It was the famous publicist PJ Barnum who said in 1855 “I do not care what people say about me but get my name right”.

In today’s international marketplace, getting names right is vital.

Marketers and brand managers are becoming more and more concerned that their newly created name will be inappropriate in their target markets.

We’ve all seen middle aged marketing executives embarrass themselves when trying to appear trendy to the youth market but things get even worse when attacking overseas markets.

What many people don’t realize is that innocuous English product names often do not travel well. So called, ‘bad’ names, names which embarrass, offend or are just plain unsuitable, are profligate.

Every web designer is familiar with the HTML programming language, which stands for Hypertext Markup Language. The language has been in use since the advent of cyberspace, and although it will probably always be used, it is already being supplemented by newer, more versatile versions of HTML.

The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) is a family of current and future document types and modules that reproduce, subset, and extend HTML, reformulated in XML. XHTML family document types are all XML-based, and ultimately are designed to work in conjunction with XML-based user agents

Internet marketing involves more than getting traffic to your site. Sometimes the smallest things can have the biggest impact. The following five actions you can take to improve your Internet marketing and Web site are simple and often over looked when creating or marketing a site.

1) Create a unique 404 error page.

What is a 404 error page? It’s the page you see when someone clicks on a broken link or a page that has been renamed. When that happens the site visitor will see a standard page that simply tells you the page is no longer available. It has no thrills, no other links, no branding and above all, very little helpful information.

Email marketing gets results but for the kind of results that marketers rave about it’s essential to develop targeted email marketing campaigns - campaigns that identify and reach the people most likely to respond.

Without effective targeting, your email campaign - any marketing, for that matter - will be a hit and miss affair resulting in low response rates and wasted marketing dollars. It will also be a complete waste of the key strength of email marketing: that it can be targeted more effectively than any other marketing.

It simply doesn’t make sense to broadcast to all and sundry when you can focus your efforts - and your dollars - on the people most likely to buy.

Anyone who’s been in marketing for more than a day understands the value of customer testimonials. Better than any other form of proof (logical argument, data, endorsements), they can prove particular claims that the marketer wants to make about his product.

But, like any marketing tool, the strength of a testimonial is greatly related to the effectiveness of its presentation. If you give your customers typical testimonials in a typical way, they will have very little effect, because they will neither attract attention nor deliver an emotional message. But if you can find a way to make the testimonial new - either with the language itself or with the presentation - the effect can be powerful.

It was the famous publicist PJ Barnum who said in 1855 “I do not care what people say about me but get my name right”.

In today’s international marketplace, getting names right is vital.

Marketers and brand managers are becoming more and more concerned that their newly created name will be inappropriate in their target markets.

We’ve all seen middle aged marketing executives embarrass themselves when trying to appear trendy to the youth market but things get even worse when attacking overseas markets.

What many people don’t realize is that innocuous English product names often do not travel well. So called, ‘bad’ names, names which embarrass, offend or are just plain unsuitable, are profligate.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings. (Wikipedia)

This definition of SEO sounds simple, but beware! Search engine optimization is a minefield, even for professionals, and although necessary to a business, should not be undertaken lightly. Below, is a brief look at the top 10 mistakes and how to correct them.

1. Non-Relevant Linkage.
External links to your site play a large part in most of the major search engine algorithms and can be considered an endorsement of your site. But if you are being linked to from sites that have no relevance to your content, then that is now considered a negative endorsement and will not raise your ranking in the search engines. Ensure all links to your pages are from relevant sites. Be wary of link builders who acquire links from gambling, pharmaceutical or adult themed sites, especially if your site is not of the same theme. Link building is as much a science as it is an art, one we take very seriously.

While the variables are infinite (that’s a good thing - it means that every logo can be unique) there are certain benchmarks (I hesitate to call them rules) that if you follow, will pretty well insure that you’ll end up with a decent and workable logo. While whether or not a logo is ‘good’ remains completely subjective, following these pointers will give you a logo that’s usable, practical and promising a long shelf life.

Choosing a Web Designer

When you choose a web designer, there are many things that you need to be aware of and that need to be taken into consideration before you make a decision.

To some extent, the ability to work successfully with your web designer is sometime as important as their actual skill in being able to deliver the project.

A web designer that is skilled in what they do but is a pain to deal with can make the whole process frustrating and not worth the money being spent, especially if you have an emotional attachment to the project (which you should have being the one supplying the money and motivation)

In case you’ve missed it, the Web has changed; it seems like just yesterday it was good enough to take all your brochures and advertising collaterals and convert them to digital format, add a little search engine optimization, throw-in a little PHP programming and bingo, you’ve got a website. And if you wanted to show how cutting edge your company was, maybe you’d add a little dash of Flash animation, or some royalty frëe music. Well here’s a bulletin from the frontlines, that isn’t going to cut-it in the new multimedia Web-business environment.