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

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When your potential clients include your location when searching for your keywords then google shows on top of the regular results also listings from google maps, that’s what we call local search.

If your site offers a local service, like gardening or local products, like a retail store, then it’s very important to make sure your site can be found in local search.