Casual Articles - Internet and Businesses Online

Managers: PR Mechanics or Engineers?
If you are a business, non-profit, government agency or association manager, you need both. A skilled public relations “engineer” to assemble the resources and drive the action planning needed to alter individual perception leading to changed behaviors among your most important outside audiences.That engineer will help you as a manager to persuade those key folks to your way of thinking, And then move them to take actions that allow your department, group, division or subsidiary to succeed.But you’ll also want those “mechanics” on board to handle communications tactics like brochures, special events, broadcast plugs, press releases and the like.The force behind such a deployment is the underlying premise of public relations: People act on their own percep

ic. In Alexa, the lower your ranking (under 500,000 means your site is fairly well visited; under 100,000 means your site is a big contender in your industry), the more relevant your site is deemed. In addition, with Alexa, you can see the other websites owned by this company, see related sites visited from this website, as well as other sites with inbound links to this site. You can use this latter information to create a list for potential link exchanges or future strategic alliances. A tool you can use to get both rankings simultaneously is Rank Alert: http://www.rankalert.net/siterank.php

Email Etiquette in the Workplace: The Email Creed
I will give email communication the respect and value it deserves as a quick, acceptable and reliable form of internet communication.I will reply to an email within 24 hours or sooner, even if the reply consists of a few words (i.e. Great, Thanks, Sorry, Yes, No, Call me, etc.).I will use spell check and I will reread my emails prior to hitting the send button; because I understand that my email communications are a reflection on me.I will refrain from using abbreviations and email slang in my work related emails.I will address the person by name whenever possible and when appropriate in my email communications.I will work on developing an email voice that is even tone, respectable, positive and personable.I will use the blind copy email feature when sendin

Regardless of what business you're in, you have competition, or other businesses who are clamoring for the same consumer dollars as you. The competition may or may not be in the same industry, e.g. if you own a movie theatre, your competition will be all venues providing entertainment, such as bowling alleys, theme parks, skating rinks, miniature golf courses, in addition to other movie theatres. Take a moment to determine what business you're in and determine if your type of business might also attract consumers from other industries.

As an online business owner, your competition may not be as easy to gauge, especially if you don't have a retail location for your business, or if you have a global virtual company where you can work with clients regardless of location, as many coaches, consultants, virtual assistants, graphic designers, speakers, and website designers do. How do you begin to assess your competition when your business has no geographic limits? It's very similar to the steps that a traditional business might take, but it's all done online.

Here are the ten steps I use to research my competition online:

1. Brainstorm all known competitors. If you've been in business for any length of time, you probably already have a good sense of which other companies offer what you offer. Look up their websites and make a note of the website addresses. You'll be using this information later.

2. Compile a list of keywords your customer would use to find a business like yours online. How would your target market find you online? Create a list of all keywords that they might use. If you have a business that serves a particular geographic region, you'll want to create a geographic keyword listing as well, like "cleaning business" + "Beaumont, Texas" or "cleaning business" + "Southeast Texas".

3. Conduct a keyword search on the major search engines. The major players in the search engine game today seem to be Google, Yahoo, and MSN. It is the results from these search engine queries that will be the ones most commonly found by your target market. You should try your search with and without quotation marks, like "cleaning business" and cleaning business and conduct a search by location, as well, if that applies to your business. Make a note of the top 10 listings from each search engine query and those will comprise your top competition, along with other local competitors that you know about.

4 Visit your competitors' websites and analyze their offerings. Create a summary of each competitor's services and/or products. Determine the strength and weaknesses of your competition from the perspective of your target market. Assess how your offerings are better/worse/different from that of the competition. Are your prices higher or lower than theirs? Why? What makes you unique? How can you capitalize on that uniqueness and set yourself apart from the competition? By following these steps, you'll discover your competitive advantage, or the reason(s) your target market does business with you instead of your competition.

5. Create a spreadsheet to track your results. You'll want to track your research over time, so create a spreadsheet in which you keep track of all the information you discover about your competition. Compare how both your company and the companies of your closest competition evolve throughout a year.

6. See how your competition stacks up. Determine how popular your competition is. Download the Google Toolbar and determine their Google Page Rank and visit Alexa.com and determine your competitor's Alexa Traffic Ranking. A higher Google Page Rank (on a scale of 1-10), indicates more relevance and higher traffic. In Alexa, the lower your ranking (under 500,000 means your site is fairly well visited; under 100,000 means your site is a big contender in your industry), the more relevant your site is deemed. In addition, with Alexa, you can see the other websites owned by this company, see related sites visited from this website, as well as other sites with inbound links to this site. You can use this latter information to create a list for potential link exchanges or future strategic alliances. A tool you can use to get both rankings simultaneously is Rank Alert: http://www.rankalert.net/siterank.php

Your 52-Card Marketing Action Plan
When I was at Mark Victor Hansen's Mega Marketing Magic seminar, he gave everyone in attendance a stack of "Mega Action Cards."The stack was actually a tablet of 52 cards, one for each week of the year.The challenge?To dedicate yourself to implementing one idea a week for 52 weeks. The suggestion was to select ideas from those we were learning over the three-day event, and actually commit to implementing those ideas.What a great idea!After all, how many of us have attended seminars and come back home with new ideas only to end up shoving them in a drawer to never again to see the light of day.We're certainly not going to grow our business that way.The only way to grow your business is to take action eve

hen your business has no geographic limits? It's very similar to the steps that a traditional business might take, but it's all done online.

Here are the ten steps I use to research my competition online:

Who Do You Think You ARE Anyway?
In order to write a vision for your business, the first step is identifying who you really are and what is important to you.Not what you DO or have been doing, but who you ARE.You may be doing things that are really not in alignment with what is important to you in your business. It's critical to identify any of those discrepancies to redirect your efforts toward a successful venture.List all the things that you don't want to see in your business. A great way to do this is to create two columns and make the list of your "don't wants" on the left and in the right column list what it is that you do want. This is sometimes referred to as the "T exercise" because of the T created by the columns.It's easier to identify what is important to you if you think of what it is th

yword search on the major search engines. The major players in the search engine game today seem to be Google, Yahoo, and MSN. It is the results from these search engine queries that will be the ones most commonly found by your target market. You should try your search with and without quotation marks, like "cleaning business" and cleaning business and conduct a search by location, as well, if that applies to your business. Make a note of the top 10 listings from each search engine query and those will comprise your top competition, along with other local competitors that you know about.

How to Design an Effective Marketing and Communications Budget for Your Nonprofit Organization
You definitely need to have a comprehensive, realistic budget. It's a critical component of your nonprofit's annual marketing and communications plan and, like the work plan, serves as a map to ensure you reach your goals. The budgeting process helps you to determine whether your plan is realistic. If not, you know you have to cut the plan to focus on ultimate priorities and retool the budget.But, it's always a challenge to determine your nonprofit marketing and communications budget, and to justify it to the powers that be. On popular approach is to allocate a certain percentage of the organization's budget to marketing.In the for-profit world, it's fairly standard to determine a marketing budget by allocating 10-20% of projected gross revenues to marketing and communications. Howeve

gher or lower than theirs? Why? What makes you unique? How can you capitalize on that uniqueness and set yourself apart from the competition? By following these steps, you'll discover your competitive advantage, or the reason(s) your target market does business with you instead of your competition.

How To Create Residual Income With E-books
Electronic books, or e-books, have been used as an internet marketing tool for several years. Electronic books can be purely informational or they can have a sales message that promotes your product or service. The many benefits of using electronic books for internet marketing include becoming known as an expert in your field, having a product that attracts visitors to your site, and having something you can give away to new subscribers or customers. In addition to providing your customers with solid information, e-books can also be used to create residual income and boost your income over time.What is residual income?Residual income is income that continues to flow even after you have already provided a product or service. The simplest way to think of residual income is “do the w

7. Complete an analysis of their websites. What meta tags are being used on your competitor's websites? How are their websites optimized for keywords or keyword phrases? How many inbound links do your competitors have? From what other sites are the inbound links coming? Two tools you can use to scope out this information on your competition are Keyword Density Analyzer: http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html, and Link Popularity Checker: http://www.freewebsubmission.com/link-popularity.html

8. Track your competition with alerts. The easiest way to stay on top of what your competition is doing is to track them with Google Alerts and Yahoo Alerts. In my alerts notifications, I track both keywords relevant to my business, as well as the names and website names of my closest competition. Google has recently added a feature to their alerts system to notify you of blog postings as well, in addition to website updates and news alerts.

9. Shop your competition. Become your competitor's customer. Buy the products of your top 5 competitors and familiarize yourself with their sales process. By doing so, you'll be able to sell your own product or service more effectively since you'll have a better understanding of what your competition offers. Becoming their customer also lets you discover their weaknesses, as well as your own. In addition, you'll want to join their mailing list or email broadcast list to keep up-to-date on what they're doing.

10. Regularly visit your competition. Visit the websites of your top 5 competitors at least once a month to see what's new. In this way you can spot trends in your industry, as well as determine what seems to be working well for them and determine how you can apply this information and knowledge in your own business.

Creating your competitive intelligence helps you stay one step ahead of your competitors. It's essential to have an up-to-date picture of your closest competitors and what they are doing so that your company is remaining competitive and a major player in your industry.

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A marketing tag line is the one or two line descriptor that often comes after a product logo or company name. It is one of those things that looks simple but isn't. Large companies pay advertising agencies a lot of money to develop tag lines. The article shows how to effectively and inexpensively create your own tag lines on a small budget.

Do you want to make money on eBay? If so, then focus on your customers. eBay buyers seek sellers that do everything possible to make the whole buying experience simple, easy and a pleasure for them. They seek buyers with a record of success.

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