第四輯? TEST 3

Embrace online advertising.

The Internet has created an enormous new medium for advertising.

Even today, decades after its invention, marketers still haven't fully mastered the art of advertising online, so you'll have lots of room for creativity here.

Unfortunately, one disadvantage of online advertising is that many online customers actively avoid advertising, using ad-blocking browser add-ons, spam filters, and other tricks to eliminate the majority of ads from their browsing experience.

Pop-up ads - Notoriously annoying, pop-up ads (and related variants) are just what they sound like - windows that "pop up" as a user views a website and display an ad.

Banner ads - Like us in a magazine, these ads sit adjacent to content on the page. Though not as annoying as pop-up ads, these are still often rendered moot by ad-blocking software.

Search engine ads - These ads appear at the top (or along the sides) of search engine results when a potential customer searches for key words related to your product.

Some search engines offer results-based payment schemes - that is, you only have to pay if people click on your ads - making this option a smarter bet than other online forms of paid advertisement.

Nowadays, social media is an important channel for businesses to do marketing, promote brands / products / services and also be a place to connect with their customers.

Find the right groups: facebook graph search gives you several ways to look for groups to join. You can also find groups by asking current peers and colleagues what groups they belong to.

Join groups that are relevant to your industry: facebook groups can give you an opportunity to share valuable content with your peers, learns from others in your industry and connect with people who have common interests.

If you can't find or get access to a group that fits your needs, consider creating your own.

Twitter allows you to communicate with anyone else who has a twitter account, even if you aren't already connected. Your communication is limited to messages of 140 characters or less at a time.

Use twitter to connect with people who are influential in their industry. You can also see who they follow you may consider following those accounts as well.

Be sure to search for hastags relevant to your industry. This will help you find people that are talking about your given topic of interest.

Internal Communication, in a business context, is the dialogic process between employees, and employers and employees.

So many times that latter process is forgotten by strategists and PR professionals - it should always be remembered that communication between employees is very often far more powerful than any communication from employer to employee.

Whereas the 'top down', employer-driven communication is great for setting a communication agenda or discussion point, it's the peer-to-peer employee communications that determine the tone of the response back to the employer.

So, to sum up 'Internal Communication' is the conversations that businesses have with their staff and those staff have with each other.

One-on-one meetings

Staff / team meetings

Emails Voice mails,

Video broadcasts

Intranets

Audio files (usually downloadable audio, but increasingly sent out via rss technology ['podcasts']）

Staff-to-staff newsletters

Corporate newsletters

Annual reports

Quarterly reports

Roadshows

The answer to the question of whether or not your business should invest in new technology is ever simple. It is yes. After that, things become a little more complicated.

First you must identify what new technologies will make a real difference to you and your customers, helping you to remain competitive or even gain market share. And then you need to decide when to make the leap, how to do it, and with whom.

Understanding how vendors bring new innovations to market, and how they are adopted at different stages of the product cycle - and who buys them - can help you decide which technologies might be right for your business and perhaps more importantly, give you a good indication of when you should be investing in them.

It doesn't change the fact that predicting the future is still more of an art than a science, but when you're playing a game with stakes this high every little helps.

a) the boundaries of the analysis (i.e., what costs are internalized and externalized)
b) the selection of appropriate indicators of potential positive and negative consequences of new technology.
c) the monetization of non-market values
d) a wide range of ethical perspectives

Do we have a unique niche or advantage to exploit ?

How costly will it be to build, promote, and support?
How long will it take to build?
How hard is it to support?
Are there any legal issues?
Do we have the in-house skills to do it? Or does it need to be outsourced?
Can it be outsourced more affordably while maintaining quality ?

Being acitve in your industry trade association can bring with it many benefits. There is power in being connected to other people who are active in your line of work, but it can also be easy to talk yourself out of committing to that annual meeting year after year.

Many people think that joining the organization is enough, but to capitalize on the return on your investment you need to be engaged and participate in the meetings.

Small business owners are busy, so the thought of taking a few days away from the office to participate in a conference, trade show, convention or seminar can seem like a waste of time. However, these live meetings might be just what you need to uncover new ways to growing your business.

Many think that being around competitors can be a waste of time, or worse, a chance for others to steal their ideas. But not everyone in your business is actually a comepetitor, as many can be allies and friends. The mindset you choose about participating in events will impact your results.

Educational opportunities. No matter how experienced you are at your business, everyone can learn. Working in a small business venture can often be isolating, and without exposure to a variety of points of view, we can miss new ideas and trends that can impact future results.

The educational aspect of a conference can expose you to new ways of conducting your business and help you discover how to be more productive.

Networking with peers.

Collaboration is the way to approach networking. While there are those whose intentions can be suspect, most people can help each other and cover ideas and spark inspiration when they get to know each other on a personal level.

Position yourself as an export.

1. Select the appropriate circuit. It's a given to send your team to the appropriate circuit: college, high school, or middle school.

2. Consider local conferences first. These are your bread -and-butter conferences because they are the ones that most of your delegates can financially afford to attend a consistently every year.

3. Match conferences with team goals. Every conference should help your team achieve a developmental goals, whether that be an educational session for first timers to learn a beginner conference to.Novices to build confidence.

4. Encounter new vendors and suppliers. Too often people shy away from the trade show exhibit hall at conferences. They fear that they will have to talk to salespeople, but this industry suppliers are some of the best people for you to get to know if you want to learn more about the current business climate.

5. Review the costs. Take note of the delegate fees and travel expenses you want to make sure that your team members California to attend the conference, or that you have developed a fundraising or subsidization strategy to address the financial needs.

This is important to ensure that your talented members are not priced out from good opportunities.