Geotagging: Tweet Your Way to Success

Back in instant messaging’s heyday, I was always a bit perturbed when someone left an away message with a not-so-specific location.  “At the nail salon.” Now, I’d love to join you for a pedi, but where to head? I’m from New York, where nail salons are about as common as pizzerias, so a generic reference whittled the possibilities down to, oh, about 6 shops in a 2-mile radius.
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The Case for Professional Web Development

I have heard this story a thousand times. Heck, I have even been a part of this story.  What story you ask? Let me set the scenario for you:

Two business owners are having coffee. They have successful businesses that they are ready to expand on to the internet.

“Have you chosen a web developer yet?”

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Keep These Eggs in One Basket.

The old adage goes “don’t keep all your eggs in one basket” however whoever said that never worked web consulting services. Any web business, regardless of size, usually has the following internet tools:

• web hosting
• email addresses
• website development
• customer ordering/inquiry forms
• website maintenance

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Generate Sales Leads Using Your Website

Traditional business dictates that sales leads be generated through sales people. The most common roadblock we face at Dreamscape Marketing when explaining the power of a website to potential clients is the “traditional sales” argument. A popular belief amongst brick and mortar businesses is that a website is simply a sign post for customers to navigate to when they need an email address, phone number or office location. These businesses believe their sales will only come from where they have always originated, a sales force. What these businesses do not realize, and what may end up hurting them in the long run, is that the market for sales properly utilizing the internet is enormous for ANY business model.

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Own the Elevator

Recent research has shown that the first thirty seconds of a meeting with prospective clients is the best chance to sell them on your products and services. This priceless time is commonly known as your “elevator pitch” and can often make or break a business opportunity.

A prospective client has most likely heard many elevator pitches, and will not be receptive to yours unless it breaks the mold of monotony. Danny Wood, a Sales Expert based out of Northern New Jersey, recently discussed some interesting tactics to differentiate your sales approach from your competitors. He  recommends two useful strategies:
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Be the Bull.

Breaking a company’s recession with a strong marketing strategy

As the recession continues to loom like a dark cloud that continuously ruins your family vacations, what can you do to improve your business forecast? Most companies, like my former, decided to cut costs. Cutting costs unfortunately almost always means cutting people, and cutting very good people. While this solution may help a short term goal of reduced expenses (or to the terminated employee, their income/mortgage payments), in the long term this will only bury the organization under more work for a diminished workforce to handle. It is like quicksand, the harder you try to fight tough economic times, the farther you get pulled into them. In my mind, the best approach is to take action. Face the bull head on. Instead of cutting costs because of reduced business, go out there and find more business. The key to new business is marketing.
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Cuil Runnings

Last week a new competitor entered into the scene to take on Google for the title as world’s greatest search engine running (actually created by former Google employees). Cuil (pronounced “cool”) brings your standard query to the next level, by not only running a search for a particular text but analyzes the surrounding content to formulate a more relevant result. The search engine stretches out across more web pages (apparently three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft). You’ll also find that your results won’t necessarily be the most popular sites visited so as to bring forth sites that may not be as frequently visited but happen to be more relevant to your search. Lastly, the program offers a new sense of privacy by not keeping record of the history of your searches.

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