ChirpUp.com

Google Domination is Good for Your Business

As the world’s single most powerful media and technology force, Google is doing more than just changing the interactive marketing machine for small and mid size business. They’re biting, chewing and spitting out old notions of interactive marketing. Google is making “small” and “fearless” a competitive advantage. They are reconstituting and democratizing the very notion [...]

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Google Buzz, What Is It?

Heard about Google Buzz? Are you having trouble understanding it? Here is one way to explain it: Your Email Has Problems I don’t mean your email is broken; it probably works fine. Messages go out, messages come in – it works. I don’t mean that it’s a mistake to use email, either. So What’s the [...]

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Social Network Gaming and Marketing

There’s more to social networks than Facebook messages, random coupons and aimless Twitter comments. Sure, nearly every company has a Facebook profile these days. They’re free and easy to manage. But how do you create something engaging, interesting and relevant? How About Games? Gaming is no longer just an escapist outlet for Mountain Dew-guzzling teens [...]

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Happy First Birthday ChirpUp!

On February 12, 2009, we launched our business and ChirpUp.com. We kicked off an intense year filled with hard work and hustle. We met an incredible collection of new and established businesses. Rob and I pledged to be our own case study.  We committed ourselves to a spirit of openness and education and a little [...]

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How To Know Your Old Fashioned Website is Dead

It was painstaking stuff building that website of yours. When your company finally got serious about it, the process made you think about things you never really considered. You worked with your web developer and solved all kinds of problems together – identity, interactivity, information. Nice work! (Or maybe you just slapped up a brochure [...]

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Social Media: The New Friendly Mass Media

Not long ago in the US, a mere three television networks served 250 million people. That was the era of mass media. As simple as it seemed, for marketers, there were a lot of ways to get it wrong back then. New Media is More Accessible and Efficient Traditional mass media was no friend to [...]

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TrueValue’s DIY’ers Build Brand and Community

So how do you make your website more engaging and more appealing, without meaningless drivel that just about everyone knows? In other words: Why would I want to visit your website without needing to buy something? Well, it’s conversation, my dear Watson. As pointed out in “You Can’t Afford Not to Blog,” blogging is an [...]

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How to Respond to Negative Feedback

Want to be transparent and do it in a high-tech way? Google is trying to help you for free. Google’s Favorite Places is a business-to-consumer program where participating local businesses will have a window decal from Google that can be scanned by a person’s iPhone to extract instant data. That means, your furniture store or [...]

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Social Media Marketing ROI, Not Snake Oil

When it comes to results of social media marketing, I find myself agreeing with some of social media’s loudest critics. Valid critics complain that common indicators of social media engagement don’t plainly map to return on investment measurements (ROI). And they’re right. That’s why I don’t represent Twitter follower counts, for example, as an exclusive [...]

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How to Use Twitter – Just the Basics for Business

Twitter is just a miniaturized blog. But the simplicity of it sometimes hides the vast potential of Twitter as a tool for business. The “social” networking power of  Twitter enables a message to be transmitted far and fast, relying on little besides instant digital word-of-mouth. When applied to promotion or advertising, Twitter can become an [...]

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