Visibility Marketing

Why Free is so profitable!

October 29, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

In the case of digital media and social media, giving it away is turning out to be quite a profitable business.

Every business owner has their niche or talent that makes their business a success, in many cases it requires long hours and a massive commitment to be success, or keep the business alive. If you’re an advertising or marketing professional, you should consider giving away some of your services for free. In doing so, your acting in faith that if you can show value to the business owner they will do business with you.

In some cases many people worry about giving up the trade secrets, and in case you’re curious the trade secret is google and YouTube. If you want to know about it, it’s likely a website, or blog and they give it away for free. Want to know how to do it, use the second largest search engine, YouTube and your likely to find a how to video that will walk you through it step by step.

The truth is teaching someone or telling someone, doesn’t mean they will have the time or talent to do it for themselves. Take Google Places, clearly google places is changing the way people find relevant local sources for service and goods, and in some cases places like automotive centers and florists just don’t have the time to take on simple tasks as listing their business with Google Places.

In the end it’s all about time and resource management, if you can show a business owner value in your service for free, then they know they will find value in the paid product and services you can offer as well.

Social Brand Visibility: Identi.ca

October 28, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Twitter or Identi.ca?

Micro-blogging has become a big thing when it comes to promoting your sites, network or keep in touch with your friends.

But which host do you prefer?

Identi.ca is a microblogging service where users post short (140 character) messages which are broadcast to their friends using the Web, RSS, or instant messages. While similar than Twitter in both concept and operation, Identi.ca provides many features not currently implemented by Twitter, including XMPP support and personal tag clouds.

Identi.ca allows free export and exchange of personal and friend’s data based on the FOAF standard; therefore, notices can be fed into a Twitter account or other service.

Identi.ca is an Open Network Service. Their goal is to provide a fair and transparent service that preserves users’ autonomy. You deserve the right to manage your own on-line presence, they say. The service reached 1 million postings on November 4, 2008.

Users say it trumps Twitter by leaps and bounds in terms of features. But with these features comes an uncharted territory, much of which is sometimes getting abused.

Identi.ca is as close to Twitter as you can get. Instead of Tweets they call their massages ‘dents’. In fact it’s almost identical to Twitter….”almost” because Identi.ca was built with OpenMicroblogging in mind. This means that it is built on an open platform that can be shared with anyone who wants to host their own federated version of the software. So unlike Twitter, which hopes to monetize the service in order to turn a profit, you can host a Laconi.ca server, sharing ‘dents’ with any identi.ca accounts as well as with anyone else running the same software. This means no more down-time.

Twitter is close, and more popular, but identi.ca is robust, more reliable, and simply an ALTERNATIVE and a CHOICE.

How to Market Your Business like the Big Boys

October 27, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Sometimes looking at a big company and their marketing strategy can teach us a lot about marketing our small business.

Apple Co. is no doubt a big company. They are known for their innovation and ‘cool’ gadgets. Every launch of a new product involves a presentation by Steve Jobs. Their products are sold in the millions in the first few days (iPhone 4 sold 1.7 million in 3 days) because they create such an anticipation and smart marketing campaign. What do they do that makes them so successful?

Looking at their last few launches a pattern emerges. Not only does Steve Jobs do all the presentations, not only he wears the same clothes no matter what weight he’s in, there are some things we can all learn from the big boys, with their cool innovations, the advertising budget and the PR firm. We can do it too, on a smaller scale.

When Steve Jobs does his presentation he is concise, to the point and entertaining. He does not concentrate on the technical aspect of the new product. He doesn’t talk shop – how fast it is, how the components became smaller. What he does talks about is what their new product will do for you, the customer. How will it improve the way you communicate or do business. If a customer wants to know the specifications of their new gadget he can go to their web site and get that information. Steve jobs is talking to the average customer to show him how cool is the new product and how fun it is to use.

When thinking about marketing and advertising, think about your customers first – how will they benefit from it, what needs your product comes to satisfy.

Create a buzz. That is what Apple does best. Months before the product launch they drop a few words here and there. Obviously not every company is as highly regarded as Apple, and not every launch is a topic of conversation on the big news networks. Creating a buzz before the launch is very important. Every company that is serious about their marketing can do it through websites, social media and bookmarking sites. Don’t wait until the product is completely finished. When you create a buzz you can get feedback about what people want and think your product will be. Monitor those conversations, see what customers really want.
Create a product customers will be happy to show off. When you look at Apple’s products, not only the components are important the packaging is important as well. It is always slick and new (think iPhone, iPad, iPod.) Apple always innovates, jumps ahead in leaps and bounds, not only evolves from model to model. What can you do to your product to make it as sleek as possible, something others will be proud to share? How do you show it on your website?
Get expert advice and recommendations ahead of time. Show your product to the titans of your niche and have them write a few words about it. Put it on your website and tweet about it.
Take pre-orders. This is a must and a base to build on. Even if you are not sure yet about the final price, you can create a following you can e mail to and update on pricing and new features. A business woman I know created a buzz by tweeting about her product when it was still in the building stage. She got 150 preorders just in the first few days. The product is not finished yet.
Make a big deal out of your launch – as big as your budget allows. If not a presentation in a big ball room, you can create a launch on the web. Make sure your speech is short and entertaining. Leave the technology to the experts.

The bottom line – when you are about to launch a new product, plan the launch months before the actual date. Think what information you want to release and when, think how you can maximize your exposure and don’t hesitate to turn to experts in the field to help you plan it correctly.

Social Brand Visibility: Mister Wong

October 26, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Why call a service Mister Wong? It comes from the term “Wong the Web!” a reference to the practice of wonging, card counting strategy in Blackjack.

Mister Wong is a creation of a German company that initially wanted to take on Google. Started in 2006 the website allows customers to bookmark their favorite sites and use that list as a basic search engine. To find a site that is not on your list, you can search the bookmarks of other people. It is a peer recommended search engine that is meant to weed out the less interesting ones.

With their services users can:

Search and find the best website of a certain category.
Save and manage their sites.
Access the bookmarks from any computer.
Connect with Twitter and import links.

Management of the bookmarks can be done by accessing the website or by downloading a toolbar that allows you to bookmark without leaving the current page.

A relative newcomer, the service is available in German, French, Russian, Spanish, Chinese and English, and is the leading social bookmarking service in Europe with over 50 million users in 2009. They claim to be the second largest bookmarking service in the world.

Mister Wong has a different approach than Del.icio.us for example. Mister Wong’s variation is more to the point with users creating groups on top of the groups created by tags. Here, just like in Reddit, users can vote with thumbs up or thumbs down, and the recommended site will rise or fall from the top of the list. You can also make friends through the site, create user profiles and show your latest stream of bookmarks and links.

Mister Wong is another website that uses human recommendations to get a site ranked. Unlike Google for example, where new information is scanned and placed by machines, Mister Wong and other bookmarking sites concentrate on allowing you to search less cluttered result pages in an attempt to save you time and compete with the big search engines.

Their dream, to be an alternative search engine, is not yet fulfilled. With more users, and more recommendations they eventually might be able to do just that. Another great visibility opportunity.

Issues and Concerns from Long Island Non-profits : Social Media Day of Giving

October 22, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

On October 19, 2010 a group of 22 agency representatives from nonprofits on Long Island came to Touro Law Center in search of support to better understand social media and how the digital age has changed the way the nonprofits service their organizations.

A few days later we’ve taken a few minutes to review just a few of the questions, concerns, and issues that the representatives from the nonprofit organizations brought with them to the “Social Media Day of Giving”

Are agencies risking bad comments when they create exposure on facebook and twitter?

The general consensus is that nonprofits just like businesses and individuals lost the ability to control their message without interruption a decade ago. While some have viewed social media platforms like Facebook and twitter as a potential risk, others have capitalized on the opportunity that it represents. While the legal position might caution the nonprofits from engaging in social media, business professionals, community leaders, and social media professionals urge nonprofits to engage in the opportunity that social media provides.

One of the concerns seems to rest with the ability of others to say things or post comments that the organization or nonprofit may not endorse or support. The concern goes as far as, to fear liability from participation or posting by others. While every professional can relate to the concern of what others may say, the new world of social media is about how you capitalize on those opportunities, and is what will make the difference in organizations for years to come. Participation provides the opportunity for viral exposure, which even when led by negative or unsupported posts, comments, ideas or issues, it still represents an opportunity for the nonprofit to display how they support and respond.

Are we liable for what others say?

Unfortunately there is no easy answer to this question. Like anything else, the ultimate interpretation is left in the hands of skilled lawyers and the courts.

Social media professionals would argue that we create an opportunity to open a dialogue and share ideas and emotions and events, what others do with that information we cannot be responsible for, nor can we control. Social media platforms like Facebook, twitter, and even service listings like Merchant Circle and Yelp are platforms that offer us opportunities to engage the general public as well as our members. When someone else takes it upon themselves to provide information they do so candidly without endorsement or support from those that have created the social media platform for which to discuss or topic was engaged.

Now it would just seem good practice that if you create this platform you would be responsible to manage it and monitor it to seize opportunities created by those that would produce information content which your organization does not endorse or support.

How Do we monitor what is said about us?

Ultimately within social media itself and monitoring of your brand and organization is done through everyday participation in social media. This means as you participate in platforms like Facebook and twitter your staff or organizers should be participating in such a rate that monitoring what is said and how it is said is a natural part of the social media interaction.

The hardest part of monitoring your organizational or brand comes from the fact that there is an infinite number of places, platforms and possibilities for others to post a comment or distribute information that may be in support or in contradiction of your organization’s mission or goals. There are lots of resources available to monitor your brand, organization, staff, or keywords throughout the Internet. Two such platforms that offer this opportunity are Google, using Google Alerts (free) you can set up e-mail alerts that will notify you when keywords you have selected have been used anywhere throughout the internet, when Google has crawled it. The second and far more robust option is Giga alerts and Copyscape. Giga Alerts offers a wide variety of monitoring tools for keywords, subject matter and content throughout the entire Internet and while it requires a monthly fee, it provides a priceless service to alert you to any activity taking place on the web in regards to any subject or content you wish to monitor. The other platform copyscape can provide support to organizations in regards to any original press releases blogs or other information in an effort to deter others from reproducing your content.

Online Donations, are they working?

Nonprofits and other organizations often point to their websites as a failure or disappointment in fundraising results. I have found this to be most true during political campaigns and large-scale social movements. While it may be possible that your website is not converting the online donations as you intend it to, it is also possible that your website is raising far more than you give it credit for.

Websites have been a constant evolution from their first introduction and will continue to evolve in purpose, function and monetization as time goes on. The initial purpose of the website was to be a professional extension of an individual that would represent any business organization or another candidate. As such the presence of a website alone may be contributing to fundraising indirectly. An example I often use is a political candidate’s website may offer the opportunity for you to donate to their cause, however the average donor for personal and political reasons would much rather contribute in person than over the Internet. While the website may not have captured the donation through digital means, it is reasonable to assume the existence of the website provided individuals the opportunity to learn an associate with the candidates cause and platform. This extension of the candidate through a website provided the opportunity to capture donations and raise funds that might not have been possible had the website not existed.

While there is no one way to prove that a website or social media campaign has produced fundraising results there are ways to draw plausible conclusions. In the case of a website using Google analytics, a free tool, an organization can monitor the amount of traffic that their website receives daily, weekly, monthly and compare their fund raising success with traffic generated by the website. Google analytics will also provide data that will allow you to track what sources created the traffic for your website. A simple example is direct traffic was likely done via word-of-mouth, whereas references from Facebook would clearly be an indication that something on this social media platform interested people enough to visit the website. While it is hard to prove the success of the website or social media in fundraising, it is a reasonable assumption that if fundraising efforts were more successful during a specific time, when traffic was increased to the website, that there is a correlation between the existence of social media and the website and the fundraising success.

What is the best platform for helping increase fundraising efforts?

There are many social media platforms that offer different opportunities that tailored to different groups of people, as such there is no magic bullet, no one way or platform that will provide fundraising success. Social media platforms are tools that can only be successful when you have chosen a successful message or niche which can be used to capture interest from people that utilize social media.

We cover a lot of information and services how do we cover it all on social media?

The purpose of the website is to be your broad information source. While others will argue that websites should be concise and target your specific mission, others believe the website is meant to be a source of information for everything and anything related to what you do. Social media on the other hand is most successful when you take specific issues and develop a campaign around that specific issue or cause allowing you to create a higher conversion rate from less of an effort.

When do you commit a full time person to Social Media?

It would seem to be the general consensus of social media professionals that successful social media campaigns never come from just one individual. There are many reasons why organizations want to embrace social media on many levels. The earlier concerns regarding monitoring what’s said and how it is said is one of the biggest reasons why no one person should be responsible for social media content. Much like call centers and phone banks, social media requires many individuals to participate and support one another in order to be successful.

What did I take away from this event?

Jeff Namnum explained that Social Media Professionals each bring something different to the table, “one of the great things about Social Media is we can disagree” in a way that is productive.

Special Thanks to my fellow volunteers at this event, as with every interaction I am confident that their input and support at the event helped influence how this blog article was developed.

Dafna Adler, Jaci Clement, Alan Z. Fromm, Farida Harianawala, David Neuman, Ilene Schuss, Sueanne Shirzay, Andrzej Sienko, George Torres, Marilyn Zayfert,Mo Krochmal and Jeff Namnum.
Touro Law Center provided the support, facilities and overall hospitality for the event. Thank You.

Promoting a Small Business Without Breaking The Bank

October 21, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

How do you promote your small business while staying afloat? All you need is a little ingenuity!

The classic promotions options are print, television media and direct campaign. You might think that all these options will cost money, and that you need a large budget to get your message across. Without spending an incredible amount of money, you can attract customers, and have ready to use custom recorded video content for future use, as follows:

Cut costs by using your own employees in place of models for print and television Ads. It’s more believable and you stand a better chance of being noticed and remembered.
Obtain a database of email address and send your company’s information with links to your site via emails for direct campaign.
Put up your promotional videos on your website, with additional content and offers that people can read and watch. Always make sure that your website loads fast, and don’t use too many graphics and heavy content that might slow down the experience for your customers.
Spend a little to ensure more traffic to your website. With more traffic you can usually expect more sales.
Use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to advertise your products and services. Even though too many companies are doing this nowadays, you can still garner eyeballs if you package your company’s identity realistically.

What you need to do is to combine guerrilla marketing with traditional advertising strategies to gain exposure and get paying customers by letting the current technology work for you instead of against you. Create interesting and entertaining under 3 minute videos and post them on your site; while you’re at it, you may as well upload them on video sites such as YouTube. Most video sites are free; by posting your videos online, you can create exposure for your company. Make sure that your video titles contain keywords that are commonly searched by people.

Focus on your demographic; who do you want to target? If you know this already, well and good. If not, consult a good advertising agency to help you define your correct demographic. When you’re on a budget, focusing on your exact target audience will get you more paying customers.

Optimize on television broadcasting by purchasing media time in any locality on any cable network. By doing this, you can run a local cable television advertising campaign in many different cities at the same time. For example, if you know that most of your customers live in large cities, focus only on them. By doing this you can bring down your advertising budget. A national television campaign is way more expensive than a cable TV campaign, and is not as effective either.

Social Brand Visibility: BibSonomy

October 20, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Many sites are actively advertising in search engines for the most valuable search queries. This high level of competition tends to result in high advertising costs which make it difficult to find attractive advertising opportunities. Resource sharing provides new ways of organizing and sharing information on the web and provides advertisers with another way for Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

BibSonomy is a social bookmarking system that allows users to bookmark and share their favorite sites and publication in a collaborative manner.

The bookmarking is easy, just as it is done on the regular browser, but it saves all the bookmarks to the BibSonomy site, which enables accessed from any computer. Users tag their ‘finds’ and can look at what others have tagged and viewed, in a social networking manner.

The uniqueness of BibSonomy is that it goes further than just being a social bookmarking system. It allows for publication sharing. It is what they call ”A team oriented publication management”.

It offers users the ability to store and organize their publications and supports exchange and integration of different people by offering a social platform for literature exchange.

Both bookmarks and publication can be tagged to help find information. A description can be freely chosen. The assignment of tags from different users creates a new vocabulary called ‘folksonomy’. It evolves from the participants of research groups, individual users and learning communities organizing their information needs. Folksonomies became popular on the web in 2004 as part of social software applications. The word is a mix of the words “taxonomy” and “folk” and allows an intuitive structure for navigating the data.

Developed by a team of students and scientists at the “Institute of Knowledge and Data Engineering” and is hosted by the University of Kassel in Germany.

While about 55% of visitors to the site come from India, it is also popular in the Philippines. The use of this site in the United States is at about 8% only, but is growing rapidly.

How to get Your Small Business on the Virtual Map

October 19, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

The world is divided into two equally powerful entities today; one is the real world that we live in, and the other is the virtual world, or the world of the internet. Getting your business known and noticed in the virtual world can boost your brand identity recognition and your sales to unforeseen heights, depending on your marketing strategies. So how to put your small business on the virtual map?

The first thing to do is to set up your professional corporate website and incorporating e-commerce to increase the value of your business. However, this alone will not result in an implicit increase in the enterprise value of your business.

What you will need to do is leverage the Internet to increase your sales and profitability, thereby increasing the value of your business. With over a 1000 million people online in the world today, and trillions of dollars transacted over the internet, you can sense the presence of a staggering opportunity.

When you put yourself on the virtual map, you are in effect completely eliminating geographic barriers. With one step, you reach a wider, more diverse audience. A properly marketed Web site can be a very effective means of reaching new and existing customers and expanding your geographic presence. Here are a few tips:

Get a smart, professionally designed website designed for your company.
Place your logo prominently on all pages.
Place brief but informative and useful brochure ware of your company so that your potential customers, vendors and partners get an idea of who you are.
Use search engine optimization tools to ensure that your Web site appears at the top of search lists when someone looks for a product or service similar to what you offer.
Make sure your site prompts visitors to input comments and feedback. This way, you can capture the information of existing and potential customers to support the efforts of your sales team.
Ensure that your website allows a safe and secure online purchasing experience. Use the best payment gateways and incorporate every possible security signatures that you can afford. When you allow customers to purchase your products or services online, you can more than quadruple your sales output.

By allowing people to shop online at your Web site, you can reduce your sales staff and other overheads. Imagine what this can do to your business’s bottom-line. Putting up your brochure content on your site can eliminate the need to print expensive brochures and other collateral materials.

Retain your customers and build customer loyalty by offering customer contact and support online. When your customers’ requests are attended to via real time chat, or email follow up, there’s greater satisfaction and trust in your company.