August, 2012

Reducing Your Carbon Footprint: A Guide For Small Businesses

We live in an age which is increasingly concerned with global climate change, and the term ‘carbon footprint’ is familiar to many of us. In its most basic terms, a carbon footprint is calculated based on the greenhouse gas emissions produced by an individual or organisation.

The emissions generated by even the smallest of businesses can be significant, and many small corporations are rightly striving to reduce the impact they have on the environment.

QR Codes Bring Email, Mobile Coupons to Life

Marketers today face a dizzying array of options designed to help capture audience attention and drive sales. While email marketing through newsletters and coupons remains one of the most popular and successful vehicles for driving both online and in-store sales, mobile technologies have quickly gained momentum as the go-to choice for reaching consumers who are increasingly dependent on their mobile devices for everything from socializing to banking and shopping.

Mobile Web Apps for Businesses

Mobile marketing is one of the recently introduced and effective strategies which generate more business for an organization in comparison to various other strategies. The reason behind the high success rate is the high availability of number of users for products and services. Deployment of mobile web applications or mobile apps is one such sub-domain in mobile marketing. Mobile apps build a brand for a business by providing something unique to the user or by adding some new and awesome features in their apps to attract as many users as possible.

How to Combine Online and Offline Marketing to Rev Up Sales

If you’re running a business, people want to meet you. One-on-one contact builds trust and credibility. But they also want to be able to go to your website and learn more about your business, read an article you’ve written or watch a video. Whether you’re an aspiring or established entrepreneur, the best way to promote your product or service is to combine offline and online marketing.

It’s Time to Take a Fresh Look at Asset Based Lending

There are many misperceptions among CFOs and finance executives when it comes to asset-based lending (ABL). The biggest is that ABL is a financing option of last resort — one that only “desperate” companies that can’t qualify for a traditional bank loan or line of credit would consider.

With the economic downturn and resulting credit crunch of the past few years, though, many companies that might have qualified for more traditional forms of bank financing in the past have instead turned to ABL. And to their surprise, many have found ABL to be a flexible and cost-effective financing tool.

Interview: Ken Wisnefski, Founder of WebiMax, Discusses Some of the Major Shifts in Internet Marketing

In an exclusive interview, Ken Wisnefski, Founder and CEO of WebiMax, talks about some of the major shifts taking place right now in the digital world – such as so-called social-search, Panda and Penguin Algorithm updates that change the game for backlinks, the keys for running successful online marketing campaigns, and so on. He also shares some insights, marketing tips and much more. Enjoy!

10 Tactics for More Traffic Getting Tweets

Twitter is a fun and engaging social network site that was launched in 2006 and has since earned its way into the top ten most visited sites.   With Twitter, you can post short text messages called tweets.  As of 2012 Twitter has over 500 million users and several million tweets are posted per day.  When used properly Twitter can be an effective marketing tool for your business.

5 Brand Development Tips When Blogging

Brand development is a very important component of any strategy looking to gain a competitive edge over other bloggers! In fact if yours is an internet marketing blog, building a brand is all the more important simply because money is now involved! Let's have a quick look at 5 ways bloggers can establish for themselves a competitive edge by building a brand!

Idea Cafe turns Sweet 17! We're also celebrating by giving you a PRESENT

August 15 is a big day here at Idea Cafe!  17 Years Online! Look around and you won't see many other Internet pioneers who started in 1995 that are still around. Now, at the age of seventeen, we are proud to be among the oldest existing small business communities on the internet! All of this thanks to you -- our regulars

Upgrading One's Business Presence

Often augmenting one’s business can be as straightforward as making minor changes to one’s physical location and updating one’s online presence sufficiently to reflect current trends. While many consultants will argue that total makeovers are a necessary step of the modern business landscape, this does not need to be the case. 

If one makes strategic changes that address some of the most mainstream trends, upgrades can be kept to a minimum.