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Super Bowl Hangover: Is the NFL Brand at Risk Due to Concussion Lawsuits?

Posted by Christian Moritz Wed, Feb 1, 2012

Enjoy the Super Bowl.  Speaking as a marketing expert, if National Football League executives continue to dilute the NFL’s prime brand, the game of football may not be super much longer.

The NFL brand, with its hard-hitting action evoking the gladiators of the Roman coliseum, has come to represent a worldwide leader in sports and entertainment. In a world that is perceived to have gone soft, the NFL brand owns the niche of selling warrior bravado; the perception of participation in an epic battle of dueling cities; the opportunity to defend one’s own, naturally-superior, even noble, city.

Thanks to the hard-hitting, blood, sweat, and tears mentality of its players, the NFL has mastered channeling regional pride into a billion dollar entertainment enterprise. It owns the “hero” whitespace in a way that our national “past its prime” baseball or even actual wars do not.

Doubt me?  Consider the military metaphors of the broadcast booth.  Quarterbacks are referred to as “field generals.”  A deep pass is a “long bomb.”  Moving the ball down the field is going into the opposing team’s “territory.” Even America’s sweetheart pacifist Lisa Simpson of The Simpsons once said, "What could be better than the savage ballet that is professional football?"

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22 Great Examples of Landing Page Design

Marketers are becoming more aware of the need to measure ROI of existing websites and improve the conversion rates of landing pages.  One key statistic used in the measure of success of landing page is the bounce rate. A bounce occurs when a visitor lands on page of your website and exits from the same page without navigating to any other pages. The higher the bounce rate, typically the lower your conversion rate is on your landing page.

On of the largest contributing factors to a high bounce rate is Landing Page Design. The goal if a great landing page design is to archive a bounce rate of under 25% (you’re never going to have a 0%).  A bounce rate also determines the relevancy and user experience for your landing page.

So what makes a great landing page? It takes an understanding of call to actions, color and the right offers to entice someone from being a passive visitor to actually interacting with your brand online.

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Drupal or WordPress? Selecting a Small Business CMS.

Posted by Roman Jankowski Mon, Jan 16, 2012

One of the most daunting tasks for any business is starting a new website project or redeveloping a website.  But what’s the best content management system - CMS for small business? As experienced web professionals, we are constantly asked with the question all the time.  Many businesses have experienced one or the other, but rarely both, so we’ve put together a very brief comparison of the two most popular platforms today.

Similarities Between Drupal and WordPress

Ease of Use – While both take their own approach, both CMSs offer the end user the same amount of user-friendliness to adding and sharing content.
Administration – Both WordPress and Drupal offer similar approaches to managing users and defining their role on a website.
Licensing Costs – Both have no additional licensing costs outside of third party tools and modules.  
Upgradability – Both offer great upgradability. WordPress is a click of a button, while Drupal offers a core update you can run to update to the most current, secure version.
Customization – Both offer customization of the front-end user experience.
Security Updates- Both WordPress and Drupal require constant updates and upgrades to stay on top of security and compatibility issues with browsers and third party tools.

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Worlds Most Expensive Business Cards

Posted by Roman Jankowski Sun, Jan 15, 2012

Black Astrum Diamond Business Card

business card design

UK based designer house Black Astrum worth $1,500 per card comes in packs of 25 cards. According to Business Insider, the cards are “invitation only” and made for select elite clientele.

http://www.blackastrum.com/

Carbon Fiber Designs Business Card

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Drupal Web Design DC Classes

Posted by Adam Aloi Sun, Jan 15, 2012

Acquia Training is coming to Washington DC on Monday January 23rd- Thursday 26th featuring three days of classes for for developers, designers, and managers with any level of experience: beginning, established, or advanced. Classes include:

Drupal in a Day - Washington, DC

Get a solid introduction to Drupal (6 or 7) in one day. Learn about the most essential features and concepts of Drupal through hands on activities. By the end of this day you will be familiar with Drupal terminology and be able to identify how many Drupal sites are constructed. You will know how to identify and choose modules to get the functionality you need. Because this class will be an overview and not an in-depth course, it is perfect for people who are on the fence about using Drupal or who are looking for a hands-on introduction. This course serves as a prerequisite to Acquia's Drupal for Site Builders course.

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DC Web Design Tips for Small Businesses

Posted by Roman Jankowski Sun, Jan 15, 2012

If your business is in Washington, DC and relies on your website to attract customers, you may have noticed a few more competitors in your space. Well you’re not alone.  More companies are beginning to invest significant dollars in web design projects to better compete in the metro area.

Why the Sudden Rush of Web Design Projects?

The local economy is hot. There are new construction projects all around the city, home prices are increasing, and contrary to what you hear in the media, government is continuing to increase their budgets.   In fact, Washington, DC has been ranked as one of the best places to find a job in 2010, 2011, and 2012. Forbes recently wrote about DC, “flush with government and government-supporting jobs--has the healthiest labor market among major U.S. metro areas. By one estimate, there's roughly one advertised job opening for every unemployed worker in the D.C. region, which includes parts of Maryland and Virginia. The nation's capital has an unemployment rate of just 6%, according to the latest data. That's the lowest among the country's largest 50 metros, and 3.8 percentage points below the national average.” more here.

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Want to Win Voters, Members or Media? Think Soda, Beer, French Fries

Posted by Christian Moritz  Sat, Jan 14, 2012

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.”

Before entering the world of public policy marketing three years ago, I spent 18 years exclusively in the corporate and small business world creating and marketing consumer and business-to-business brands.

Wow. What a difference!

In the for-profit sector, marketers develop brands very carefully to own a unique position in a consumer’s mind.  They do this by creating products with distinct attributes in price, promotion, product and placement – the “Four Ps.”

The Four Ps have been marketing mix gospel for decades. The narrower your target market and thus brand definition, the more powerful your brand. Think Volvo versus Chevrolet. One stands for safety, the other… many things.

Yet, in Washington, many organizations fight for sameness. They purport to be the true representative of “all-American values” with red, white and blue colors and the shortest name or acronym possible. Their communication strategy is cluttered; they try to be all things to all people. In short, the General Motors of politics.

I suggest that many advocacy organizations could increase their influence by narrowing their focus and creating a distinct, defendable mental position in the minds of their target audience. They should invest strategic thinking into determining the emotional benefit their organization offers that distinguishes itself from its competition in what analysts call our “attention economy” (the result of the fact that, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Herbert Simon phrased it, “the rapid growth of information causes scarcity of attention”). Capturing attention is where profits and influence can be found.

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The 2012 gTLD application process and what you need to know about new generic top level domains.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) opened its official application period for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). What does this mean for brands worldwide? Today there are only 21 top level domains (such as .com, .net, .gov) designed to organize the net in higher level categories.  That’s going to change almost immediately with the ability for any business, individual, organization, or group to secure their own gTLD. 

Here are some critical aspects you need to know about the gTLD application process:

A.  New 2012 gTLDs require every new request to go through a 12 question application process. You can browse basic information here.
B.  The cost of a gTLD application requires a deposit of $5,000. The full fee for the new gLTD is $185,000 including a $6,250 quarterly fee.
C.  According to industry reports, over 3,000 applications have been received so far.
D.  ICANN will review the applications based on a number of considerations including legal and anti-competitive factors.

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10 Ways to generate business on LinkedIn

Posted by Adam Aloi Wed, Jan 11, 2012

Are you looking to expand your sphere of influence and begin generating leads for your business on LinkedIn? About 135 million users have registered on LinkedIn, the internet’s largest business-to-business networking platform, but how do you communicate effectively to these business professionals? Here are 10 steps to get more visibility and leverage its platform for your business goals.

1. Join LinkedIn and Complete Your Profile

LinkedIn is a powerful business and  social networking tool that relies on the content generated by its users.  After all, other users on LinkedIn will be searching for your services, products, and your name. Make sure you give LinkedIn’s  search tool enough information to properly index.

2. Keep Your Profile Public

Utilizing LinkedIn without maintaining a public profile is like trying to advertise a new business location but refusing to put up any signs that tell people you’re there. If you want to maximize LinkedIn’s potential, you’ll need to go to your account settings and enable public searching for your name and business.

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7 Top Benefits of Drupal CMS

If your business has previously used a Content Management System (CMS) like Wordpress or Joomla and wondered, can I do better? What am I missing out on?  Fortunately, one of the most flexible and functional CMS solutions recently launched its newest version. It’s Drupal 7 and there’s a whole lot of chatter about its powerful mix of business tools and easy maintenance.

Drupal is an open source CMS that gives its users a large degree of flexibility to modify, share, and distribute content (text, video, data, business services). Still, Drupal is more than a CMS. It is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that is perfect for a small business and scalable for any large enterprise. And don’t take our word for it either, check out why it was rated InfoWorld 2011 Top Pick here

We’ve used a number of content management systems in the past, and while none are perfect, some do the job better than others. Drupal lets us stay ahead of the game and take advantage of the ever-evolving community platform that allows millions of contributors to update it constantly. Consider this -- somewhere in the world, Drupal is being updated every second. Like Wikipedia, it’s driven by people that care about how it functions and operates, rather than how it’s marketed. It’s the biggest open secret in web development.

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