When you are marketing a brand name or product – online or offline – it is essential for you to acquire the know-how of writing a brochure effectively. The contents of the brochure will either be ignored or call potential customers to action. Information must be helpful to the reader so that they will feel a need to contact you for further assistance. Brochures have been used in marketing for years and the fact that they are still around – and have taken several new forms on the Web as online promotional literature – is testament to their inherent value in contributing to sales. Below are some useful tips on the process of writing a traditional or online brochure effectively: Keep it Brief The contents of your brochure must be brief and to the point. It is possible that the brochure may have several pages but the information therein must be relevant. Readers mostly scan through the brochure to check – Read the full article
Watch out, WordPress and Tumblr. Blogger is about to undergo a major makeover this year. At this year’s SXSW in Austin, Texas, search engine giant Google provided a glimpse of the new and improved Blogger, its very own blogging and publishing platform and sixth largest website in the world (according to Alexa). To be included in the series of updates to Blogger are: a brand new interface, a revamped post editor, a more customizable template designer, and a new content discovery feature. These and more are going to be rolled out throughout the year. “2010 was a big year for Blogger,” wrote Chang Kim, Blogger Product Manager, in a blog post covering the announcement. “We introduced template designer, real-time stats, comment spam filtering, mobile templates, web fonts and more. 2011 promises to be another exciting year. We’re kicking things off at SXSW by giving folks a sneak peek at our next-generation user interface. The new design is not only cleaner and more modern, but it also – Read the full article
Don’t think that scrapbooks will cut it. Not in today’s world. If you’re a photographer serious about marketing yourself and showcasing your talent to the world, you’ll have to establish your own online presence – with which you can create your portfolio, show your best shots, tell stories through images, and maximize every opportunity to render your professional services. That’s where WordPress comes in. It’s one of our favorite content management platforms here at Lakeshore Branding. It should be yours, too. We’ve already created the ultimate list of awesome small business WordPress themes for the biz owners; now it’s time to show some love to the photographers. In this post we have compiled 49 of today’s most stunning, flexible, and user-friendly photography WordPress themes that are out there right now. If you’re a designer, graphic artist, or illustrator, don’t hesitate to check the themes out, too. These WordPress themes are actually pretty versatile. Feel free to share, tweet, post on – Read the full article
The E-commerce industry hasn’t only grown bigger than ever. It has also become more social than ever. Thanks to the constant evolution of the Web – and to the popularity of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter – businesses and retailers are now doing more than just catering to individual Internet users and online shoppers. They’re also marketing to the people’s friends, inner circles, and communities, with the aim of bringing in more fans, followers, and dollars. Yes, dollars. In a recent story by Mashable, Jason Taylor, vice president of Platform Strategy at Usablenet, wrote that, when it comes to marketing, it’s “no longer just about ‘liking’ brands.” With a social network like Facebook giving way to new sales opportunities, businesses and online retailers are maximizing their social presence to drive not just marketing and branding campaigns, but also additional revenue. “By integrating purchasing into their branded pages,” Taylor said, “businesses can effectively take advantage of Facebook as a – Read the full article
The landing page: the place where visitors are directed after clicking on an ad, a search result, a link, or an offer. It’s also the critical page that can convert mere visitors or readers into your customers, fans, or followers. What goes into building an effective landing page? Let’s check it out. Answers. It’s likely that visitors clicked on your ad or your offer because they want to get hold of a certain piece of information, or because they want answers to their questions. So give them just that. Answer their search queries. Tell them what your offer is. Explain how they can benefit from buying your product or service, from supporting your brand. Guide them on how to get started. Regardless of what your objectives are – to make a sale, to get people to sign up for a newsletter, to get a Facebook user to like your fan page – make sure that you craft your landing page – Read the full article
At Lakeshore Branding we believe in the triple bottom line philosophy, the phrase was first coined in 1994 by John Elkington, the founder of a British consultancy called SustainAbility. His argument was that companies should be preparing three different (and quite separate) bottom lines. One is the traditional measure of corporate profit—the “bottom line” of the profit and loss account. The second is the bottom line of a company’s “people account”—a measure in some shape or form of how socially responsible an organisation has been throughout its operations. The third is the bottom line of the company’s “planet” account—a measure of how environmentally responsible it has been. The triple bottom line (TBL) thus consists of three Ps: profit, people and planet. It aims to measure the financial, social and environmental performance of the corporation over a period of time. Only a company that produces a TBL is taking account of the full cost involved in doing business. For businesses, sustainability – Read the full article
No matter what Facebook says, E-mail is not going to go away. And neither will E-mail marketing: in fact, according to a recent survey, more dollars are expected to be spent by businesses and marketers this 2011 on E-mail campaigns. We certainly hope that some money goes toward studying the anatomy of a great E-mail newsletter. Why? Because E-mail is one way – is still one of the best ways – to effectively capture attention in the age of information overload and short attention spans. Oh, and because 94 percent of all Internet users read E-mail. That’s higher than the percentage of Internet users who turn to search engines to find information. Let’s check out the body parts of a sexy, irresistible E-mail newsletter – the kind that doesn’t go straight to a recipient’s trash folder. Your company name. One of the most common mistakes that E-mail marketers make is the assumption that people will remember who they are. Well, – Read the full article
Looking to get ahead of the social media marketing game? Sure, Facebook and Twitter are still the king and queen of this kingdom – just as reported in a recent StrongMail survey of online marketing budgets in 2011 – but the New Year also heralds a number of new social media darlings that are certainly worth keeping an eye on. Last year, it was Foursquare and Posterous leading the pack. This year is just as promising – if not more promising, thanks in large part to the continued expansion of social media and to the crazy range of new sites, apps, and startups out there. Here are our picks for social media websites to watch in 2011. Quora Last March 2010, Quora reportedly received $86 million in funding from Benchmark Capital (also a Twitter investor). It didn’t make any million-dollar noise the rest of the year, but this 2011 just might be the year Quora really makes waves. As a – Read the full article
