In hopes of giving a boost to small businesses in need of capital, President Obama signed the bipartisan Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act into law today (April 5).  Read more

Kenneth Wisnefski, founder and CEO of WebiMax, a leading search engine optimization firm, announced the online search industry has undertaken major changes in the past year and further indicates more changes are expected in the short-term.  Read more

Has the SEO marketing division of your business ever considered creating a viral branded video campaign? Videos are actually one of the best ways to market your company, its brand, products, and services on the internet. And, if your video goes viral, the extent of your brand's reach can be phenomenally huge. In fact, it would be worldwide. What could be better for your brand?

The e-commerce numbers are growing across the globe and daily deal sites are a large reason for the sector's growth. Looking specifically at the Italian market, the growth and role of daily deal sites in e-commerce is no different. According to leading industry executives, companies like Groupon and LetsBonus are surging in Italy and contributed to the country's double-digit growth in 2011 online retail sales. The presence and success of these sites is noteworthy and the degree to which they continue to grow and attract online shoppers will greatly affect the trajectory of the e-commerce industry both in Italy and other markets. As such, looking at the future of this sector, internet retailers have an opportunity to employ specific practices, among them being SEO, to push coupon sites forward driving more traffic and growing conversions.

Businesspeople, I see you out there, checking your personal emails, looking at your sister-in-law's vacation pictures on Facebook, and trying to figure out Instagram for your Android.  Basically, you have some time, spare time.  No, I don't want to hear the excuses, as if I was your personal trainer. But I am going to tell you to work!

But while requesting this information might be unusual among employers generally, Kenneth Wisnefski, social media expert and founder/CEO of WebiMax, said: “We see this very often, especially in public service work including teachers, police and government officials.”  Read more

There is news seemingly coming out daily regarding the possibilities that smartphones present businesses in terms of widening exposure and growing business. This is essentially because of all the sectors that smartphones and their functionality and features touch. The impact is clearly seen and only growing in the years to come especially regarding mobile local searching both at home in the US (where smartphone adoption has just reached the 50% mark) and abroad.

Social media networking sites are forever developing new affiliations with each other to better enhance their users' experiences. The most recent ones to do so are Tumblr and Facebook, as reported in a recent Mashable article. The two websites have announced a new feature that will making the sharing of blog posts from Tumblr much easier on Facebook's new Timeline format. Users of Tumblr can activate this from their Tumblr accounts.

I've shopped at second-hand shops since I was a teen.  Like most things, I did it then because it was cool.  I'm thirty-three and not so cool any longer but still dig novelty shops.  You can get some unique clothing items in such establishments.  I've gotten many compliments over the years while wearing $1.50 shirts; it's because the man makes the clothes (figuratively and literally); I find clothes (from any decade) befitting to Anthony's style.  But let's not get gender biased; the woman makes the clothes fit her style too.

I have written about cultural characteristics often on this blog to affirm their importance for proper international SEO and general internet marketing efforts that are catering to specialized or international markets. [One side note is that cultures are not restricted solely to countries, as groups within an overall culture can have their own specific cultures with accompanying tendencies]. Understanding how they impact your business is paramount and it requires doing the necessary research on the local contexts and establishing how best to accurately adapt web content and messaging to improve the customer connection, among other things. International SEO companies work to assist businesses with their strategy and actions in this regard and help them gain a greater foothold on various international markets.

Large companies often have the luxury of investing in their employees by offering to pay for graduate education programs. While that is not always an option for small business owners on tight budgets, there are ways to implement continuing education strategies that will keep a workforce happy and informed without eating into a company’s bottom line.  Read more

There is some important and exciting news about Pinterest that a lot of businesses really need to pay attention to. As reported by a recent article on Mashable, it has been found that Pinterest is not just a heavy driver of traffic to companies' websites. Pinterest has now been shown to also be a driver of sales. This piece of information adds greatly to the mounting evidence that supports Pinterest's value to the world of marketing. This evidence purports that Pinterest possesses a great deal of potential for becoming an integral component of many companies' SEO and social media marketing campaigns.

Batter up, April is here.  It's time for a new season of baseball.  Teams are well practiced, prepared, and have planned for success.  In theory, each team knows what it takes to succeed.  It's a matter of playing hard each game, maintaining positive momentum, and keeping cleats laced for the long haul.  There are little-to-no surprises to be had by management.  There are unfortunately the occasional slumps and trades; but, managers have all the tools at hand to compete.  In short, there's no crying in baseball; and, there should be no crying in branding, moving forward amidst the marketing season.

Recent reports that some businesses and government agencies are asking job applicants to share their personal login information for Facebook is driving a heated debate on online privacy. Online marketing expert Kenneth Wisnefski wrote in the Washington Post that the debate could lead to litigation brought by job seekers and possibly to legislation protecting job applicants’ privacy vis-à-vis social media.  Read more

Good Sunday to you, readers.   Let's get down to what happened online.

Businesses must cater to each local context - have I said that before on this blog? Yes, it is a recurring theme but only because it holds great utility for businesses and it bears consistent repeating. This is especially the case when others are offering the same advice, like say Tom Smith, managing director of the market research firm GlobalWebIndex.

There definitely have been more than a few businesses and organizations that were initially dismayed at the changing of their Facebook brand pages to the Timeline format. What they may not have realized yet, however, is that the Facebook Timeline format will turn out to be highly beneficial for meeting their SEO and social media marketing needs. In fact, what everyone really seemed to need was an article from Mashable, that was recently posted, which outlined and detailed the ways in which Facebook Timeline has been designed to enhance marketing on the social media network.

When it comes to cell phones, lower prices and competition among service providers transformed what was once a luxury for the privileged few to a necessity for the masses. They evolved from the expensive “car phone,” carried in bags, to today’s tiny-by-comparison smartphones, which are used for far more than making calls and sending text messages. Read more

I have written a good amount on the importance of local search for businesses with the rise in smartphones and more specifically, the rise in web searching on smartphones. The rate of search is impressive. In a recent Google study, 99% of global respondents indicated they use search engines on their smartphone, and searching for local businesses is one of the most popular searches. The essential point on this if you are unfamiliar, is that SEO companies and marketers can assist businesses that cater to local audiences by increasing their presence on local-centered platforms and features. SEO for geo-targeted search terms and optimizing pages on local features such as Google Places will improve the online visibility of businesses when searchers enter queries for their industry in their geographic area.

The introduction of Facebook Timeline for brands officially brought to light a very important aspect of marketing through social media: brands must be humanized. In other words, a brand must communicate with its social media audience on a direct personal level. This can provide dividends of benefit for companies, because it increases the trust that customers place in them, which in turn produces positive results in profits.

The Mega Millions lottery jackpot has hit a record $500 million. Would you quit working if you won it?  If you have a job interview this week, that is hardly an idle question. The lottery, to be drawn Friday, is on a lot of people’s minds this week, and as a result hiring managers may pull out a doozy of an interview question.  Read more

In yesterday's post, I looked at Google Autocorrect and how a Romanian brand responded to the unfavorable suggested terms for the Google search query "Romanians are…" launching a "Romanian are smart" campaign. The campaign was successful and more attractive terms replaced the undesired ones. Businesses and individuals can find themselves in similar reputation management cases where they seek the services of SEO companies to resolve the issue. Check out that post for thoughts on what companies can do in such a scenario. However, today we look again at Google's Autocorrect, but this time in relation to Japan and the object of unfavorable suggested terms is an individual rather than a nationality.

How would you like to save marketing dollars by getting your brand valued within its community?  Wait.  The gentleman branding process doesn’t work for every person or brand.  There's something I would like to point out to business people, regardless of your industry.  There's one aspect which all of the online marketing, SEO, social media, black/white-hat tactics can't offer your company…personality.  I try to pass on sentiments of great people and branding onto readers; but, I honestly can't ingrain or grant character; that's the man-in-the-mirror's job.

When it comes to Pinterest, far too many people insist that the image-sharing site is mainly geared towards a female user base, especially one which falls within the middle age bracket. However, there have finally been some facts presented to disprove that myth. A recent article from Mashable features a slideshow of 11 men who are all heavy users and big fans of Pinterest. Their activity on the site serves as evidence that Pinterest has appeal to both men and women.

A heated debate has emerged over social media users’ right to privacy stemming from recent reports of corporations and government agencies asking potential applicants to surrender their Facebook login credentials during job interviews.  Read more

As search is their primary function and market, Google continually works to improve the search experience on their platform for their end-users. Google consistently rolls out improvements to their algorithm and search approach, some larger (such as Google Search Plus Your World) and some smaller (such as the continuous geo-targeting refinements), but all are detailed in their company blog, which is an important way that marketers and SEO experts keep abreast of the latest from the search giant.

Recently, I wrote a post leveraging the WSJ's high costs of high-speed technology sentiments.  Today I see more of the same money leveraging taking place.  In this scenario it involves the coming presidential election.  In many ways, the election involves huge marketing campaigns, where loyalists and foil-ists endeavor at outdoing one another.  Behind the liaisons, the campaigning, the slights at others, is the purpose of it all, to provide value to the nation, by elucidating its next best leader.  Like with services and products, ideally all of the marketing is to supply end users, the general public, with value, right?