Here's a fantastic article about how small businesses can use social media in their marketing: 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips. What I think makes this article stand out is that the author gives both a basic strategy and an advanced strategy for each social media tool. Most articles I've read give only more advanced strategies. However, the basic strategies are especially helpful for those who are just getting their feet wet. With these basic strategies, you know you're starting out on the right foot.

This article first appeared in the July 2009 issue of the Monrovia Chamber of Commerce newsletter.

Swing open the door of Monrovia Floral and you are enveloped by the fresh scent of forest and flower gardens. A large refrigerator holds distinctive floral arrangements, and assorted gifts fill shelves on both sides. But the scent of greenery comes from the back workroom, where creativity and camaraderie flow into each bouquet.

As a marketing professional, I think it's important to stay abreast of the latest online marketing tools. So sometime last year, I signed up for a Twitter account -- and promptly determined that Twitter was only for egotistical people who actually thot others were interested in the minutia of their day. Well, I'm eating my words now.

What do you do when you're faced with filling in an online profile? Perhaps you are just registering on a site to comment on someone's blog posting, or to post a question in a user forum. Are you prepared with a cool screen name and a line of information about yourself? Or do you just skip that section, with a vague intention in the back of your mind to come back later?

I’ve been looking around for a good definition of web 2.0. I don’t see any simple answer that encompasses all that it is. However, I did come across this article at O’Reilly which is arguably the best, most comprehensive discourse on the topic — if for no other reason than that these are the guys that coined the phrase.

I came across this article today from the Online Marketing Blog, SEO 2.0, Digital Asset Optimization. I haven’t seen much or anything on this term yet, so it caught my attention. It points to the fact that search engines are now finding ways to search content in the various kinds of documents and ways/places that we post material online — video, photo, social media, etc.

Notice this title doesn’t imply simplicity, or easy SEM*. But, as I’m doing research (an ongoing task) this morning on SEO, I’ve come across some great resources, that I think are worth referring back to. These give important basics, but the fact is, there’s a lot of work involved to execute the strategies.

This is a great article I came across today, Ten Stories That Can Sell Anything. Simply put, there are basically 10 angles you can take to market your product or services. And they are all related to Maslow's heirarchy of needs. Any marketing or psychology class will all tell you about Maslow's heirarchy of needs. However, this article puts the marketing and psychology together in a simple, straightforward package. Here's a summary:

We're all hearing about MySpace these days, and it's arguably one of the most popular social networking sites. All the teens I know live on MySpace. I've determined that it's the new "mall". It used to be that teens went to the mall to hang out. Now they just go to MySpace.

Ok, I have a confession to make: I allowed my domain name to expire. Not on purpose, mind you -- accidently. Others have told me dreadful stories of what happened when their domain expired, and now I, too, got caught. Thankfully, my story ended up being a minor problem. And so, here is a list of things I've learned: