Imagine your brand as the camera on your iPhone 4s. One side of the lens you have the consumer and the other, you. This is where you both interact. How you present your company, how perceptions are made and how connections merge to create the substance that is your brand. Mostly you are judged on these 4 things; The definition of your brand How you communicate How you interact and network And lastly, the way in which you present yourself and deliver As we touched on yester

This week is all about Digital Branding. Kind, grade, or make, as indicated by a stamp, trademark, or the like: the best brand of coffee. Or as David Ogilvy said; “The intangible sum of a product’s attributes: it’s name, packaging and price, its history, its reputation and the way its advertised.” The father of advertising’s mantra followed these four basic principles, Research Professional discipline Creative brilliance Results for clients With online PR taking such a great

We’ve put together a small list of respectable blogs suggested by our readers (and one or two from OPT!) http://purple.us/blog . Suggested by @purplecomm. An informative blog from the US with a mix of ASL and English content. http://digitalbrandmarketing.com/  Suggested by @basilpuglisi. They write about anything from social media to branding to mobile technology. Jonathan Payne @socialgameplan gives a shout out to @lewishowes. Claiming that after watching 2 of his videos, hi

We’ve talked about blogging this week.  You should now be at a point where you can safely post something up online consistently.  Sharing your blog is the next step. There are now great sites to help you distribute your blog. And this year is it ALL about GREAT CONTENT!  I’ll talk about this more in the coming weeks but PLEASE take the time and write good stuff!  Really give this a lot of thought and look at what your competitors are blogging about.  Make yours better, richer

Nothing comes easy and blogging doesn’t just happen.  you have to dedicated yourself to writing one and work out how much time you can spend doing it.  This can be an aspect of determining what kind of blog you can present.  You certainly don’t just get followers overnight, believe me, even if you are giving away product – its hard! 1.         Do strive to produce great content as that is the best way to attract followers. 2.         Do think about what grabs you to a post, o

If you are an advanced blogger, start thinking about your yearly campaign. If you remember, back when we were talking about ‘ planning your time ’ it’s so important to plan before you write. Anyway – back to you guys that are just starting out. You need to decide; a) What do you wish to achieve from your blog? b) How you wish your blog to be perceived? c) Will you write a monthly and give out a lot of info? d) Will you write a daily bite size offering? e) I

Welcome to 2012! How’s the head?! OPT have talked mostly about social media and how it can help your business.  We hopefully all know now that it is unavoidable.  You just have to make the decision to either employ someone to look after it or adapt and introduce new jobs into your daily routines. Let’s begin this year, by hammering home some mega easy and positive steps towards getting your business out there online in 2012. Honing its online presence and giving your baby a r

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging! #SocialMedia

I would like to thank our followers and wish all our readers a very happy and restful Christmas and a prosperous New Year! I also hope that I have started an informative and exciting development service for you to add to your weekly reading lists. If you would like to provide content on this blog or collaborate in any way, shape or form. then please get in touch! Here’s to 2012! Andrea #socialcommunities #SmallBiz #thinkandtweetlater #Twitter #socialmediaplanning #onlineprtip

There are many pros and cons to choosing your own name for your business.  I have struggled with this question for years but stuck with my own personal name for many reasons. The most important being, that I had a ready-made audience. Obviously your name gives a certain personality to a company, product or service and many clients prefer that personal touch. Therefore it can work in your favour in many industries. If you remember my blog ‘The Art of Self Promotion (1 of 5) ’

If you are using the wrong domain name for your business, product or service, you should seriously think about changing it now! You could be missing out on quite a hefty amount of free marketing. Ask yourself these questions: Is it easy to spell and remember? Is it your own personal name that is hard to spell and remember? Does it contain a dot or slash in it anywhere? Does your domain name contain word repetition? And are the words spelled differently? Is it similar to anoth

We have discovered that your name is really important for online marketing but how does it actually affect your strategy? Simple.  A good name will allow you to be flexible and creative in your marketing plans.  This is not about design, although if you are a business that is lead by good design, this will also need to be reflected in your name. We loved this article” Pandecta Magazine http://www.pandecta.com , although written in 2009 – many of the issues remain the same. Bu

As mentioned yesterday, your business name/domain name could be the only thing that is holding you back from getting the traffic you need to succeed online. I have spoken with brand experts who believe that names should be almost a blank canvas, in which to build the image of your business upon.  Some swear by a coined name that are made up of ‘halves of words joined together. I believe that any name can be fabulous, as long as it is justified with an appropriate marketing s

As we hit the silly season, over the next 5 days I will be discussing the importance of your domain name and will be answering the following questions: How important is the name in business? How does the name of your business affect Online Marketing Campaign? Should you change your domain name? Should you use your OWN name for your domain? The name of your business could make or break your success. It should speak of the expertise, value and uniqueness of your product, servic

This week we have covered many important tools to get familiar with to get the most from Twitter. It’s Sunday, you have much homework, so just a somewhat obvious reminder today. Do make sure that you make sure twitter is connected with all your other sites online. When I say connected, I don’t just mean that you have typed your twitter address on your Facebook page etc. I mean, you have to decide whether you want your twitter and facebook updates to sync. You may wish for

“An all in one social media dashboard packed with amazing features” After a week’s worth of OPTs Twitter Tricks – we believe we have saved the best until last! We have mentioned social oomph a blog or two ago – well this takes that to the next level but is totally free.  Each one slightly differs in navigation so it really is down to taste, which you prefer. We also haven’t covered the use of location with twitter and other social media sites.  If you are business that works

Trends on Twitter identifies the most popular news stories and hot topics from across the globe. You can also just search for stuff that is trending on a local basis.  All you have to do is change your location. There is a snapshot of the most tweeted along the sidebar on your computer screen or on your mobile, on the search screen. Trends can be used for: Finding out information in real time. Participating in topics that grab your attention To find new friends interested in

“Another fantastic, free social media tool that can boost your results and save you time”  OPT First launched as ‘Tweet Later” Social Oomph allows you to schedule tweets. Blogs and manage your follows among other things. If you are like us and manage plenty of twitter accounts, blogs and sites it is an essential part of your life! Also – it enables you to sit down at a convenient time and plan your weeks social media updates, then forget about them! We at OPT like it because

“We Follow, offers a clean, well executed design and easily navigable pages that are clearly refreshed often”  ReadWriteWeb.com Kevin Rose , the founder of Digg , launched ‘We Follow’ in 2009 and it continues to be a staple twitter aide it was created to help new users find people to follow. It’s basically a design friendly list and more importantly, wouldn’t scare off the lesser experienced! On the front page, it displays lists of the most popular twitter users under specifi

“We are convinced that everyone has something to share, and so they should!” www.paper.li Recently nominated ‘ Mashable Award’s Finalist ’ in the category ‘up and coming social media service’ for 2011 and we at OPT understand why! Paper Li is a content curator service for Twitter enabling people to publish newspapers based on the topics they are interested in.  A great way of passing the best of what you read to your ‘follows’.  It also teaches you, as mentioned in my first