In business though, it is not enough just to have people talking about your advert, it’s conversions that matter. One way of improving conversions is to increase the ways in which consumers can interact with your brand, using a related campaign that encourages those who had their attention caught by your advert to take more notice of the company behind it.

So how do you do this? Orbital campaigns can consist of many different aspects that all use the theme of your advert to feed back into your company. A popular advert is nothing if nobody knows who produces it, so feeding off the buzz created by your ad is essential if your campaign is to be considered a success. Here are some ways of doing this:

Create a Specialist Website

You might be able to create a great buzz from your campaign, but if the product you are trying to sell isn’t something that people would want immediately (insurance, for example) then they aren’t very likely to follow it up by clicking on to your website. If you create a special website that is specific to your campaign however it can be an effective way of driving consumer interest towards your brand and keeping you in their minds even after the end of the campaign.

This can then help to drive a secondary viral online campaign that will have your brand buzzing around the internet, not only securing more potential customers but also doing wonders for your internet marketing efforts.

Social Networking

Social networking has become a great way for businesses to interact with customers, and sites such as Facebook and Twitter provide companies with an effective way of connecting the marketing campaign with the brand. Pointing your customers in the direction of your business Twitter and Facebook accounts is as close as it comes to providing physical contact with your company over the internet, forging a community of people who have one thing in common, your brand. By getting people to “Like” you on Facebook, you will also be getting them to tell all of their “Friends” about your company and your campaign, opening yourself up to potentially thousands more people who will interact with your company.

Promotional Products

If you have created a campaign with memorable characters or catchphrases, using relevant promotional products and promotional gifts can be an effective way of capitalising on the success of your campaign. It is providing potential customers not only with a further interaction with your brand, but putting something physical into the hands of consumers who have only had a virtual relationship with your company up until that point.

Improving the interaction between those who are interested in your advertising campaign and your brand is a key way of increasing conversions. A popular advertising campaign is a great start, but orbital campaigns are vital if those who are interested are going to be convinced to buy from you.

When you are looking at your next big marketing and advertising campaign, make sure you go orbital to improve your chances of success.

Alan writes articles on issues surrounding the marketing, advertising and PR industries for The Promotional Gifts Company. They specialise in providing promotional gifts to enhance brand awareness in marketing campaigns.

Dropbox

Every start-up founder uses free or inexpensive online resources to get his or her company launched. Chadd Bennett of RetroRazor, a Seattle-based company that sells old-fashioned safety razors, provided us with a list of the tools he found to be the most helpful. First up, he recommends a CRM application. “Until recently, we used a Google spreadsheet to keep track of the retailers buying our razors,” Bennett says. “But we just started using a program called Zoho CRM. I chose it because up to three people on each account can use it for free. Plus, it’s established enough that I don’t think it’s going to disappear. We only use it for our retail clients, not for individual customers, because we have hundreds of them and it would take too long to enter their information into the database.”

“Dropbox is a virtual hard drive, but it doesn’t just store your files; it syncs them as well,” Bennett says. “I use it to send files to my video producer. After he edits the video, he saves it to Dropbox and the new version is automatically saved on my computer. Dropbox is free for the first two gigabytes. Now that we’re doing a lot of video editing I’m going up to the paid version, which is 50 gigabytes for $99 a year.”

http://www.getdropbox.com/

Over the next few weeks I am going to be blogging about 10 FREE but essential business tools that can help your business and save you a fortune in these programs – the first one is CRM software. 

Every start-up founder uses free or inexpensive online resources to get his or her company launched. Chadd Bennett of RetroRazor, a Seattle-based company that sells old-fashioned safety razors, provided us with a list of the tools he found to be the most helpful. First up, he recommends a CRM application. “Until recently, we used a Google spreadsheet to keep track of the retailers buying our razors,” Bennett says. “But we just started using a program called Zoho CRM. I chose it because up to three people on each account can use it for free. Plus, it’s established enough that I don’t think it’s going to disappear. We only use it for our retail clients, not for individual customers, because we have hundreds of them and it would take too long to enter their information into the database.”

Visit ZOHO HERE

They’re so popular on Twitter that it would take a football stadium, or several, to accommodate everyone who follows their posts.

No, they’re not Hollywood A-listers like Oprah or Ashton Kutcher, who have collected more than a million fans on the micro-blogging service.

Rather, they’re three relative unknowns from Northern California who, through tireless hobnobbing, nonstop posting and, in one case, luck, have joined a rare club: Twitter’s citizen celebrities.

All three – a business coach, a cellist and an entrepreneur – have tens of thousands of people following their musings. Depending on the perspective, the sheer numbers are a testament to Twitter’s power to connect people or simply a pointless popularity contest.

The San Francisco service’s simple allure is allowing users to post brief messages about everything from politics to the tuna sandwich they ate for lunch.

Followers are those who subscribe to, and automatically receive, another’s posts. Amassing a huge number of followers is a badge of honor for many.

Those who have gained a measure of fame say it’s a way to meet people and share ideas, although they confess that interacting with their audience can eat up hours a day.

Inspiration, gratitude and soulfulness emanate from Shannon Seek’s posts on Twitter. The business coach, professional organizer and owner of a conferencing business is a supernova of positive energy, all day, every day, in cheery messages in which she shares blessings, online hugs and cosmic harmony.

“Twitter is a place I go to raise my vibration,” said Seek, a Marin resident who has attracted more than 53,000 followers.

Seek’s journey into Twitter’s upper echelon started as an outlet while she recovered from breast cancer surgery last year. She started following others, and many would follow her in turn.

Like elsewhere, there is a big appetite on Twitter for emotional pick-me-ups. When not broadcasting optimism, Seek, 40, replies to others who send her their good karma.

“The beauty of rebirth from the phoenix inside,” Seek recently wrote in one of her occasional Twitter poems, which, like all posts on the service, is limited to 140 characters. “My faith washes over me like the tide.”

On average, Seek posts 70 times daily. Her record is about 185 times, or one every 8 minutes.

Keeping so many followers happy isn’t as easy as it may sound, Seek said. People can “unfollow” someone as quickly as they follow them, meaning the pressure is always on to be interesting.

Still, Seek said having so many followers is an honor.

“It’s a big part of saving my life and in helping me know that I have made a difference in their lives,” she said.

Put in the spotlight

If the number of followers on Twitter is any gauge, Zoe Keating is more famous than Paris Hilton, Newt Gingrich and Justin Timberlake.

The professional cellist, whose avant-garde music draws modest-size audiences, got a big break when Twitter’s staff placed her on a list of suggested people to follow. By being thrust into the spotlight, her following – numbering around 8,000 at the time – catapulted by around 5,000 daily, for more than four months, to more than 777,000.

“I wonder if it was all a grand social joke by the Twitter founders to create someone who is famous who really isn’t,” Keating said.

Although glad to have such a huge audience, she also downplayed its importance. Some new followers, she said, send ego-deflating messages asking, “who the hell are you?”

Keating, 37, posts from a shack among the redwoods near Occidental, in Sonoma County, where she composes her music. When on the road, she tweets from the tour bus (they generally have Wi-Fi connections) or from backstage.

Because of her following, Keating feels compelled to post more frequently on Twitter than she did before, usually about recording sessions and other music-related topics.

“It’s hard on a musician when 1/2 your audience isn’t allowed to attend your concert because they are under 21,” Keating recently wrote.

Whether her prominence on Twitter has translated into anything concrete is unclear. Her music sales have increased, but she’s unsure if it’s because of her online fame.

Keating said that when and if her Twitter celebrity ends, she’ll cope just fine.

“I’ll just go back to what I was before,” Keating said. “I’m not sure that I want to be too well known.”

85,000 and counting

Having more than 85,000 people follow you on Twitter helps when your dog is sprayed by a skunk, as Dave Malby can attest. He tweeted about his smelly pet, and got nearly 20 suggestions for eliminating the stench.

Malby, a serial entrepreneur from Newcastle, in the Sierra foothills east of Sacramento, is a Twitter fanatic who has drawn a huge following since signing up last year. It’s his social outlet, business-networking vehicle and personal escape (his wife suffers from Alzheimer’s).

“It can really consume you,” Malby said.

He started on Twitter to send a message to Joe the Plumber, who he thought was mistreated by the media during the presidential campaign. It grew from there, in part because of his aggressive campaign to follow others, many of whom followed him back.

“The people I’ve met on Twitter are phenomenal,” Malby said.

During the Internet boom, Malby, 54, said he made millions of dollars selling ZIP code data. More recently he started a business selling camera stands that are popular on eBay. He walks a fine line in promoting his commercial interests on Twitter, where overtly doing so is frowned upon.

In his posts, he regularly mentions an online seminar for would-be entrepreneurs (run by someone else). He also touts a separate Twitter account he uses as an online radio show for playing rock oldies.

But even with his ample following, Malby’s not satisfied.

“My goal is to reach 100,000, after that, I’ll probably back off,” he said.

About Twitter

21 million Number of users

126 Average number of followers

Should you be Twittering?

Want to know how to get your Website high up in natural search results, but don’t want to pay a search engine optimization (SEO) firm just to find out what you are doing wrong?

Now you can get a free, automated evaluation of your site on Website Grader. Just type in your Website address, and it will spit out a report detailing what you can do to boost your site’s SEO juice. It even gives you a grade.

Website Grader is operated by HubSpot, a search engine and Web-marketing optimization company hoping to get leads from the site.

Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret is that he uses a giant calendar and then marks off the day in a giant red ‘X’ when he writes something that day. The key is not to break the red X chain.

Inspired by Jerry’s idea, the folks at SmarterFitter have built an online Seinfeldian Chain calendar. You can make your own calendar and click off the red X on each day you’ve achieved your goal. No registration required – the app will give you a bookmarkable permalink to your chain so you can X off each day you write, exercise, not smoke, skip caffeine or whatever you’re perfecting with practice.

Remember, don’t break the chain!

I was recommended this service by a colleague who i met in London last week, he has a virtual development business and utilises students around the globe, one thing that keeps them and his business together is Business IT Online – and its FREE!

Business IT Online, a free webware application which provides contact management, calendars, invoicing, document  and cashflow management for the small business user and it has just signed its 10,000 user.

Founded by a group of people who used to work for Accenture. While they were implementing enterprise applications like SAP and I2, they found they were regularly asked to  develop lightweight or interim applications for their customers  based on things like Excel.  They could see there was a market for straightforward business applications, designed for the small business user, but with a “keep it simple” approach, delivered across the web.

They left Accenture and started Business IT Online.  The product entered a beta phase in September 2005, and went fully live in April 2006.  It’s taken them a little over a year to pass 10,000 sign ups.  Their active users are in the thousands.  Their free service is supported by advertising 

The service has a straightforward sign up process.  The basic system allows you to create and track contacts, a calendar and tasks for two users.  The premium service allows you 5 or more users, and adds, amongst other things,  contact history and pipeline management to the system.   They use the Plaxowidget to import contacts, and that means you can transfer your contacts from Outlook, Outlook Express, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and of course Plaxo.  You can create simple invoices and credit notes, and the premium upgrade adds management facilities and document collaboration.   The Cashlow module offers a simple way for a business to track sales, purchases and expenses, so they can keep a running total of their cash position. 

The premium option is charged at £120 for 6 months, and you can add more users beyond that.  You can also network with other members and promote your business within the members community. Give it a go! Go virtual!

Looked up my mates new website today and was really impressed with his Find Us section, he has used Street View on Google Maps so you can even see the street where his office is located at plus photographs of the area.

Discover Google Street View

Use Street View to:

• View street level photographs (select cities)
• Take virtual walks; pan, rotate and zoom
• Explore cityscapes, landmarks, points of interest
• Find shops, restaurants, parks, hotels and more

Thanks to the great team at Worthing Media i am pleased to announce the launch of the new UKpreneur blog design. As i am getting more readers i thought it would be nice to make the look a bit more sharper!

Really pleased with the new look and hope you like it!