Marketing

As landing a high ranking through search engine optimization grows more competitive by the day, often blocking small-to-medium-sized enterprises from achieving top spots online, more businesses are turning to social media to find new customers. Many customers, meanwhile, are also starting use the se...

For any of us who grew up in the age of digital, it's starting to feel like deja vu all over again as companies large and small flock to social media darling Facebook. It's not hard to understand the allure, given that there are over 400 million members -- 100 million of which live in North America;...

Social media strategies are not just for consumer-focused companies anymore. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and their ilk are finding their way into business-to-business firms. Solid waste service provider Waste Management, for example, has set up a Web 2.0 shop. Interactivity is key, and social media...

With more than 60 million users, Twitter clearly is a successful social media platform. However, the question of whether it also can be a successful business has yet to be answered. On Monday, Twitter proved that it's serious about making an effort to become a profitable enterprise when it banned th...

The location-based service company Glympse has its headquarters in Redmond, Wash. You certainly don't need the company's iPhone app -- which lets people track their friends' locations on smartphones in real-time on maps or satellite imagery -- to know that. But it may seem lately as if Glympse has b...

Most successful companies invest in marketing. Marketing budgets are utilized differently depending on factors such as industry and company goals, and results are contingent on how well an organization understands and interacts with its customers. However, what many organizations don't know is tha...

The "Like" button that's part of Facebook's new Open Graph platform depicts a miniature "thumbs up" hand gesture, and it provides a quick, easy way for those visiting certain websites to indicate they approve of the content and want to place it on their FB profiles. And like thousands of Roger Ebert...

As business offerings go, Go800's plan is simple: It gives mobile consumers a quick keyword connection to a call-back from vendors. The vendor's ad lists an easy-to-remember keyword, a ready-to-buy viewer texts that keyword to Go800, and a moment later the viewer's phone rings with a call from the v...

How we communicate has always had a dramatic impact on business. The telephone made the "sales call" possible; soap company advertising created a whole genre of radio and TV programming; the Internet enabled the "live demo." Business is about connecting with your consumer, and the earlier your compa...

The new Main Street exists anywhere thumbs can hit keys or scroll across a touchscreen. So what does your online presence say about what you have to offer those virtually strolling by? Customers regularly seek feedback on future purchases from their social circle. Conversations about your brand are ...

If you're low on cash it doesn't mean you can't get what you want or need. "You can barter literally anything," said Karen Hoffman, who along with former business journalist Shera Dalin authored the new book The Art of Barter: How to Trade for Almost Anything. The book outlines how individuals and b...

Streaming video provider Hulu may be moving to a subscription model. That's according to a report in the Los Angeles Times and a host of online rumors. The plan, which reportedly would be rolled out at about $10 per month, would cover episodes of television shows older than the last five -- an archi...

Accountability is essential for any company that wants to be successful. Without it, there is no way to know whether what you're doing is working or could be done better. In the competitive world of Internet retailing, razor-thin margins and fickle consumers make it even more important to ensure ...

Seagate and Paramount Digital Entertainment have launched a limited promotion for a Seagate portable hard drive that has been on the market for about a year-and-a-half -- they are now offering it preloaded with Paramount movies. The 21 movies preloaded on the 500 GB FreeAgent Go can be viewed only a...

Twitter's No. 1 focus is now on revenue, and the social-networking Web site wants to reassure software developers that they will get a piece of the growing pie. At Twitter's first-ever conference for developers -- the Chirp conference being held in San Franscisco on Wednesday and Thursday -- the yo...