Marketing and branding
Business Photos For Small Business – From Google
Ross | April 25th, 2010It’s tough to keep up with the whirlwind of online products aimed at small businesses, and tougher for small businesses to decide where to focus their attention and budgets. A few days ago, I learned about an interesting new program from Google – focused on helping small businesses create photos of their business that would [...]
What Can You Learn From The World’s Best Brands?
Ross | April 23rd, 2010You might recall my post earlier this year about PSFK’s Good Brands Report 2009. In that post – Branding Secrets Of The World’s Best Brands – I talked about five common lessons that startups and small businesses can learn from the world’s best brands. Those lessons included: having a good company name and logo design, [...]
U.S. Government Continues To Embrace Crowdsourcing
Ross | April 11th, 2010Last month, the U.S. Government adopted a new policy promoting government crowdsourcing initiatives at the national level. As part of that effort, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has launched a new website designed to crowdsource policy opinions focused on the manufacturing industry. It’s great to see the government follow-through on its [...]
JUST (don’t) DO IT
Josh | March 31st, 2010A few weeks back, as a way of celebrating the launch of the new Writing projects on crowdSPRING, we invited the entire community to submit their best work to be published as a guest post on the cS blog. We received over 70 entries, including tons of really great submissions, and ideas on some really [...]
What if Microsoft Created The iPod?
Ross | March 22nd, 2010Most people agree that great design more easily captures attention than poor design. For example, when Apple originally released the iPod – the iPod didn’t have the features of the Creative Labs MP3 players, or even the Microsoft Zune. In fact, many MP3 players today have more features than the iPod – but only a [...]
Search Engine Optimization Tips For Startups
Ross | February 24th, 2010Search engine optimization (SEO) can provide low cost opportunities for a startup to market its products and/or services. However, many startup founders don’t appreciate the difficulty of executing an effective SEO strategy when you have a new company and a new domain. There are SEO experts, of course, and some are outstanding (follow Danny Sullivan [...]
Simple Messages Can Be Very Powerful
Ross | February 20th, 2010I was disappointed by the advertising on the superbowl a few weeks ago. Most of the ads were terrible and several were incomprehensible. Some of the more effective ads shared a common trait: they were simple and focused. Simple messages work. Simple is memorable and understandable. That’s one reason why Google’s search ad during the [...]
