<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?><rss xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:blogger="http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008" xmlns:gd="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005" xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" xmlns:openSearch="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchrss/1.0/" xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0" version="2.0"><channel><atom:id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922</atom:id><lastBuildDate>Wed, 06 Nov 2024 02:53:58 +0000</lastBuildDate><category>business growth</category><category>thinkvault</category><category>business start-up</category><category>entrepreneur</category><category>new business</category><category>visibility</category><category>internet visibility</category><category>business process</category><category>visibility expert</category><category>Sandra Connor</category><category>thinkvisibility</category><category>video</category><category>on-line services</category><category>online business</category><category>sales</category><category>social media</category><category>business video</category><category>money management</category><category>blog</category><category>pricing</category><category>MBE</category><category>Non-Techie Tuesdays</category><category>WBE</category><category>business card</category><category>green solutions</category><category>holiday greetings</category><category>process</category><category>product</category><category>viability</category><category>Certification</category><category>banking</category><category>business type</category><category>contest</category><category>diversity</category><category>experiment</category><category>retirement</category><title>thinkVAULT - Savvy Business Owner Tips</title><description>Checklists, Tips, and Tools to make your business start-up and business growth easier.</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/</link><managingEditor>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</managingEditor><generator>Blogger</generator><openSearch:totalResults>55</openSearch:totalResults><openSearch:startIndex>1</openSearch:startIndex><openSearch:itemsPerPage>25</openSearch:itemsPerPage><language>en-us</language><itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit><itunes:subtitle>Checklists, Tips, and Tools to make your business start-up and business growth easier.</itunes:subtitle><itunes:category text="Business"><itunes:category text="Business News"/></itunes:category><itunes:owner><itunes:email>noreply@blogger.com</itunes:email></itunes:owner><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-8635088992540196230</guid><pubDate>Wed, 15 Dec 2010 18:10:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-12-15T13:10:56.330-05:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business growth</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvisibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility expert</category><title>Visibility Basics: Small Business Marketing with Newspaper Ads</title><description>&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;We revisit the concepts of marketing for maximum visibility in this article by Todd Bates. He explains how newspaper advertising &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; still fit into your strategy. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;Small Business Marketing with Newspaper Ads&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;Author: &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/todd-bates/484370" title="Todd Bates"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;Todd Bates&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;Are you currently running Newspaper Ads? Have you seen that the cost of your ads in print have risen while the results are falling? In the modern era, print mediums are losing millions (some groups billions) of dollars to entrepreneurs moving to marketing their businesses online. Is print media dead?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;Walk by any coffee shop, airport lounge, or newsstand and you will see that print media isn’t dead. Yes, print is struggling, but they still command millions of eyeballs. Millions of people still pick up newspapers daily. The big question is how are you transforming those eyeballs into customers? How are you piquing their interest and getting them to take action?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;Should you fall victim to the ad salesman and be told you need to “run the ad longer” or “buy a bigger ad” you will just be throwing away money. Newspaper ads can work for your business, when you can avoid key mistakes.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;1. &lt;strong&gt;Change Them Quickly&lt;/strong&gt; – The benefit of newspaper ads is they are printed daily. Don’t get sucked in to running the same ad for an entire month. Be nimble and get the ability to change your ad quickly. If your ad doesn’t generate a single call, you don’t have to scrap the entire ad; you might just need a headline change. Remember, when you run internet ads you can change them every hour if you need to, push your newspaper advertising and change as often as you can to find the ad that works.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;2.&lt;strong&gt; Remember&amp;nbsp;the 7% Rule&lt;/strong&gt; – Tragically the newspaper ad salesman isn’t your friend. They will try to use logic like “Just 1 customer and the ad pays for itself”. Last time I checked you aren’t in business to invest $1 and get $1 back, you might as well keep the dollar in your pocket. To keep your marketing and advertising costs down for your business, my 7% rule states that you can only invest 7% in marketing to get a customer. That means that if your average customer is worth $3,000 to you, then you can invest $210 to get that customer. Watch your numbers to keep your costs in-line.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;When you want to get more from your newspaper ads, you can’t do what everyone else is doing. To get results, your ad needs to be different and needs to stick within your marketing budget.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;Article Source: &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/small-business-marketing-with-newspaper-ads-3840300.html" title="Small Business Marketing with Newspaper Ads"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/small-business-marketing-with-newspaper-ads-3840300.html&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;About the Author&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"&gt;As a business and marketing coach he has helped over 15,000 clients in the last 20 years. His dedicated style of 1 on 1 coaching gets business owners and sales professionals the help they need, not like many of the "1 size fits all" programs. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;To this day he is still the only top marketing coach that you can reach on the phone. With over 41 different marketing systems that he has personally developed he matches the personality of his clients to the RIGHT system for maximum success. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/12/visibility-basics-small-business.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-6693426556734132098</guid><pubDate>Thu, 18 Nov 2010 19:17:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-11-18T14:29:59.823-05:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business growth</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">internet visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">new business</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">sales</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><title>The Art of Follow-up in the Science of Visibility</title><description>&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;Some would say that internet visibility, ala web page content and SEO tools, is a science. I would tend to agree.&amp;nbsp; You can certainly measure page hits, calculate analytics, and derive "scores" for what tactics are most effective. But what about the end goal -- connecting with people? &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;Recently, a follow-up e-mail came from a sponsor of an event that I attended. It took a few days for it to cycle through their internal process. I'm sure someone entered all of the contact info into a database. Perhaps someone else formatted the e-mail message in their template. It's also likely that the originator approved the final version before it was sent. This was from the largest law firm in town, ergo they have deeper pockets that many companies. The nature of what they do also lends itself toward a certain attentiveness to minutia.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;Those details aside, when all is said and done, this guy did his follow-up in an impressive way. He thanked us for attending. A link to his PowerPoint presentation was included, along with links to related materials on the company site. Spammer-resistant contact information was there, as well. &lt;i&gt;These folks were &lt;u&gt;thorough&lt;/u&gt;! &lt;/i&gt;If there is any chance of our engaging his firm in the future, he moved at least a little closer to top of mind.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOgKMudMvusqt0zenZ4-tMFziFSIpCBRrvSJU299YhedhYKkUucc5XH22pEHFoNcWjYyagP7PBD7hTyCkB4_G60wD0JWkmwlwD55n9ab31ZIl05f4o-w1Ts9lMZsnrF_26sCutrk37w_I/s1600/Follow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOgKMudMvusqt0zenZ4-tMFziFSIpCBRrvSJU299YhedhYKkUucc5XH22pEHFoNcWjYyagP7PBD7hTyCkB4_G60wD0JWkmwlwD55n9ab31ZIl05f4o-w1Ts9lMZsnrF_26sCutrk37w_I/s320/Follow.jpg" width="320" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;How solid is your follow-up strategy? &lt;/b&gt;Are you building your visibility by remembering the simple things, such as follow-up? Make sure you cover this area. You can be sure that your competition will be.&amp;nbsp; &lt;b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/b&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;A word of advice:&lt;/h3&gt;Get to your follow-up quickly. The snail at the end of the line becomes a meal for creatures higher -- and faster -- in the food chain. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;hr /&gt;&lt;table border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;div style="color: #006500;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;i&gt;This is what we can do for your business&lt;/i&gt; - Help you to get and use the best tools for:  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;     &lt;/div&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Building and maintaining &lt;b&gt;Internet Visibility&lt;/b&gt; for your business. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Channeling that visibility into &lt;b&gt;Online Business revenues&lt;/b&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Measuring and Managing Results&lt;/b&gt; from being visible and online. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;div style="color: #cc0000;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Are any of these familiar?  &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Your website isn't bringing business to your door... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Your e-marketing is expensive and cumbersome... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;You can't measure your results effectively... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;div style="color: #b45f06;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Click this link to&amp;nbsp; &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="mailto:esse@thinkvaulter.com?Subject=Internet%20Visibility%20and%20eBusiness"&gt;Contact us now&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; about solutions for those problems. &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr 3px="" size:="" /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/11/art-of-follow-up-in-science-of.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOgKMudMvusqt0zenZ4-tMFziFSIpCBRrvSJU299YhedhYKkUucc5XH22pEHFoNcWjYyagP7PBD7hTyCkB4_G60wD0JWkmwlwD55n9ab31ZIl05f4o-w1Ts9lMZsnrF_26sCutrk37w_I/s72-c/Follow.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-8750436830237018097</guid><pubDate>Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:15:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-11-18T14:02:04.349-05:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business growth</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvisibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><title>Should You Reinvent the Visibility Wheel?</title><description>&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTq2uBpnaD7qHF9SWdlp9yynTnDbw9FyixWtpsth2te9DVoof454y13Sk4kF9np1wyeutPtcZXC13zVSqXDyXesBF9WkIAhLvukLOYmNwutfnlsGHj8ZIbfIl0Owf0OhzaE8LXmqJuDqQ/s1600/wheel1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTq2uBpnaD7qHF9SWdlp9yynTnDbw9FyixWtpsth2te9DVoof454y13Sk4kF9np1wyeutPtcZXC13zVSqXDyXesBF9WkIAhLvukLOYmNwutfnlsGHj8ZIbfIl0Owf0OhzaE8LXmqJuDqQ/s200/wheel1.jpg" width="200" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;When I was growing up, from time to time my dad used to say "Why reinvent the wheel?" He was most often referring to doing something in a way that is tried and true, i.e.: proven to work.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;When I find a resource or a batch of information that is not just good, but great, I like to share it. Such is the case with the writings of a blogger named Stoney deGeyter.&amp;nbsp; One of his recent posts addresses a topic that is near and dear to most of our hearts - &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="color: #cc0000;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyter/how-to-ensure-your-website-gets-some-act.php"&gt;How to Ensure Your Website Gets Some Action&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;Basically, most websites -- aside from their lack of ability to be &lt;i&gt;found&lt;/i&gt; -- fail to lead people from Points A to B to C, so that they actually &lt;u&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;do&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/u&gt; anything while they're there. Stoney spells out some ways to fix that. Among the suggestions are:&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;Using ACTION words to describe what your business and website are about. and&amp;nbsp;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Setting specific CALLS TO ACTION on the web pages to help drive the results you're looking for.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;If you are wondering why you have not gleaned more sales from the internet, answer a simple question:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;b&gt;Have you asked for the sale?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Take a look. Be objective. What does a visitor see when they arrive at your website?&lt;br /&gt;
You probably don't need a bigger, shinier, fancier Visibility Wheel. You just need one that &lt;i&gt;&lt;u&gt;works&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/i&gt; for your business.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;hr /&gt;&lt;table border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;div style="color: #006500;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;i&gt;This is what we can do for your business&lt;/i&gt; - Help you to get and use the best tools for:  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;     &lt;/div&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Building and maintaining &lt;b&gt;Internet Visibility&lt;/b&gt; for your business. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Channeling that visibility into &lt;b&gt;Online Business revenues&lt;/b&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Measuring and Managing Results&lt;/b&gt; from being visible and online. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;div style="color: #cc0000;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Are any of these familiar?  &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Your website isn't bringing business to your door... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Your e-marketing is expensive and cumbersome... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;You can't measure your results effectively... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;div style="color: #b45f06;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Click this link to &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="mailto:esse@thinkvaulter.com?Subject=Internet%20Visibility%20and%20eBusiness"&gt;Contact us now&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; about solutions for those problems. &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr 3px="" size:="" /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/08/should-you-reinvent-visibility-wheel.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTq2uBpnaD7qHF9SWdlp9yynTnDbw9FyixWtpsth2te9DVoof454y13Sk4kF9np1wyeutPtcZXC13zVSqXDyXesBF9WkIAhLvukLOYmNwutfnlsGHj8ZIbfIl0Owf0OhzaE8LXmqJuDqQ/s72-c/wheel1.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-7271828425501717138</guid><pubDate>Tue, 06 Jul 2010 11:45:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-07-06T07:45:00.470-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business video</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">online business</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvisibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">video</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><title>Business Visibility and Telling a Story</title><description>&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;This post is short. It includes a business-related visibility story in video format.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="color: #cc0000;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;The video is short.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;The point: You don't need a long story to build your online visibility.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;You simply need to tell one... Or a few... Or many...&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;In any case, start the process of telling your story. Otherwise, you remain invisible. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;object height="258" width="400"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/CZb2LCb__h8&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;fs=1?color1=0x234900&amp;amp;color2=0x4e9e00&amp;amp;border=1"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/CZb2LCb__h8&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;fs=1?color1=0x234900&amp;amp;color2=0x4e9e00&amp;amp;border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="258"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;hr /&gt;&lt;table border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;div style="color: #006500;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;i&gt;This is what we can do for your business&lt;/i&gt; - Help you to get and use the best tools for:  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;     &lt;/div&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Building and maintaining &lt;b&gt;Internet Visibility&lt;/b&gt; for your business. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Channeling that visibility into &lt;b&gt;Online Business revenues&lt;/b&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Measuring and Managing Results&lt;/b&gt; from being visible and online. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;div style="color: #cc0000;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Are any of these familiar?  &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Your website isn't bringing business to your door... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Your e-marketing is expensive and cumbersome... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;You can't measure your results effectively... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;div style="color: #b45f06;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Click this link to &amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt; &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="mailto:esse@thinkvaulter.com?Subject=Internet%20Visibility%20and%20eBusiness"&gt;Contact us now&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; about solutions for those problems. &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr 3px="" size:="" /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/07/business-visibility-and-telling-story.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-45821450003855490</guid><pubDate>Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:59:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-07-05T10:53:32.382-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">entrepreneur</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvisibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><title>Visibility and My "Why"</title><description>&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;DMMI Associates LLC turned 5 a few days ago. Those five years have had their ups and downs -- good times and tough times. Ergo, as Year Six gains its footing, I decided to revisit my "why" list. As &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://hubpages.com/profile/Bill+Bartmann"&gt;Bill Bartmann&lt;/a&gt;, Tulsa billionaire wrote in his &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Billbartmannsbusinessstartuptips"&gt;&lt;i style="color: #783f04;"&gt;Why Be in Business for Yourself?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt; article, &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;Entrepreneurs know that there is only one predictable way to become wealthy; you need to take control of your destiny...&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXR6f5zaEgM9ts1EO-pC47M_tp6dpLwGZDU1UwvAFJKhsZ0nh4gbBucUdlQ796aRGqhD2GXOrmmkSf0aho1mDPBkOZNLIAqvanZBSjD3yQ-Ejuv1rX-11y-7EjHs4j4iP2ZevHKN809p0/s1600/MyWhy2010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXR6f5zaEgM9ts1EO-pC47M_tp6dpLwGZDU1UwvAFJKhsZ0nh4gbBucUdlQ796aRGqhD2GXOrmmkSf0aho1mDPBkOZNLIAqvanZBSjD3yQ-Ejuv1rX-11y-7EjHs4j4iP2ZevHKN809p0/s320/MyWhy2010.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Wealth and independence are certainly valid motivators for many small business owners. My why list, though, has another key element that greets me every day. I am responsible for the well-being and guidance of an adolescent child. He's my main WHY.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;b&gt;If you encounter me someday and wonder why I work hard and often push harder: he's why.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
So, to all the parents out there whose why may be a bit fuzzy today: Keep at it, all you Mommy and Daddy Business Owners. Our kids are counting on us. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;hr /&gt;&lt;table border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;div style="color: #006500;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;i&gt;This is what we can do for your business&lt;/i&gt; - Help you to get and use the best tools for:  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;     &lt;/div&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Building and maintaining &lt;b&gt;Internet Visibility&lt;/b&gt; for your business. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Channeling that visibility into &lt;b&gt;Online Business revenues&lt;/b&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Measuring and Managing Results&lt;/b&gt; from being visible and online. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;div style="color: #cc0000;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Are any of these familiar?  &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Your website isn't bringing business to your door... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Your e-marketing is expensive and cumbersome... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;You can't measure your results effectively... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;div style="color: #b45f06;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Click this link to &amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt; &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="mailto:esse@thinkvaulter.com?Subject=Internet%20Visibility%20and%20eBusiness"&gt;Contact us now&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; about solutions for those problems. &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr 3px="" size:="" /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/07/visibility-and-my-why.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXR6f5zaEgM9ts1EO-pC47M_tp6dpLwGZDU1UwvAFJKhsZ0nh4gbBucUdlQ796aRGqhD2GXOrmmkSf0aho1mDPBkOZNLIAqvanZBSjD3yQ-Ejuv1rX-11y-7EjHs4j4iP2ZevHKN809p0/s72-c/MyWhy2010.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-6507697749121295483</guid><pubDate>Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:22:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-06-24T13:26:29.516-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">internet visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">online business</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvisibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><title>Visibility? Show Me.</title><description>&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;Last week, I wrote a blog entry titled "&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/06/visibility-on-world-wide-web.html"&gt;Visibility on the World Wide Web&lt;/a&gt;" &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
It had some facts and figures &lt;i&gt;(yawn)&lt;/i&gt; -- all intended to make a good case for Internet Visibility for your business. The catch is though, &lt;b&gt;if you found your way to this blog, you probably already understand that visibility is important.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Over the last several months, I've told you about various Why's, What's, and How's relative to building your business visibility. Ultimately, that should lead to profitability -- a concept that I was first introduced to by &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://hazelmwalker.com/"&gt;Hazel Walker&lt;/a&gt; of the &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.referralinstitute.com/franchise/index.php?fe=0079c975d&amp;amp;SessionID=064fe7bc3b1537378039f9553bbd71f8"&gt;Referral Institute&lt;/a&gt; in Indianapolis, Indiana. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The missing piece, however, has been the &lt;b style="color: #274e13;"&gt;"Show Me"&lt;/b&gt; part. A lot of people claim to be able to do something. This is especially true now that Social Media is deemed hot. Very few folks &lt;i&gt;show you.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;b&gt;So, here's what you will have a chance to see:&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk8oYgyPKzfXy24BD2Jx36JRA1t7r59dD9ZGIwH8iOsIzywASJBCVI4409kNEL3bQFMWdaeCPqVra1K5tOQ0aqjaDfcy9p5KtQK-IpOoFtlz5fJc4DycIO6gWccxr4nPlfnp3SVMpdvfs/s1600/Visibility_Recipe_33.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk8oYgyPKzfXy24BD2Jx36JRA1t7r59dD9ZGIwH8iOsIzywASJBCVI4409kNEL3bQFMWdaeCPqVra1K5tOQ0aqjaDfcy9p5KtQK-IpOoFtlz5fJc4DycIO6gWccxr4nPlfnp3SVMpdvfs/s200/Visibility_Recipe_33.jpg" width="200" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Starting today, I'm demonstrating the Visibility Recipe in the real e-World. &lt;br /&gt;
I'll be using the tools that I've talked about on this blog and other social media sites. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Step One is the Website. It will be the &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://showmevisibility.imgonlinebusiness.com/"&gt;Show Me Visibility&lt;/a&gt; site.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;The recipe preparation will continue from there.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;As of this posting date and time, the site is a "shell" of sorts, ready to be filled. You are invited to watch its evolution.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;b&gt;Be advised: &lt;/b&gt;The site is meant to both demonstrate and market thinkVAULT's visibility services. Therefore, be forewarned. I intend for it to attract business owners who need the solutions we offer.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="color: #cc0000;"&gt;There will be some elements of fun, too. So, enjoy!&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;table border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;div style="color: #006500;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;i&gt;This is what we can do for your business&lt;/i&gt; - Help you to get and use the best tools for:  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;     &lt;/div&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Building and maintaining &lt;b&gt;Internet Visibility&lt;/b&gt; for your business. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Channeling that visibility into &lt;b&gt;Online Business&lt;/b&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Measuring and Managing Results&lt;/b&gt; from being visible and online. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;div style="color: #cc0000;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Are any of these familiar?  &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Your website isn't bringing business to your door... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Your e-marketing is expensive and cumbersome... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;You can't measure your results effectively... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;div style="color: #b45f06;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Click this link to &amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt; &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="mailto:esse@thinkvaulter.com?Subject=Internet%20Visibility%20and%20eBusiness"&gt;Contact us now&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; about solutions for those problems. &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr 3px="" size:="" /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/06/last-week-i-wrote-blog-entry-titled.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk8oYgyPKzfXy24BD2Jx36JRA1t7r59dD9ZGIwH8iOsIzywASJBCVI4409kNEL3bQFMWdaeCPqVra1K5tOQ0aqjaDfcy9p5KtQK-IpOoFtlz5fJc4DycIO6gWccxr4nPlfnp3SVMpdvfs/s72-c/Visibility_Recipe_33.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-6519207889107631328</guid><pubDate>Mon, 21 Jun 2010 13:00:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-06-24T12:25:03.541-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business growth</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">internet visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">online business</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvisibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><title>Million Dollar Website</title><description>&lt;div style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;Million Dollar Website?! &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;What website could cost a million dollars? &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;Truthfully – anyone’s. A small business website that merely sits idly on the internet, with little or no traffic, will cost its owner about &lt;i style="color: #006500;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;one million dollars&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; in lost business.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;In fact, a business without even a simple &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="color: #444444;"&gt;Internet Visibility Strategy&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt; is missing opportunities to capture prospective customers every day! &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;There is a solution to this widespread problem, however. An Internet Visibility Strategy can solve it. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;Whether your company is in the market for outside help, or not, some basic tenets remain true.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;If you would like to see and hear them, please set aside 5 to 7 minutes to review this web page: &lt;a href="http://bit.ly/OYN0622" rel="http://bit.ly/plugins/iframe?hashUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2FOYN0622"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Click here&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;You may contact us from there, if you'd like to know more or engage us for help. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: small;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;table border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;div style="color: #006500;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;i&gt;This is what we can do for your business&lt;/i&gt; - Help you to get and use the best tools for:  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;     &lt;/div&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Building and maintaining &lt;b&gt;Internet Visibility&lt;/b&gt; for your business. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Channeling that visibility into &lt;b&gt;Online Business&lt;/b&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Measuring and Managing Results&lt;/b&gt; from being visible and online. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;div style="color: #cc0000;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Are any of these familiar?  &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Your website isn't bringing business to your door... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Your e-marketing is expensive and cumbersome... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;You can't measure your results effectively... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;div style="color: #b45f06;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Click this link to &amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt; &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="mailto:esse@thinkvaulter.com?Subject=Internet%20Visibility%20and%20eBusiness"&gt;Contact us now&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; about solutions for those problems. &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr 3px="" size:="" /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/06/million-dollar-website.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-7235314901730846957</guid><pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:02:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-06-16T10:02:02.176-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business growth</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">internet visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">online business</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvisibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><title>Visibility on the World Wide Web</title><description>&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;What exactly constitutes "web presence" and visibility on the World Wide Web? The mere fact that it is world wide presents both opportunity and potential obscurity!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Estimates from various sources revealed these numbers:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuJzc-uefpaeKvPCjbo-cMEUVRpLEWe0yxbns_YZnV7MeL4za8H5KQU4Ye0Eko0CMEeB3ptppEx1UWIG9wsjV4heRST0-JrBhOOBihJKbqLG4P-B3zHjuinuZVNA5E29xuvWl6yxcvRgE/s1600/site_count_history_May2010.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuJzc-uefpaeKvPCjbo-cMEUVRpLEWe0yxbns_YZnV7MeL4za8H5KQU4Ye0Eko0CMEeB3ptppEx1UWIG9wsjV4heRST0-JrBhOOBihJKbqLG4P-B3zHjuinuZVNA5E29xuvWl6yxcvRgE/s320/site_count_history_May2010.png" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Active registered domain names = 80 million. &lt;br /&gt;
This represents exponential growth over the last 5 years. &lt;i&gt;Source: &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://news.netcraft.com/archives/category/web-server-survey/" target="_blank"&gt;Netcraft&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt; As of November 2009 - over 20 BILLION web pages were being indexed by Google and Yahoo! &lt;i&gt;Source: &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_web_sites_are_there_in_the_World_Wide_Web" target="_blank"&gt;Answers.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;The number of unique URLs, i.e.: the addresses to your&lt;i&gt; &lt;/i&gt;web pages and other sites, now exceeds 1 TRILLION -- yes, a 1 followed by 12 zeroes. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;div style="color: #006500;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;Is it any wonder that web surfers may be a bit challenged to find your website? The odds are quickly turning against you. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;div style="color: #006500;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWjJaonJHN3KNyIiAc_JvNbmHd4GZu0IfoR8n878uzc3-muFut6FvrrFYVB7ykdXwfT2oyS698PJ3fFJyPTpqT1jvyjrCOENjKlkYtPxNewO34yyIpgFB-P0RdPVVHji1EpD_a-CVvxMo/s1600/Google_flower_shops.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWjJaonJHN3KNyIiAc_JvNbmHd4GZu0IfoR8n878uzc3-muFut6FvrrFYVB7ykdXwfT2oyS698PJ3fFJyPTpqT1jvyjrCOENjKlkYtPxNewO34yyIpgFB-P0RdPVVHji1EpD_a-CVvxMo/s320/Google_flower_shops.JPG" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Let's say that you own a flower shop and you put up a website. &lt;i&gt;You sit back and wait for the phone to ring...&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;b style="color: #990000;"&gt;But wait -- how will your website and your flower shop be found among the 11 million plus search results?&lt;/b&gt; &lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;Click the image to see a larger version.&lt;/span&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="color: #006500;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;Just how do you build a strategy to be found among the millions of possibilities?&lt;/span&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;b&gt;That &lt;i&gt;&lt;u&gt;is&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/i&gt; in fact the key: you must have a strategy. &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
That strategy begins with knowing your market and understanding it better than any of your competitors. Beginning there will help you to refine your market niche.&lt;br /&gt;
Once you know your market niche, &lt;b&gt;the who to and what you sell&lt;/b&gt;, it becomes more clear how to target that market. Zero in on that target. Then you can create and tune your website to serve both it and your bottom line.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;To help you answer the key questions for defining your niche, see this article from Entrepreneur.com on how to narrow your &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/term/82498.html"&gt;Target Market&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;table border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;div style="color: #006500;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;i&gt;This is what we can do for your business&lt;/i&gt; - Help you to get and use the best tools for:  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;     &lt;/div&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Building and maintaining &lt;b&gt;Internet Visibility&lt;/b&gt; for your business. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Channeling that visibility into &lt;b&gt;Online Business&lt;/b&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Measuring and Managing Results&lt;/b&gt; from being visible and online. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;div style="color: #cc0000;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Are any of these familiar?  &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Your website isn't bringing business to your door... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Your e-marketing is expensive and cumbersome... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;You can't measure your results effectively... &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;div style="color: #b45f06;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Click this link to &amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt; &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="mailto:esse@thinkvaulter.com?Subject=Internet%20Visibility%20and%20eBusiness"&gt;Contact us now&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; about solutions for those problems. &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr 3px="" size:="" /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/06/visibility-on-world-wide-web.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuJzc-uefpaeKvPCjbo-cMEUVRpLEWe0yxbns_YZnV7MeL4za8H5KQU4Ye0Eko0CMEeB3ptppEx1UWIG9wsjV4heRST0-JrBhOOBihJKbqLG4P-B3zHjuinuZVNA5E29xuvWl6yxcvRgE/s72-c/site_count_history_May2010.png" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-9075207162189444894</guid><pubDate>Sat, 12 Jun 2010 17:37:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-06-12T13:40:46.064-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business start-up</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">entrepreneur</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">Sandra Connor</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><title>Raising Queens and Successful Business Owners</title><description>&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibo0iBBEJTJ6RLywtcnxedJ77b_rxOUL6t87i8y-YGmbBG5vgxNXgwEWpzDkg7OnEXoXhtN5S_7Xx4wbzEI6PU8qz-l4IQT578kr-LKCHgAkMxKK1elC8os1TlL1L-hBWjvhQzXj9hrYA/s1600/RaisingQueens.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibo0iBBEJTJ6RLywtcnxedJ77b_rxOUL6t87i8y-YGmbBG5vgxNXgwEWpzDkg7OnEXoXhtN5S_7Xx4wbzEI6PU8qz-l4IQT578kr-LKCHgAkMxKK1elC8os1TlL1L-hBWjvhQzXj9hrYA/s320/RaisingQueens.JPG" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"&gt;My friend and business colleague, Cynthia Newman, has just published a book. It's titled &lt;u&gt;Raising Queens&lt;/u&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The opportunity to help her to plug it notwithstanding, the theme also sparked my thinking. &lt;b&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;b&gt;The same values that we should be teaching our daughters and girls about success in life, also apply to success in business.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Excellence&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Ethics&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Esteem&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;None of these "3 E" values have changed over many milenia. Congratulations, Cynthia on bringing the message to the masses. Here's to making it a best seller.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;i&gt;Read about the book on Cynthia's &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.cnewinspiration.com/"&gt;promotional website&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;div style="color: #006500;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;i&gt;Cynthia's first book signing is &lt;b&gt;Sunday, June 13, 2010&lt;/b&gt; from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Indy Arts Center in Broad Ripple. 820 East 67th Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46220. &lt;/i&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr 3px="" size:="" /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/06/raising-queens-and-successful-business.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibo0iBBEJTJ6RLywtcnxedJ77b_rxOUL6t87i8y-YGmbBG5vgxNXgwEWpzDkg7OnEXoXhtN5S_7Xx4wbzEI6PU8qz-l4IQT578kr-LKCHgAkMxKK1elC8os1TlL1L-hBWjvhQzXj9hrYA/s72-c/RaisingQueens.JPG" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-8909635044368031705</guid><pubDate>Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:47:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-06-09T17:47:36.246-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business video</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">internet visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">online business</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><title>The 3 Ingredients of Web Presence for Online Business</title><description>&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;A solid web presence is the lifeblood of any online business. The internet is without a doubt the great frontier of playing field leveling. It doesn't take Fortune 500 sized marketing budgets to make an impact. Yet, this wondrous internet frontier is so vast, with so many ways to navigate it, that a lot of business owners are overwhelmed by the whole idea of doing business online.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;div style="color: #006500;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;One fact cannot be ignored however: &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;i&gt;If you miss the Internet Roll Call, you will miss any and all opportunities that could come your way through web channels.&lt;/i&gt; &lt;b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
You must be &lt;u&gt;PRESENT&lt;/u&gt;!&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;I suppose it doesn't hurt to be big and unmistakeably present, like Sweetums in the Muppet Roll Call below. But what if your business is small? What if your "crew" is just a few? &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Take heart. There are just three key ingredients to having a meaningful web presence. The best news is this: Unlike in years past, when high quality would cost you a high price, your budget is just another factor and not a features-limiting restriction. &lt;b&gt;You can do a lot with whatever you have. &lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;The Web Presence Ingredients are these...&lt;/h2&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Definitely purchase a domain name and build a website. &lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
It does not have to be fancy. Your website should represent you well, however. Load it with content that helps or informs your prospects -- even if they are not quite ready to buy from you now.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Start a blog and write regular blog posts.&lt;/b&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
Blog entries can be short; in fact, they were meant to be brief (just like this one).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Find a way to add video content to your pages. &lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
You can embed other people's videos, from You Tube or other sources, like I've done here. &lt;br /&gt;
Better yet, find a way to include video content about your company and what you offer. Tell stories about how you add value to your customers' lives and businesses.&lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt; &lt;span style="color: #cc0000;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
See 'Lucy's Story' near the end of this post.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;object height="385" width="480"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/HOa_YMOzEGQ&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/HOa_YMOzEGQ&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2I71kA4Q6dOtBQm0eCT0ef1Aq5667U63xfKpP3wxxPbnEI19p1jyPXd2tHhqkul5lAjNAmnpAn2MO8KLjNA9oQOcSz5vftzZZg-eN81K4l6_w722igjvNjHVkbQsM33ROt0aT8DuB_RU/s1600/Visibility_15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2I71kA4Q6dOtBQm0eCT0ef1Aq5667U63xfKpP3wxxPbnEI19p1jyPXd2tHhqkul5lAjNAmnpAn2MO8KLjNA9oQOcSz5vftzZZg-eN81K4l6_w722igjvNjHVkbQsM33ROt0aT8DuB_RU/s320/Visibility_15.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;Be VISIBLE.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;div style="color: #006500;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;This short video shows you what our partners at &lt;b style="color: #073763;"&gt;IMG Online Business&lt;/b&gt; can do for you and your crew. Click on the &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://imgonlinebusiness.com/"&gt;live link&lt;/a&gt; at the end if you would like to try it for yourself. A 30-day trial can be had for the low price of: FREE. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;b&gt;By the way, if you need help getting set up, just &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://imgonlinebusiness.com/let_us_know"&gt;let us know&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;object height="354" id="player" width="425"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.authorstream.com/player/player.swf?p=411242_634116900385263750" /&gt;&lt;param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /&gt;&lt;param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.authorstream.com/player/player.swf?p=411242_634116900385263750" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="354"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr 3px="" size:="" /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/06/3-ingredients-of-web-presence-for.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2I71kA4Q6dOtBQm0eCT0ef1Aq5667U63xfKpP3wxxPbnEI19p1jyPXd2tHhqkul5lAjNAmnpAn2MO8KLjNA9oQOcSz5vftzZZg-eN81K4l6_w722igjvNjHVkbQsM33ROt0aT8DuB_RU/s72-c/Visibility_15.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total><enclosure length="152265" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" url="http://www.authorstream.com/player/player.swf?p=411242_634116900385263750"/><itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit><itunes:subtitle>A solid web presence is the lifeblood of any online business. The internet is without a doubt the great frontier of playing field leveling. It doesn't take Fortune 500 sized marketing budgets to make an impact. Yet, this wondrous internet frontier is so vast, with so many ways to navigate it, that a lot of business owners are overwhelmed by the whole idea of doing business online. One fact cannot be ignored however: If you miss the Internet Roll Call, you will miss any and all opportunities that could come your way through web channels. You must be PRESENT!I suppose it doesn't hurt to be big and unmistakeably present, like Sweetums in the Muppet Roll Call below. But what if your business is small? What if your "crew" is just a few? Take heart. There are just three key ingredients to having a meaningful web presence. The best news is this: Unlike in years past, when high quality would cost you a high price, your budget is just another factor and not a features-limiting restriction. You can do a lot with whatever you have. The Web Presence Ingredients are these...Definitely purchase a domain name and build a website. It does not have to be fancy. Your website should represent you well, however. Load it with content that helps or informs your prospects -- even if they are not quite ready to buy from you now.&amp;nbsp; Start a blog and write regular blog posts. Blog entries can be short; in fact, they were meant to be brief (just like this one).&amp;nbsp; Find a way to add video content to your pages. You can embed other people's videos, from You Tube or other sources, like I've done here. Better yet, find a way to include video content about your company and what you offer. Tell stories about how you add value to your customers' lives and businesses. See 'Lucy's Story' near the end of this post. Be VISIBLE. This short video shows you what our partners at IMG Online Business can do for you and your crew. Click on the live link at the end if you would like to try it for yourself. A 30-day trial can be had for the low price of: FREE. By the way, if you need help getting set up, just let us know. © 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved</itunes:subtitle><itunes:author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</itunes:author><itunes:summary>A solid web presence is the lifeblood of any online business. The internet is without a doubt the great frontier of playing field leveling. It doesn't take Fortune 500 sized marketing budgets to make an impact. Yet, this wondrous internet frontier is so vast, with so many ways to navigate it, that a lot of business owners are overwhelmed by the whole idea of doing business online. One fact cannot be ignored however: If you miss the Internet Roll Call, you will miss any and all opportunities that could come your way through web channels. You must be PRESENT!I suppose it doesn't hurt to be big and unmistakeably present, like Sweetums in the Muppet Roll Call below. But what if your business is small? What if your "crew" is just a few? Take heart. There are just three key ingredients to having a meaningful web presence. The best news is this: Unlike in years past, when high quality would cost you a high price, your budget is just another factor and not a features-limiting restriction. You can do a lot with whatever you have. The Web Presence Ingredients are these...Definitely purchase a domain name and build a website. It does not have to be fancy. Your website should represent you well, however. Load it with content that helps or informs your prospects -- even if they are not quite ready to buy from you now.&amp;nbsp; Start a blog and write regular blog posts. Blog entries can be short; in fact, they were meant to be brief (just like this one).&amp;nbsp; Find a way to add video content to your pages. You can embed other people's videos, from You Tube or other sources, like I've done here. Better yet, find a way to include video content about your company and what you offer. Tell stories about how you add value to your customers' lives and businesses. See 'Lucy's Story' near the end of this post. Be VISIBLE. This short video shows you what our partners at IMG Online Business can do for you and your crew. Click on the live link at the end if you would like to try it for yourself. A 30-day trial can be had for the low price of: FREE. By the way, if you need help getting set up, just let us know. © 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved</itunes:summary><itunes:keywords>business video, internet visibility, online business, thinkvault, visibility</itunes:keywords></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-2540741098735079940</guid><pubDate>Mon, 24 May 2010 14:18:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-05-24T10:29:29.486-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business growth</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">internet visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">on-line services</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><title>Working Way Too Hard at Visibility</title><description>&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2I71kA4Q6dOtBQm0eCT0ef1Aq5667U63xfKpP3wxxPbnEI19p1jyPXd2tHhqkul5lAjNAmnpAn2MO8KLjNA9oQOcSz5vftzZZg-eN81K4l6_w722igjvNjHVkbQsM33ROt0aT8DuB_RU/s1600/Visibility_15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2I71kA4Q6dOtBQm0eCT0ef1Aq5667U63xfKpP3wxxPbnEI19p1jyPXd2tHhqkul5lAjNAmnpAn2MO8KLjNA9oQOcSz5vftzZZg-eN81K4l6_w722igjvNjHVkbQsM33ROt0aT8DuB_RU/s320/Visibility_15.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Internet visibility can be a challenge. Keeping web pages updated and dynamic, so that the search engines are happy, can be a full-time job. Just ask any webmaster.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Yet, the solution is more multi-faceted than merely hiring someone to maintain your website. You could probably do a better job of that yourself anyway; you know what you want to say, need to say, and when it needs to be said. All you really need are the tools to get it done.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="color: #cc0000;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Case in point: &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Earlier today, I visited a website. On the home page, an event was advertised. In all fairness, the event was coming up within a few days. &lt;i&gt;HOWEVER...&lt;/i&gt; &lt;span style="color: #990000;"&gt;The &lt;/span&gt;&lt;u style="color: #990000;"&gt;Early Bird&lt;/u&gt;&lt;span style="color: #990000;"&gt;, discounted price deadline had already passed.&lt;/span&gt; Since I know the folks fairly well, it's guaranteed that their intention was not to rub this fact into anyone's face. &lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Wouldn't it have been nice for them to have an announcement -- or even an entire page -- that &lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;expired after the deadline date?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Our on-line business partners at IMG have just such a solution. Their web business tool does that and much more.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;div style="color: #006500;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;This short video highlights a few features for you. Click on the &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://imgonlinebusiness.com/"&gt;live link&lt;/a&gt; at the end if you would like to try it for yourself. It's free. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;b&gt;By the way, if you need help getting set up, just &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://imgonlinebusiness.com/let_us_know"&gt;let us know&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;object height="354" id="player" width="425"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.authorstream.com/player/player.swf?p=332305_634025183744272500" /&gt;&lt;param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /&gt;&lt;param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.authorstream.com/player/player.swf?p=332305_634025183744272500" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="354"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr 3px="" size:="" /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/05/working-way-too-hard-at-visibility.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2I71kA4Q6dOtBQm0eCT0ef1Aq5667U63xfKpP3wxxPbnEI19p1jyPXd2tHhqkul5lAjNAmnpAn2MO8KLjNA9oQOcSz5vftzZZg-eN81K4l6_w722igjvNjHVkbQsM33ROt0aT8DuB_RU/s72-c/Visibility_15.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total><enclosure length="152265" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" url="http://www.authorstream.com/player/player.swf?p=332305_634025183744272500"/><itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit><itunes:subtitle>Internet visibility can be a challenge. Keeping web pages updated and dynamic, so that the search engines are happy, can be a full-time job. Just ask any webmaster. Yet, the solution is more multi-faceted than merely hiring someone to maintain your website. You could probably do a better job of that yourself anyway; you know what you want to say, need to say, and when it needs to be said. All you really need are the tools to get it done. Case in point: Earlier today, I visited a website. On the home page, an event was advertised. In all fairness, the event was coming up within a few days. HOWEVER... The Early Bird, discounted price deadline had already passed. Since I know the folks fairly well, it's guaranteed that their intention was not to rub this fact into anyone's face. &amp;nbsp; Wouldn't it have been nice for them to have an announcement -- or even an entire page -- that expired after the deadline date? Our on-line business partners at IMG have just such a solution. Their web business tool does that and much more.This short video highlights a few features for you. Click on the live link at the end if you would like to try it for yourself. It's free. By the way, if you need help getting set up, just let us know. © 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved</itunes:subtitle><itunes:author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</itunes:author><itunes:summary>Internet visibility can be a challenge. Keeping web pages updated and dynamic, so that the search engines are happy, can be a full-time job. Just ask any webmaster. Yet, the solution is more multi-faceted than merely hiring someone to maintain your website. You could probably do a better job of that yourself anyway; you know what you want to say, need to say, and when it needs to be said. All you really need are the tools to get it done. Case in point: Earlier today, I visited a website. On the home page, an event was advertised. In all fairness, the event was coming up within a few days. HOWEVER... The Early Bird, discounted price deadline had already passed. Since I know the folks fairly well, it's guaranteed that their intention was not to rub this fact into anyone's face. &amp;nbsp; Wouldn't it have been nice for them to have an announcement -- or even an entire page -- that expired after the deadline date? Our on-line business partners at IMG have just such a solution. Their web business tool does that and much more.This short video highlights a few features for you. Click on the live link at the end if you would like to try it for yourself. It's free. By the way, if you need help getting set up, just let us know. © 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved</itunes:summary><itunes:keywords>business growth, internet visibility, on-line services, thinkvault, visibility</itunes:keywords></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-4609359738514771718</guid><pubDate>Wed, 12 May 2010 05:03:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-05-12T01:06:42.798-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business growth</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business video</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">internet visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">video</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility expert</category><title>Wacky Webcast Wednesday: Visibility in Action</title><description>&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: xx-small;"&gt;indianapolis new air conditioner, new air conditioner indianapolis, air conditioner, air conditioning, central air conditioner&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #005500; font-size: medium;"&gt;Business Visibility in Action&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;This post is part of a theorem proof. You remember those -- from high school geometry? Every so often, you must test and prove a theory in business, as well.&amp;nbsp;Welcome to my world.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;Stay tuned... literally and figuratively. This video is just over a minute long, if you want to take a look. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;object height="354" id="player" width="515"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.authorstream.com/player/player.swf?p=389246_634091283878520000" /&gt;&lt;param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /&gt;&lt;param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.authorstream.com/player/player.swf?p=389246_634091283878520000" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="354"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;b style="color: #222222;"&gt;Comments are welcome. You are invited to share your thoughts. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="color: #005500;"&gt;Remember, part of our focus is your business visibility. So, if you need help being more visible to your target market, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" body="I'd%20like%20to%20know%20how%20thinkVAULT%20can%20help%20me%20with%20being%20more%20visible." href="mailto:info-1@thinkvaulter.com?Subject=I%20Need%20More%20Business%20Visibility" style="color: #005500;"&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color: #274e13;"&gt; and we can get started on solutions targeted just for you! &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr 3px="" size:="" /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/05/wacky-webcast-wednesday-visibility-in.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><thr:total>0</thr:total><enclosure length="152265" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" url="http://www.authorstream.com/player/player.swf?p=389246_634091283878520000"/><itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit><itunes:subtitle>indianapolis new air conditioner, new air conditioner indianapolis, air conditioner, air conditioning, central air conditioner Business Visibility in Action&amp;nbsp; This post is part of a theorem proof. You remember those -- from high school geometry? Every so often, you must test and prove a theory in business, as well.&amp;nbsp;Welcome to my world. Stay tuned... literally and figuratively. This video is just over a minute long, if you want to take a look. Comments are welcome. You are invited to share your thoughts. Remember, part of our focus is your business visibility. So, if you need help being more visible to your target market, click here and we can get started on solutions targeted just for you! © 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved</itunes:subtitle><itunes:author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</itunes:author><itunes:summary>indianapolis new air conditioner, new air conditioner indianapolis, air conditioner, air conditioning, central air conditioner Business Visibility in Action&amp;nbsp; This post is part of a theorem proof. You remember those -- from high school geometry? Every so often, you must test and prove a theory in business, as well.&amp;nbsp;Welcome to my world. Stay tuned... literally and figuratively. This video is just over a minute long, if you want to take a look. Comments are welcome. You are invited to share your thoughts. Remember, part of our focus is your business visibility. So, if you need help being more visible to your target market, click here and we can get started on solutions targeted just for you! © 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved</itunes:summary><itunes:keywords>business growth, business video, internet visibility, thinkvault, video, visibility, visibility expert</itunes:keywords></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-7511754203953806402</guid><pubDate>Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:52:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-04-30T11:52:43.355-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">blog</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business growth</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business process</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business start-up</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">entrepreneur</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">new business</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">viability</category><title>Fearless Five Fridays: Be Brave Enough to Ask "Why"</title><description>&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #005500; font-size: medium;"&gt;Children ask "Why" much more often than adults. &lt;b&gt;Why is that?&lt;/b&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;If you are a parent, or you can remember back to when you were a toddler, the word &lt;b&gt;why&lt;/b&gt; weaves its way into many conversations. Children are not afraid to ask "Why." That's how they learn. The logic and nuances behind our decisions dictate why. Children -- little sponges that they are -- seek to understand our why. They should; otherwise they grow up to be automatons, blindly following directions and orders.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;Today, I'm asking you to begin asking yourself "why" more often. When we learned the 5 W's in language arts class, "why" is usually last in the list: who, what, when, where, &lt;b&gt;why.&lt;/b&gt; Let's shift that order and make it first. Starting with why can help you to answer the other four more quickly and effectively, from a business perspective. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why"&gt;Wikepedia&lt;/a&gt; simply suggests the word is a "request for an evidential reason." Evidence: the facts, preferably persuasive, that support the reason for doing something. Stopping to ask yourself "Why" is a way onto the path of continuous improvement - a necessary ingredient to stabilizing and growing your business.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;Instead of overwhelming you with the hundreds of "why" questions business owners could or should ask of themselves, in this periodic series I will pose specific "why" queries you may wish to consider. How you answer this first one, and what action you decide to take, can help you better manage your time. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;BONUS: For parents -- here is a &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://whyfiles.org/"&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; to answer some of the thousands of science-related "why" questions you hear from your little ones. And yes, you can search for "&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://whyfiles.org/071questions/"&gt;why is the sky blue&lt;/a&gt;" on &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://whyfiles.org/"&gt;&lt;b&gt;The Why Files&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Mmn2nXLYF6_ny6YI7dZJPZ1RxoJx8XKUd4ojICISsGWrF9_xZAay04qq6ySx6viObZ6zhOvNQOlUlBK23Sl_qwhEHD9ieeWvWYo2pR3ENyCkLq6Dc9kwb7XBvM7KCm-lFSdTudWmens/s1600/Why1_20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Mmn2nXLYF6_ny6YI7dZJPZ1RxoJx8XKUd4ojICISsGWrF9_xZAay04qq6ySx6viObZ6zhOvNQOlUlBK23Sl_qwhEHD9ieeWvWYo2pR3ENyCkLq6Dc9kwb7XBvM7KCm-lFSdTudWmens/s320/Why1_20.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #660000;"&gt;Why do we check and read e-mail so often during the day?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #660000;"&gt;Understand, I am not suggesting that you &lt;i&gt;ignore&lt;/i&gt; your e-mail. Consider, however, the &lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;amount of time&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; you spend on it. More and more of our in-boxes are filled with &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacn_%28electronic%29"&gt;Bacn&lt;/a&gt; that we want and don't get to, versus Spam that we don't want.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #660000;"&gt;Time management experts suggest that we schedule e-mail reading appointments, just like we (should) do everything else during the day.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Let a &lt;b&gt;valid Why&lt;/b&gt; drive how you schedule even a seemingly harmless task like responding to e-mail. If it's related to generating revenues, preserving a client relationship, or building relationships into revenues: Go for it! &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;table border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;It's easy to let time just drift by, reading and responding to e-mail that really is not urgent. Set up e-mail "appointments" during your work day -- and stick to it!&lt;/span&gt;  &lt;/span&gt;                             &lt;/span&gt;                                
&lt;div style="text-align: right;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niche_market"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;hr /&gt;&lt;b&gt;See also these suggestions on &lt;a href="http://bit.ly/anGVAp" rel="http://bit.ly/plugins/iframe?hashUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2FanGVAp"&gt;How to Give Your Inbox a Master Cleanse&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/b&gt;published on Mashable.com. Even the Bacn must be handled eventually; the article spells out some ways to help you do that.&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
If your time spent on e-mail is eating into your business-building time, start shifting your focus. Box it into time slots and don't let it creep outside them. You'll begin to see results in other areas of your business life. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;b style="color: #222222;"&gt;Comments are welcome. You are invited to share your thoughts. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="color: #005500;"&gt;Remember, part of our focus is your business visibility. So, if you need help being more visible to your target market, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" body="I'd%20like%20to%20know%20how%20thinkVAULT%20can%20help%20me%20with%20being%20more%20visible." href="mailto:info-1@thinkvaulter.com?Subject=I%20Need%20More%20Business%20Visibility" style="color: #005500;"&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color: #274e13;"&gt; and we can get started on solutions targeted just for you! &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt; &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr 3px="" size:="" /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/04/fearless-five-fridays-be-brave-enough.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Mmn2nXLYF6_ny6YI7dZJPZ1RxoJx8XKUd4ojICISsGWrF9_xZAay04qq6ySx6viObZ6zhOvNQOlUlBK23Sl_qwhEHD9ieeWvWYo2pR3ENyCkLq6Dc9kwb7XBvM7KCm-lFSdTudWmens/s72-c/Why1_20.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-5550594782005403150</guid><pubDate>Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:00:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-05-02T16:31:11.175-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business growth</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business process</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">internet visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">social media</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility expert</category><title>Visibility - Market Targeting with 140 Characters</title><description>&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #005500; font-size: medium;"&gt;Twitter began their "Promoted Tweets" Program this week. &lt;br /&gt;
Should you care about that? Maybe... &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;If you have a set of target markets defined, along with strategies to reach them that include on-line Social Media tools, then &lt;b&gt;yes&lt;/b&gt;, you should probably care about that.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;If you have carved at least one specialized niche from your market&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;(see this &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/04/manage-your-money-monday-niche-focused.html"&gt;related post&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/i&gt;, then you may find the possibilities intriguing. Niche marketers will find many creative ways to use this new service as time progresses.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;This example was found on &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://mashable.com/"&gt;Mashable.com&lt;/a&gt; --&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAgdO2OJ8mYGUa7cz9rDFcl6DNBrQ77YhW7BdKHigBs5fthJInEbqwydXWM38iQxCRAlvhCugokjKPiegL3h1RrjGJaQn5FL949XtotZjIJc491u4NOrL6OATPux_RwoAMdLabNT9tNXA/s1600/virgin-america_cabin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAgdO2OJ8mYGUa7cz9rDFcl6DNBrQ77YhW7BdKHigBs5fthJInEbqwydXWM38iQxCRAlvhCugokjKPiegL3h1RrjGJaQn5FL949XtotZjIJc491u4NOrL6OATPux_RwoAMdLabNT9tNXA/s320/virgin-america_cabin.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #660000;"&gt;"Take Virgin America for instance. The Twitter-savvy brand wasted no time targeting Promoted Tweets toward their in-flight WiFi customers. On launch, the company put out three distinct tweets that they then promoted with carefully crafted keywords. Two of the tweets were meant to engage just their passengers at 35,000 feet. Just imagine how cool it would be to fly Virgin America and uncover a tweet that was meant just for you. That’s the power of talking to a smaller audience."&lt;/span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK0VUKRWyD_DpMdAfX1Stcii_g-jhcWQYcOaOFaguZzaXZL9qPEfqJD0aH8vojxdJeSNpVjhfNz5CYKvBSMLGBNDqInedQnwzar52vjN4vQv3LMnbjLXKeqKi1DI6taXQhAbMnzA5fMKU/s1600/distill_VA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK0VUKRWyD_DpMdAfX1Stcii_g-jhcWQYcOaOFaguZzaXZL9qPEfqJD0aH8vojxdJeSNpVjhfNz5CYKvBSMLGBNDqInedQnwzar52vjN4vQv3LMnbjLXKeqKi1DI6taXQhAbMnzA5fMKU/s200/distill_VA.jpg" width="152" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Virgin America is one of just six hand-selected early adopters, or Phase One Twitter advertising partners, who are using the new Twitter offering. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;table border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;Virgin America carefully distilled this niche. From  the universe of air travelers, they targeted just the people flying on  one of their airliners, at cruising altitude, using the in-flight WiFi.&lt;/span&gt;  &lt;/span&gt;                             &lt;/span&gt;                              
&lt;div style="text-align: right;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niche_market"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;hr /&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;How can you parse your market to better serve your customer base? &lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
I suggest that you give that some thought. The more visible you are to your ideal customer, the better results you are able to both realize from, and provide for, them.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;b style="color: #222222;"&gt;Comments are welcome. You are invited to share your thoughts. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="color: #005500;"&gt;If you need help being more visible to your target market, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" body="I'd%20like%20to%20know%20how%20thinkVAULT%20can%20help%20me%20with%20being%20more%20visible." href="mailto:info-1@thinkvaulter.com?Subject=I%20Need%20More%20Business%20Visibility" style="color: #005500;"&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color: #274e13;"&gt; and we can get started on solutions targeted for you! &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt; &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr 3px="" size:="" /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/04/visibility-market-targeting-with-140.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAgdO2OJ8mYGUa7cz9rDFcl6DNBrQ77YhW7BdKHigBs5fthJInEbqwydXWM38iQxCRAlvhCugokjKPiegL3h1RrjGJaQn5FL949XtotZjIJc491u4NOrL6OATPux_RwoAMdLabNT9tNXA/s72-c/virgin-america_cabin.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-6989727361450759188</guid><pubDate>Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:39:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-05-02T16:32:32.183-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business growth</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business start-up</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">money management</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">new business</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">sales</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">Sandra Connor</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility expert</category><title>Manage Your Money Monday - Niche Focused Marketing Can Improve Visibility</title><description>&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #005500; font-size: medium;"&gt;Are you focused on a Niche Market?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj52Bxi-SY9MaXBrLJg363S9mI3kEAiz4jmY5mGh5aqlgqzycB03SZg-uIcuxWBh5vOw9hU34bFwIOz_4nA0IxvJQbv0D5CGCxoV3swvjYmkbGT6xd51x-B3hYOC-rACjWBUBIhxg7jfWM/s1600/BullsEyes_Multi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj52Bxi-SY9MaXBrLJg363S9mI3kEAiz4jmY5mGh5aqlgqzycB03SZg-uIcuxWBh5vOw9hU34bFwIOz_4nA0IxvJQbv0D5CGCxoV3swvjYmkbGT6xd51x-B3hYOC-rACjWBUBIhxg7jfWM/s200/BullsEyes_Multi.jpg" width="200" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;...or are you aiming for whatever can bring revenues in the door?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;Consider an archer, with a quiver full of arrows. In a field filled with targets, will that archer pull out a bevvy of arrows, load them into the bow, and launch them... HOPING to reach one or more of the targets?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt; Probably not and neither should you! &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;A few weeks ago, a blog entry was published on how your &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/03/business-model-focus-on-top-line.html"&gt;Business Model&lt;/a&gt; affects your top line. Answering those 5 W's will help you to define a niche. Once you do define your niche, however, it's usually in the best interest of your company to stick to it. &amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;table border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;A &lt;b&gt;niche market&lt;/b&gt; is the subset of the market on which a specific product or service offering is focused.  &lt;/span&gt;                             &lt;/span&gt;                          
&lt;div style="text-align: right;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niche_market"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;hr /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;A key reason to stick to your niche -- it makes it much simpler to market your product or service. This is especially true when it comes to the &lt;b&gt;Who your target market is:&lt;/b&gt; the &lt;b style="color: #005500;"&gt;demographics&lt;/b&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;Have you ever been to a networking event and listened to various people introduce themselves? The format is often a 30-second or 1-minute &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_speech"&gt;Elevator Speech&lt;/a&gt; or Elevator Pitch.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXeI1NHNI65pPvzjkyBWM2HLF4wKs0AOP4GYWiWhded92mMZ_CRVWjs7QFc7htqVed_Q3p1SOYJhV1_TArUHXEYjLdo6jAmgLIy2bQTW1hs7J0YbNEC3xVHqhsbrb1oZ3zSmiCb92AvfE/s1600/BullsEye.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXeI1NHNI65pPvzjkyBWM2HLF4wKs0AOP4GYWiWhded92mMZ_CRVWjs7QFc7htqVed_Q3p1SOYJhV1_TArUHXEYjLdo6jAmgLIy2bQTW1hs7J0YbNEC3xVHqhsbrb1oZ3zSmiCb92AvfE/s320/BullsEye.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 14px;"&gt;The ones that make you sit up and take notice are which ones?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;The person who starts with "I'm looking for anybody who..."&amp;nbsp; &lt;i&gt;-or-&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp; "My company helps very small businesses, owned by women who..."&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;The guy who says "We can help you get more customers."&amp;nbsp; -or&amp;nbsp; "If you've been thinking about finding time-saving ways for more potential customers to get to know you, we can help you with that." &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;Those are just a couple of examples. But, here's another question for you:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;How narrow can you make your market niche?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="color: #005500;"&gt;&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1HlpNxknUOKw7oaVrOSXg1u7H7MOhw2LNzpVoOZLG8fWDPnEkqesDkFkgRpVdI3E-vN_3ijzc6ZVnYBjzxHzgkqk5uPfZUt_lR44P79FbwA55Xzms2Ycl695sgoA5gEYfjOpjc0qtluc/s1600/BullsEye_OnTarget.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1HlpNxknUOKw7oaVrOSXg1u7H7MOhw2LNzpVoOZLG8fWDPnEkqesDkFkgRpVdI3E-vN_3ijzc6ZVnYBjzxHzgkqk5uPfZUt_lR44P79FbwA55Xzms2Ycl695sgoA5gEYfjOpjc0qtluc/s200/BullsEye_OnTarget.jpg" width="200" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;The better you can define exactly what you're selling, the more likely it is that you will find your target market quickly. This is especially true of services providers -- the folks that sell intangibles. They must know what prospects' problems look like and what the symptoms are of an unsolved problem. That helps them to tell good stories and paint mental pictures for their prospects of them solving &lt;i&gt;&lt;u&gt;THEIR&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/i&gt; problems similarly.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A narrower niche may help you to hit your target more consistently, with a corresponding increase in revenues. You will likely find yourself spending less time, and marketing dollars, to get more customers &lt;b&gt;with just a little more focus.&lt;/b&gt; Try it. Let us know how it works for you.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;b style="color: #222222;"&gt;Comments are welcome. Tell us what you think. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="color: #005500;"&gt;If you need help being more visible to your target market, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" body="I'd%20like%20to%20know%20how%20thinkVAULT%20can%20help%20me%20with%20being%20more%20visible." href="mailto:info-1@thinkvaulter.com?Subject=I%20Need%20More%20Business%20Visibility" style="color: #005500;"&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color: #274e13;"&gt; and we can get started on solutions targeted for you! &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt; &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr 3px="" size:="" /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/04/manage-your-money-monday-niche-focused.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj52Bxi-SY9MaXBrLJg363S9mI3kEAiz4jmY5mGh5aqlgqzycB03SZg-uIcuxWBh5vOw9hU34bFwIOz_4nA0IxvJQbv0D5CGCxoV3swvjYmkbGT6xd51x-B3hYOC-rACjWBUBIhxg7jfWM/s72-c/BullsEyes_Multi.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-6313007872949342043</guid><pubDate>Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:57:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-04-12T16:57:33.020-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business growth</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business process</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">entrepreneur</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">money management</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><title>Manage Your Money Monday - Drawing the Line on Sunk Costs</title><description>&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #005500; font-size: medium;"&gt;How often do you hit the snare of Sunk Costs?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;You know this term by a few different words and phrases. "In for a penny, in for a pound" is a common one. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;Sunk Costs defined:&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0vQirpNKCVmdQ3VIFI2Ygok8JPeS9W6AJItYeR39dugtLSEMSL58h38lGE9_xLIiMi30XoYaWJYqwLSpAg99BILSLkFIWoTCkKziBDyS-rWSzrrjkMa-YqH1bXCdq8D-mPBw3hI7kUpM/s1600/Money_pit_movie_poster-200px.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0vQirpNKCVmdQ3VIFI2Ygok8JPeS9W6AJItYeR39dugtLSEMSL58h38lGE9_xLIiMi30XoYaWJYqwLSpAg99BILSLkFIWoTCkKziBDyS-rWSzrrjkMa-YqH1bXCdq8D-mPBw3hI7kUpM/s320/Money_pit_movie_poster-200px.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;table border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;Sunk costs are retrospective (past) costs that have already been incurred and cannot be recovered.  &lt;/span&gt;                             &lt;/span&gt;               
&lt;div style="text-align: right;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;hr /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;One of the keys here, of course, is the whole concept that the expenditures cannot be recovered. Similar to the scenario in the 1986 movie "&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Money_Pit"&gt;The Money Pit&lt;/a&gt;," business owners are sometimes distracted from reasonably evaluating future investments by what they have already spent on an earlier bad decision. Thus, they blindly throw "good money after bad" so to speak. They fall into what's called the &lt;b&gt;Sunk Costs Fallacy&lt;/b&gt; that leads them to believe it's less costly to continue. Too often, it is in fact less costly -- in the aggregate -- to stop and begin again.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;I actually had someone justify a decision to continue down the same path, who had used this line of thinking. "Understand, I have already spent $XXX dollars. It will be cheaper for me to stay with that."&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;It made no difference that the other option was better, less time-consuming, more reliable and a more cost effective solution in the long-run. The net initial out-of-pocket cost was higher -- and that was all that person could see. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="color: #005500;"&gt;&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbmA-sPFn8FDY1nD26YzE8wlJKwWn0jmHepEc3vOTjdXqIyi_3YZwcdBe0ejcN5qUzAoQh5hOPxP3kjJANRpDVsn-X7hszUIdw5WoiSyAs7EkiV2_sF-01VCRCr4jMkI4bq844zi34R-g/s1600/Money2Burn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbmA-sPFn8FDY1nD26YzE8wlJKwWn0jmHepEc3vOTjdXqIyi_3YZwcdBe0ejcN5qUzAoQh5hOPxP3kjJANRpDVsn-X7hszUIdw5WoiSyAs7EkiV2_sF-01VCRCr4jMkI4bq844zi34R-g/s200/Money2Burn.jpg" width="141" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;What would you do in a situation like this?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Would your decision be influenced by what you had already spent -- and could not get back?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Would you evaluate your options based strictly upon merits, or would you be unwillingly to admit -- even to yourself -- that a mistake was made? &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;Regardless of the type of resources committed -- money, time, people hours -- you probably want to take a hard look at &lt;i&gt;&lt;u&gt;total costs&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/i&gt; when making a decision. Even if sunk costs are involved, make an "apples to apples" comparison. (I had to use just one more cliché). &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;b style="color: #006500;"&gt;Comments are welcome. Tell us what you think.&lt;/b&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;hr 3px="" size:="" /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/04/manage-your-money-monday-drawing-line.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0vQirpNKCVmdQ3VIFI2Ygok8JPeS9W6AJItYeR39dugtLSEMSL58h38lGE9_xLIiMi30XoYaWJYqwLSpAg99BILSLkFIWoTCkKziBDyS-rWSzrrjkMa-YqH1bXCdq8D-mPBw3hI7kUpM/s72-c/Money_pit_movie_poster-200px.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-2965934768077098825</guid><pubDate>Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:54:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-05-02T17:07:15.625-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business growth</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business video</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">entrepreneur</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">internet visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">new business</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">Sandra Connor</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">social media</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">video</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility expert</category><title>Webcast Wednesday - The Visibility Equation: Social Media + Video</title><description>&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #005500; font-size: medium;"&gt;Are you really still wondering whether or not you need Social Media as a part of your Marketing Strategy?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;Please allow me to respectfully submit the following theorem to you --&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;The time for wondering is over and the time to incorporate Social Media into your visibility toolkit is now.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;There are several variables in the Visibility Equation. Two factors that are givens, however, are:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;Social Media&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;Video&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha9Qw4bTPoVZvEheX9yupTlWSeEOJqeWRCsAj0xU9J9A4hwhXTEw8LxXgISU_r2q3z0dU5AjWc_y9q75tdPvTkKsm31MvmZd9HEfVAvTKp05qlgRghq2hfnxOaf51o1olpcnSjT1071Co/s1600/social-media_jumble.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha9Qw4bTPoVZvEheX9yupTlWSeEOJqeWRCsAj0xU9J9A4hwhXTEw8LxXgISU_r2q3z0dU5AjWc_y9q75tdPvTkKsm31MvmZd9HEfVAvTKp05qlgRghq2hfnxOaf51o1olpcnSjT1071Co/s200/social-media_jumble.jpg" width="200" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;That is clearly illustrated in the informal treatise in the video below. Michael Stelzner walks, drives, and talks about why Social Media is here to stay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;table border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;"It's a lot like fax machines when they first came out... Every business is going to have to have a presence in Social Media." &lt;/span&gt;                             &lt;/span&gt;            
&lt;div style="text-align: right;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;Michael Stelzner   Creator of Social Media Examiner&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;hr /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;object height="225" width="400"&gt;&lt;param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9655130&amp;amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;amp;show_title=0&amp;amp;show_byline=0&amp;amp;show_portrait=0&amp;amp;color=B4CC27&amp;amp;fullscreen=1" /&gt;&lt;embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9655130&amp;amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;amp;show_title=0&amp;amp;show_byline=0&amp;amp;show_portrait=0&amp;amp;color=B4CC27&amp;amp;fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="225"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://vimeo.com/9655130"&gt;Social Media Drive 2&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://vimeo.com/stelzner"&gt;Michael A. Stelzner&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;Oh, yes... Michael is advertising a virtual Social Media summit which starts in May 2010. I'm sure it will be great!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;How would you like to get a jump start on your planning process, though? &lt;i&gt;Just keep reading below...&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr 300px="" width:="" /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://avonchamber2010w.eventbrite.com/"&gt;Social Media for Business Webinar Series&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnERmmIgq3QmoJ8OaijVxIllON1pw4ReVXVOfbBrAol_LRTIdPHYHv2s27F62fhAV1U1xq2TUs5cyyEnzGizblCYCoMLrPHLTvAXFulljPilyd09iLV49AjsILaN2vt6rAr8PZ1JHSOYQ/s1600/SocialMediaBlanket_20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnERmmIgq3QmoJ8OaijVxIllON1pw4ReVXVOfbBrAol_LRTIdPHYHv2s27F62fhAV1U1xq2TUs5cyyEnzGizblCYCoMLrPHLTvAXFulljPilyd09iLV49AjsILaN2vt6rAr8PZ1JHSOYQ/s320/SocialMediaBlanket_20.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #990000;"&gt;Why don't you join us on a journey toward using &lt;b&gt;Social Media&lt;/b&gt; to help you build your business?&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;It comes in small, manageable, evenly spaced, virtual bites - i.e.: &lt;b&gt;webinars&lt;/b&gt;. Click &lt;b&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://avonchamber2010w.eventbrite.com/"&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; for details and to register, if you decide that this series is for you. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;b style="color: #006500;"&gt;Comments are welcome. Tell us what you think.&lt;/b&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr 3px="" size:="" /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/03/webcast-wednesday-visibility-equation.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha9Qw4bTPoVZvEheX9yupTlWSeEOJqeWRCsAj0xU9J9A4hwhXTEw8LxXgISU_r2q3z0dU5AjWc_y9q75tdPvTkKsm31MvmZd9HEfVAvTKp05qlgRghq2hfnxOaf51o1olpcnSjT1071Co/s72-c/social-media_jumble.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-3963576856643124844</guid><pubDate>Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:53:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-03-18T14:53:53.494-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">blog</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business growth</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">entrepreneur</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><title>Tough It Out Thursday - on Perseverance</title><description>&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt;There usually is no blog entry from me on Thursdays. Tweets yes, with several hash tags for "#TIOTh" -- blog entries, no.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt;The main reason &lt;b&gt;Tough It Out Thursday&lt;/b&gt; is included in the topics calendar is simply this:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt;For many of us, it is the most challenging day of the week. Maybe you've had three days of business bliss, but it's much more likely that you have met -- &lt;b&gt;and &lt;i&gt;overcome&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt; -- one or more challenges every day this week. A small percentage of us may even have "hit a wall" or worse yet... gone SPLAT!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt;A few days ago, I came across a paper I'd saved. It was from the owner of a local printing company, who always included &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt;a cover letter&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt; with the monthly company newsletter. In it was a story that is familiar to many, but bears repeating. &lt;i&gt;In fact, I read it to my son the day I found it. &lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt;This little story is called "Giving Up Too Soon"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;table border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;A man meets a guru in the road. The man asks the guru, "Which way is success?"  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;The berobed, bearded sage speaks not but points to a place off in the distance.  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;The man, thrilled by the prospect of quick and easy success, rushes off in the appropriate direction. Suddenly, there comes a loud "Splat!!!"  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;Eventually, the man limps back, tattered and stunned, assuming he must have misinterpreted the message. He repeats his question to the guru, who again points silently in the same direction.  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;The man obediently walks off once more. This time the splat is deafening, and when the man crawls back, he is bloody, broken, tattered, and irate. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;"I asked you which way is success," he screams at the guru. "I followed the direction you indicated. And all I got was splatted! No more of this pointing! Talk!"  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;Only then does the guru speak, and what he says is this: "Success IS that way. Just a little AFTER the splat." &lt;/span&gt;                           
&lt;div style="text-align: right;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;Author Unknown&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfXRB5z1rdAddYNHTRBvTY7AZTv0-ZoasDt0JyUxYjaf2Ixefoz9Sb6VYGMt2DhItC_Wd_abcVpTvarvWEW-B5lh_XTyJOkoCKWebAes6H1jvvuyX08DikTT4Xuzq1HsTxCfUIzo4Kz-g/s1600-h/Splat!_20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfXRB5z1rdAddYNHTRBvTY7AZTv0-ZoasDt0JyUxYjaf2Ixefoz9Sb6VYGMt2DhItC_Wd_abcVpTvarvWEW-B5lh_XTyJOkoCKWebAes6H1jvvuyX08DikTT4Xuzq1HsTxCfUIzo4Kz-g/s320/Splat!_20.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt;Maybe you haven't gone "Splat!" -- perhaps you never will. But just in case you do, remember to keep going in the direction that your objectives, plans, and strategies are taking you - &lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;just beyond the next obstacle&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt;I'll do my best to continue bringing you a little inspiration on Thursdays to help keep you going.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;b style="color: #006500;"&gt;Comments are welcome. Tell us what you think.&lt;/b&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;hr /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/03/tough-it-out-thursday-on-perseverance.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfXRB5z1rdAddYNHTRBvTY7AZTv0-ZoasDt0JyUxYjaf2Ixefoz9Sb6VYGMt2DhItC_Wd_abcVpTvarvWEW-B5lh_XTyJOkoCKWebAes6H1jvvuyX08DikTT4Xuzq1HsTxCfUIzo4Kz-g/s72-c/Splat!_20.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-8387653530466517470</guid><pubDate>Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:48:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-05-02T16:36:01.569-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business growth</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">entrepreneur</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">green solutions</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">internet visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">on-line services</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">product</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">sales</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">Sandra Connor</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">social media</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">video</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility expert</category><title>Manage Your Money Monday - Visibility on the Level Playing Field Called Internet</title><description>&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt;Last week, we looked at your need for a viable business model - the road map for the journey to managing your money well. This entry for &lt;b&gt;Manage Your Money Mondays &lt;/b&gt;focuses on how a strong visibility arsenal can help both the top and bottom lines of &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt;your income statement&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt;Promoting your business is a basic requirement for its survival. How you promote it spells the difference between surviving and growing faster than your competition. More and better visibility content and visibility venues can give your company an edge.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju0-xX4tEWuS4N8aQVY4vctoCZLxI-qoNPPDIfcwQ0SUxFoMYObNGmTeY9q0cwyKebTeqHg4l7VS6twL1rMKmzdG4iZR1PFnzum816SNEU4vnR3H7iCtAsunsx0Y44g3EN2_6km7Hx-HU/s1600-h/Visibility_15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju0-xX4tEWuS4N8aQVY4vctoCZLxI-qoNPPDIfcwQ0SUxFoMYObNGmTeY9q0cwyKebTeqHg4l7VS6twL1rMKmzdG4iZR1PFnzum816SNEU4vnR3H7iCtAsunsx0Y44g3EN2_6km7Hx-HU/s320/Visibility_15.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;You must have an edge. What's yours? &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;&lt;table border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;"Whether you call it a commercial, elevator pitch, or 60 second presentation ... it's a must. If you have a product or service to sell, you must let others know who you are and what you offer."&lt;/span&gt;                         
&lt;div style="text-align: right;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;Victoria Trafton, owner of Referral Institute of Central Arizona&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
I have referred to the internet as the great "playing field leveler" in other posts and presentations. This is borne out almost daily with an seemingly endless stream of web-based tools that can give smaller businesses their competitive edge. They are ever more flexible, often customizable, and most importantly AFFORDABLE. &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;The service used to deploy the video below is an ideal example of an edge builder.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;object align="middle" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" height="373" id="objVeeplePlayer" width="450"&gt;&lt;param name="width" value="450"/&gt;&lt;param name="height" value="373"/&gt;&lt;param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.veeple.com/swf/VeeplePlayer.swf?siteId=LNTrFe5W22M%253D&amp;videoId=fb322b08-0b05-4849-a45a-a731be1bf573&amp;userId=&amp;baseUrl=http://www.veeple.com/&amp;showSpots=1&amp;showViewBar=1&amp;showTabBar=1&amp;mute=0&amp;spotScaleMode=maintainAspectRatio&amp;autoPlay=0&amp;allowAddComments=0&amp;allowShare=1&amp;allowEmbedding=0&amp;allowFullscreen=1&amp;allowRating=0&amp;stopPlayingOnInteractiveClick=1&amp;displayRelatedVideos=1&amp;showWorm=0&amp;showLogo=1&amp;logoIcon=1&amp;whiteLabel=1&amp;showTabClickableObjects=1&amp;showTabDetails=1&amp;showTabComments=0&amp;playerMode=player&amp;playerWidth=450&amp;playerHeight=373&amp;isFlex=0&amp;recordEvents=1&amp;deploymentUrl=http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com"/&gt;&lt;param name="quality" value="high"/&gt;&lt;param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff"/&gt;&lt;param name="menu" value="false"/&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/&gt;&lt;embed id="embVeeplePlayer" src="http://www.veeple.com/swf/VeeplePlayer.swf?siteId=LNTrFe5W22M%253D&amp;videoId=fb322b08-0b05-4849-a45a-a731be1bf573&amp;userId=&amp;baseUrl=http://www.veeple.com/&amp;showSpots=1&amp;showViewBar=1&amp;showTabBar=1&amp;mute=0&amp;spotScaleMode=maintainAspectRatio&amp;autoPlay=0&amp;allowAddComments=0&amp;allowShare=1&amp;allowEmbedding=0&amp;allowFullscreen=1&amp;allowRating=0&amp;stopPlayingOnInteractiveClick=1&amp;displayRelatedVideos=1&amp;showWorm=0&amp;showLogo=1&amp;logoIcon=1&amp;whiteLabel=1&amp;showTabClickableObjects=1&amp;showTabDetails=1&amp;showTabComments=0&amp;playerMode=player&amp;playerWidth=450&amp;playerHeight=373&amp;isFlex=0&amp;recordEvents=1&amp;deploymentUrl=http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com" quality="high" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="450" height="373" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="always" menu="false" allowFullScreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"&gt;&lt;noembed&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Video Visibility Tool - thinkVAULT | thinkVISIBILITY&lt;/h1&gt;&lt;p&gt;thinkVAULT, visibility, video, video marketing, blog, vlog, e-marketing, sales, website&lt;/p&gt;&lt;a href="www.veeple.com" alt="Veeple Interactive Video"&gt;Veeple Interactive Video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/noembed&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;/b&gt;Disclosure: I was so impressed with the capabilities of this service that my company is now an affiliate. What do you think? Could this be the edge you need?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;However you decide to invest your marketing dollars, just make sure you get the best available set of benefits. Find tools with features that you will use to generate revenues or minimize costs. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b style="color: #006500;"&gt;If this &lt;span style="color: black;"&gt;thinkVISIBILITY&lt;/span&gt; service may help you to build your business,&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b style="color: #006500;"&gt; &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://www.veeple.com/signup.php?p=LNTrFe5W22M%253D%20"&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to sign up for a free trial.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;b style="color: #006500;"&gt;Comments are welcome. Tell us what you think.&lt;/b&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;hr /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/03/manage-your-money-monday-visibility-on.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju0-xX4tEWuS4N8aQVY4vctoCZLxI-qoNPPDIfcwQ0SUxFoMYObNGmTeY9q0cwyKebTeqHg4l7VS6twL1rMKmzdG4iZR1PFnzum816SNEU4vnR3H7iCtAsunsx0Y44g3EN2_6km7Hx-HU/s72-c/Visibility_15.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-2317571457819900136</guid><pubDate>Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:55:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-04-19T12:31:54.207-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business growth</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business process</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business start-up</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">entrepreneur</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">money management</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">new business</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">pricing</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">process</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">viability</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><title>Business Model Focus on the Top Line - Revenues</title><description>&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt;This entry for &lt;b&gt;Manage Your Money Mondays &lt;/b&gt;focuses on the top line of your income statement: REVENUES.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt;You have probably read and heard about the need for a good business model for your company.&lt;/span&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
It isn't as mysterious as it could sound. &lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;That's just a strategist's way of saying to ask yourself a key question:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;How will you make money?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;table border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;A business model describes how an organization creates, delivers, and captures economic value&amp;nbsp; or social value.                     &lt;/span&gt;                    
&lt;div style="text-align: right;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://bit.ly/aNDxgT" rel="http://bit.ly/plugins/iframe?hashUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2FaNDxgT"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5869165492872679922"&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;              &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Typically, for-profit businesses focus on adding economic value and not-for-profit organizations focus on adding social value. The case can also be made that the ideal position for each lies in a hybrid entity; i.e.: profits with social consciousness and social missions with fiscal responsibility. &lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivoYBL8wuWV3d05oe33uxvM0by36NF9k1VQaMqYTpOJlwnosY8zji8iZJjZRiCvhCwCtqen9uWiVyg4c77cdrEVmiWqmc84KR8HJoIL8pcwSP6o9DG52zODzMDoZScIJzRQaaZAcZVI9U/s1600-h/Puzzle_globe_30.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivoYBL8wuWV3d05oe33uxvM0by36NF9k1VQaMqYTpOJlwnosY8zji8iZJjZRiCvhCwCtqen9uWiVyg4c77cdrEVmiWqmc84KR8HJoIL8pcwSP6o9DG52zODzMDoZScIJzRQaaZAcZVI9U/s320/Puzzle_globe_30.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="color: #004b00;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;Viable Business Model&lt;/span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;must come before you install that great marketing cotter pin: &lt;span style="color: #004b00;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/search/label/visibility"&gt;Visibility&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt; Too often, a business has a great product or service, coupled with reasonable pricing, but little or no business modeling. &lt;b&gt;It leaves a big gaping hole in the viability of the business.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;span style="color: #004b00;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;What do I mean by that?&lt;/span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;You, business owner, have identified a marketable product that you believe will sell -- there is need in the marketplace. You have calculated your income needs, factored that into your pricing, and decided this can work. You venture out into the sales jungle and do "all the right things" -- or so you thought. The results are disappointing, however. Thus, a piece of the planning puzzle is missing. You can only conclude that your business model and key parts of your strategies are flawed. &lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikMJe5EFzuKYXAz0UiwItj7YarZqe-R5xJEKduczawuzd9bpWlZ8CIB0ZOSTy9KX-sJHDJa7C12JOgsAi222QR3AgPpi6kV7HE7YQFijwgE1he6CcdPC4VuNHbHA6PB6PFSxkhOAj7N9w/s1600-h/Puzzle_msgPc_60.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikMJe5EFzuKYXAz0UiwItj7YarZqe-R5xJEKduczawuzd9bpWlZ8CIB0ZOSTy9KX-sJHDJa7C12JOgsAi222QR3AgPpi6kV7HE7YQFijwgE1he6CcdPC4VuNHbHA6PB6PFSxkhOAj7N9w/s320/Puzzle_msgPc_60.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004b00;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;The easiest way to build a Business Model&lt;/span&gt; is to&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;Ask and answer the 5Ws -- the ones you learned in English or Language Arts class: &lt;b&gt;Who, What, When, Where, Why&lt;/b&gt;. Apply the answers to your Business Model. Then make sure that your price points, your packaging and presentation [branding], and your placement match up accordingly. &lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;b&gt;For example: &lt;/b&gt;If you provide high-end bathroom remodeling, you need to market your services in venues and to prospects that are likely to spend upwards of tens of thousands of dollars on that set of products. Develop plans for finding and connecting with &lt;u&gt;&lt;i&gt;those&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/u&gt; prospects so that your time -- and marketing dollars -- are invested well. Find people who are already connected to your market niche; that makes a great starting point. &lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b style="color: #006500;"&gt;If you would like a little help with strengthening the viability of your business,&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;b style="color: #006500;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" body="I'd%20like%20to%20know%20how%20thinkVAULT%20can%20help%20me." href="mailto:info-1@thinkvaulter.com?Subject=I%20Need%20a%20Utility%20Man"&gt;E-mail&lt;/a&gt; us with your questions, or leave Comments below,&lt;/b&gt; about your challenges in reaching your business goals.   &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;hr /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/03/business-model-focus-on-top-line.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivoYBL8wuWV3d05oe33uxvM0by36NF9k1VQaMqYTpOJlwnosY8zji8iZJjZRiCvhCwCtqen9uWiVyg4c77cdrEVmiWqmc84KR8HJoIL8pcwSP6o9DG52zODzMDoZScIJzRQaaZAcZVI9U/s72-c/Puzzle_globe_30.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-7693606967454781725</guid><pubDate>Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:09:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-05-02T16:37:08.854-04:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">blog</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business growth</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business start-up</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">entrepreneur</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">internet visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">new business</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">Sandra Connor</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">video</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">visibility expert</category><title>Visibility: Don't Run Your Business Without It!</title><description>&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004100; font-size: medium;"&gt;What one thing does every business need to &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;stay&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt; in business?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;Put simply: The one big common factor is visibility&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;! &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;table border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;"A business with no sign is a sign of no business."                     &lt;/span&gt;       
&lt;div style="text-align: right;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;A common tagline in the sign-making industry              &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
This widely accepted concept for brick and mortar businesses applies equally well to all businesses.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwCyNB97qZD3pExyDqEKLo4XPx6_rk_2-scbBt6Wvk6eI0et62rQk5QfEmmoccBUEda8jeOhADrnnzElw4ySgYLU1QhZSb_JUJWROhjUcfABAv3Fz8zu23O6ob55o5wLlKJ3keIwK1fd4/s1600-h/WebSurfer_GoldenMan.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"&gt;&lt;img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443793801275688482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwCyNB97qZD3pExyDqEKLo4XPx6_rk_2-scbBt6Wvk6eI0et62rQk5QfEmmoccBUEda8jeOhADrnnzElw4ySgYLU1QhZSb_JUJWROhjUcfABAv3Fz8zu23O6ob55o5wLlKJ3keIwK1fd4/s200/WebSurfer_GoldenMan.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 137px;" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="color: #004b00;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;Why?&lt;/span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;The great playing field leveler &lt;span style="color: #004b00;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;The&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #004b00; font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt; Internet&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; has made it so. You may not have a storefront at the corner of Apple Lane and Orange Boulevard, but you still must have a visible presence. &lt;i&gt;Otherwise, no one knows where to &lt;u&gt;find&lt;/u&gt; you. &lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Furthermore, in today's Web environment, no one has a plausible excuse for lacking a Web presence&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;With just a little bit of research, a savvy business owner can find free hosting, free design tools, free domain registration, free blog sites and certainly free social media communities.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The caveat is, however, that a zero cash outlay does not necessarily mean "cost free." Some of the hosting sites will display your website for free, but that comes with banner ads -- of &lt;span style="font-style: italic;"&gt;their&lt;/span&gt; choice, not yours. Visitors could get so distracted by other companies' ads that your message is buried in the busyness.&lt;br /&gt;
Design tools are also limited. Your choices for page templates, layouts, and colors -- if there are any choices -- will be limited.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="color: #006500; font-size: large;"&gt;Still, there are many other choices that offer very serviceable options for carving out your corner of business visibility.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoMJBNnMFAdB8ibl0XuyLeEm08DJwigJRMOw3dsNO6YwxRvaF5HYb01mrMO-JsnXT3FbjKntci4ByOjKWg2la76Ruz6EUhD5SeZUDgsNZHQooESxnXyGp7ueZry8FMRWdtSUSP7LUW0II/s1600-h/BLOG_25.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"&gt;&lt;img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoMJBNnMFAdB8ibl0XuyLeEm08DJwigJRMOw3dsNO6YwxRvaF5HYb01mrMO-JsnXT3FbjKntci4ByOjKWg2la76Ruz6EUhD5SeZUDgsNZHQooESxnXyGp7ueZry8FMRWdtSUSP7LUW0II/s320/BLOG_25.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;One of the easiest ways to build visibility is &lt;b&gt;Blogging&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Among the group of visibility tools that require creating content, blogging takes the least amount of technical knowledge. Dressing up your page with &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="color: #783f04;"&gt;colors&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;, &lt;b&gt;bold characters&lt;/b&gt;, and graphics takes just a few mouse clicks. The real "work" is in the writing. In a blog post on the Mashable site, &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.twitter.com/msuster"&gt;Mark Suster&lt;/a&gt; - a venture capitalist - published an article called &lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://mashable.com/2010/03/01/company-blog/"&gt;HOW TO: Create a Successful Company Blog&lt;/a&gt;. He clearly details &lt;b&gt;Why &lt;/b&gt;you must blog, &lt;b&gt;What &lt;/b&gt;you should blog about, and some &lt;b&gt;Right and Wrong&lt;/b&gt; ways to go about it.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;It's my fond hope that this blog is an example of a "right way" to go about it. &lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;Let me know what you think.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: verdana;"&gt;In future entries, we'll take a look at some other visibility options, including a newly emerging concept called &lt;b&gt;Vlogging&lt;/b&gt; - no that's not a typo.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b style="color: #006500;"&gt;If you would like to have higher visibility for your business,&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt; start by checking out one of the services we offer to our clients: A &lt;span style="color: #990000; font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Webmercial&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;. You can see an example -- and place an order --&amp;nbsp; in this post "&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-visible-is-your-business.html"&gt;How Visible Is Your Business?&lt;/a&gt;"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #333333;"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/03/visibility-dont-run-your-business.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwCyNB97qZD3pExyDqEKLo4XPx6_rk_2-scbBt6Wvk6eI0et62rQk5QfEmmoccBUEda8jeOhADrnnzElw4ySgYLU1QhZSb_JUJWROhjUcfABAv3Fz8zu23O6ob55o5wLlKJ3keIwK1fd4/s72-c/WebSurfer_GoldenMan.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-7948114273608732617</guid><pubDate>Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:14:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-02-23T14:08:00.070-05:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business process</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">Non-Techie Tuesdays</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><title>Tech Tools Yield Tech Skills for Small Business Owners</title><description>&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisDgcd1RJXwvRHRYk1KTUAWWMY1TXvnlnBrDKv19DJZWY-rS1yyBm-7Xk1QHORMc6ZSt2Va5Kio9cScR_gL5Fer-lRggl03zRmDDpb8pFzZkvwXo3g-LfSyr4F95M8YR22nXxdrqkvyyw/s1600-h/SprintPhones.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 106px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisDgcd1RJXwvRHRYk1KTUAWWMY1TXvnlnBrDKv19DJZWY-rS1yyBm-7Xk1QHORMc6ZSt2Va5Kio9cScR_gL5Fer-lRggl03zRmDDpb8pFzZkvwXo3g-LfSyr4F95M8YR22nXxdrqkvyyw/s200/SprintPhones.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441443593683778530" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: rgb(0, 65, 0);font-size:130%;" &gt;On this Non-Techie Tuesday, I pose two questions to you:&lt;br /&gt;Are you intimidated by your computer, non-techie small business owner?&lt;br /&gt;Do you use a cell phone resembling any of these? &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I'll bet that you do. Now think back a few years... Would you have pictured yourself using anything that "complex" before you actually tried it? My guess is: probably not. Yet, you do it everyday!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:130%;"&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration: underline;"&gt;Why then, are so many people still intimidated by their computers&lt;/span&gt;?&lt;/span&gt; - a colleague posted the cutest picture of her dogs on Facebook. She took it with her cell phone and uploaded it. &lt;a target="_blank" href="http://www.bit.ly/NTTu0223"&gt;Here it is&lt;/a&gt;. (If you are not a Facebook user, and you can't get there from here, my apologies). A couple of clicks and it was all done. I challenge you to acknowledge that your desktop or laptop computer can be tamed just as easily.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:130%;"&gt;Start by recognizing that you control &lt;span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"&gt;it&lt;/span&gt;, not the other way around.&lt;/span&gt; A bit of planning ahead to see to its care and feeding is all you need.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 65, 0);font-size:130%;" &gt;This article is about memory maintenance. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;To better understand why that's important, envision this scenario:&lt;br /&gt;You have just come back from grocery shopping for your family. Your children help to carry the bags into the kitchen. They sit them anywhere there is an empty space. That is fast and convenient -- &lt;span style="font-style: italic;"&gt;at that time.&lt;/span&gt; You could leave the bags where they sit, but odds are you won't. You could still find everything, BUT IT WOULD TAKE LONGER. (Not to mention the fact that the perishables would spoil)!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;Windows works in kind of the same way.&lt;/span&gt; (Sorry Mac users. I haven't used one for a long time).&lt;br /&gt;Your files get stored wherever it's "convenient" for Windows to "sit" them, when you click SAVE. After a while, though, finding the files gets harder and harder. Some of them have even been split up and stored in two different "kitchen cabinets." The end result: Your computer gets slower and slower.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;The solution is simple.&lt;/span&gt; Windows comes with a tool called &lt;span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(175, 0, 0);"&gt;"Disk Defragmenter"&lt;/span&gt; or Defrag, for short. Depending upon how often you save files, and how big they are, you may need to run Defrag every week. Defrag should be run at least once per month, in any case.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:130%;"&gt;To get you started, here are links to the Microsoft site for how to run the Defrag utility. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6rACEKu5soVvtrJ6tpmR1zVpTvrLt60CifhtHjJt-a6iqpvXcokciuZp6utB5jN7mFqiWF-qhn0dU8cDxxFyA7KeudpWZ7e6-y6xMeLxfTxT1f45wJV4auV11wfNRYnAmEMcD_8NRgNM/s1600-h/Defrag.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 199px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6rACEKu5soVvtrJ6tpmR1zVpTvrLt60CifhtHjJt-a6iqpvXcokciuZp6utB5jN7mFqiWF-qhn0dU8cDxxFyA7KeudpWZ7e6-y6xMeLxfTxT1f45wJV4auV11wfNRYnAmEMcD_8NRgNM/s200/Defrag.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441514935931060914" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" &gt;Vista&lt;/span&gt; users &lt;a target="_blank" href="http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Improve-performance-by-defragmenting-your-hard-disk"&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt;. The instructions are written in an easy to understand manner (unlike the XP version linked below).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:130%;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;XP&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; users &lt;a target="_blank" href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314848"&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;span style="font-style: italic;"&gt;Fair warning: the article is a be "tech-speaky," but the steps can be followed. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;If you have never run Defrag on your computer, the process could take hours. My advice: wait until your workday is over, then start it. Everything should work faster when it's done, unless you have other problems...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:180%;"&gt;Happy Computing!&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://bit.ly/Noo1PW"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:Verdana;"&gt;&lt;b style="color: rgb(0, 101, 0);"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" body="I'd%20like%20to%20know%20how%20thinkVAULT%20can%20help%20me." href="mailto:sandra@thinkvaulter.com?Subject=I%20Need%20a%20Utility%20Man"&gt;E-mail&lt;/a&gt; us with your questions, or leave Comments below,&lt;/b&gt; about how to reach your business goals.   &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;hr /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/02/tech-tools-yield-tech-skills-for-small.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisDgcd1RJXwvRHRYk1KTUAWWMY1TXvnlnBrDKv19DJZWY-rS1yyBm-7Xk1QHORMc6ZSt2Va5Kio9cScR_gL5Fer-lRggl03zRmDDpb8pFzZkvwXo3g-LfSyr4F95M8YR22nXxdrqkvyyw/s72-c/SprintPhones.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-4403979785601172541</guid><pubDate>Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:49:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-02-22T23:31:20.034-05:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">banking</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business card</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">money management</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><title>Manage Your Money Mondays - The Value of a Banking Relationship</title><description>&lt;span style="font-family:verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: rgb(0, 65, 0);font-size:130%;" &gt;How valuable is a good banking relationship?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Over the long haul, a banking relationship is to a business as air is to everyone: &lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;It is required! &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;table width="250px;" border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;"Keep skunks and bankers at a distance."                     &lt;div style="text-align: right;"&gt;Humor from the Heartland              &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The quote above, widely accredited as "Old Farmer's Advice," is only half true. Your banker should be close -- in good times and bad. It is much easier, as well, to make a case for lines of credit or a loan BEFORE the money is needed. This is especially true now that credit has been and remains tight.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A banker who knows you will be more likely to help you. Small business bankers are increasingly creative these days. Certainly credit has not become any easier to get, but for a business owner with personal assets to use as collateral, and a decent credit score, money can be had.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One cautionary note: Make sure that the credit line is used to support activities that will replace the funds. Working capital to cover cash flow needs tied to customer orders is one good use. Cash requirements just to cover payroll, on the other hand, may not be.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwyI9d-xum-Y9lJNtLy6t7Xpx8usboLLOG3mVYT0GTzcORZ7OxelwuiXunuWlDRbsKA0u-qPvkhpbbiPdUCXwQIUiEjgUqAK1uppzLL7gRj-54-Jo6YeX15T_Pw_O1cLasmEQ1K-15kVI/s1600-h/CashStacks.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 151px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwyI9d-xum-Y9lJNtLy6t7Xpx8usboLLOG3mVYT0GTzcORZ7OxelwuiXunuWlDRbsKA0u-qPvkhpbbiPdUCXwQIUiEjgUqAK1uppzLL7gRj-54-Jo6YeX15T_Pw_O1cLasmEQ1K-15kVI/s200/CashStacks.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441168062238444706" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Also consider forming relationships with multiple banks. The financial meltdown of 2009 bears out the wisdom of this approach. If you were a customer of a bank that had to tighten lending, you were at risk of being left high and dry in the credit arena. This &lt;a href="http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/tips/archives/2009/10/multiple_bankin.html"&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; from Business Week "&lt;a href="http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/tips/archives/2009/10/multiple_bankin.html"&gt;Multiple Banking Relationships&lt;/a&gt;" clearly makes this point.&lt;br /&gt;Entrepreneur.com suggests "aggressively managing cash flow" as another tactic for both building strong banking relationships and business survival in "&lt;a href="http://www.entrepreneur.com/money/moneymanagement/article201908.html"&gt;Grow Your Cash Stash by Managing Cash Flow&lt;/a&gt;."&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Talk to your banker regularly. The good ones will share information and insights on how things work in their bank or credit union. Your business will be better off for it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:Verdana;"&gt;&lt;b style="color: rgb(0, 101, 0);"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" body="I'd%20like%20to%20know%20how%20thinkVAULT%20can%20help%20me." href="mailto:sandra@thinkvaulter.com?Subject=I%20Need%20a%20Utility%20Man"&gt;E-mail&lt;/a&gt; us with your questions, or leave Comments below,&lt;/b&gt; about how to reach your business goals.   &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;hr /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/02/manage-your-money-mondays-value-of.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwyI9d-xum-Y9lJNtLy6t7Xpx8usboLLOG3mVYT0GTzcORZ7OxelwuiXunuWlDRbsKA0u-qPvkhpbbiPdUCXwQIUiEjgUqAK1uppzLL7gRj-54-Jo6YeX15T_Pw_O1cLasmEQ1K-15kVI/s72-c/CashStacks.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-4404579760802248950</guid><pubDate>Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:57:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-02-16T10:06:50.433-05:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business process</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">entrepreneur</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">new business</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">Non-Techie Tuesdays</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><title>Can Your Password Pass a Security Test?</title><description>&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBntPF_mAA2jAJmKOLq-a4oASR1yBTXY2wFKmY7AJiPL4Yl8ohQ_28Cn0IAkKK0RsmW5fKiWiwHZ4OoALOMs22TQGRVbi6oLuiVUvHIKCBoLSFAff5lsc0DVH63uP9FDFVd1FtKQN5ABU/s1600-h/Remember.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 149px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBntPF_mAA2jAJmKOLq-a4oASR1yBTXY2wFKmY7AJiPL4Yl8ohQ_28Cn0IAkKK0RsmW5fKiWiwHZ4OoALOMs22TQGRVbi6oLuiVUvHIKCBoLSFAff5lsc0DVH63uP9FDFVd1FtKQN5ABU/s200/Remember.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438850040951472674" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: rgb(0, 65, 0);font-size:130%;" &gt;Are your passwords easy to remember?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;More importantly: Are your passwords easy for someone else to figure out? &lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Good news: You can have the best of both worlds. &lt;/span&gt;Here are a few suggestions as to how.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:130%;"&gt;Begin with a &lt;a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mnemonic"&gt;mnemonic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; - a memory aid that is unique to you. This can be a word, letter or number pattern that permits you to remember and use password patterns multiple times, but keeps others clueless.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:130%;"&gt;Then add an &lt;a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/algorithm"&gt;algorithm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; - a systematic approach for applying your mnemonic pattern to each new password need.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 65, 0);font-size:130%;" &gt;Here's an example:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Jodi likes music. She selects an orchestra section -- &lt;span style="font-style: italic;"&gt;"brass" let's say --&lt;/span&gt; that she can stick with for a while as a password base. She also can remember her fondness of fruit and a 3-digit number. Combine these, with a way to identify the site or program the password is for. The first two letters could work.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;RESULT: Jodi's Facebook password could be &lt;/span&gt;"brass233berryFa" This combination meets the must haves for a strong password:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;at least 6 characters.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;contains a number.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;upper and lowercase.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;less than 16 characters (some sites restrict length)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;Voila! Something that Jodi can remember, that is tough for others to discern, using a pattern that can be reused.&lt;br /&gt;This works, of course, as long as Jodi has a memory that serves her well most of the time.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You don't have to rely solely upon your memory though, even if your mnemonic works perfectly for you.&lt;br /&gt;You can store your passwords online. The founder of Noobie, Patric Welch wrote in a recent &lt;a href="http://bit.ly/Noo1PW"&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; about the challenges surrounding where to store passwords. He offers several suggestions for safely storing passwords on the internet "in the cloud."&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgGC6KzIhMKXxwMqouQwQOAak8Kasdi3VevxRTipCPy7F4SWG4_RtZb9nBod4Vg1n2VNnQbrKVwOAaH6KoyE4q8Sv4l3N2S22ed6QCRdWxbH0TsSh8vCJU434Bb-IFw9399KZ_6sWlnzs/s1600-h/password.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 143px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgGC6KzIhMKXxwMqouQwQOAak8Kasdi3VevxRTipCPy7F4SWG4_RtZb9nBod4Vg1n2VNnQbrKVwOAaH6KoyE4q8Sv4l3N2S22ed6QCRdWxbH0TsSh8vCJU434Bb-IFw9399KZ_6sWlnzs/s200/password.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438855629000001762" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://bit.ly/Noo1PW"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;"Is your head in the cloud about passwords?"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt; aptly details the mostly upside of keeping your secret password sauce in the internet cloud, along with some additional safeguards to consider.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The next time you have trouble coming up with yet another password, you may wish to try this process.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:Verdana;"&gt;&lt;b style="color: rgb(0, 101, 0);"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" body="I'd%20like%20to%20know%20how%20thinkVAULT%20can%20help%20me." href="mailto:sandra@thinkvaulter.com?Subject=I%20Need%20a%20Utility%20Man"&gt;E-mail&lt;/a&gt; us with your questions, or leave Comments below,&lt;/b&gt; about how to reach your business goals.   &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;hr /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/02/can-your-password-pass-security-test.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBntPF_mAA2jAJmKOLq-a4oASR1yBTXY2wFKmY7AJiPL4Yl8ohQ_28Cn0IAkKK0RsmW5fKiWiwHZ4OoALOMs22TQGRVbi6oLuiVUvHIKCBoLSFAff5lsc0DVH63uP9FDFVd1FtKQN5ABU/s72-c/Remember.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5869165492872679922.post-6112201004608009885</guid><pubDate>Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:07:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2010-02-15T10:55:34.844-05:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">business start-up</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">new business</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">retirement</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">Sandra Connor</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">thinkvault</category><title>Manage Your Money Mondays - Small Business Owners and Retirement</title><description>&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl9lYSg6ElOqcWVt3nnDkCSAUrla9eQds_Siu6mewkUiphVSW8T7oHfzccVudDLcvv6Qdoeqj774qzK4ePPeoMQCM_AywHs3v43JKpyLai49_zTbFtbAcssfFK2nrS14gOncDDkNCsX_k/s1600-h/Retirement_401K.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 132px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl9lYSg6ElOqcWVt3nnDkCSAUrla9eQds_Siu6mewkUiphVSW8T7oHfzccVudDLcvv6Qdoeqj774qzK4ePPeoMQCM_AywHs3v43JKpyLai49_zTbFtbAcssfFK2nrS14gOncDDkNCsX_k/s200/Retirement_401K.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438494157893401218" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: rgb(0, 65, 0);font-size:130%;" &gt;Why should a new business owner be thinking about Retirement?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you have a business plan - even a one-pager - the very last (but not least) section should address your Exit Strategy. Eventually, you &lt;span style="font-style: italic;"&gt;&lt;u&gt;will&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/span&gt; exit from your business venture. Why not exit on terms that are most favorable to you? &lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"&gt;REMEMBER:&lt;/span&gt; As the years go by, it takes a larger (and more painfully difficult to find) chunk of your earnings to build a nest egg for retirement. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Most of my clients are, in fact, planning to retire from the businesses they are running now. Some may start new ventures later, but the firms that they are now nurturing are also their means for building wealth. Retirement planning, therefore, is a key strategy for right now, not the future.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, how does a savvy business owner address the issue of retirement planning -- along with all the other challenges that come with business ownership? The short answer: Face it head-on and treat it like the necessary expenditure that it is.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Retirement investment funds should be in your budget, just like every other planned monthly cash outlay. Whether or not this line item is in your corporate budget, your personal budget, or both depends partially upon how your business is structured. Consult your financial planner and tax advisor for the best approach. Sub-S corporations can manage this process a bit differently from LLCs, for example.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The bottom line: You gotta do it! For a perspective on the retirement realities and the impact of timing, see this &lt;a target="_blank" href="http://bit.ly/PtP1Ret"&gt;Facebook video&lt;/a&gt; from Pete "The Planner" Dunn.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs3m_mXgj7Kva61DknJcW8D1DSMYBw0lsKacvOhi56tk5ndnixq_ge9efaErrjaphgmXPGkATWLmSl7foTYe0CDHc0NmqUbY0Nea-JQPN2NorukdG20bl83w0auH50MSYJcX_NlV40j-Y/s1600-h/Retirement_RoadSign.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs3m_mXgj7Kva61DknJcW8D1DSMYBw0lsKacvOhi56tk5ndnixq_ge9efaErrjaphgmXPGkATWLmSl7foTYe0CDHc0NmqUbY0Nea-JQPN2NorukdG20bl83w0auH50MSYJcX_NlV40j-Y/s200/Retirement_RoadSign.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438498814329950322" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:Verdana;"&gt;&lt;b style="color: rgb(0, 101, 0);"&gt;&lt;a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" body="I'd%20like%20to%20know%20how%20thinkVAULT%20can%20help%20me." href="mailto:sandra@thinkvaulter.com?Subject=I%20Need%20a%20Utility%20Man"&gt;E-mail&lt;/a&gt; us with your questions, or leave Comments below,&lt;/b&gt; about how to reach your business goals.   &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:Verdana;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:x-small;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"&gt;© 2010 DMMI Associates LLC – All rights reserved &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;hr /&gt;</description><link>http://dmmi-biztips.blogspot.com/2010/02/manage-your-money-mondays-small.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (DMMI Associates LLC)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" height="72" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl9lYSg6ElOqcWVt3nnDkCSAUrla9eQds_Siu6mewkUiphVSW8T7oHfzccVudDLcvv6Qdoeqj774qzK4ePPeoMQCM_AywHs3v43JKpyLai49_zTbFtbAcssfFK2nrS14gOncDDkNCsX_k/s72-c/Retirement_401K.jpg" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item></channel></rss>