Top Ten Mistakes made in Business Plans

1. Not proving that you have the management expertise to make it happen.
The quality of your people will lend credibility to your ideas and even to your financial projections. If your management team is not as strong as it could be, join forces with a great board of advisors.

2. Not demonstrating where your revenue will come from - what customers pay you and
why they pay you.
Don’t be too aggressive in setting revenue projections or you will undermine your credibility.

3. Not proving that your business model and long term cost structure is good enough to make a real profit.
How will your business make money - what is your margin structure, what are your costs?

4. Not being clear enough in your product description to allow the reader to quickly see the need and the niche for this product.
It may seem obvious to you, but not so to the reader not educated in your business.

5. Not proving that the market opportunity is big enough to get interested in.
How big is your market now and what will it look like in 5 years?

6. Not adequately acknowledging your competition.
Investors know that if there is no perceived competition, there may be no market for what you are offering. The better you can describe your competition, the better you understand your market, and the more likely you will dominate it.

7. Not writing for the target audience.
Although the core is the same, the plan should be written for the perspective of banks, equity investors, and others. Go as far as you can to tailor each plan to the audience’s specific interests to show you’ve done your homework and know to whom you are talking.

8. Starting with a boring, unenthusiastic executive summary.
This is the first section to be read, and if it isn’t exciting the rest may never be seen. Make it fun and be enthusiastic. It should stand alone and generate interest for more. It deserves all the thought you would put into a professionally done promotional piece for your customers.

9. Poor presentation.
If you have typos and grammatical errors in your business plan, the reader will assume the work you do in your business is sloppy too.

10. Saying too much.
Keep the entire plan to a maximum of 30 pages, with an executive summary of 3 pages or less. If investors are interested, they will ask for any other information they need. Amateurs talk in the business plan about unimportant details because they don’t know what they should say and what they shouldn’t. Hire a professional editor to reduce the page count and help you emphasize your strengths.

How to Write a Business Plan for Small Businesses

A plan for your small business is useful if you want to focus yourself and get an overall picture of what you have to do in order to build your enterprise. On top of that, a good business plan is an absolute must if you want to convince institutions or individuals to loan money or invest in your business. One way to organize your business plan is to compose it like an informative news article, explaining the "who," "what," "when," "why, and "how" of your business.

Who are you?
Write about your background and previous experience in your field. Tell about your notable accomplishments, and about your partners and staff. If your company has been in business for some time now, then write about your "track record." Explain what your company has already accomplished and give an idea of how it stands in relation to competitors in your particular field of business.

What are Your Products or Services?
What are you producing or what are you going to produce? What are your products or services? What kind of revenue will these activities be bringing in or what is the expected range of revenue once the products are launched? Answer these questions giving a complete picture of the principal activity that you are engaged in or will be engaged in during the timeline of this business plan.

When Will things Happen?
If you have a new start-up business, this section of the plan will allow you to explain the steps that are needed to set-up your business and make it fully operational. How much time do you need? When will the business be up and running? If you are have an already existing business, it is useful to place somewhere in the plan a list of targets that you want to achieve and give approximate dates as to when these targets can be reached.

Where is Your Business?
Where are you located? Do you work at home or do you have business premises? If you have a business location such as a store or factory, then explain about the size and capacity of this establishment. What is the business climate like in your area? Are there significant competitors and what are your prospects of competing in this market? Answer these questions as best you can and give yourself and would-be investors a clear picture of where your business is situated geographically and with relation to your overall market.

Why are you in Business?
Explain why your particular enterprise, product or service is needed. What can your add to the already existing area of business that your are entering? What need are you going to fill? The answers to these questions are particularly important for investors looking for opportunities in emerging businesses and emerging markets.

How will it all Happen?
Your sales and marketing plan should be outlined in this section. Explain how you intend to establish your product or service and what steps you will take to create or expand your customer base. How will you finance the start-up and/or expansion of your business? Explain the source of your funds whether you have existing loans or liabilities. How much money do you need to raise in order to get realize your overall plan for the launching or expansion of your business? Explain how you are going to translate your business idea into a living reality.

Take a look at your planned business or your existing business from the perspective that has been outlined in this article, and write a concise business plan. It will help to bring clarity to your operations and convince investors and lenders to participate in your enterprise.


"When I started out in business, I spent a great deal of time researching every detail that might be pertinent to the deal I was interested in making. I still do the same today. People often comment on how quickly I operate, but the reason I can move quickly is that I’ve done the background work first, which no one usually sees. I prepare myself thoroughly, and then when it is time to move ahead, I am ready to sprint." Donald Trump Quote

Increase Direct Ad Revenue

If you have been blogging for a while, you know that selling ad space directly to the advertisers on your blog can become one of the lucrative sources of revenue for you. When you have started selling ad space on your blog, you always want to sell off all the available ad space or ad spots on your blog to make the most out of direct ad selling. In this article, I'll be sharing with you the techniques that I have used to maximize my blog direct ad revenue. These have been good ways for me to maintain and increase my blog ad revenue. I hope you'll find them useful too:


Create an Advertising Page

An advertising page is basically a page that tells what ad space you are selling. It usually describes everything you are offering (text link, banner ad, sponsored review, etc) with price details included.

With an advertising page posted on your site, the visitors who are interested on placing an ad in your blog can find the advertising info they need immediately. This will potentially generate some fast sales for you.

Writing an advertising page isn't very difficult. The content of advertising page usually starts with an introduction, followed by the info of the ad options you are offering and lastly providing your ordering details and also your email address for the prospective advertisers in case they need to contact you to get more advertising info.

You might want to see example of advertising page before writing one fir your blog, you could take a look at my advertising page at:

If you need more examples, you can visit other blogs that have an advertising page posted. By looking at other blogs' advertising page, you'll get an idea of how to write your own advertising page.

The important information you must include into your page are the introduction, your blog traffic stat or other stats, (e.g. Google ranking, Alexa ranking, etc), The ad options you are selling with price details included and details of how to order an ad spot on your blog.


Set the Right Price

It's important that you are charging reasonable prices for the ad spaces you are offering for sale. This is not just to appeal your prospective advertisers to advertise on your blog but also to keep them as your long term advertisers which will ensure steady ad revenue for you.

It seems to be easy task to set the prices for the different ad spaces you are offering. The assumption is that the banner ad on highest position such as banner ad on the header of your blog should be charged at a highest price and ads on the lower location such as at the sidebar should sell at a lower price because ad on higher positions will generate more traffic for advertisers. Well, this isn't always right.

An effective way that can help you set the right price for each ad space you sell on your blog is by putting up your own affiliate ads (Clickbank, CJ, etc) on the ad spaces of your blog to test the click-through rate and traffic before opening those ad spaces for sale. The testing period doesn't have to be long; just one week is good enough.

Once you have tested each ad space, you would know the average daily clicks of each of your affiliate ads that placed on the different ad spaces on your blog and so you can set the price accordingly. Let says your 125 x 125 banner ad which places on the top right sidebar of your blog get an average daily unique clicks of 10. This means the advertiser who places a 125x125 banner ad on your blog is estimated to get 300 unique visitors (10 x 30) monthly. So you can decide what is the reasonable charge for a banner ad that generates 300 unique visitors for the advertiser each month.

If you think each unique visitor that you direct to your advertiser should cost $0.30, then the price for a 125 x 125 banner ad on your blog will be $90 per month (300 x $0.30). $90 for 300 unique visitors every month, seems reasonable enough right. But you certainly can charge more if you are in a highly profitable niches such as Forex, debt consolidation and etc.

By setting your price based on the traffic level, you can also avoid over-charging for different ad space on your blog. For instance, a 468 x 60 banner ad on the header of your blog seems to be expensive than a 125 x 125 banner ad at the top right sidebar because the 468x60 banner ad is located at a higher position. However, when you test the traffic level, you might find that the 125x125 banner ad is actually attracting more traffic than the 468x60 banner ad. So, the 125x125 banner ad was supposed to be expensive than the 468 banner ad.


Post Testimonials on Your Advertising Page

You know the Internet users like to find supporting information about the product or service they're interested before really buying it. It's no different when it comes to buying ad spaces on blogs. The real testimonials from your previous satisfied advertisers are much like supporting information which will convince your potential advertisers to order an ad spot on your blog.

Testimonials often are short and sharing the real positive advertising experience on your blog. These are certainly powerful supporting information that can convince your potential advertisers.

So how you can get real testimonials from the advertisers?

If your blog has generated a couple of sales for some of your advertisers running an ad campaign on your blog, they are the happy advertisers willing to give you a testimonial if you ask for one. The satisfied advertiser may occasionally contact you to tell you that they are happy with the result from the ad campaign they run on your blog. You may reply the advertiser and invite him/her to publish a testimonial on your blog advertising page. You will include the advertiser's name, photo if possible and the advertiser's website link. The advertiser will certainly be happy to send you back an testimonial because they can include a link in the their testimonial.

Another way is to send a thank you email to the advertisers who have advertised one month on your blog and decided to renew their ad campaign on your blog. These are probably satisfied advertisers as well. Your email will thank them for renewing their ad on your blog and invite them to publish a testimonial on your blog. Tell the advertisers you'll be including their website link in the testimonial. You might then get one or two replies from them with a testimonial for you to publish on your blog.


Provide Helpful Customer Service

The prospective advertisers can be your paying customers. Many advertisers often like to ask questions before they place an order. So, make sure you read their questions and give the answers that they are looking for.

Also advertisers often like to test the click-through and conversion rates. This is to find out the performance of their ads. When they aren't satisfied with the result, they'll request for ad changes. Thus, you should allow ad changes on anytime. This way the advertisers can test different ads and landing pages to get the performance that they expect. When the advertisers are freely to request changes, they will probably renew their ads. This will secure your ad revenue.

Moreover, you might think about running discount campaign from time to time. It's helpful to boost up your ad sales. Also offering something like one week trial or two week trial could also push the advertisers to order ad space from you.

The above are the techniques that I have applied to maintain and boost up and blog revenue. Hope these techniques will work on you as well.

5 Practical Tips for Generating Targeted Traffic to Your New Blog

You have been inspired by the successful bloggers who have made a nice living from blogging. You began to like the idea of blogging for cash and started to sign up for courses, blog RSS feeds and newsletters to learn about blogging. You followed the steps and finally got your first new blog launched on the Internet. You published a post daily. But after week, you found that only a few visitors have read your posts. You started to think about how to drive targeted traffic to your new blog.....

In this post you'll find several ways that you can use immediately to get targeted traffic.


Blog Commenting

Commenting on large traffic or popular blogs is any easy way to get some targeted traffic to your blog. I'm sure you have no problem finding the popular blogs in your niche. Take time to read about their posts and probably you'll learn something more which can help in your content creation. When you like to express your opinion, you can post your comments in. Most blog allows your name to link to your blog. So, your comment could potentially attract traffic when the visitors are reading your comment.


Participating in Forum Discussion

There are also popular forums in your niche as well. You could find the popular forums of your niche through Google search engine. These forums can be your quick sources of targeted traffic. Forums allow member to add link in their signature. So, you can make sure of the signature to get traffic.

The key to getting traffic from forums is participation. You should be active in discussions. Be helpful. When someone started a thread asking for help or advice, you may take the opportunity to post your reply with answers to their questions. You might also start your own threads to discuss about something interesting. This way you'll get good exposure in the forums and people who read your messages will see your signature link as well. Those who click your signature link will be directed immediately to your blog.


Pay Per Click Traffic

The advertising network like Google AdWords can generate quality targeted traffic for your blog. As far as I know, Google often offer $100 or $50 free advertising credit to 'first-time' advertisers. So if you haven't used AdWords before, think about signing up a new Google AdWords account to get the free advertising credit and start testing drive targeted traffic from AdWords. If you are happy with it , you might continue your campaign. Make sure you do some calculations to find out how much you can spend on AdWords every month.

However, if you advertising budget is tight, you can look for those cheaper ppc advertising networks. Bidvertiser can be a good option when it comes to buying cheap ppc traffic. The quality isn't as good as AdWords but traffic is still targeted.


Guest Posting

Quite a lot of blogs are accepting guest posts for publication these days. My blog MoneyMakerInfo.blogspot.com is one of them. You can write a few posts exclusively for the publication on the blogs that accept guest post. You'll include a few lines with your link in the author bio of your post for promoting your blog.

The good thing about guest posting is that your post will be display on the homepage which can potentially generate a good amount of traffic for the first 24 hours of publication. But guest post often needs to be quality and unique. So, make sure you take the time to do research to come up with some good quality posts so that your posts get accepted for publication.


Article Marketing

Article marketing works much the same with guest posting. You write articles and public on article directories. You are allowed to included your anchor text links in the author bio of your articles. The article doesn't have to be great quality to get accepted for publication. Informative articles with more than 400 words are ideal for publishing on article directories.

If you can write articles on daily basis, then article marketing could become your source of traffic as well. When you submit your articles, only look for large traffic article directories such as Ezinearticles.com, Article Dashboard, Isnare and etc. These are the article directories that can potentially generate consistent traffic. Try to submit at least one article daily. Keep this practice for a month and you'll targeted traffic coming from article directories then.


Press Release

Press release sites are great places to announce your new blog. While PRweb.com seems to be good press site to announce your new blog but it's quite expensive to publish a press release on the site. There are alternatives. In fact there are free press sites that you can publish your press release on. Go to Google and search the 'term' free list of press release sites and you get to know what press sites are free. Also if you run a contest on your blog, you can publish a press release on the press sites as well.

Press release in different than articles. If you haven't written press release before, you are advised to hire someone to create the press release for you because press release is in different format.

Once you see targeted traffic flow in to your blog consistently, it will be good idea to monetize those traffic. There are several ways to make money from your blog. You can use AdSense, sell ad space on your blog, promote affiliate products and etc. Make sure you do testing to find out what works best for your blog to generate income online.

Make Money with Affiliate Marketing

Many people turn into affiliate marketing and a lot of them have given testimonials that they have really earned from it in just a few months of marketing affiliate products. Others even earn a few hundreds daily. How is this possible? What steps are they taking and what kind of marketing strategies are they following in order to drive traffic to their landing pages?

Affiliate marketing certainly can make you money. But patience is necessary and a lot of works have to put in. However, once you have left your mark in the sites where you want to gain traffic from, it stays there for long period of time and people would keep on visiting that page and you would get free traffic and affiliate sales from time to time.

So, what are the ways the professional marketers are taking in order to market their affiliate products effectively? Marketing a product needs careful planning and concept development. There are many sites where we can post a link to our landing pages which rank higher in Google. Below are some of them and it’s up to you to fully utilize and use the opportunity.

Squidoo Pages - Professional affiliate marketers use Squidoo pages to write a review about their products and to post links to their landing pages. Squidoo ranks high in search engines and if you use the highly searched keywords in your product review, there are great chances that your Squidoo page will land in the first or second page of the search engine. Squidoo is a reliable and trusted site so reviews written in the lenses are mostly preferred by most buyers.

EzineArticles – this article directory site contains hundreds of reviews and related articles about the products being endorsed online. EzineArticles has a pagerank of 6 and it also ranks high in search engines. Internet marketers find it a reliable site to endorse their products online where they get positive results. Creating an article about the product you are endorsing and submitting it to EzineArticles is a great step in marketing your affiliate products. It is important that you make your article as informative as possible so it won’t come out that you are only marketing your product but readers would also find your article very useful. This kind of article generates clicks to your given link at your author page. Readers usually become curious to know more information from the homepage of the author of the article.

Blogging – creating your own blog and creating backlinks to it is also an effective strategy. Once you have created your blog and added articles to it, you can write a review about the product you are endorsing then adding a link in the middle or bottom part of the article to your landing page. You can then join social bookmarking sites, microblogging sites, forums, social networking sites and other sites where you can generate traffic to your blog. Once you have thousands of backlinks to your blog already plus if you use keywords which are highly searched and with very less competition, there are great chances that your blog will be found. The reviews you post in your blog will then be read by buyers and if you have good quality review, there are big chances that your product will be purchased.

Article Directories – aside from EzineArticles, there are thousands of article directories online. The process is similar to what you will do with your articles at EzineArticles. It is important to note also that the article or review you submit to these article directories are modified, that is, no duplicate content if possible as Google penalizes posts which are in duplication with the others that they will find online. It is best to submit your articles first to article directories with higher pagerank as they are found first than those articles from directories with lower pagerank.

Submit to Social Bookmarking Sites - social bookmarking sites are reliable and effective in driving traffic to our blogs. Once you submit your post to thousands of social bookmarking sites online, you are creating thousands of backlinks which increases your blog’s pagerank. This boosts your blogs traffic and gives it a greater chance to land high in search engines.

People who search products and product reviews usually search first in Google or other search engines before they purchase it. Once they find your review and go to the link being endorsed in your review, there are greater chances of getting a sale. Affiliate marketing is the best and fastest way to earn money online if only you are doing the right method and strategy of driving traffic to your landing pages. It is important also to write high quality reviews and information about your products. People do really buy an item once they are satisfied with the review they find about the product they want to buy. The above ways are some of what professional internet marketers are doing. It is up to you if you will try them out. If you research about the ways and steps on how to market your affiliate products, you will always read about Squidoo pages, EzineArticles and the other methods discussed above. It is up to you to give it a try. In the end, you would be thankful you did.

Top Ways of Creating Multiple Streams Of Inc Online

Are you looking for the top ways to create multiple streams of income online, but are not sure how to do that? Then you need to know some of the more common ways to have as many streams of income on the internet as you can handle.

To help you make the most money possible here are the best ways that anyone can use for creating more than one stream of income on the internet.

One: Affiliate programs - This is a free way to use and it is very easy to get started. You just need to find affiliate programs that you want to promote and then start marketing them. Don't choose too many at once or you can easily overwhelm yourself.

Two: Sell advertising space - If you have a good amount of traffic already coming to your site and your page rank is going up then you can easily sell advertising space on your site to other online business owners.

Three: Create your own products - Many people like to create their own products such as eBooks and then sell them. This will take a little more time but it can easily be used in conjunction with these other ways for bringing in money from more than one stream.

Four: Offer a service - If you can, offer a service to business owners' online along with doing these other things. This will allow you to bring in even more money.

A good service to offer business owners is a writing service where you write articles and all kinds of other things for them. Just find a service that people are looking for and you can be sure that you will have success with this income stream.

Five: Create a membership site - Creating a membership site will give you not only a good way to make extra money but also to promote more than one stream at a time. Just remember that the more free things you offer your customers the more successful your membership site will be.

You want to be sure that you take time to learn how to effectively set up your own site so you can be sure that it will be successful. Don't try and just throw something together or this income stream will quickly dry up.

Now that you know the best ways but definitely not all of the ways that you can use for creating multiple streams of income online; all that remains is to get started. Don't delay because the sooner you get the different streams going the sooner you will be making good money online.

Why Is Tracking SEO So Important For Every Business?

When you have a business, and are using SEO marketing to help promote it, then you need to understand the different ways for tracking SEO. There are many different ways that you can use to ensure your SEO marketing efforts are paying off like they should.

You want to be sure that you use all of these ways and others so you can get the maximum effectiveness from your SEO marketing campaign. Here are a few of the most important methods to use.

1. Check your backlinks - The number of backlinks that you have has a big hand in the success of your SEO campaign. You want to be sure that you have a good amount of backlinks and that it is growing daily.

Just be sure that the links you are getting back to your site are relevant to your business or this could hurt your SEO efforts. Always take time to know what backlinks you have for the most effectiveness to your marketing campaign.

If the backlinks are not being built like they should then find ways to take care of this so you do get the links you need.

2. Check your website rank - The rank of your website will tell you how the search engines are viewing your site. The higher your rank is the more important your site is to the search engines.

You want to keep constantly working towards improving the ranking of your site by building backlinks, writing articles and many other things.

3. Stats - You have to take time to look at your website's stats because this will tell you how many people are visiting your site on a daily basis. It can also tell you what keywords are being used to help people find your business.

If the stats get higher each month then you are on a good roll but if they get lower than you need to find the problem and fix it.

Checking your stats on a regular basis gives you the change to tweak your campaigns until the stats starting going up again. Constant tweaking may be needed for a while until you get it worked out to where you are constantly getting traffic.

These are the best ways but not all of the ways that you want to use for tracking SEO. It is always a good idea to gain as much knowledge as you can about this subject so you can be sure that you are getting the maximum effectiveness from SEO marketing.

Proven Internet Business Ideas

Internet marketing is growing all around the world. Almost everyone who is aware of an Internet business as a successful way to make money, has considered some online business ideas.

Why join them? Because this is really on the boom if you know how it works.

Here are 6 Internet business ideas you may think about doing:

1. Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate marketing is when you advertise a company's products on your website or blog and you get paid each time a visit or a purchase has been made.

Adsense is one example of a paying company. Consider being an affiliate and you can earn money even while you are sleeping.

2.Make money through blogging. Do you have a blog? I Almost everybody is blogging now. To share what happened yesterday, during a vacation, at your son's birthday party, etc.

Why not use of your blogs to earn some money? You can do this by blogging about companies' products and having a link to their website. Every time a click or a purchase has been made you make money.

3. Become an entrepreneur online. When I say entrepreneur, I mean you will capitalize, build a website, and become a businessman like you always wanted.

You can be a wedding planner, freelance disk jockey, party master, or even a photographer. Online is the best place to get unlimited customers. You may even want to add some part time help when your business starts growing.

4. Become a web master. Web master includes virtual assistants who do the job of their virtual boss for them. This job includes web site and web page development, making auto responder programs and other editing jobs or virtual calls.

5. Become a writer online. Are you good at writing? You can be a writer and get paid for writing articles for Internet readers and researchers.

This is actually a job, but at the same time it is a business online since you are delivering your talent for a price. You don't need to go far. You can write and get paid from home.

6. Put your business online. So how is your retail store doing? Don't you think you can advertise online? People are online now. Even youngsters are online playing games.

Why not try putting your business online. If you don't know how to start, ask and pay somebody who knows and let him make you a website. This way you are opening up to a bigger market, and someday may need more workers.

Content Marketing - Understanding the Why and How

What is content marketing? Content marketing is using relevant and valuable information to attract potential customers to you. This information will not only attract but, if done correctly, will engage your target audience and drive profitable action to your business.

I'm always amazed at the looks and responses I get when I'm speaking to a client and I explain to them they need more content. I'm then almost always questioned "why?"

Think of content as a way of interacting and communicating with your customers without selling.

Need proof it works? Think of an article you read that captured your attention and really engaged you. Did you look to see who the writer was? Were you interested in the company that they worked for and the products or services that they offered? If they were using the skills of content marketing, I can almost guarantee you did.

A great article can market your product or service in a way that the consumer is not interrupted. You are using that article to educate your consumer and create an awareness on information that is important to them. This makes your potential buyer more intelligent.

A successful content marketing strategy will deliver consistent valuable information to your target market, when this strategy works you turn the consumers you have targeted into buyers.

Look, it's no secret that consumers are tired of traditional marketing. This is why you see a rush to social media and permission based marketing rather than intrusive marketing that doesn't allow consumers to make the choice of when they want to be marketed to. Why do you think consumers skip commercials, tear out magazine advertisements, and turn on online ad blockers? Because they are taking back control and they will decide when they want to be marketed to.

As a business, you have to be smarter in your marketing efforts and this includes writing content that is not only interesting but relevant and valuable to the market you are targeting.

How do you know if your content is marketing for you? It's easy really. Answer the following questions when reviewing your content or use them as a guideline when creating new content.

• Is it targeting a specific market? If not the content will be too broad to attract a targeted audience.
• Is your content informative, relevant and valuable to those you are targeting? Or is it just a sales pitch?
• Does it educate your target audience about your industry without being too sales oriented and pushing just your products or services?
• Does your message include a subtle marketing message that grabs the reader’s attention and gets them interested in what you offer? The key is the marketing message must create an interest and a desire for what you have to offer without trying to close a sale. Think of it as leaving a faint fingerprint on the mind of the consumer who is reading.
• Does it leave the reader wanting more?
• Does it stir emotion within the reader and inspire action?

If you answered “yes” to the above questions, you have a good piece of content that you can use to market the products or services that you offer. If you were unable to answer “yes” to all of the questions you will want to tweak your content until you can.

You can use content marketing in all areas of your marketing including print, media, events and online. You want to make sure that your website has content that markets to your audience. You also want to make sure that if you have a blog, you are also using it for content marketing. Content marketing is valuable and often leaves a longer impression than any other method of marketing.

Manage and Monitor Your Online Reputation

Just this past week, another strong brand was caught in the midst of an online controversy. The brand victim, Starbucks. Employees at a Miami Starbucks posted inappropriate photos of Starbucks customers online using the social media tool Flickr. Now, Starbucks is well known in the social media space, they have several followers on Twitter, so how did this happen?

A few months back the same thing happened to another company. I won’t go into details, because if you didn’t see the video, I don’t want to make you lose your lunch – let’s just say there were two employees of Domino's Pizza doing very unhygienic things to the pizza they were preparing. It made national news and the video on YouTube received over 1 millions views. The video threatened the reputation of a brand that had been developed by a company for 50 years.

Don't be mistaken,just because you are a business and you are not using social media, don't think that your brand can't be hurt by it if you are not paying attention. The reality is, whether or not you are participating in social media - you are playing. Your brand in some way or another is being represented,either by you as a company, by your customers or by your employees.

Monitoring major social media platforms and solving issues that reflect poorly on your brand is one of the most important parts of any company's social media effort. As a business, the most important thing to remember is that even if you are not using social media, you need to be aware of what’s going on in the social media realm when it comes to your brand. It doesn’t pay to turn a blind eye and, by doing so, it can, ultimately, be a detriment to your success.

We've all heard of brand monitoring and many of us, especially small to medium sized businesses, in the past haven't seen the need. We'd just treat customers well and give them what they need and they'd tell their friends and family. Now that we have the internet and social media, it’s even more important to monitor our reputations, especially as business owners. I always remind the clients with whom I consult that it’s not just seven people one person will tell about your services, now it’s in the millions. This is especially true with the social media tools that are available and widely used, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

I don’t care if you don’t want to use social mediums to market your service or products, it’s more vital than ever to at least have an awareness of what’s being said within the social media realm about you, your brand, your products and your services. Sticking your head in the sand will only hurt you not help you.

How Can You Monitor and Protect the Reputation of Your Brand?

• Step 1: Understand how the social media platforms work. Learn how to use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and MySpace. Become familiar with their platforms. Take a few moments and read the terms of services and watch and learn how people are using these social media outlets.
• Step 2. Don’t assume that social media doesn’t affect you. When it comes to social mediums, there are not just thousands of users, there are millions. These users consist of your customers who are bloggers, influencers, columnists and public figures. These people are talking about companies. Are they talking about yours? You need to know this and you need to know whether the chatter is negative or positive.
• Step 3: Actively Protect Your Brand. There are many steps that you can use to do this. Register your brand names with the various social media platforms, (add comma here) this way you avoid the chance of them being hijacked by someone else.
• Step 4: Create a social media policy for your company. This means creating a plan that informs and educates employees on the company policy and guidelines of using social media. This policy should inform them as to what they should and should not discuss when it comes to the company. And other appropriate practices and procedures to follow, especially in the event of a crisis.
• Step 5: Always be aware. There is no excuse not to know what is being said. It’s important to always have your finger on the pulse of what is being said, whether it be positive or negative. You always want to know when someone is talking about your and your brand – ignorance is no excuse. Monitor the social media platforms.
• Step 6: Embrace the negative when necessary. Social media is a conversation and a dialogue, so be willing to embrace the negative and dialogue in public regarding the situation. This gives you credibility with other consumers.

Benefits Of Taking Free Cash Surveys To Make Money

You should know about doing free cash surveys if you are looking for an easy way to earn more money for free. For anyone wanting to make extra money there are many benefits cash surveys offer.

Knowing these benefits will help you make an easier decision about whether taking free surveys is right for you or if you want to find another way to make money.

Here are the most important benefits you need to be aware of and reasons why so many people prefer to make money with surveys for cash.

1. Free and easy - These are free surveys to take and you get paid at the end of it. Nothing could be better than that or easier for anyone to make money without having to spend your own money to do it.

2. Make the money you want to - You can take as many or as little surveys as you choose to. There is no limit on how many surveys you can take and this means that you are the one that controls how much money you will make.

3. Doesn't take much time - Most of the surveys you take can be filled out pretty quickly. There are some surveys that will be a little longer and will take a little longer to fill out but these usually offer a higher cash incentive for anyone willing to complete it.

4. When you have time take some surveys - There is no certain time that you need to answer the surveys. If that is all the time you have you can do them in the middle of the night. You decide when to work so you can fit taking surveys into your lifestyle.

4. You have complete control - There are many types of surveys you can take for various companies from different industries. You choose what industries and companies you want to take surveys for and how many you want to take for them.

That way you don't end up taking surveys about something you have no interest in at all. Plus controlling how many surveys you take lets you control your income as well.

Now that you know these important benefits you can easily see why taking free cash surveys to make money is a good idea for anyone. Take some time to research various cash survey sites and give some a try. After all these are free surveys and you might even enjoy taking them and making money.

Real Forex Trading Training Advice

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Investing in Penny Stocks

When you begin to look for penny stocks for an investment, there are many decisions to make. Penny stocks are very speculative, which means if you buy the wrong stock at the wrong time, you could lose a lot of money. That being said, there is a lot of money to be made trading speculative stocks. You must do your research, learn how to chart and trust your instincts and knowledge. There is no hoping. Doing this, you may be able to begin making a profit quickly on a relatively small investment.

Finding penny stock to invest in is very difficult. There are thousands of stocks to choose from, how can you find a good company in the right sector, how do you choose just one that will make you money shortly after you buy it. This is where the real work comes in. Using research, scanning tools, stock picking sites and screeners can help you find that one stock that stands out above the rest.

You could use the forums, message boards and bulletin boards to gain your information but you have to weed through a lot of scams and lies. If you wait patiently you may find traders who are really interested in doing research and finding great stocks. You may find good traders but be careful, they may just be using insider information.

There are many ways to do research, you must read all the companies filings, this is cumbersome at first but becomes easier once you know what your looking for.There are also newsletters, subscription services, and stock picking sites that will help you find stocks and ideas of which sectors to buy in. These sites also provide research on their reasoning usually. If you use these types of sites, ensure that they are not being paid by the company, there needs to be a disclaimer after the advice that lets you know if their research is paid for by the company, otherwise called a promotion (these are bad). As you watch and research the penny share market you will become better at finding stocks and making money.

On any given day enter your brokerage account and begin scanning stocks by price, volume and 52 week highs and lows. This will show you what traders are interested in. Don't just buy, you need to begin research on these companies that you find. Once you get a feel for these moving stocks try trading them, this will be more of a day trading type set up and you should exit your buys as soon as the stock begins to drop in price or slow down in volume.

Ensure you have the right brokerage account, one that charges a flat fee and has some of the tools I described above. Some brokerage accounts charge extra fees for penny stocks and any extra fees will come out of your profit making it harder for your account to be positive at the end of the day. Also you want your brokerage account to have a charting service where you can chart stocks on their movements.

Stocks Trading Online

We do not need to call a broker and pay high commissions just to trade stocks. With just a few clicks of the mouse, we are in set to be in control of our investments. With online brokerages challenging to get your business, commission prices at affordable level.

Depending on online stock trades, there is trading software available to shoot your orders to "the floor" in just seconds. We can even log on to the internet, read the news about online stock trades we are interested in, look at the charts, go back to our online trading platform, click a button, and buy a stock. For example, search for the suitable stock and buy it in minutes.

With online stock trades being so easy, a person can to be nearer of getting rich quick. Many people get into this state of mind. They open an account with an online broker without hesitating and end up losing their hard earned money. Online stock trades are a get rich slow process. Money can eventually be made, but it takes some time. Most important getting sufficient amount of knowledge about online stock trades. For example, do not be greedy and think that you can get rich in a short period of time.

Before you try to open an account educate yourself by reading books, and developing a online stock trading strategy. Do not get involved with the online stock market without doing this first. The market is filled con man to take your money from you. And take your money easily if you go into this blindly. For example, you need to be smart if you do not want to be cheated by bad people.