As a small business owner you may be on a job that is usually reserved for two people or more – and you may be running around more than you ought to. (Doesn’t everyone feel that way?) If only you can split yourself in two! Well, spare yourself with these helpful apps. If you have a mobile smartphone like the iPhone or the Android, you can make use of the tools and applications to improve your workflow. After all, these phones are made for more than checking your E-mail, you know. To-Do Lists Outlook Mobile has a nice, task-syncing feature for your smartphone that lets you send meeting requests, track attendance, received detailed responses, and much more. If you’re using an iPhone, there’s the very flexible Toodledo, which synchronizes your tasks without requiring Internet connection. For Android users, use Astrid, a simple task recording dashboard for mobile that lists and tracks your To-Do list. Like the two previous tools, it’s – 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
Bing is revving it up once again by adding new features to its search functionality. Among the latest additions to the search engine’s features is a new video portal called Bing Video which offers original programming as well as videos from a variety of sources. It combines content from MSN videos with Bing’s search technology, while also housing web-based videos from sites like YouTube, Daily Motion, Hulu, and MySpace, among others. Also included is content from sites like MSNBC, CBS, Fox Sports, National Geographic, and other providers and sites from which MSN offered original media programming. Bing Video may just be what Microsoft needs to help add to its current second-place video market share (next of course to YouTube). With videos organized into several categories like News, Sports, TV Shows, Music, as well as sections for viral clips, “Last Night on TV”, and “Best of Bing”, search on Bing Video is easy, with capabilities that enable faster viewing experience and – Read the full article
The search wars have just been taken to a whole new level. The catalyst? Social media. With the phenomenal popularity of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, both Google and Microsoft will now be integrating real-time updates into their respective search engines. In separate announcements made yesterday, October 21, Google said it has reached an agreement with Twitter to include real-time updates – “Tweets” – in a new Google feature called Social Search; meanwhile, Microsoft has signed deals to get full feeds from both Twitter and Facebook. Google cited the fact that “an entirely new type of data has emerged… not only as a way for people to communicate their thoughts and feelings, but also as an interesting source of data about what is happening right now in regard to a particular topic.” The agreement with Twitter means search results will now include up-to-the-minute data and real-time observation from a stream of Tweets, so that users “will find tweets from – Read the full article
Lakeshore Branding is proud to host these five FREE hands-on small business marketing sessions in November that will offer practical advice, direct instruction, and application tips for free online and social media solutions to help small businesses and entrepreneurs in Chicago. “The ‘hands-on’ sessions started as things often do, with neighbors and friends asking each other for help and advice on something new,” said Gabrielle Blair, one of the founders of Kirtsy. “Women often get together to compare notes. And there are a lot of us who want to talk right now about how social media and online applications can simplify our lives and enhance our small business pursuits.” After Kirtsy hosted 10 Hands-On Social Media sessions with Microsoft Office Live in June, they received a fleet of requests to host more of these informal, intimate gatherings across the US and Canada. At the events, attendees cover popular platforms and get hands-on direction setting up accounts and applying them to – Read the full article
The last few days I utilized the new search engine Bing. I was skeptical at first of the new Microsoft product but was quickly impressed with the raw power of this new “decision” engine as they are branding it. I took notes in search results compared to yahoo and Google and I am going to share some of my insights into what I discovered (and opinions) 1. Bing has a better image search, I like the pop out feature to see the image a bit larger as well as the amount of images that are returned on the first page. It looks like they use “citations” to determine the image and do not have as much focus on alt and title tags. As webmasters have used images as an opportunity to put more keywords into the meta data, Google images has become less relevant. 2. Bing is showing favor to major websites, they are not showing site links except for – Read the full article
Recently there have been a lot of discussions in the web design community about the issues of dealing with Internet Explorer 6 with the recent release of IE 8. One web designer has begun showing this image above for users that still use IE 6. Check out the landing page here. The fustration for the team comes when you basically have to code the website 3, 4, 5 different ways so that it is functional in all major browsers. One of the biggest users of IE 6 is the corporate IT community who does not like to upgrade browsers that work. Our stance: Lakeshore Branding still supports Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 as well as FireFox 2+, Safari, Google Chrome and Opera. Creating seperate style sheets can be a pain for any web development team, but with some websites still seeing 30% or more of their visitors using the outdated browser, it is crutical you support it for your – Read the full article
Pay-per-click (PPC) online advertising is the most effective way to get immediate results from Internet search engines. It also happens to be one of our specialties here at Lakeshore Branding. Our team of AdWords Certified Professionals helps you plan, create, manage, execute and optimize your online ads. Attuned to the trends of the Web, we can even manage your listings and placements on Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and AdBrite, among other advertising marketplaces. Our goal is simple: drive conversions to your business. From budget planning and creative execution to optimization and demographic targeting, our online advertising management service helps you leverage the Internet to grow your business. Let Lakeshore Branding be your online advertising agency — because more than out-of-the-box creativity, you need in-the-know expertise. Drive an Increase Conversions Lower Cost per Conversion Minimize your Cost per Click Analytical Analysis Reports
