advertising

Webmasters and vendors who use viral marketing usually have their different reasons for utilizing it. Some swear by its usefulness and some like it simply because it gets them straight to their focus on market. If you are nevertheless unsure about the advantages of viral advertising and marketing, hold studying.

"Deal-of-the-Day" promotions, such as those offered by Groupon, LivingSocial and others, are gaining momentum among small and mid-sized businesses. It's not unrealistic for them to see hundreds or even thousands of individuals taking advantage of their deal. And this immediate blast of new customers, products and services purchased is what appeal to businesses. In just a few minutes or hours, they can boost profits and get the word out on their business and its offerings. 

Besides, the process looks relatively simple. All is done for you, because the deal-of-the-day providers usually handle most of the things involved in the process: distributing the deals to subscribers, managing and processing the purchases, and providing the appropriate coupons for customers to redeem.

Question: What's the best way to lose potential customers?

Answer: Piss them off.

Yet, that's exactly what many Internet marketers are doing...pissing off potential customers. How? By using disrespectful marketing methods. Unfortunately, there seems to be a pervasion of intrusive and disrespectful marketing on websites across the Internet.

As you may know from our recent updates, we here at WOMbeat! have used the winning proceeds from the Idea Café “Innovation & Originality Grant” to continue updating our website which allows our users to easily share great local recommendations with people they actually know and trust - friends, family and coworkers. Some of you may have already seen many of the new features we have already implemented over the past couple of months.

Online marketing...Email marketing...Blogs...Search engine optimization (or SEO)...Google Adwords...Yellowpages...LinkedIn...Facebook...MySpace...

Do any of these words cause you heartburn? Today, we are fortunate to have so many marketing options, but more options can mean more confusion. But how is a business owner supposed to evaluate which ones are right for their business or the most cost-effective?

The good news keeps on coming...and we owe it all to you! Thanks to Idea Café and our winning their “Innovation & Originality Grant” in January, the interest level in WOMbeat! continues to rise. Just this past week, we learned that WOMbeat! founder, Linda Olson, was honored as one of the “Tampa Bay 100” by Tampa Bay CEO Magazine. You can read the full story here if you like.

Are you one of those business owners who continue to resist “the pressure” from well-meaning friends and peers to join LinkedIn? Maybe you actually signed up once, but are you having a hard time find any value in it? If this sounds like you, you are not alone…but you may be missing out on a very powerful tool. WOMbeat! owes much of its early growth to LinkedIn , so let me share a few of the pearls I found in Linkedin.

Never need to lookup a phone number again

So far, 2009 has been just an amazing year. After winning the Idea Café’s “Innovation & Originality Grant,” we continue to be blessed with so much good news and press. Not only did we make a guest appearance on the CEO Lounge (listen to the program here) in January, but we were also selected to present at Startup Riot 2009 last month in Atlanta, GA (the only company from Florida and the only female presenter selected!).

First of all, let me say how excited we here at WOMbeat! still are over the Idea Café “Innovation & Originality Grant” win. Not only did this win help us see a tremendous growth in traffic to our site, but we continue to get more coverage because of it. In fact, last week we were one of the guests on a talk-radio program called the Ceo Lounge. Listen for yourself here