submit_url = “http://www.shoestringbranding.com/2007/09/30/how-to-track-your-brand-in-consumer-generated-media-cgm/”;

Participating in Consumer Generated Media (CGM) is pivotal to your Shoestring Branding™ strategy. Through clever, responsible and consistent use of CGM like:
• blogs
• forums and discussion groups
• social bookmarking sites
• social networks and
• review sites
you will slowly but surely position yourself as an expert in your niche and build your brand.
As your […]

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submit_url = “http://www.shoestringbranding.com/2007/09/27/the-three-biggest-internet-marketing-time-wasters/”;

Buliding a great website / blog / brand takes time and hard work. Unfortunately, many aspiring web entrepreneurs put too much emphasis on these three time-wasting activities:
Changing the layout, colors and general appearance of their site
Designing our website is one of the first steps in our long journey to build a small […]

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Genuine marketing, based on honesty and integrity, is the only kind of marketing that truly engages the hearts and minds of potential customers.  The following are the principles of character driven marketing:

Always maintain a genuine attitude of integrity and caring. If you present a false facade of caring for your own gain, customers will eventually […]

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One of my pet peeves is to see people using cheesy Outlook stationary templates with their outbound email. This habit is widespread even among employees of Fortune 500 companies. These templates not only look unprofessional and make messages difficult to read, but they also represent a wasted branding opportunity. Lets look at one example, using […]

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Choosing a domain name is one of your most important business decisions. There are basically three types of domains:
1. Keyword (generic) domains,
2. Company (branded) domains and
3. Mixed domains
Each has its pros and cons. Let’s examine each one separately.
Keyword (generic) domains:
Keywords are terms that describe what you do. They are also the words […]

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I spend a lot of time on the road, so my travel experiences have become an endless source of branding article ideas. Here’s one of them:
A few months ago I was boarding the courtesy shuttle bus of one of the largest car rental companies in the country, when I sensed the smell of a lit […]

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For years we’ve been told not to talk about features, but benefits, to the point that it has become a marketing cliché. Nowadays, however, benefits are not enough to give products an edge. Making good products is not hard any more. Factories in low cost countries are a dime a dozen, and they can manufacture […]

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Purple Cow is a remarkable little book about the current state of marketing. Seth Godin makes the convincing case that selling ordinary products using traditional advertising no longer works.

Ordinary products are easy to make these days, most of us have everything we need, and we’re pretty satisfied with it. No amount of money […]

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