Yep. Hyundai is paying people to drive their cars

Now I am not really a big fan of these cars. I usually hear about the loans outlasting the car. It can’t feel good to be paying $250 – $350 a month on a car that is falling apart. 

But is this the new way to sell cars? Or is this just the little guy trying to make some waves in the pond?

Personally, and I dont want to sound like a snob here, but they would need to pay me double that, for a longer period of time to drive one. Otherwise I’ll stick to my used 03 and 04 toyotas with 80k+ miles each.

Great content is certainly the most important feature of any blog, no argument here! But a good design can help feature your content in the best way possible. Different blogs require different things to make them efficient and targeted toward the right users. Some blogs use advertising to gain revenue and give exposure to companies that offer services that would be of value to its readers. It doesn’t work for everyone though. The secret to a good blog design is figuring out what you need and how to best organize it so that people can easily read your content. Here are some great blog designs, targeting different audiences with a multitude of styles.

Think about your favorite blog. I bet the design plays a big part in why the content seems so good to you. Have you seen some great new blog designs lately? Share your favorite ones.

In Continuing our series on twitter tips, I present tip #4

So you want to use twitter as a company / organization. In following our other tips, i’ll keep this short. 

• create a company account (nothing special, just an account reserved for professional stuff)
• only tweet the big things
• keep @replies to a minimum
• avoid linking to things out of your control (but DO link to your own stuff as often as needed)
• Follow your new company account from your personal, and vice versa. 
• follow other businesses, employees, organizations you belong to, and industry leaders. 

In Continuing our series on twitter tips, I present tip #3

Avoid twittering just for the sake of twittering. 

Nothing to say today? this week? Thats okay.

In Continuing our series on twitter tips, I present tip #2

Would you call a customer to tell them this tweet? even email it to them?

If not, dont tweet it. 

Posting relevant, important, news is good. Silly is okay some times if it fits your company culture. Just dont tweet when you used the restroom, something you ate, what you did off your to do list, etc.

In a new series, I’d like to share tips on using twitter effectively as an organization. Small, short and easy to swallow tips on twitter. 

the first tips to kick off the series:

DO NOT feed your twitter posts into your blog.
People reading your blog dont care to see your @replies. 

DO feed your blog posts INTO twitter. 

So a few weeks ago i posted some questions regarding the newspaper industry, and how to fix it. I think I have some solid ideas, that I will post later. But that post got me thinking. A new series of blog posts, on what would you do to fix a company or industry. Could be a fun exercise in creativity. 

So today I ask: If Sprint came to you for marketing / business help,

How would you fix Sprint?

(more…)

So we have been really exploring the use of twitter as a tool around her for Factor1 (follow us here factor1). The jury is still out on it being useful for us.

In my 2 week exploration, i find some people are litteraly just brodcasting white noise. Twittering to twitter, even if they have nothing to say at all. Its pretty annoying, and I un-follow those people quick.

Are you one of those people? Here is a quick tool to help you know. 

www.followcost.com

When you think of websites with white backgrounds you probably think of search engines, news sites, and plain designs with lots of crammed in content. Many people want color, texture, and bright vivid designs. White is often overlooked, but many things can be done with just a white background. White offers the ability to add lots of contrast, allows your images to pop and there are many possibilities that you might not have considered before.

Here are some great sites that use lots of white to achieve a great look.

Ever feel like you are the last to hear about something? Maybe somone is talking about you or your organization online and you dont know about it. 

Here are some great tools to keep an eye on things. 

• Google Alerts
   Have Google email you anytime a specific term, or link pops up. 
• Twitter Search feed
  Yes, you know you can search on twitter. But did you know you can have an RSS feed update of the results?
• Technorati blog search
  Who blogged about you? And yes, this too has an RSS feed for the results. 
• Google blog search
  Same deal as technorati. 

You can never have too close an eye on whos talking about you. Listen, adapt, react as needed. But dont become obsessed about it. 

Any tools i missed?