When trust was the value

"At the risk of sounding like someone who remembers only the bright spots of a golden age, I think it's worth exploring some of the values of the leaders who first shaped Silicon Valley, because they provide a sharp contrast to those of recent Internet entrepreneurs. The values of Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Larry Page of Google, and Mark Pincus of Zynga are currently influencing not only the business decisions their companies make but also the values of many other new Internet businesses.
When I arrived at Hewlett-Packard in 1965, the company was already a $300 million giant. Bill Hewlett's and Dave Packard's ideas and principles were in evidence everywhere.
I learned a great deal listening to them in meetings and watching them manage. Dave's memorable quote, "More companies die of indigestion than starvation" -- roughly translated, "Focus, stupid" -- became one of my own guiding principles.
I learned that sharp focus ensured great execution and created loyal customers.
Dave's values became the company's values and the employees' values.
His concern for the customer became the company's concern.

The company was focused on delivering advanced technology of great value, then servicing and supporting the customer to make sure he derived value from what he bought. Customers trusted Hewlett-Packard.
I remember one customer who so trusted the salesman who took care of his account that he let the sales rep purchase what he needed.
That period of trust went on for a long time. The salesman told me his secret: He never bought anything for the customer that the customer did not really need."
Dewayne Hendricks

Looking for a career?

One of the most effective marketing is, in my opinion, the affiliate marketing. It is a performance-based marketing in which you find: a business (the merchant), the network which offers multiple campaigns that the affiliate can choose, the affiliate who is the publisher, and of course the customer.
Blue Global Media specializes in unique performance marketing solutions that you cannot find anywhere else and offers them both to the affiliate AND the customer.
It is an Affiliate network founded in 2005 by company CEO Chris Kay, and since then developed into a network that maximized earnings both for affiliates and advertisers.
It provides Internet marketing methods, search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing (PPC - Pay Per Click), e-mail marketing, and display advertising.
The goal of the company is an ever better performance which of course results in more conversions, higher payouts, better earnings.
And if you have any doubt remember, as they say: they do not offer a job, they provide a "career".
Why not trying the Payday affiliate program?

How NOT to sleep at night

"A hacker claiming to have broken into networks of dozens of banks and stolen customer data, has released as proof a file that contains names, addresses, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers in plain text, but no credit card numbers.
"I penetrated over 79 large banks, I've been targetting these banks since 3 months," read a tweet from the Twitter account of Reckz0r.
"Actually, I didn't hacked VISA & Mastercard, I hacked the banks, #Chase..etc."
Everything you need NOT to be able to sleep at night...

Could you hope to find anything better?

People now a day tend to be a little bit spoiled; they take everything for granted, especially when it comes to computers and Internet.
They seldom remember the times when the computer memory was so small you were mostly limited to text or the Internet when the speed was just a few Kbits and it took hours to see a picture.
I remember the first websites were so poor of images compared to the ones of today, and the main thing you had to keep in mind was to be able to make something nice looking, with all the needed information’s, but "not too heavy", because the customer didn’t like to wait, and if it took a little bit more, he just clicked on "stop” and went away...
Today you have so much freedom, you can use all kind of pictures, even small videos, the important is that you choose the right LiteSpeed Technology hosting on 8-core Xeon.
In this way, whoever wants to see your site, will have it in a few seconds, no need to press "stop” and go away...
And the good thing is that everything you can dream of having with a web hosting (besides the speed) comes together with servers with the most competitive pricing.
Could you hope to find anything better?

If you want to be found, you must be where they look for you...

The Internet is a wonderful way to find whatever you want.
From the marmalade recipe to the latest technological gadget review.
Whatever you want to know is there.
At the reach of just a click of the mouse.
That is why it is essential for a business owner to be there.
If you want your customers to find you, you MUST have a presence online.
But that is not enough.
They must also find you.
In the U.S. alone, approximately 16 billion search queries a month are conducted on the internet, but that doesn’t really mean that if they are looking for the stuff you sell they will find you.
It is a war among websites.
And the victory is being there, in the first places, when they look for you. Otherwise, it is like if you were not there.
But the fight gets even more interesting when your customers are mostly local. In one way it can be more difficult, because if you use the right keywords, the right optimization, it is for nothing that, for example having a pizzeria in San Francisco, you reach people who live in New York.
That is why, in this particular case, you need mostly a local SEO.
You need somebody who is able to produce the right local search optimization.
How?
For example using the Google+ Local platform, where your company can be registered adding to the name and all features also photos and videos of the locations, so that,as a reward, Google gives a more prominent placement on its search results.
You can even add a map and details about the specific location, so that it gets very easy to find you.
Another way can also be adding your site to the local directories.
When somebody in San Francisco needs a pizzeria in the town, usually looks in the local search.
Another way to upgrade your website could be using social media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Groupon, Flickr or Foursquare, or the simple reason that if you are looking for customers, you better look where they are...
If your business is local, also the search must be a local search.

Good SEO softwares can drive performance

The worst mistake in marketing your business is to compete with your competition on the same things.
That only leads to escalation, which leads to lower prices or higher costs unless the competitor is inept.
Companies should strive to be unique.
Managers should be asking, "How can you deliver a unique value to meet an important set of needs for an important set of customers?" Then comes the second step.
Which is planning and when in lack of valuable experience, using somebody else´s experience.
When you talk of franchise marketing, it should be clear that your company should remain unique and in the same time using the common strategy and tools of your collegues.
For doing so there is nothing better than sharing the expenses and using seo friendly cms.
And what could be the best web marketing software that you could use?
Usually when it comes to a franchise business they use to build, and manage one website per franchise location, so that they can compete with local providers.
This means more costs and time.
But there are on the market web marketing and automation platforms that can change this strategy, focusing on all network members growing with their number.
While your business stays unique, the marketing increases the chances of a better position in the major search engines.
Besides this seo technology offers you the advantage of a a built-in online quote system to handle the sales process, fully integrated with payment gateways.
This really represents the easy-to-use, cost-effective marketing tool that any online franchise marketing shoud have.
Operational effectiveness is, in essence, extending best practices. Good SEO softwares can drive performance.

The 11 years old who got it clear

There is a story about a financial guy who one day in 1929 got a tip about what stocks to buy from a shoe shiner, he said "That was the moment I understood it was time to quit..."
A video of an elevan years old Canadian girl who perfectly understands what is going on:

watch video

should tell everybody that the game is definitely over.

Video Games became much more than games

When the Kinect was introduced it was clear that was much more than just video-game.
The early adopters of the Kinect were not content just to play games with it.
The object synthesizes an arsenal of sophisticated components: a fancy video camera, a “depth sensor” to capture visual data in three dimensions and a multiarray microphone capable of a similar trick with audio.
Combined with a powerful microchip and software, these capabilities could be put to uses unrelated to the Xbox.
Like: enabling a small drone to “see” its surroundings and avoid obstacles; rigging up a 3-D scanner to create small reproductions of most any object (or person); directing the music of a computerized orchestra with conductorlike gestures; remotely controlling a robot to brush a cat’s fur.
Microsoft’s chief executive announced that the company would release a version specifically meant for use outside the Xbox context to indicate that the company would lay down formal rules permitting commercial uses for the device.
Does progress flow from a corporate entity’s offering a whiz-bang breakthrough embraced by the masses?
Or does techno-thing success now depend on the company’s acquiescing to the crowd’s input? Which vision of an object’s meaning wins?
The Kinect does not neatly conform to either theory.
But in this instance, maybe it’s not about whose vision wins; maybe it’s about the contest.


Liberally taken from Dewayne Hendricks

Social Marketing is the old "word of mouth"

The most important thing for any online business is to have an effective ecommerce strategy planned.
Ecommerce consultant such as ECommerce Partners can help a business plan out a strategy to increase sales.
Marketing is what makes a difference between a business and a successful business. Once, long ago before the Internet was born, it was mostly a "word of mouth"matter. I remember, when Ferrero began its business, he personally used to go to the local open markets and sell his products, including the ancestor of Nutella.
He was successful, thanks to the "word of mouth", you tried it, you liked it, you told your friends and they told other friends and so on.
But it was only thanks to his genius and the right marketing that the Nutella ( and the other Ferrero products) became known worldwide.
Today you cannot be successful unless you are online.
Because it is THERE that your customers look for you.
But, exactly as in the local market, you MUST have the best position, the place where the biggest number of customers finds you.
And the strategy is the same.
You do not call it "word of mouth", you call it social marketing, but it works exactly in the same way: somebody tries it, likes it and tell his friends, who tell their friends and so on.
But the Iternet is MUCH bigger than the local market, you have more chances. But you also share the place with many more competitors...
So, in the end, who wins?
The one who has the best strategy, and of course the best partners with the most effective ecommerce strategy...

The entertainet

"The Internet is being turned into The Entertainet.
Nothing wrong with that per se, BUT after we get done chopping and channeling the Internet (versitile, duplex, distributed control, datagram, medium performance highly flexible general purpose network) into the Entertainet (dedicated, simplex, centralized control, semi-virtual circuit, high performance, custom purposed network) then we are going to build an Internet again.

Because we will still need an Internet, once we are done putting the Entertainet in place." What does really mean?
The Internet was born as end to end network, the content was created on one end and sent to the other.
While TV for example was broadcasted from the center to the end.
Entertainet is a way of going back, a copy of TV.
The Internet is a revolutionary mean because it is INTERACTIVE, while TV is a passive way to entertain...
Next month, a little more than a year after the National Science Foundation (NSF) launched the Future Internet Architecture (FIA) program, 100 researchers will gather in Palo Alto, CA, to discuss the progress in “content-centric networking” (CCN) – a new direction for organizing Internet traffic that aims to provide greater security and faster connectivity.
Content-centric networking represents a shift from today’s focus on using network addresses to find content.
Instead it proposes a protocol that specifically defines and tracks content.
Backers say it represents an evolutionary change similar to IP forwarding.
“We think it’s definitely a concept that will change how people design high performance hardware".
The goal of the meeting will be to have the research community share work, exchange ideas, and begin to shape the kind of content ID and router frameworks needed to make the CCN concept work.
“We are trying to define and validate what you could think of as an Internet Protocol for content,” “It’s this kind of work with people experimenting with apps and use cases that will push toward the design of a core protocol,”

You know what you get AND what you spend to get it...

Most people don't really understand why one site would perform better than another on a search. And many still have no clue of what SEO means.
That is why the websites of the people who know are on the first page of Google.
Well, it is not enough to KNOW, you also need to KNOW HOW to be there and, even more important, how to last there.
Once, in the early times of the Internet it was not even so difficult, because the people who really knew were few and also, there were not SO many websites online.
Now a day it is getting tough and tougher every day.
So tough that if you really want to be successful, it is better to find an expert.
It is true that it is money that usually comes back as customers, but when it comes to pay...you know what you spend, but you are not so sure that it will make THAT difference.
What about affordable seo services?
That sounds good, but it sounds even better if affordable means: you pay if you get results...
That is gold for my ears, because, nothing is better than being sure to spend the money AND have a good ROI for what you invested.
Imagine a company that offers the strategy that best fits your needs and budget and then establishes goals for each marketing campaign.
And you? You pay if you reach the goals...

How can one do more with less?

The business environment has never been tougher.
Companies need to grow their revenues while reducing IT costs.
How can they achieve these seemingly contradictory goals during lean economic times?
How can one do more with less?
If you have a small or medium sized company and you cannot afford or do not want to have an IT department, but you still need one, the best solution could be a "shared" one.
What is the use of a complete IT department if you need it just for a few tasks?
Or why bothering to have one, when you can find the best on the market for a fraction of what it would cost you?
Never heard about IT support services?
That means you can have all the technical support you need, whenever you need it, and the best services and solutions, with the best employees with no employee.
Many companies, including government contractors, legal, associations, financial services and information technology providers have already adopted this solution.
The IT support includes monitoring of desktops and servers 24/7, software applications, Help Desk for all OS, even maintenance, Firewalls, Routers, Devices and if you need...VPN's.
If you need professional network design and network implementation services or simple computer network support, and do not want to invest in a special IT department, you can have the best team of professionals, always with the last technology, always on top and on service.
Whenever you need network support services, 24/7, with the best innovative network support plans and solutions, that is the best answer.
And what about disaster recovery planning and solutions?
How much would it cost to lose most of your data, just because you haven’t thought it possible? What about an online backup?
And if ALL this and even more comes for an affordable fixed monthly fee...it is like a dream...isn’t it?