The Internet continues to grow, and more and more organizations are leveraging its power to support not just their own business objectives, but also their causes, advocacies, and social responsibilities. Charities have taken to using websites as their main communication vehicle, while an increasing number of groups and individuals are utilizing the Web to get volunteers, spread information, raise awareness, and raise funds through online donations. A creative and properly implemented fundraising campaign to a broad online community can indeed get more results and raise more money than an offline campaign, and without as much overhead expenses. Do you represent a group looking to get more results from your online fundraising campaign? Here are some essential tips to help you do that more effectively and make your campaign a success. Get legal First things first – make sure you have registered with the right officials and met the requirements for launching your fundraising campaign. Just because it’s being done online – Read the full article
While Twitter, and more recently Foursquare, have been the darlings of the social media world in recent memory, an outstanding and arguably more practical service has been quietly kicking butt. That service is Posterous. What is Posterous? At its simplest, Posterous is another blogging platform. But unlike most blogging platforms, the primary method of posting is done via email, not in a custom backend platform (note: Posterous has recently improved their post editing tools). But Posterous is so much more. Let’s look at some of the best features and how you can get some value out of using it. Autopost Arguably the coolest feature of Posterous is autopost. A majority of people (and businesses) have multiple social networking presences, be it a Twitter account, Facebook page, blog(s), Flickr account, etc. With Posterous, you can set up your posts to be shared across a number of social sites. For example, you just took some nice photos of a company event, and – Read the full article
States have been trying for years to find ways to collect taxes from online sales, which continue to grow at a rate of about 10 percent a year. States are now losing out on $20 billion annually in taxes they would be collecting if all online sales were happening in physical stores. The Illinois Department of Revenue estimates that they could collect $153 million per year with an online sales tax as proposed in Senate Bill 3353. In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled that states could not force retailers to collect sales taxes unless they had “nexus” — a physical presence in a given state. That doesn’t apply to operations such as Amazon that don’t run physical stores and do all their business online. What does this mean? There are approximately 8,940 affiliates in Illinois representing 4.47% of all US affiliates. In 2008 Illinois affiliate marketers earned $78.6MM and paid $2.35MM in state income taxes. As an active member of the affiliate – Read the full article
Marketing Sherpa, a trusted resource that publishes useful news, case studies, and best practices data about Internet and integrated marketing, recently released the new Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report. It’s a robust guide that contains research, charts and tables, case studies, and trends in today’s ever-evolving Internet marketing industry. Over 2,000 marketers participated in the surveys conducted by Marketing Sherpa, surveys which covered topics such as strategy, forecasting, budgeting, integration with other marketing channels, social applications, and social media. It is meaty: 197 charts and tables, 14 chapters, 255 pages, and results from research conducted with 2,317 business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketers. The benchmark report also introduced a ROAD Map, which stands for the Research, Objectives, Actions, and Devices that businesses and marketers would have to determine in crafting and implementing a social media strategy. Because social media is continuously evolving, one has to consider this ROAD Map, which is meant to help businesses and marketers stay abreast of social media – Read the full article
It’s easy to slap a name onto your business and call it a brand. But that alone won’t cut it these days – especially not online. It needs constant nourishment and attention in order to position it into something that will be successful. The great thing about promoting your brand online is that there are plenty of tools available out there for you to use. Like websites and blogs. Social media and local business listings. Online maps and directories. E-newsletters and RSS feeds. Of course, by building a brand online, you can also reach and influence more people than ever before – and at a much quicker pace than through traditional means like radio, TV, or print. Before you throw your brand onto the World Wide Web, however, it’s best to follow some of the online brand management tips which you’ll find below. Develop an Online Marketing Strategy You may have a lot of high-quality valuable information on your website, – Read the full article
Marketing research isn’t what it used to be. It has expanded to include the world of websites, blogs, social media, online advertising, and other web-based media. The great thing about this all is that there are lots of tools you can use conduct market research and gather competitive intelligence. Our top posts on Lakeshore Branding have been about social media monitoring and competitive intelligence. So I thought we would share some our favorite tools and this list turned into a description of 29 tools for competitive intelligence. So check out the list and please let us know if we are missing any. 1. SpyFu: Spyfu is a tool that lets you find out what keywords your competitors are targeting in the search engines. Not just keywords, mind you, but AdWords, too. All you have to do is type your competitor’s site in SpyFu’s search bar, and voila! Immediate results that show you the keyword and AdWords landscape for that domain. – Read the full article
Do you know that 54% of CIOs ban the use of social media in the workplace? “Wow” was our first reaction, too. A bunch of Web 2.0 marketers are of course prone to advocate the merits of using blogs and sites like Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, and YouTube in efforts to help businesses grow. But like with many things, social media can be a double-edged sword. A secretary will tweet about the laughable fashion sense of her boss. An employee will write an eloquent blog about how the routine Monday meetings are a total waste of time. And then another staffer will post status updates about how nothing here – certainly not promotion up the corporate ladder – is based on meritocracy. Don’t think social media can be stopped, though. While this new digital sandpit is highly interactive and engaging, it can also be extremely hard to control. There are varying approaches taken by companies to either ban or limit it, – Read the full article
This week we received an email from a DePaul student (Go Blue Demons!), who was looking to interview a web design company about usability. I spent some time thinking about it and developing some answers and I thought I would share it on our blog- Enjoy! (1) Describe the company. Briefly describe the products they build and/or the services they provide Here are some quotes from our website but basically we are a web design company that focuses on Search Engine Optimization and Conversions by using the latest W3C complaint coding (xHTML and CSS) and also using the latest usability compliance. “Web design is more than just creativity, it’s usability. Understanding your visitors and how they use your website will lead to increased conversions. For each new website, our team of graphic designers, SEO consultants and marketing specialists work together on strategy, design, usability, and goals.” Lakeshore Branding, what started as a small marketing firm in 2007 has evolved into – Read the full article
