Solving the Internet's Congestion Problem

An open, neutral internet has been a force for sweeping social change: democratizing information, commerce, and access to jobs, triggering GDP growth and a rising standard of living. Our collective ability to equally access and innovate on internet platforms, from search and social networks, to content and commerce sites, is fundamental to continued growth.

It is not a given.
With internet innovation comes congestion. The amount of content shared and accessed by the world's 2.4 billion Internet users is constantly increasing — in volume, and in size. It is outpacing the internet's, and Internet Service Providers', ability to efficiently deliver it.

Internet penetration and usage continues to expand at exponential rates. But the issue is not just a growing internet population. It's the growing fidelity demands of today's internet population, as they transition from text, image, and standard-definition media-sharing, to high-definition (and even 4K) file transfer. Innovation in content quality has surpassed innovation in internet delivery. Today, billions of people are increasingly using the same pipes to deliver billions of HD media files. We're facing a congestion crisis. 

Online Business Opportunities In 2013 – Is It Time To Invest?

Have you been struggling with the idea of investing in an online venture. Times are changing, and more and more retail locations are hurting when it comes developing new business strategies to keep their doors open. Online enterprises have been thriving for years now due to their relatively cheap start-up and maintenance costs. In 2013 so far, there have been several online business opportunities that have surfaced, leading many people to invest in running their own company from the comfort of their own home. We have categorized the most popular online business opportunities in 2013, and will give some examples of the sources you can establish these start-ups. 

Tα βήματα για τη δημιουργία e-shop

Μέσα στην κρίση της αγοράς, με αυξημένη την ανάγκη περιορισμού των λειτουργικών εξόδων των επιχειρήσεων, πολύς λόγος γίνεται για τη δημιουργία ηλεκτρονικών καταστημάτων στο Διαδίκτυο προκειμένου να αυξηθεί ο τζίρος. Ας δούμε, λοιπόν, το θέμα όσο μπορούμε καλύτερα.

Το πλεονέκτημα του ηλεκτρονικού καταστήματος είναι ότι πουλά για εσάς 24 ώρες/365 ημέρες τον χρόνο

4 Ways To Get Your Local Business To Stand Out Online

In a local market there can be plenty of competition.  Specifically in a large city, you can only imagine how many pizza places, hair salons, dentists, lawyers, etc., there may be.  Since what you offer is typically the same as your competitors, it’s important to ramp up your marketing in order to stand out.  Offline marketing can still be effective for a local business, but as more people are searching online for local products or services, it’s important to have a positive online presence.  Use these local online marketing tactics to stand out and differentiate your business from the rest:

Brand Transformation on the Internet

What kind of online marketing strategy makes the most of digital media? One very intriguing answer, from the proprietor of the digital marketing and design agency Huge, is the embrace of software experience. To Aaron Shapiro, companies don’t thrive by selling products or services anymore. They thrive by creating immersive experiences where people go to get their problems solved or their aspirations realized.

How Rapportive Helps Businesses Manage Customer Relationships

Everybody knows the old saw, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." But, do you really know who you know? Probably not as well as you'd like.

Between pocketing business cards, filling up your smartphone contacts and expanding your social media connections, trying to remember who's who gets tough. But San Francisco-based Rapportive is here to help. The company's free-to-download Gmail extension automatically collects information about the person you're e-mailing, including Twitter account content, Facebook posts, LinkedIn data and any other material tied to that e-mail address. The info is displayed as a simple sidebar, usually replacing the distracting paid ads on the right side of the page.

How mobile wins Millennial travelers

Millennials will have more spending power than any other generation by 2017, and are the fastest growing age segment in travel. Between vacations and business trips, they’re already dreaming of and planning their next voyage. Travel brands will capture these dreamers – and win their bookings and loyalty – via mobile.

Mobile booking wins the Zero Moment of Truth, from anywhere

How Social Media and Millennials Impact the Alcohol Industry

For businesses and brands today, social media is a necessary and important aspect of a marketing strategy. Certain industries adopted social media as a platform to reach customers in the early stages while others are still testing the waters.

For marketers in the alcohol industry, one of the biggest challenges they face is age restriction. Early versions of social networks made it difficult for social media marketers to determine which users were above the legal drinking age. When considering how large the Millennial demographic is, it is understandable that this is a pitfall for alcohol companies.

SWOT Analysis for Web Publishers

The rapid changes in the search industry over the last sixteen months have left many web publishers wondering whether they should pivot their business models or exist the industry entirely. This is a difficult question for business owners who have invested years of their lives and much of their wealth in firms which may no longer be viable contenders in the "new" search industry.

SWOT analysis is a technique which business owners can use to strategically analyze their businesses in relation to their competitors and the marketplace as a whole. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunites, Threats.

• Strengths are attributes of the organization which provide an advantage in the marketplace.
• Weaknesses are attributres of the organization which cause a disadvantage in the marketplace.
• Opportunities are actions the organization could take to create an advantage in the marketplace.
• Threats are events which could happen in the environment and cause the organization to be disadvantaged.

The first two areas, Strengths and Weaknesses, focus primarily on the internal attributes of the organization. The last two areas, Opportunities and Threats, focus primary on how the organization may be affected by external events.

Time is Money: Cost of Social Media Marketing for Businesses

Small business owners are lucky. Since they are small, they don’t need a million dollar budget and a 15 person team managing their marketing. They can do it themselves, hire an individual internally or outsource it to a marketing professional in the community. But I’d like to address the common misconception that social media marketing doesn’t cost a lot. If someone is telling you that they can take over all your social media marketing initiatives for $100 a month, they’re lying to you. If you want to hire a college student for $7.25 an hour to do the job for you, go ahead. They don’t have the skills or know-how to do a good job and won’t care about doing a good job because you’re paying them minimum wage.

How To Improve Visibility, Communication & Accountability of Social Media Within Your Company

Do you want to improve visibility, communication and accountability of social media within your company? It’s as simple as sending a project dashboard on a regular basis to a broader team.

Really. That’s the magic pill.

It seems so simple yet not enough of us do it. Instead, we complain that there are silos or that people don’t understand that corporate social media is more than just tweeting and status updates. While there are many other ways that you can take your internal critics and turn them into your biggest fans, sending a project dashboard on a regular basis can be one of the simpler ways to increase visibility, communication and accountability for you and your team.

Ecommerce for a Cause: 5 Ways to Make an Impact with Your Online Store

One of the best things about owning an online business is that you get to do what you love, everyday. Even better, you get to make an impact on the lives of others through the products and services you sell. Today, many companies are positively impacting their communities through relationships with non-profit organizations. You may or may not be already engaging in cause marketing with your online business, and today I’d like to share a few ideas with you about how to get started.

Top 7 reporting metrics for ecommerce store owners

Running an online store can be hard work. You spend so much time working out how to get traffic to your site and then watch the numbers dwindle down with low conversion rates, cart abandonment etc. But for this reason it’s crucial to keep an eye on a number of key measures to stay up to date with how your business is doing.

1.  Revenue and profit

The first thing to look at is revenue and profit. For any business online or not the lifeblood is cash-flow and revenue and profit should be monitored regularly. Pretty much every ecommerce platform will give you easy access to monthly revenue stats. Costs are harder to monitor and for that reason I like to use an online accounting platform like Xero or Wave Accounting so you can get your costs, revenue and full profit figures all in the one place.

Endless Possibilities

Helping a fearless client birth a new community is one of the most rewarding parts of my role as a Community Shepherd here at Brains on Fire. I really like that “getting it off the ground” work, the hard work, the dirt-under-my-nails work. And sharing “little wins” with my client as we work together to build something meaningful and connectable in the world is just about as good as it gets.

Πως Μπορεί Να Γίνει Η Επιχείρησή Σας Πιο Likeable

Όπως έχετε παρατηρήσει η επιρροή των Social Media είναι πια αδιαμφισβήτητη. Βασιλιάς των Social Media στην Ελλάδα είναι με διαφορά το Facebook με περισσότερους από 3.7 εκατομμύρια εγγεγραμμένους χρήστες.

Επομένως είναι πια ιδιαίτερα σημαντικό για την επιχείρηση σας να διαθέτει μια ισχυρή παρουσία και στο Facebook. Μέχρι και πριν από λίγο καιρό οι περισσότεροι στην Ελλάδα είχαν εστιάσει όλες τις προσπάθειες τους στο Google, και συγκεκριμένα στο πως θα ανέβουν πιο ψηλά στα οργανικά αποτελέσματα (SEO).

15 Free Ways to Increase Blog Traffic

Get More Blog Traffic for Free

Generating traffic is the lifeblood of your online business. Without sufficient traffic your site and blog will never accomplish their purpose. And while there are numerous pay options to generate traffic, there are an equal number of effective and free tools and approaches. Here are some great traffic generators:

1. Free Traffic Source: Forum Marketing

When, Why, and How You Should Start a Forum

Should you start a forum? When I first started getting into blogging, I noticed that many experts advised new bloggers to join forums and start talking. Not to directly promote your blog, but to be helpful on the forum, include a link to your blog in your signature, and you will start getting more traffic and loyal visitors. Having experience with this method, I know it works well enough, but there are better ways to driving traffic to your website – like starting your own forum!

When to Start a Forum

Influential Mentions Aren’t the Same as Word Of Mouth Returns

Earlier this week, I took a look at why the social influencer – as identified by the likes of Klout, Kred, etc – isn’t anywhere near as valuable as an Instigator.

The post created a great discussion (which is still ongoing) around both sides of the coin, and whether it was just a case of semantics or if an Instigator was the true “influencer”.

I just wanted to expand on that a bit more, especially on why the influencer marketing model (as it currently stands) may be even more worthless (at least as far as real results go).

What’s Worth More to You – The Cost of Your Reputation or the Cost to Monitor Your Reputation?

A few weeks ago, Heather Whaling shared the story of Nationwide and how they responded to what could have been a very difficult situation.

While there was still come criticism about the response possibly being less “human” than it could have been from the various Nationwide accounts, it was still a great example of reacting quickly to douse potential flames.

It was also a great reminder that social media needn’t be scary for businesses worried about negative statements posted about them online (one of the biggest stumbling blocks for any business owner when it comes to social media).

My Small Business Social Media Training Manifesto

After years working as a social media consultant, trainer, author and speaker, it finally dawned on me just where my passions lie: it’s in a coalescence of small business, social media, and introducing this medium to emerging markets.

Small Business

I am cut from small business cloth. Each of my parents owned small businesses, both my wife and I run small businesses, and many of my past clients have been small businesses. Needless to say, I know the challenges small business owners face from the inside out, including those that are marketing-related.