By Jerry Bader

Do you have a plan? Most companies spend a considerable amount of time, energy, and money planning what to do and how to do it.

Let’s say you need a website, so you develop a plan, present it to a bunch of website designers, and get quotes or proposals. You’re not going to get caught with your pants down like the last time by some nerdy geek, you know the skinny kid with the scraggly beard, whose techno-babble gave you a headache, or the bizarre young lady dressed in gothic chic with the black lipstick and tattoo to match - yikes, no thanks, not this time, this time you got a plan.

Human Motivational Optimization

You read all the blogs on website design, you know all the ins-and-outs of search engine optimization, and Google Adwords. No one is going to pull a fast one on you. You know your business, your market, and your needs. Or do you?

How much do you really know about how real people interact with your website? How much do you really know about what we call Human Motivational Optimization? All the stats, logs, and number crunching analysis that forms the basis of many website development plans does not truly give you the visceral understanding of how to connect to an audience, and isn’t that what you want your website to do?

So maybe your plan is the wrong plan; it’s like planning a trip to Home Depot to buy a cabbage; it just doesn’t make sense. So how about a plan that does make sense, something simple, understandable, easy to implement, that is if you hire the right people to do it. But before we tell you the four steps to creating your very own Website Branding Plan, let’s talk about Don LaFontaine.

Every Company Needs A Movie Trailer

Chances are you don’t know who the late Don LaFontaine was, but you’ve heard his voice many, many times. Don was the most famous and influential voice behind thousands of movie and television trailers. He had a distinctive deep, gravely voice, and a writing style that reinvented the entire movie trailer format. But why should you care? Simple. Movie trailers are the ultimate elevator pitch, a short memorable performance that compels you to action, kind of like what a mission statement is suppose to do, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning, or rather, the end.

Branding Starts With Thinking Backwards

Most people like to start a project at the beginning and work their way through until they reach the end. Makes sense, or does it? If you don’t start with where you want to end-up, it’s unlikely you’ll ever get where you want to go. Remember our cabbage? Planning a shopping to trip to Home Depot because they got cool stuff, doesn’t help if what you want is a cabbage.

Branding is no different. If you don’t start with how you want your audience to think about you, they will probably never think about you at all. So now that we got that straight let’s start our plan where it makes sense, the end.

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By Melanie Rembrandt

After optimizing your site for search engines and pursuing other marketing efforts, it’s time to use the power of the press to boost sales, awareness and credibility cost-effectively. But how do you pitch your story to a reporter?

Here are some quick tips to help you through the media process:

1. Know Your Targeted Media Members.

Before you even reach out to a reporter, you should know what that person writes about and what he or she will be interested in discussing. Do your homework before contacting a specific reporter, and you’ll have a much better understanding of what you should say (and the topics to avoid).

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By Matt Jackson

The content of a website includes everything from the graphical elements of design and the pictures used to the textual website content. All must play its part and converge to create the greatest possible user experience that converts visitors into buyers and profit. However, the most effective website content can also be used to help drive a mass of search engine traffic to any site.

Taking the time to carefully plan and write, or investing the resources to have your web page content professionally written can pay dividends.

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By Matt Jackson

While written with search engines in mind, SEO content should also consider the end users of your website; your potential customers. Attracting masses of traffic, regardless of how targeted that traffic, is only a portion of the battle.

If the content you’ve used is next to meaningless or smacks of being written solely to rank well in the search engines then your website will under perform and your online business efforts will suffer as a consequence.

Finding the perfect blend between search optimised content and offering an enhanced user experience is critical to better website performance.

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By Jeremy Gislason

Copy writing, which is the most fundamental skill in any online business, is an important part of Internet advertising. It is the art of writing sales and marketing materials, which can promote your business on the Web. Being able to learn and master this art can help your business stand out from all the other online businesses of the same type.

The Effect Of Copy writing On Your Online Business

Copy writing can either boost your business into success, or it can run it into the ground, and it can depend greatly on how good your sales copies are. Learning how to use words to properly promote your product or service can generate a great amount of sales for your online business and bring you thousands of members to your mailing list. It can even boost your web site traffic through word of mouth if you write a copy that is intriguing or buzz-worthy.

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By Steve McMains

Do you really need a brand?

Do you need to develop a brand identity?

If you want sustainable growth in your business and if you want to earn more than what you do today, you must develop a brand identity for you or your business. There is no alternative to this proposition.

At this point, many business owners will step back saying that branding means advertising and thus it would require huge investment. This is a very common situation as a beginner: The business owner do not have much idea about the actual rate of advertising in different media.

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