O MANNY's

Looking for media attention? Make yourself accessible and appealing by laying out the right information online. By Tim Donnelly

When journalists want to find you, they're looking specifically to talk to an official at your company about product releases, company news, or new trends. Other times, they're looking to get in touch with any number of similar companies to comment on changes in the industry or to seek out an expert in the field for a broader story. Especially in that second case, you want the media to be able to navigate your website quickly and find out if the experts at your company are what they're looking for. After that, you need to make sure reporters and editors can get everything they need—from contact information to photos—quickly and seamlessly.

Creating a good press page or media center on your website is simple and quick if you follow these rules recommended by industry experts.
• The media center part of your website should be obvious and identifiable from the home page.
• Put a direct phone number and e-mail address for your designated media affairs representative, or for the specific members of your company you want the media to talk to.
• Providing some quick and easily digestible biographical information is important.
• Include a list of your most recent press releases and an archive of your past releases, in chronological order. Keep these in traditional press release format and make sure they're readable across all platforms.
• If you're trying to get a company executive or employee on TV to talk as an expert in the field, you want to reassure journalists that the person knows how to handle an interview. It is recommended posting one or two of your best previous media appearance videos that highlight your composure.
• Artwork on your press page can include company logos, photos of top executives, product photos, recent charts or other graphical data, Stoller says. He recommends providing two versions 72 dpi for online use and higher resolution 300 dpi for traditional print publications.

Tablet computers begin to find their business niche as productivity and presentation enhancers.
By Dan O'Shea

It turns out neither your smartphone nor your laptop should be jealous of your sleek new iPad. But those big, old three-ring binders that have always held performance reports and sales charts? Well, their days are numbered.

Tablets such as the Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy and Dell Streak are having a surprising effect at the office.

"It's much better than a binder," says Sanju Bansal, COO of MicroStrategy, a Vienna, Va., company that develops business intelligence software for the iPad and other devices. MicroStrategy bought iPads for 1,370 of its 2,000 employees. "It's better than having to go through 50 to 100 sheets of paper in a binder. You get full access to information and can share it more quickly."

A laptop can do roughly the same thing, but tablets may be more culturally accepted in the workplace. "There's something very human about the tablet that isn't human about the laptop," Bansal says. "When you open a laptop in a meeting, it's like you are erecting a cultural barrier between yourself and others. Tablets already have the cultural acceptance of paper."

MicroStrategy is seeing its customers adopt the iPad initially at the executive levels before it trickles down. Bansal tells of a retailer equipping its store managers with iPads to keep them on the move and a hospitality company that uses them to help hotel managers get out from behind their front desks.

Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, which adapted its multimedia organizer, tagging and storage app for the iPad, says his Mountain View, Calif., company sees tablets' appeal to a new type of user.

"We don't think of business users as any different from consumers," Libin says. "It appeals to the modern knowledge worker."

[For Android Tablets visit MYILE]

If you don’t know what cookies are, they are basically tiny tracking systems or files placed on your PC or Smart Phone every time you visit a site, open an app, etc. For the PC there are unlimited amount of software or tactics to help you remove them. However, a Super Cookie is a tracking system that you can’t delete or remove. You can think of it like an IP address but on a smart phone it could be as simple as a unique product ID.

When you provide your age, gender, credit card, interact with apps your activity are transmitted to adverting companies, your carrier or data centers which then sell to advertisers without your knowledge or your option to opt out. Eventually, the introduction of front facing camera, what’s to stop app developers from enabling smart phones the ability to take pictures without your knowledge?

From a marketing perspective it is a very invaluable method to measure and fine tune tactics but from an overall individual angel, this is a very very risky. If you stop to think, imaging how information from lets say your facebook account could be related and analyzed to: your health record, phone call, bank account activity, drivers license record, purchases, politics, law enforcement records, travel activity, utility use. And all this information was made all available, linked, so instantly like your banker retrieving your credit rating.

As a sales and marketing individual, my advice to small business owners or large businesses take what you need but don’t jeopardize the privacy and safety of your customers, children, friends, associates, or neighbors for more information which most likely can get in the hands of hackers or criminals or most likely would be abused. My advice to myself and individuals is to be very careful in this fast-cheap storage digital age.

Lack of standard practices means different companies treat the same information differently. For example, Apple says that, internally, it treats the iPhone's UDID as "personally identifiable information." That's because, Apple says, it can be combined with other personal details about people—such as names or email addresses—that Apple has via the App Store or its iTunes music services. By contrast, Google and most app makers don't consider device IDs to be identifying information. – WSJ

WSJ's Julia Angwin explains to Simon Constable how smartphone apps collect and broadcast data about your habits. Many don't have privacy policies and there isn't much you can do about it.
An examination of 101 popular smartphone "apps"—games and other software applications for iPhone and Android phones—showed that 56 transmitted the phone's unique device ID to other companies without users' awareness or consent. Forty-seven apps transmitted the phone's location in some way. Five sent age, gender and other personal details to outsiders.
The findings reveal the intrusive effort by online-tracking companies to gather personal data about people in order to flesh out detailed dossiers on them. - WSJ

Not sure if there’s ever been a company to do that but imagine the publicity. This is where I’d say, “It will be possible " but in the mean time how about your logo on a school team’s jersey or the Dallas Cowboys official uniform.

A new study by independent media shop Horizon Media reveals that sports jerseys are prime real estate for marketers. How prime? The study finds that corporate sponsorships on sports jerseys could generate more than $370 million in advertising value.

Take care before you pitch to check the backgrounds of the investors and investor groups you're dealing with.

Keep in mind that ideas are hard to protect from a legal standpoint. I've had people take my ideas and run with them. The more likely scenario is that friends and associates will be the ones doing the purloining, not investors. Better to be quiet, overall. Share your plans only with very trusted people, and choose your investors carefully before you pitch.

Tim Berry is the president of Palo Alto Software Inc.

In order to make your networking efforts work, you need to embrace a “relationship networking” mentality. Here are five things to remember when attending networking events:

1. Don’t go there to sell, go there to connect.
2. Have meaningful conversations with people you meet.
3. Follow up with people you found interesting or who you can help in some way. Don’t follow up to sell them something.
4. Meet these people in a one-to-one setting, learn more about them, and ask them: “how can I help you?”
5. Go for the long-term relationship, not the short sale.

Ivan Misner is founder and Chairman of BNI

You don’t save it. You simply build around what online can not offer people, a sense of community. The experience of going to the video store, picking out movies, chatting with neighbors or strangers and standing inline to pay for it with your buddies on a weekend nights, or during the holidays are emotional memory makers. Sure it might be cheaper to order movies from Netflix but where is the love.

Blockbuster and many others like it are now struggling as their audiences opt for cheaper, more convenient options, many of which, like Netflix Inc. The rise of Netflix, and especially its newer streaming movie service that lets subscribers watch videos instantly online, has put growing financial pressure on independent stores like Le Video around the U.S., even as chains like Hollywood Video and Blockbuster shut many locations. For the past year, Le Video has operated in the red, and it broke even for the prior seven years only because its founder and owner, Catherine Tchen, didn't pay herself anything, she says.

My suggestion is to reinvent the idea of going to see a movie. In this case, rent a movie. No matter if Netflix owns 99% of the rental business, people will still go to movie theaters, people will still go to concerts, sports events, trade shows. Nothing beats face to face social interaction. Blockbuster is likely to put it’s self up for sell. According to wsj, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization dropped below $100 million in 2010, down from $150 million the year before. And the number of Blockbuster's by-mail subscribers dropped to 1.2 million at the end of October from 1.5 million the year before. Netflix, by comparison, has 20 million subscribers. One way is to create a mini movie theater experience. Get rid of most of the physical inventory of movies (DVDs, VHS) add furniture, gaming systems, and turn it into a bar like experience.

Discussions with at least some potential suitors have produced an estimated valuation of $8 billion to $10 billion.


"Are these prices justifiable based on financial multiples? No," said Ethan K of venture capital firm B. Venture Partners. But these start-ups are building social services and have lots of data about their users and "the market is valuing that mightily right now."


Twitter's revenues and valuation have risen even as the company continues to work on ways to translate its more than 200 million registered users into a profitable business. Twitter, which was created in 2006, introduced advertising into its service last year.

The internet, since the ecommerce boom of late 90’s, brought in the business model of giving away things in exchange for advertising. Now businesses, especially the media, want out of that model. As a consumer I would gladly take free quality programming any day. I like many have come to expect certain things to be free with no regard for the cost to produce and distribute materials.

As a business minded individual, who could be on the boards of News Corp., I would say, “Enough. The era of free ends today. According to WSJ article about Hulu, The free online television service is reworking their business model. “But its owners—industry powerhouses NBC Universal, News Corp. and Walt Disney Co.—are increasingly at odds over Hulu's business model. Worried that free Web versions of their biggest TV shows are eating into their traditional business, the owners disagree among themselves, and with Hulu management, on how much of their content should be free.”

No one will pay for cable, television, news, music, software content in the next 100yrs if media industry leaders don’t grow some freaking balls and do what needs to be done.

• Device manufacturers pay a small fee
• Telecom companies pay a small fee
• A global standard or agreement that no media company should make or distribute certain content for absolute free
• Consumers pay through their cell phone, cable, dial-up, and satellite or internet provider for an all you can eat content.

“Every business has different needs,” Alexis [Jon Alexis, president of TJ’s Fresh Seafood Market & Catering] said. “We are so proud of what we do, that we are happy to give someone $30 of free seafood if they will come back again. Groupon is kind of like a nuclear bomb, you just have to use it once, and use it well.”
Created in 2008, Groupon has worked with more than 30,000 businesses in North America, according to spokesperson Julie Mossler, with the vast majority being small business owners.

Uptal Dholakia, associate professor management at Rice University in Houston, set out to test the effectiveness of promotions for small business owners in September 2010. His study, “How Effective are Groupon Promotions for Small Businesses?” He surveyed 150 businesses that ran and completed Groupon promotions between June 2009 and August 2010. Of the respondents, 66% said the promotion was profitable.

The 32% of respondents with unprofitable promotions reported significantly lower rates of spending by Groupon users beyond its face value (25% vs. 50%) and lower return rate to purchase again at full prices (13% vs. 31%).

Based on the general objectives of promotions or discounts, it’s meant to introduce potential buyers to your products, company, etc which if executed right could lead to loyal customers. The thing about this though is that discounts attract mostly bargain shoppers who most likely do not intend to be loyal. They move from one retailer to the next. Or in my case, sometimes just buy substitute brands when what I want is not on sale. Have you gone to a grocery store to buy a box of Christie Oreo cookies only to pickup another popular brand of cookies that happens to be on sale. However there are brands that command a great amount of unquenchable loyalty, until they fuck up big time at least.

Apple products are rarely promoted at very aggressive discounts, unless new models are coming. People pay premium price for iPhones, Nike, Rolex, Lexus, etc. Tim Hortons is also a brand that owns the coffee section on people’s mind in Canada.

So the suggestion to small businesses, how do you acquire business without giving products away or competing on price? Learn from Tim’s. I have never seen them or others in the industry compete on price. They compete on consistent: good customer service, fresh goods, cleanliness, comfort, safety, and experience.

In addition, the biggest mistake retailers sometimes make is lowering price one time and thinking they can get people to later pay full price. Your products better be what I call “REAL”, Rare, Exclusive, Addictive and Loved if you want to stop lowering prices.