centre of your strategy with multiple traffic sources leading back to it.

Why? Because that’s where you, as the web site owner, have full control over content and how it’s presented to your potential or current customers. It’s where you can reinforce your brand and make sure that the next time they come directly to your site and not via Facebook or something similar. It’s also where you can capture their email addresses so you can now market directly to them, tailoring your offers to make them more attractive.

And remember, social networks come and go – you may have experienced some success using them at present but the moment they’re sliding downhill and hemorrhaging users you’ll have to repeat all that hard work on the next big site, where your market has migrated to.

It makes more sense to drive traffic to your own site and keep them there so you don’t have to keep chasing after them.

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Today, using email-forwarding and POP3 mailbox settings, it’s possible to use an online email service like Google Mail or Hotmail or traditional email clients like Outlook, Thunderbird e.t.c., to manage your email whilst using an email address in the form myname@mydomain.com.

But why would you want to? Consider that email has become the most widely used communication format today. If you’re reading this article on our web site the chances are you have your own Internet access and your own email address. If you use your own domain name every person that you send email to is going to see the email address and understand that the domain (the ‘mydomain.com’ bit) probably has a web site attached to it and that all they have to do to visit it is type into their browser www.mydomain.com.

That’s the first way in which you can strengthen your brand. The second is by making use of the “From” alias so that it reads something like “From: Mr. A. Name of Mycompany Ltd., www.mycompany.com”. Most of the time, only the name of the person is used in the “From” alias. By correctly utilising the “From” alias, you’ll provide the email recipient with a lot more information including your company name and your web site address.

Thirdly, always make use of the “signature” tool that practically every email client, web-based or not, has built-in. The signature, once set up, is automatically added to the bottom of every email you send out. This is one of the most powerful branding tools as there is no limit to what you could put in the signature file. For example, your signature file could read:

Mr. A. Name
My Company Ltd.

e: a.name@mycompany.com
w: www.mycompany.com
t: +44 123 456 7890

Sale, this week only: all prices slashed by 25%!! Click here to see the sale

New stock coming soon.

Using this simple tool, every email you send out with this signature effectively acts like an ad for your sale. It drives traffic to your web site where you can further strengthen your brand and will likely get you some sales too!

By using these tips, every email you send out can push your brand in three different ways. Not bad for something that only takes a few minutes to implement!

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This is another powerful way of branding your site, that confirms to your site visitor that they are indeed on the correct website.

There is a cool tool at http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/ that lets you create favicons from a picture for free, which you can then use on your very own website.

Ask your web designer to use this free tool to help you improve your site branding!

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