Twitter and Facebook: yes, sure, everyone’s heard of these social media giants. But there’s another name that’s slowly but steadily catching the attention of media companies, businesses, and celebrities – and one which you, as an Internet marketer, business owner, or startup, might want to check out for yourself. It’s called Tumblr. Tumblr has actually been around for awhile – it was launched nearly four years ago – but it’s only now that the potential of this easy blogging service is being recognized and realized by the world of social media users. In a nutshell, Tumblr is a platform for blogging, much like WordPress, Blogger, Movable Type, and Posterous, but what makes it different from these other platforms is its ability to “socialize” its service. Tumblr isn’t just for strictly “writerly” bloggers or Dear Diary writers; it’s for anyone who wants to share anything, from text passages, quotes, photos, links, music videos, etc. at the click of a button. In – Read the full article
We’re sure you’ve heard of The Social Network, this new movie about the founders of Facebook. It opened earlier this month and so far, from what we’ve been hearing, it sounds like this 120-minute thriller-docudrama-comedy will be making plenty of noise at next year’s Oscars. You should see The Social Network if you haven’t done so yet. Not only is it a thrilling closer look at what went on behind the creation of today’s biggest social networking site; it’s also a really, really good movie. You don’t even have to be a Facebook fan to enjoy it. Directed by David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club), written by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, A Few Good Men), and starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Brenda Song, Rooney Mara, and huge pop musician Justin Timberlake, The Social Network – as Rolling Stone describes it – “brilliantly defines the decade”. Of course, if you’re a startup, small business owner, or marketer, you also might want – Read the full article
Tracking time and invoicing clients are important office tasks that you may often wish you don’t have to do. If only, right? But regardless of whether you’re a freelancer, a consultant, a small business, or a corporation, you just have to have some form of system to keep that income stream running smoothly – plus, of course, a staff member employed specifically for the purpose of managing that system. Enter FreshBooks, a web-based accounting, time billing, cost estimate, and invoicing application that has been dubbed “the leader in online invoicing”. It’s designed to help users save time and money in performing such accounting tasks as tracking income, managing estimates, creating and sending invoices, receiving customer payments, and generating accurate year-end financial reports. It’s definitely a great concept, but does FreshBooks perform better than if you just hired an accountant or a third party? Our answer: yes. A resounding one. We here at Lakeshore Branding have recently incorporated FreshBooks into our – Read the full article
LSB creative director Ryan turned 25 yesterday, so we celebrated the only way we know how- cupcakes and shenanigans. Our office buddy Lisa Bun from Collision Labs baked up some very tasty, homemade cupcakes which were consumed faster than burritos at a burrito eating contest (which happened yesterday, as well). Afterwards, we headed to English for dinner and drinks. Check out some more pics and stories from the night at Cooler by the Lake.
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
Lakeshore Branding, Inc (“Lakeshore Branding”) wants to make your experience as enjoyable and rewarding as possible by making sure you can use our vast array of information, tools, and opportunities with complete confidence. Please read the following to learn more about our privacy policy. What This Privacy Policy Covers This policy covers how Lakeshore Branding treats personal information that the company collects and receives on-line, including information related to your past use of Lakeshore Branding products and services. Personal information is information about you that is personally identifiable like your name, address, email address, or phone number, and that is not otherwise publicly available. This Privacy Policy covers all end users of Lakeshore Branding services including those who access some of our services but do not have accounts (“Visitors”) as well as those who pay a monthly service fee to subscribe to the Lakeshore Branding products or services (“Members”). This policy does not apply to the practices of companies that – Read the full article
