Aspiring musician? Budding young artist? Aspiring novelist? These days, it’s not enough that you have your own album, creative portfolio, or published book. You have to have a website, too. It may not seem fair to be a one-man (or one-woman) team and to have to develop your own website and market your product to your audience, but that’s just the way it is. If you’re determined to succeed, you might as well go with the flow and start building your online presence. One of the best ways to do so is by using WordPress, our favorite content management system here at Lakeshore Branding. Not only is the entire platform easy to use; it’s also fully customizable, and it evolves in accordance with today’s Web standards. Now, we understand perfectly your desire to have a website that serves as an expression of yourself (and your work), and that’s why we came up with this list of the best WordPress themes – Read the full article
If you want to make sales without chasing customers or making cold calls and do it in a way that is pleasing for you as the marketer and comfortable for the prospect, there are strategies that you can implement so that people will be calling and lining up to do business with you. In this article we will discuss 9 Strategies on How You Can Achieve Expert Status In Your Niche. We’ll begin with: Article Marketing: Writing articles and giving well-researched information to your niche and placing them on your website or social media platforms will be a great way to get started in positioning yourself as an expert in your niche. You can also distribute them in article directories as long as they are of quality such as Ezine Articles or trade publications in your niche (online and offline). Write a book: The book can be in the form of an E-book that is downloadable or it can be – Read the full article
Raising funds online isn’t easy. Thank goodness there are useful social media marketing platforms like Kickstarter and Twitter. (Check out our tips for fundraising on Twitter and our coverage of some of the most successful social media fundraisers!) But if these tools aren’t flexible enough for your charity organization, political advocacy, or religious community – and if you think you’ll need a bigger Web presence, like a website or a blog – then you might as well create your own WordPress site. WordPress is Lakeshore Branding’s recommended content management system (CMS). Why? Because it’s focused on aesthetics. Because it’s built on evolving and upcoming Web standards. And because it’s so easy to use. To help rally your cause, we compiled this list of 15 WordPress themes sure to strike at the heart of your online audience. These WordPress themes are great for non-governmental institutions, public sector groups, charity organizations, environmental organizations, fundraising events and committees, advocacy groups, political aspirants, churches, – Read the full article
While the traditional breadcrumbs are nothing but annoying, the term “breadcrumbs” in technology has a different reputation. For those who are unfamiliar, breadcrumbs are little words and phrases that some websites place at the top of a webpage to help the user follow where they are in the website. They work as little navigation tools to help someone stay organized when working through a website with many different webpages. Consider the example below: In general, only major companies use breadcrumbs because they seem so sophisticated. After all, a small business website can’t be that hard to navigate, right? Wrong. If you have more than one webpage, utilizing breadcrumbs has many benefits. Top 5 Reasons Your Webpage Should Be Using Breadcrumbs 1. Easier Usage – Visitors will likely have a much better experience on your website if they can get around easily. Sometimes users can get frustrated jumping from page to page because they get lost, but breadcrumbs help solve this – Read the full article
More and more entrepreneurs are beginning to take advantage of all the Internet has to offer. For most companies, the Internet is a huge player in whether or not they will be successful. For others, it is the only player. In other words, many entrepreneurs are starting a small business that is online-only. If you run a blog or a website designed to help consumers, chances are that most of your business can be done through this online website. Before you know it, advertisers are interested and vendors want to be a part of the action. Eventually, you can have yourself a very profitable online business. Other online companies, however, get blindsided by the dollar signs and forget about the legal steps they must take in order to keep that money. After all, an online company takes a long time to turn profitable. When it finally happens, it’s exciting. But it’s important to put that excitement on hold and consider – Read the full article
For those of you who are Google addicts like myself, you should find this piece choc-a-bloc full of Chrome apps for you to gorge yourself on. Whether it’s gaming you are looking for or an app to help your business run more smoothly, you should find something here to satisfy your taste buds. The Google Chrome Store makes me feel like a kid in a sweet shop at the best of times, and if you haven’t checked it out already you will find it hard not to after reading below. Bear in mind that you need to be using the Google Chrome browser (to enjoy these apps), so download it now and start browsing in the shop and on the Internet. Google Chrome apps for small business One of the best apps I have found on the Google Chrome Web store is the ZOHO Invoice app, which I now use religiously to process all my invoices and keep track of – Read the full article
Last week we published a guide on how to monitor Google Places reviews, Web updates, and content changes. It was well-received by our readers, so we’d like to build on the post and share info this time on tools for online reviews monitoring and management. Hopefully, this list will help you track online reviews of your brand, product, establishment, service, or business – and enhance your reputation as more customers talk about you on Google Places, Yelp, online directories, local business listings, and social media sites. Or, if you’ve used any of the online reputation management tools below, do let us know by leaving a comment below and sharing with us your experience. ReviewPush Texas-based ReviewPush markets itself as an “online review management tool for small to large businesses”. It offers a dashboard for monitoring / tracking reviews, protecting your brand and reputation, engaging with customers, and enhancing product offerings and promotions (such as coupons). ReviewPush features include: Continuous social – Read the full article
Thanks to our good friends over at the social media networks, individuals can create personal brands better than ever. Though you may not know it, your actions on social media accounts give the public a certain image of you. This is probably most true for those who are very fluent in social media—continually connecting and commenting with others on the web who enjoy similar websites and articles. However, a personal brand works just like anything else in life: having one can be very beneficial; not having one can be damaging, and vice versa. A good way to think about a personal brand is like a resume. In a sense, a resume is a document that explains why you are one way and not another—you’re good at math because you studied it in college; you’re a loyal employee because you stay at your jobs for over one year, etc. In other words, creating a personal brand through social media is becoming – Read the full article
