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Ad.ly: The Art of Advertising on Twitter
In the 1980s she was Punky Brewster, the star of a comedy about an orphan. Today, Soleil Moon Frye is a 34-year-old mother of two and a power marketer for Ad.ly, an advertising agency that pays actors, athletes, and musicians to promote products through micromessaging service Twitter. Twitter is testing its own advertising service, which could compete with Ad.ly for the attention of sponsors. Full article.
Biz Tech Expo in Baton Rouge October 6 - 7
Business Report’s 28th annual BizTech Expo is set to for October 6-7 in the Baton Rouge River Center. More than 200 booths will be featured at the two-day event, offering the latest technology, products and services for business owners, executives and entrepreneurs. Cenla Advantage Partnership will have a representative at the event and will post information on new technology and products on cenla.org's website. More information.
Choose the right products and services to offer
Have you thought about opportunity cost as it relates to the products and services you offer within your business? It takes a certain amount of resources (time, money, effort, etc.) to pursue a given product or service, and it is imperative for businesses to choose the products and services that are most likely to guarantee success. Full Article. Similar Article.
Brain Fitness programs increase in popularity
There's another kind of fitness revolution going on, and this one involves your brain! Brain training market products hit $265 million in 2008, a 160 percent increase from 2005, the latest year available, and customers represent older and younger adults. Full Article.
Darwin at Work: Survival of the fittest companies
When you consider all the once-popular products and brands and once-mighty companies that no longer exist and companies that are giants today but were mere embryos a decade or two ago, you realize that many laws of nature also apply to business. To be successful in business, we need to understand a few concepts such as natural selection, artificial selection and conservation. Change is in the nature of progress. In order to survive, you must anticipate change, manage change and master change. Full Article.
Amazon to sell groceries online in U.K.
Amazon is the first name many think of for books and DVDs, but it hopes British shoppers will soon be logging in to load their weekly groceries into its virtual baskets as well. Amazon.co.uk announced that it will launch an online grocery store offering free delivery on household, niche, ethnic and international products. Amazon launched Amazon Fresh in the US in 2007, but limited deliveries to Seattle. This month, the group also started selling food and drinks online through its German site. Full Article.
Twitter gets into E-Commerce
Twitter recently announced @earlybird Exclusive Offers, which will offer time-sensitive deals on products and events. People can follow that account to get access to deals. The idea borrows from private and limited-time sale sites that represent a recent trend in online shopping. Twitter hinted that it could filter deals by category, like apparel or gadgets, in the future, and stressed that it would be selective about which deals were offered. Full Article.
Think and Act Like Your Customers
An innovation-focused company shouldn't have an avoid-the-competition-at-all-costs mindset. Instead, the company should always be wondering what the competition is up to, why might people prefer their products to ours and how does the customer think through purchase-and-use decisions? The simplest form of competitive intelligence is to encourage employees to act like "regular" customers. Full Article.
Dell Considers Going Private
In the three-and-a-half years since he resumed running Dell, the computer maker he founded 26 years ago, Michael S. Dell made acquisitions, cut jobs, and hired executives to put a little flash in company products. When asked if he'd ever thought about taking the company private, Michael Dell replied "Yes.” Full Article.
Are You Pushing In A Pull World?
Consumers have grown accustomed to "pulling" information on products and services from the Internet and various social media programs. The authors of a new book, The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion, offer some practical advice about ways business owners can capitalize on this trend. Some of those practices include "reverse mentoring," a process where, instead of seasoned executives grooming young employees, the process works the other way. Another idea is to have employees who are versed in pull technologies such as social media, could mentor other employees not as familiar with those programs. Full Article.
