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

“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

It’s a creative market out there. Now more than ever and business is not just for the academic, techno minded geeks. Anyone can start their own business (as long as you have a great idea, with legs of course!) Technology has allowed people like me, (academically challenged, ahem) to flourish and enhance their natural skills – the ones they were born with and make a go of their own business. I personally thank Steve Jobs for making my life so easy behind a screen. I am a tru

It goes without saying that we all would like the option to try before we buy, not only would it earn immediate trust and loyalty from our customers, but it gives them a CHOICE. We live in a world nowadays where (and some may argue) that there are too many choices. Pfff. I disagree and I love that there are numerous amounts of choices in our everyday lives. I love that you can change your career at the drop of a hat, or fly off to distant lands in a day or bag a much sort aft

Websites are also a huge part of the broken chain s .  Just because you have spent time and/or good, honest money on what you think is a decent website, doesn’t mean that you will automatically rise through the ranks on Google and be at the front of the shop window for all to see. Some of the most basic web pages, with full SEO rich content are the most popular, because of the SEO work that has gone into it. So many people spend all their time on a great website. Flash and ot

In our last post – we asked;  ‘ if your content lacks good, strong keywords then how do you expect others to find you? ‘ Keywords are basically the words that your customer/client would type into Google to find you.  If you were a catering company, I would take a guess that ‘catering hire’, book caterer’, ‘party food’ and ‘event catering’ to mention a few are up there towards the top of the keyword ladder. They are vital words and mostly come in pairs, to add into your conte

Think and Tweet Later! Here are our simple twitter rules for a trustworthy campaign! Building communities is SO important. Your customers/clients need to feel very important. They care far less about your advertising than about what your other customers are saying about you and how you respond to your customers is vital to success! Having an ‘active twitter presence’ enables you to demonstrate strong customer service, rather than just claiming you offer it! You also don’t w