Category Archives: Communications and PR

If you’ve got a story to tell, look for tips on how to do that here.

01.05.11
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Is social media right for marketing your small or medium sized business?

Social Media for small business
Image by Matt Hamm.

Tips for social media marketing, and the many different ways social media can be used to promote small / midsized businesses (SMBs), can be found in almost endless numbers on an incredibly wide variety of websites. But there’s one crucial tip most small businesses won’t see – and that they should consider before any of the others; namely, is social media right for you at all?

Marketing budgets for SMBs have always been tight, and human resources to manage these dollars are becoming even more scarce. So while there are clearly great opportunities for small and medium businesses to use social media to market themselves, it’s equally clear that social media isn’t for everyone. Continue reading →

10.02.10
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Usability – the best investment that most organizations will never make.

A price tag well into five figures is no longer uncommon for a small business trying to build a website. Many medium sized businesses tag another zero on the end of their bills – yet even larger companies with even bigger budgets are often reluctant to spend a small fraction of that to ensure that their sites actually work.

A small but growing industry has been screaming for attention, but is still not getting the respect they deserve. Usability experts have spent years studying how people use the Internet to determine what works and what doesn’t, and even though their invaluable insights are available for a fraction of what it costs to create a site, the vast majority of comapnies never bring one in.

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09.24.10
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Blogging your way to improved sales: The top 10 tips for starting a small business blog

Small business blog success - top tips for business blogsSmall business owners have asked me many times over the years about how blogging might help their company. They’ve heard about the success of companies like Dell and Walt Disney and they wonder if there is some way blogs could have the same kind of impacts on their small or medium sized businesses. The improved client relationships these blogs build, and the way that translates into increased sales, can clearly help small businesses as much as it does big ones.

The only problem is that a bad blog can hurt your company, too.

Building a popular and successful blog isn’t rocket science, though, and it is a marketing tool that is accessible to even the smallest of companies. Following are these top 10 tips to help your small business use this powerful tool effectively will also help you avoid the potential pitfalls. Continue reading →

08.29.09
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Me and 60,000 of my closest friends.

My 3 year-old son loves to play hide and seek. He’s not the most challenging opponent that I’ve played against, but he absolutely loves the game. My ridiculously compeitive nature means that I sometimes struggle to enjoy the game (and supress my urge to coach him), but my mother more than makes up for my shortcomings in this area.

She is officially the hide-and-seek queen of our family, since she plays almost endlessly with our son – who absolutely loves the game. Last week he picked a terrible hiding spot (even by his standards) and she took a second to snap a quick photo.
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06.21.09
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All politics is local – and now its social, too.

If there is a politician or elected official in the Western world who thinks that they don’t need to be aware of social media after the recent Iranian elections, I’d be quite surprised. Its true that many politicians are (wilfully?) ignorant of technology and social media, but even the most ardent luddite cannot help but notice the opportunities presented by these tools.

There is an outside chance that even after President Obama brilliantly displayed the value of social media in his campaign some politicians might still have not seen the value of these tools. The way that social media has shed light on recent Iranian elections, however, should leave no room for doubt with anyone who thinks they should hold elected office.

In an election of questionable legitimacy that has lead to unquestionably brutal police tactics, the one tool that was effectively able to draw world attention was social media. Twitter saw thousands of posts right from Tehran, YouTube ended up with saddeningly graphic videos, blogs were posted by those who voted and were intimidated by state police thugs – and all over the world minds were changed and hearts were won over.
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