What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a social network of more than 20 million professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries.

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When you join, you create a profile that summarizes your professional accomplishments, pretty much like an online resume, but with important social networking elements baked into it.
Here are some personal branding and marketing tips […]

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Darren Rowse, publisher of the wildly successful Problogger blog, has recently written a book . Problogger is all about making money online, has 45,000+ subscribers and features more than 4,000 posts. Probably most of the content in the book can be found by reading and digging deep into the blog (a real treasure […]

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Photo Credits: yananine
You can see it everywhere these days: from the entry level car with the performance engine, premium sound system and power everything, to the neighborhood restaurant serving food fit for an upscale bistro, to the local grocer projecting itself as a destination for wine connoisseurs.
The path that Target beat years ago by offering […]

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In this age of information overload and short attention spans, the ability to deliver clear and concise presentations is one of the most important skills.
Instead, business presentations today are mostly long, unfocused and boring. In a typical PowerPoint presentation, the audience is forced to sit through slide after slide of charts, bullet points and […]

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Photo Credits: Mikhael747
You know the drill: it’s noon and you and your co-workers are planning lunch.
You: Where should we go?
Co-worker 1: Oh, I don’t know, where do you want to go? (turning to co-worker 2)Co-worker 2: I don’t know, whatever, anything’s fine with me…
Suddenly, something as simple as grabbing lunch morphs […]

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I just finished reading Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin’s latest book. It is mainly an account of what happens when old school companies try to use social media to sell commodity products.
Commodity products (the meatballs) and social media (the frosting and the cherry) don’t mix very well and the result is a mess (a meatball […]

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This morning I was going through some small business feeds in Alltop and received the pleasant surprise that Shoestring Branding is now featured in Alltop’s Small Business section, next to the likes of Inc., Entrepreneur, Seth’s Blog, Fast Company, Duct Tape Marketing and Escape from Cubicle Nation.

Alltop, as you may already know, is Guy Kawasaki’s […]

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For quite some time, I have been using Gmail as my email program. Recently, I discovered a great Gmail feature that lets you brand your email address. For example, if you have a Gmail account and your email address is johnsmith@gmail.com, you can now use your own domain to create an email address […]

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Photo Credits: jared
Avatars and favicons are two very important branding elements common on the web and social media. Used properly they will make your blogs and social media profiles more memorable and easier to recognize.
What is a favicon?
A favicon is a small graphic element that identifies your site or blog in a web browser’s […]

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In the wake of Microsoft’s recent $44 billion unsolicited bid for Yahoo!, bloggers of all walks of life have been quick to write the beleaguered Internet portal’s obituary. Most of the articles I’ve read blame Yahoo!’s demise on an out of control brand extension strategy and the ensuing lack of focus.
I think […]

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