Becoming an entrepreneur requires a certain amount of drive and enthusiasm.  If we didn’t believe in ourselves and our businesses, we would still be working for someone else.  But when the going gets tough, it’s easy to lose sight of why we started in the first place.  This can cause us to become unmotivated, and it could be the demise of the business we’ve worked so hard to build if we’re not careful. Businesses are like relationships: commitment is an absolute must if they are to succeed.  Here are some tips for staying focused and pulling through the hard times.…

I love reading reviews, case studies, and success stories. I love to see how people are utilizing products they need, what they think of them and how they use it for success. The Internet is a great place for anyone to get information on just about anything.  Students use the Internet to get information that they need to do their schoolwork.  Hobbyists go online to find patterns and compare notes with others who share in their craft.  And smart shoppers go online to research products before buying. Product reviews are highly sought after online.  Whether a shopper is looking for…

For the past several months I’ve been intrigued by the concept of mobile advertising. I wanted to know how it worked and why would anyone call up an ad? I immediately bought the domain “www.thebrandingexperts” (view this on a Blackberry). The way I look at it is, mobile media is another great avenue to deliver your quality content. I picture my audience sitting in airports, hotel rooms etc. reading information delivered to their Blackberrys from The Branding Experts. My first offering is my current FREE newsletter, “Useful Information #53.” One of the nice things about mobile promotion is that you…

Google Reader is a wonderful tool to stay on top of all of the feeds that you love. It’s a great to see at a glance what my favorite sites are writing about. RSS feeds have made accessing information online much simpler.  They allow us to view the latest from our favorite blogs, social media sites, and other frequently updated mediums with the greatest of ease.  But in order to utilize them, we must have a feed reader. There are lots of feed readers available, and most of them are free.  But they are not all created equal.  Some are…

There’s a term within the marketing industry -“other people’s money.” This segment of the business community is the stated target audience of many marketers. It simply refers to businesses who’s decision maker is not spending their own money. It is the money of the company they work for. They are an employee NOT the owner. There is a huge difference in attitude. Some good, some bad. From a brand perspective the best situation is OPM (other people’s money). These people are quicker to spend the necessary funds to get the job done properly. They are not guided by an emotional…

My wife and I were out with friends recently and talk of my recent art exhibit came up. I paint in watercolor, and I held a studio Christmas show. (www.EdRoachWatercolors.com) My friends and my wife all thought I had blown an opportunity to sell a certain painting to a guest. They remarked how the guest remarked how they had liked the painting and how “I talked them out of it”. I “missed a sale,” they said. Here’s what happend: The painting was part of a stack of work I keep under my work table. I consider these junk. I keep…

For a long time, those of us who have a web presence have used web statistics to tell us how well our site is doing. We use it to figure out what kind of traffic we’re getting, what content brings in the traffic, who sends us the traffic, what people are searching for, what people use to access your content and more. These are all important. The problem, web stats don’t tell us who these visitors are. The ‘other side’ of the information like demographics. If you’ve been in business for a while, you more or less have an idea…

Recently I’ve been chatting alot about Twitter, it’s uses, how fun it is, and even a rant about being a twitter snob. The first time I saw Twitter I honestly thought it would be a HUGE time suck for me and I wouldn’t get any work done at all.  The results of it’s use has been quite the opposite for me.  I get lots of great traffic, ideas, and best of all build relationships and friendships with new people who are not in my current network. I wanted to share with you a brand new blog recently launched by Darren…

It’s time to stop beating your chest in your marketing. There are some words, like quality, service and value that are so overused in marketing materials that consumers just tune them out. They’ve lost all meaning and credibility and using them can actually hurt you. They don’t enhance your message, they cloud it. These words have been so watered down and are so generic that the consumer makes the assumption that you don’t really have anything to tout, so you’ll just pulling out the generic words to take up space. That doesn’t mean you cannot market your quality, commitment to…

It’s a little late to think about buying a parachute when you’re going down in flames. Businesses that chose to ignore their brands and marketing to save a few dollars are now scrambling to try and and fend off their inevitable demise. Have you ever noticed that many in the retail world, both large and small do their best job at marketing when they are going out of business. The liquidation sales are adequately promoted with proper funding. When they had the opportunity to take marketing seriously they chose to pinch pennies and failed to invest in themselves, believing people…