Leverage your inner lemon

Entrepreneur Connect describes how to turn a negative image which a product might have into a postive. This type of branding can be called Brand judo. The branding of the VW Beetle car after the second world war is the classic example of how a car felt to be too small and ugly became a classic. Check out the article here.

Where can I find business statistics?

This entry on the intute blog gives the quick and short answer! It also reminds me to promote the idea of using intute for all your searching. Intute will always give you reliable up to date results. Intute is made from items which have been checked by subject experts. In this blog post they are also chatting to you about it.

More Top 10 Business search tips

Here is another collection of business search tips from Karen Blakeman. She says :

"A group of business information researchers gathered at the London Chamber of Commerce in Queen Street, London for the TFPL workshop – facilitated by yours truly – on key web business resources. The participants were from a variety of types of organisations but they all had a mission to find out what business information was available for free or on a pay-as-you-go basis. We covered not only business information sites but also how to make better use of the advanced search features of the likes of Google and Yahoo.

At the end of the day, the group was asked to come with a list of Top 10 Tips."

Take a look here

How to influence influencers, bloggers, tweeters etc.

Robin Broitman says "In this article, I’ve pulled together resources, tips and advice that can help you identify influential bloggers and other social media users and develop strategies to engage your targeted influencers in ways that will help you achieve your objectives. I’ve included a special section on Blogger outreach and relations as well. Finally, there’s a section on tools and lists to help you in your efforts."
Full of pratical advice which gives insights into how to get noticed.

10 small business social media marketing tips

Ross Kimbarovsky suggests we begin by outlining clear goals for social media marketing efforts and figuring out how we/ll measure sucess, Once we’ve outlined goals, he shows 10 ways to begin to leverage social media for our marketing efforts.
Includes discussion of Facebook, Twitter, company blog,LinkedIn, brand consistemcy etc.

10 ways you can use Twitter lists

Sarah Evans on Mashable blog gives some ideas on how lists on Twitter can be used :
Industry peers and professionals lists
Expert lists
Recognise and rewatd customers lists
Niche lists
Employee directory lists
Political campaign lists
Location based lists
Event attendees and live tweeter lists
Self-serving lists
Promote your affiliation lists

Do social media bans work?

This article in Edge Online ( from the Institute of Leadership Management) says that organisations are blocking access to social media sites at work for fear of unwanted employee distractions. Scott Beagrie looks at whether an outright ban makes management sense and talks to firm advocates of social networks in the workplace. Is it a good thing to ban Facebook? This is a useful little article which defends the use of social networking in business, and reckons that businesses must overcome their reluctance to get involved.

State of the Blogosphere 2009 report

Technorati have released their 2009 blogosphere report.Since 2004, the annual study has followed the growth and trends in the blogosphere. For the second time, they surveyed bloggers directly. They were generous with their thoughts and insights. The 2009 State of the Blogosphere survey demonstrates the growth of the blogosphere's influence on subjects ranging from business to politics to the way information travels through communities. In a year when revolutions and elections were organized by blogs, bloggers are blogging more than ever, and the State of the Blogosphere is strong. Includes a section on monetization, revenue generation and brands in the blogosphere.

Mobile to be social networking hub

Report says that recent Forrester Research believes mobiles have the potential to become the hub for all social computing activities, rather than just complement PCs and laptops.

Example of a personalised Business Page

Here is a link to Robert W. Fernekes personalised home page. He is using the free software package Netvibes to gather together lots of RSS feeds from newspapers, blogs. podcasts etc. I use Pageflakes to do a similar thing for my home page. I think it gives a glimpse of the fuure as we become more likely to create our own home pages to suit our own needs. Using these services means that we can access our home page wherever we require by going into Netvibes or the other services.