“We added quick-switch multi-profile management and unlimited analytics reporting to Statf.ly Pro to meet the growing demands of time-strapped agencies and brand managers overseeing content distribution and communications for multiple social client profiles,” says Statf.ly CEO, Bryan Crick. “Statf.ly will continue to grow its suite of management and analytics features with a usability-first philosophy that is both economical and efficient.”

Statf.ly enables users to store Twitter and Facebook history, keywords, and report annotations for up to one year, which is valuable for generating more compelling long term analysis, in depth quarterly reports and annual strategy reviews.

The Statf.ly platform provides users the ability to efficiently:

• Manage and distribute content on multiple social profiles
• Monitor keywords and conversations on Facebook and Twitter (Google analytics coming soon)
• Perform live searches on Twitter and Facebook
• Measure the results of interactions through a filtered set of data points
• Create and monitor campaigns via Bitly
• Generate unlimited one-click analytics reporting (for Statf.ly Pro)
• Collaborate with team members on data analysis with data point annotation, sharability and PDF export
• Store social data such as Twitter and Facebook history, keywords, and report annotations for up to 1 year

The StatFly platform makes the management, interactivity and analysis of social engagement strategies as effective and efficient as possible for business. For more information, visit http://statf.ly.

A corporate website needs to be professional, meetings need to be professional, and branding a business needs to be done in a professional manner, for the most part at least. The blog is an opportunity for businesses to connect with their customers on a more personal level. When a clean cut corporate blog is littered with a bunch of wordiness along with a few charts or graphs, although it might offer great information, nobody ends up reading it. Successful blogs are the ones that connect with their audience on a personal level.

One of the best ways of connecting with an audience is through taking the mask off of the blog and revealing the real people behind the slogans and logos.

One of the easiest and most neglected ways of giving a blog a personal touch is by posting pictures of the people who work in the company. Presenting a picture in front of the reader inspires trust because it shows that the company is not hiding behind a curtain, and seeing a picture of a person naturally makes the blog more personal.

The online shoe store sensation “Zappos” intersperses their blog posts between shoes and fashion focused posts with fun posts featuring their employees. In honor of the new year and the resolutions that come with it, Zappos produced a post about how four of their employees lost a total of 50 pounds, and how they did it. Through posts like these customers are able to connect with the company on a personal level.

Another thing that corporate blogs often sadly neglect is their audience, while the great bloggers show a great appreciation and consideration for their audiences. Obviously, a corporate blog is expected to present products, but the way to present products in a blog is not the same as in an advertisement. Since successful blogging is a more personal art form the presentation needs not be “salesy,” but rather it should be more like show-and-tell.

Although being obvious in other forms of marketing, corporate blogs also often neglect to give their audience what they want. If, for instance, a certain business’s main market is teenagers it would behoove them to have a cool blog with a youthful twist, whereas if another business’s main market is other businesses they should consider a more clean and professional look.

There is one advantage that corporate blogs have over the average blogger. When a reader comes to a corporate blog to find out a little more about the company, the corporate blog can give them something extra special by presenting lesser-known information about the interworking of the company.

Additionally, the blog can be the place for posting promotions. By making the reader feel like he or she is “in on things” that the rest of the world aren’t, the corporate blog can show appreciation to their readers by giving them something a little extra special. And that is also a great way to produce blog posts that go viral.

Author Bio:
Scott Hersh is a business blogger for BCAblog.com the official blog of BusinessCashAdvance.com, leaders in merchant financing.

But what now? How can you work to grow that site before your product or service has even been launched? How can the site serve as a spur to your business without costing you too much money in the early going?

To answer these questions, here’s a basic step-by-step process for insuring that you put out an appropriate site and start driving people to it, thus leaving you room to worry about the many other issues that probably sit on your plate.

Step 1: Insure Quality
When your website first goes online, it probably isn’t fully developed or as extensive as you’d like it to eventually be. That’s okay. Just make sure that your website accomplishes two objectives: that it is informative and that it is professional. As people hear about your start-up and become interested in learning more, they will likely turn to the website for information both broad and specific. Make sure that this information is provided clearly and directly, without requiring any work on the viewer’s part.

As for professionalism, the establishment of your website is likely the first action that confers your business’s legitimacy to the general public. You want to insure that it confers credibility, as well.

Step 2: Start Marketing
You don’t need a full-fledged internet campaign to market your site at this point; you shouldn’t feel obligated to bury yourself in SEO tactics or consider expensive advertising opportunities. However, you do want to put some marketing gears into place, specifically by taking advantage of the free advertising offered through social media. Create a Facebook page that links back to your site. Start a Twitter feed. Get friends, relatives, and colleagues to help you spread the word. Work to amass a mailing address. Simply put, it’s always best to explore your free marketing avenues as early as possible.

Step 3: Be Ready To Analyze
Although your site and your business both are still small, you want to insure that the apparatus is in place for analyzing consumer data as customers begin to build. To this end, you may want to install an analytics program that can track, synthesize, and analyze data that is generated by traffic to your site. Such programs include Omniture’s analytics offerings, specifically Omniture’s website optimization plan.

After you’ve completed these steps, you can sit back and wait until your business is more mature before developing your site further. To be sure, you’re going to want at some point to further consider site design, features, and advertising, but before you grow your site too much it’s important to spend some time growing your business.

What is the value of being approachable?

If you ask Scott Ginsberg, the answer is, “priceless.

Scott knows more than a thing or two about being approachable. For the last eleven years, he’s worn a name tag EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. He’s even taken it one step further — he’s had his name tag tattooed on his chest.

This high energy marketing student turned entrepreneur and author of thirteen books is now walking talking life changing expert on approachability and the good fortune it brings.

His newest book, The Nametag Principle captures over an entire decades worth of rock candy solid, hard earned lessons learned on how to attract people and get more opportunities in your life.

The pages are filled with a years’ worth of crisp, hard-hitting actions, organized by month, with each days’ reading containing a daily dose of brain candy, all designed to galvanize you into taking action and making daily strides to become more engaging, more joinable, more human and more approachable.

Here’s an excerpt from the month of February:

A friend of mine recently purchased an online sales training course for his employees. When I asked why his salespeople liked the program so much, his answer surprised me:  “Because it’s fun. We can get good content anywhere. But the personality of this program is what makes it so cool.”

JUST AS I SUSPECTED: Nobody buys boring, nobody notices normal and nobody pays for average.

As my friend Rohit so eloquently suggested in his must-read book, Personality Not Included, “People don’t sue doctors they like.”

Your challenge is to figure out which unique attribute of your personality, life experience and expertise you can leverage in a remarkable way. Put values before vocation, individuality before industry and personality before profession.

After all, people buy people first.

How are you leading with your person and following with your profession?

Business people in corporations, governments and organizations all over the world are well advised to take his lessons learned and incorporate them into their culture if they are to survive and thrive in a world

Ginsberg is on a global mission to teach people all about how being approachable can produce dramatic improvements in work environments, cultures, relationships between people and their customers, and in profits.

“When you wear a name tag, people know that you want them to be free to engage you in conversation.  It’s an invitation that tells people ‘Approach me, introduce your self. It’s OK!’ says Scott. That’s they way you want to be seen as a manager and that’s the way you want your people to be seen.”

“When people see you as approachable all sorts of opportunities open up.”

Through a VERY generous offer from Scott, ESB Journal is able to offer his awesome new book for FREE! No strings, no opt-in necessary. You can download your copy by clicking this link.

You know what would be REALLY GREAT?

If you’d take a moment and SHARE this link with your friends and colleagues — help us get the word out about Scott’s book, and help him spread the message of approachability, and it’s value to your overall business success. Use the links at the bottom of this article. Thanks!

About the Author
Scott Ginsberg is a fun, lively, energetic and experienced media guest who has been interviewed and featured in USA Today, CNN, NBC, 20/20, Fast Company, Redbook, the Wall St. Journal and dozens of radio and tv talk shows across the nation. Scott is a regular contributor to the St. Louis Small Business Monthly, INSTORE Magazine, PR Canada and Expert Village. His conversational, content-rich articles have appeared in hundreds of online and offline publications worldwide. Also, his work has been reprinted in dozens of textbooks and resource guides.

His other books include Stick Yourself Out There, The Approachable Salesperson, The Approachable Manager, The Approachable Frontline, The Power of Approachability, How to Be That Guy, Hello, My Name is Scott, and Make a Name for Yourself. Visit him online at http://www.hellomynameisscott.com.

If you’re a small-business owner, creating a distinct brand image for your product or service is essential – and can be accomplished through some very simple methods. Karen Post, author of “Brand Turnaround,” offers tips for small businesses looking to create a memorable, impactful brand or image:

Start with a game plan – Ask yourself, how do you want people or customers to think about you or your business? Consider what your story is and what makes your product, service and company unique. Is your persona sophisticated and established, trendy and progressive, or creative and fun?

Make your marketing consistent – Keeping a consistent message across all your marketing materials and efforts can help customers remember your brand. Cross media consistency is key – from printed materials to website and online image — to reinforce the personality of your company.

Make it yours – Distinction cuts through clutter. Consistently communicate what’s unique about your brand and company. Whether you are at a networking event with business cards, using brochures and flyers to advertise or targeting prospects through postcards, Staples makes it easy to get a similar look and feel with professional design capabilities and print experts.

Audit your brand “touch points” – How does your marketing message come in contact with – or touch – your customers? Many small businesses reach customers through postcards, flyers, letterhead, banners, brochures and other marketing materials. Staples Copy & Print, for example, offers a full range of products and services that help businesses get their printing done quickly and easily, whenever and wherever it’s convenient for them.

While online marketing efforts like social media and search engine optimization can be effective tools for reaching customers, don’t overlook the continued importance of traditional branding tools. Printed materials such as postcards, letterhead and business cards continue to be a prime way for small businesses to communicate with current, new and potential customers and offer that lasting brand impression.

Digital printing technology has made it easier than ever to customize this type of material and get what you need quickly. Gone are the days when a small business would have to wait weeks for new business cards. Now, thanks to services like Staples Copy & Print, you can get customized marketing materials – including flyers, brochures and more – in less than a week. Simple items such as business cards can even be done in a matter of hours and picked up in store the same day.

Online services offer customization; however the professionals at Staples can provide guidance and expertise in customizing your marketing materials. Professional design capabilities mean you can leave all the technical work of creating print products to the experts. Or, if it’s more convenient, you can order products online and pick them up in your local store.

Creating and conveying a unique brand message is an important aspect of a small business’ overall marketing efforts. Fortunately, a combination of modern technology and traditional tools can make it easy for small businesses to communicate their branding message to current and potential customers.

There are many reasons why email marketing has proven to be a successful sales tactic for retailers. A few are:

• Email marketing offers practical, cost-effective and results-driven solutions that enable retailers to promote merchandise and hot sales.

• The ability to segment a list enables a business to target its email marketing campaigns by key demographics, including age, buying patterns and location.

• Email marketing allows for campaign optimization and increased efficiencies by testing the effectiveness of an email distribution mid-campaign and making corrections as needed.

Campaigner®, a popular email marketing service that offers segmenting and a user-friendly interface, suggests the following tips to retailers who would like to try email marketing but don’t know where to begin:

Target your customers. A good email service can segment your list by past purchases to match your subject line and product links to what the customer wants to buy.

Segment your lists. Segmenting a customer list based on typical order size can help you create targeted emails for low, average and high spenders.

Using these sublists can help you personalize offers for each group with the right incentives to entice potential customers to fill their carts a bit fuller this year.

Make geography an asset. If you’re near a college campus, sort your list by state or zip code to identify customers who are out of the area. For example, by segmenting the list, you can target students with “move-in” specials for dorm room essentials and parents for hotels and restaurants.

Connect with your customers. Identify the most loyal customers and personalize campaigns to make them aware of your latest offers. For example, you can include a loyalty promotion, like free shipping or presale notices.

Keep it simple. Skip the need to learn layout and photo manipulation software by using a service like Campaigner that offers a complete, user-friendly interface and good back-end reporting.

Keep in mind, these tips can work throughout the year. Done correctly, email marketing allows you to become (and remain) visible to customers and prospects with highly targeted messages, at a minimal cost, that deliver measurable results.

To learn more, visit http://www.campaigner.com.

Networking
Facebook and Twitter aren’t just for Fans, they are also a great way for you to find others in the business and connect with them. Look for press members or reviewers who would be interested in your type of business and then follow them. If you remain active online, they will eventually take notice of you and possibly give you a few write ups in the local paper or magazine to help get your name out there.

Establishing Your Authority
Another part of social media is blogging, and through a blog you can help establish yourself as an authority over your industry. People like to buy from those who know their business and do it well so having a highly informative and trustworthy blog will make people more inclined to shop with you.

Creating Hype
In addition to using your social networking accounts to network with press and industry related individuals, you should also be using them to keep your prospective customers interested and engaged. Keep them waiting and wanting. Post updates about your opening, the new products or services you are adding to your line, and what you are doing to bring it all together. By keeping everyone involved you will have them eager to support you, and dying to get in when you open your doors.

Businesses today won’t survive if they don’t start incorporating social media sites into their every day operations. Shoppers today no longer simply want to buy their goods from an unknown business; they want an experience and want to feel as though they are connecting with a community when they offer a business their patronage. Give them what they want and create a strong following by signing up and staying active on social media sites and on your blog.

The ability to survey your online network is a strategic way to collect opinions and insights. Recognizing that today’s consumers are social beings, Zoomerang has released a new Facebook application that makes it easy for users to quickly get feedback from their online communities. The free and simple application allows you to post a survey or poll on your Facebook page and then quickly and effectively draw together feedback from the breadth of your social ecosystem. You can even include photos or videos in the question and answer options to make the choices more descriptive.

With Zoomerang’s Surveys & Polls for Facebook, you can ask your friends to help you decide on a myriad of topics—personal and professional. Ask your network to:

• Rank the Halloween costume most likely to help you win the “most frightening”;
• Identify trends and conduct business planning accordingly;
• Solicit votes for the next ice cream “flavor of the month” for your business;
• Determine what products or services your customers are most interested in

“Feedback is priceless in this day and age,” said Alex Terry, general manager of Zoomerang. “Consumers trust their inner circle of friends and family and, at the end of the day, their opinion is heavily valued.”

Effectively engaging with your network on social media allows you to get more insights and input from those that you already trust. Using Zoomerang’s Surveys & Polls for Facebook is one way to effectively gather and share these insights. Now is the time for you to make better decisions with others’ input-your Facebook friends are listening.

For more information on this free application, check out Zoomerang’s Surveys & Polls for Facebook at https://apps.facebook.com/zoomerangsurveys.

Where to Go
One such site is Tagged; it has over 100 million people already registered in over 200 countries and can help you find your special someone or a bunch of new friends who share your interests. It makes it easy to meet new people through social games, friend suggestions, browsing profiles, group interests and much more.

What to Do
Common interests are a foundation for many friendships, so you can use the site Tagged to meet people who have interests similar to yours. You can do so by looking for pages on the site that have people who have joined with that interest. People from all over the world use the site, so there’s almost bound to be someone out there who cares about the same things you do.

Another way to find new friends is through connections to your current ones. You may be able to find new people whom your friends are friends with, simply with a click of a button.

While friendship, dating and flirting can all be a part of this new approach to social networking, there’s much more to it. For instance, engaging social games can also be the secret sauce when it comes to social discovery. The popular Pets game, for example, garners over 5 million unique interactions a day. If you are looking for a romantic connection, a recent survey found 38 percent of respondents made a romantic connection through a Tagged social game.

One of the other favorite features of the Tagged site is a news feed with a difference. The “What’s New” feed cleverly lets you choose which member updates you see by filtering them according to location, gender and age. This makes finding new friends to meet around the block or around the world easy, while still maintaining tight privacy controls by following your account’s privacy settings.

When on the Go
For fun and friendship when you’re far away from home, the site Tagged has apps for the Android, iPhone and BlackBerry, and it recently launched a new mobile website for all other handsets.

Learn More
For more information about finding new friends in the social networking space, visit http://www.tagged.com.

“There is no one, magic resource that will market your work and who you are as a professional,” says Marc Scoleri, director of Career Services at The Art Institute of New York City. To develop a targeted plan, conduct research to determine where your audience is looking for the skills you offer. “In addition to your portfolio site, attempt to combine LinkedIn, industry sites, social media and networking.”

Here are some suggestions on how to market your online portfolio from Scoleri and Juliane Pelfrey, director of Career Services from The Art Institute of Ohio-Cincinnati, a branch of The Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago.

Industry sites and other portfolio sites
Whether you’re a budding professional or a skilled expert, content is important to sites that host portfolios because content generates traffic and attracts employers. Pick sites that have higher traffic, are more visible than others and best fit your skill sets. In addition to your official portfolio site, look for other portfolio sites or industry-related sites like http://FilterFoundry.com, http://Behance.com or Art Director’s Club http://adcglobal.com. Get these industry sites to feature you by entering their contests, volunteering for pro-bono work, etc.

LinkedIn and social media
Scoleri recommends LinkedIn as the best use of professional online networking. You can create a company profile from within your personal LinkedIn profile. Connect with other professionals and ask for recommendations. While other social media sites can assist in your marketing efforts, it’s not necessary, Scoleri says. If you plan on using Facebook, Twitter or blogs, use them so that they link to your official portfolio site.

Search engine optimization
Include keywords on your site that employers are using to search for talent. Include these keywords in your online portfolio, blog, LinkedIn page, etc. If you are looking for freelance or contract work, you may want to look into paying for Google AdWords.

Go mobile and keep up with technology
There’s nothing worse than a missed opportunity. A portfolio site should easily load on a mobile device. Take your site to networking events via an iPhone or iPad. Show up in person when networking at industry events. Pull out your iPhone and show your work when appropriate. Get others to view your site quickly by placing a Quick Response code (QR code) on your business cards that links directly to your portfolio site.

Marketing promotional slicks
A marketing slick or a promotional slick is like a teaser ad, says Pelfrey. “The slick is a self-promotional document, perhaps in PDF format, that includes your top two, and no more than four pieces of work with short descriptions and a link to your online portfolio site should they want to see more,” she says. Pelfrey recommends that you keep the slick to the standard 8.5-by-11 inch document size to facilitate viewing and printing. Send the promotional slick with your resume.

Is your site marketable?
“The online portfolio lacks human interaction,” Pelfrey says. “You have to convey who you are and what you can do through pictures.”

Before you market your online portfolio, make sure it is:

Updated
An online portfolio site is similar to a resume. Make sure your links, contact information, biography, list of accomplishments, etc. are current and active.

Tailored
Show your potential employers that you can do the type of work that they are looking for and need. Employers need to be able to directly relate to your work.

Professional
Be selective when featuring work that portrays extreme religious beliefs, sexual orientation, political stance, ethnic background or violence. If you do include images that elicit a strong, emotional response be sure it serves the purpose of your ultimate goal.

Your best
Only include your best work. Ask a colleague, an instructor or a friend. They can give you their best recommendations.

Brand yourself and consider yourself a company. Try to keep your look and feel consistent. Use color, font or a logo to create a common thread between your portfolio site, business card, blog, etc.

To learn more about The Art Institutes schools, visit http://www.artinstitutes.edu/nz/.

 - Courtesy ARA