This Amazon Logo gives a good insight about what amazon offers to its users. The Smile from A to Z indicates the happy customers of the portal, add to it the large scale inventory of products on Amazon ( A to Z) products are available on amazon. Nice.

Big Ten is an academic union which was founded in the year 1896. Until 1990, this union consisted of 10 universities, but in June 1990 Pennsylvania State University was added. They didn’t want to change their name, so they added the number 11 to the logo.

Carrefour is one of the biggest European retailers, and it’s also French for “crossroads”. The logo symbolizes this word via two opposite arrows. They also added the first letter of the name, because if you look closely you’ll see the letter C in the negative space between the two arrows.

Continental is a manufacturer of tyres. You could actually see this in their logo, because the first two letters create a 3-dimensional tyre.

Eighty-20 is a small consulting firm. Most people think that the logo has nothing to do with the brand name. But the trick is to view the dark squares as 1’s and the light squares as 0’s. Then the top line reads 1010000 and the bottom line reads 0010100, which represent 80 and 20 in binary.

Sony Vaio is a well known brand of laptops. But did you know that the name Vaio logo also had a hidden meaning? Well, the first two letters represent the basic analogue signal. The last two letters look like a 1 and 0, representing the digital signal.

I really love this logo: every letter is made of the number 8.

This logo was made for twins. To reflect the essence of the duo, a bold typeface was created to reflect the boldness of their approaches. The number 2 was integrated to show the creativeness of their ideas.

If you look at the centre of this logo, you can see two people enjoying a Tostito chip with a bowl of salsa. This logo conveys an idea of people connecting with each other.

Toblerone is a chocolate-company from Bern, Switzerland. Bern is sometimes called ‘The City Of Bears’. They have incorporated this idea in the Toblerone logo, because if you look closely, you’ll see the silhouette of a bear.

The Sun logo is one of the most famous ambigrams in the world. You can read the brand name in every direction; both horizontally and vertically. This logo was designed by professor Vaughan Pratt of the Stanford University.

Roxy is a company that specializes in clothing and accessories for girls who love snowboarding, surfing… The company is actually a part of Quiksilver. The Roxy logo is made of two Quiksilver logos that form a heart.

This simple looking logo actually carries a whole lot of information. First of all you can see the letters N and W, the first two letters of the brand name. But what most people don’t see is the compass that points to the Northwest, another reference to the brand name.

The NBC (National Broadcasting Company) is one of the biggest American television networks. I think most of you have already seen the peacock in this logo. The peacock has 6 different tail feathers, referring to the six divisions at the time that this logo was created. The peacock’s head is  flipped to the right to suggest it was looking forward, not back.

The Milwaukee Brewers is a professional baseball team from Milwaukee, Wisconsin (well, duh…). Their logo is actually made up of the letters M (on top) and B (below the m). These two letters also form a baseball glove.

This logo also uses a negative space to create the letter H. You can see three different parts: the letter H and W and a whale’s tail in blue.

I know this logo looks like a simple, boring green tree, but if you look at the tree crown, you’ll see that it can also be interpreted as a brain. The logo lays emphasis on the strong intellectual capabilities of the company’s staff and also reflects ‘green’ and ‘labs’ parts of their name.

At first, this logo might not make much sense. But if you look closely, you’ll see the number 1 in the negative space between the F and the red stripes. I also love how this logo communicates a feeling of speed.

This is probably one of the best known logos with a hidden meaning. If you look closely, you’ll see an arrow that’s formed by the letters E and x. This arrow symbolizes speed and precision, two major selling points of this company.

The e of the logo also ends up looking like the trump area of an elephant!!

The old logo of Baskin Robbins had the number 31 with an arc above it. The new logo took this idea to the next level. The pink parts of the BR still form the number 31, a reference to the 31 flavours.

Unilever is one of the biggest producers of food, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products. The logo is an amalgamation of all its offerings in the market. On Closer look you will identify logo’s of Dove, Surf Excel, Lipton Tea, Parachute, Heart’s Ice Cream brand of Unilever etc.

54 Billion.

That’s what Forrester Research predicts for US B2B Social Media Marketing spending by 2014.

As a living example of a B2B company that fully leverages blogging and social media in our online marketing, TopRank Marketing has a lot of first-hand insight that we can share with clients. I know there are many B2B marketers that are uncertain about their place on the social web and over 6 1/2 years of B2B blogging experience can provide the companies we work with a unique perspective.

Working smarter with developing and implementing blogging strategy, content planning, promotion, SEO and the intersection with other on communications channels such as PR and social networking saves time, resources and improves results.

Am I biased towards blogging as part of a B2B marketing strategy? Absolutely. Is blogging appropriate for every B2B company? Not by a long shot.

According to the 2010 SEMPO Study, 35% of B2B companies integrate social media marketing with search marketing. At this stage of the Social SEO game, that percentage shows a lot of opportunity for growth.  However, companies we’ve worked with like Marketo have made substantial progress towards dominating their industry and experiencing explosive business growth, in part, due to the effects of blogging and SEO.

Deciding whether to start a B2B blog or have an existing blogging effort audited is worth thoughtful consideration. Did you start a blog because the competition is blogging? Are interns managing the blog content and promotion? Are your blog contributors experiencing burnout or boredom?  Are there a lack of comments and engagement?  There are many reasons B2B blogs fail, but that doesn’t mean a blog isn’t right for your company. Get insight from companies that are successful to see what you missed or if blogging really isn’t a good fit.

For the businesses that are getting mileage out of blogging and social media, the Business.com Benchmark Study shares the most popular metrics used to measure B2B Social Media Success:

• Website Traffic – 68%
• Brand Awareness – 61%
• Engagement with Prospects – 60%
• Engagement with Customers – 52%
• Brand Reputation – 47%
• Prospect Lead Quality – 40%
• Revenue – 38%
• Prospect Lead Volume – 37%
• Useful Product Feedback – 26%

With the right plan and guidance, affecting these KPIs as well as lead generation is a reasonable expectation through B2B blogging and social media.

Three things B2B Marketers can do to get the ball rolling with social media:

1. Establish a Listening Program: Brand monitoring is the most common dimension social media monitoring efforts focus on, but extend your efforts to Audience Analysis and Social Keyword Research as well to get a handle on the community you’re trying to engage with. Trending keywords can facilitate real-time marketing or longer term editorial planning and SEO.

2.  Give to Get with Content: Commit to aligning content with searcher personas that also meets your marketing objectives. Information and education have their place with B2B marketing. Understand those needs of your target audience and develop content (optimized for keywords of course) that meets those needs but also facilitate your prospecting pipeline.

3. Leverage Social Media Marketing campaign tools across channels to promote optimized social content. Creating multiple media and content for a single promotion to a mix of social destinations is very time consuming and inefficient unless you use tools. Examples of social media marketing campaign management tools with corresponding analytics include: Awareness, SWIX, Sprout, Pop.to, WildFire, Objective Marketer, Spredfast and Socialtalk.

Many B2B marketers go through the motions with social media, but they’re not really being social.  Adam Singer and I were just talking yesterday about the world of difference between content produced by a copywriter that’s good at writing and someone that knows an industry, writes well and especially has experience as a participant with that industry’s social networking and blogging community.

B2B marketers don’t need to “do social”, they need to “be social” and that means time and resources for participation, analysis and action. Customers can tell the difference and everything from measures of engagement to leads generated will show the difference as well.

Event: B2B Search Summit June 23rd San Francisco
I will be speaking at this event on why Blogs and Social Media should be part of every B2B Marketers toolkit and why it might be the easiest way to generate customer ambassadors and gain more quality leads. Register using the code TOPRANK and you’ll get $300 off.

This article is contributed by : Lee Oden (http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/06/b2b-marketing-social-media-blogs/)

But this one rule — The Rule of 24 — is guaranteed. Iron clad.

Doesn’t matter who you are, what you write, how you write, or how hard you try to prove this wrong.

You won’t.

You can’t. The Rule of 24 will make your writing better. Every time. No exceptions.

Simplicity on the other side of complexity

Sometimes the biggest problems have the simplest solutions.

Want to lose weight? Simple.

• Consume fewer calories than you burn each day.

Want to get more blog subscribers?

• Read Copyblogger and follow the advice you get here.
• Create excellent content.
• Give readers great reasons to subscribe.
• Use social media tools.
• Ask in a more effective way.

Want to get rich? Okay, not as simple, but the principles are there in front of your nose.

• Find a need and fill it.
• Work harder.
• Work smarter.
• Marry an heiress.
• Get smarter about your marketing.

These are simple solutions all right, but that doesn’t always make them easy. Most of them require actual effort to implement and stick to in the real world.

Which is why The Rule of 24 is your best bet for a simple fix to the big problem of how to improve your writing.

Because it doesn’t come with that particular downside.

The Rule of 24 is as easy to implement as it is to understand. It doesn’t ask you to give up something you love, and it doesn’t go against the grain of who you are.

It’s not even original or genius. It’s simply true. Always has been.

You just have to choose it. And too many writers don’t.

Want to be a better writer overnight?

Here’s what you do:

Sit on what you think is your final draft for 24 hours.

No, really. That’s it.

No matter what you’re writing — a novel, a screenplay, a blog post, a landing page, a letter — if you do the best you can on it and then wait until the next day to go over it again …

… you have my iron-clad, 100 percent guarantee that you’ll make at least a tweak or two that will make it better.

Every time. Dependable as death, taxes and somebody voting for Kate Gosselin.

Aren’t we all glad I’m not charging for that sage advice?

Send me your $49.95 now, and I’ll make your writing better overnight … guaranteed or your money back!

I know it sounds ridiculously simple. I know it sounds like the other shoe will drop any moment. But there are millions of writers out there who don’t do it — even though it’s absolutely guaranteed to improve their writing.

It may be a typo you didn’t see the day before. It may be a better choice of word, a less-is-more edit, or a wholesale shift in creative or structural strategy.

But you will change something.

And the piece will be better for it.

What if there’s nothing to fix the next day?

Wow. There’s not one single thing you can do to make that piece better, huh?

Nothing at all you can tweak to make it just a little bit clearer, a little bit more compelling, a little bit punchier than it was before? Why, you must be the best writer on the planet.

Or … you aren’t.

Nobody’s that perfect. The piece might be exceptional or even brilliant, but that’s not the point.

The point is that if you come back to it the next day, every time, you open yourself to the opportunity to make it even better.

So there it is. The Rule of 24, available to all, completely free of charge, and unconditionally guaranteed.

Still don’t believe me? Want to write a post about how wrong I am? Good for you.

Let the draft sit for 24 hours first, though. It’ll be even better when you come back and find something brilliant you forgot to put in there.

Or you can slip it into the comments. No waiting required.

This Content is written by Reknowned Blogger : Larry Brooks

http://www.copyblogger.com/

Effective social media marketing provides a mechanism for companies to spread the word about their products and services quickly and creatively and empowers consumers to respond quickly about those products and services, creating one of the most revolutionary customer feedback loops for consumers and brands alike.

Forums, online communities, blogs, live casts, social bookmarking sites, user review sites, multimedia sharing, micro blogging, and social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. With all the new technology out there, it is vital for businesses to track the ROI of all of their marketing activities, including their brand reputations’.  Companies are scrambling to ensure that their expenditures in social media can be justified as sound investments that will, in fact, add to the company’s bottom line in a definitive way.   While measuring the ROI of social media marketing is crucial, it has proven to be somewhat tricky as the total measured benefit of the channel goes far beyond the more traditional measurements of ROI in marketing and media.

As the medium has grown, tools to track its effectiveness for business have started to emerge.   Most companies are seeing beyond the “shiny new toy effect” of social media and are looking for ways to demonstrate to their shareholders that these activities are worthwhile, to manage their brand reputations and build market share worldwide.

Here is a  list of some of the applications that are available for businesses to measure and manage their social media activities and brand reputations online today:

* Collective Intellect – collects real time market information, providing insight into consumer opinions for marketing professionals.

* Buzz Logic – helps businesses see what social media sites are generating high interest or buzz, so it can advertise there.

* Buddy Media Platform – a simple way for both companies and advertising agencies to manage and track their social media efforts.

* Alterian Social Media – provides software for public relations and marketing companies to measure, track and monitor businesses rate of success in social media.

* Radian 6 – currently the market leader in social media monitoring, they offer a platform to “listen, measure, and engage with customers across the entire social web”.

* Brands Eye – online reputation monitoring tool.

Social media is here to stay.  It allows consumers to play an active role in the marketplace providing business targeted feedback for their products.  It is important for businesses to track this feedback to make sure it is meeting the needs of the customer.  As the demand for social media grows, business will need to find tools to help monitor them as they grow with this exciting new technology.

You can setup an e – commerce store or an affiliate site with a minimum effort with the technology available today, but running and managing it successfully is a real herculean task.

The ecommerce market is highly competitive. Big players like Amazon, Buy.com, 1800flowers, etc have dominated the entire e – commerce terrain, leaving the small and medium online retailers almost inconspicuous in the web space. Well, there is no need to sweat it out. To become a successful online seller, you have to properly optimize your ecommerce store.

This article provides 100+ retail ecommerce optimization tips and tricks that will help you enhance your ecommerce website quality, rank in search engines, traffic and conversion rates

General:

Get your senior management’s support and commitment on your efforts to improve your website.

Identify the changes required and build a good operations team.

Always remember that your goal is to provide better online service to your customer through your website. (Remember Zappos)

Set achievable goals for every webpage.

Set a key performance indicator (KPI) for every online marketing campaign you conduct.

Never depend totally on technology.

Help users to reach you by different means – email, telephone, physical address, live chat, etc.

Ecommerce Merchandising tips:

Don’t use too much of animation on your home page.

Display top-selling and newly launched products on your home page.

Make sure every product page is reachable within 2-3 clicks.

Recommend product accessories for items that have been added to a shopping cart. For example, if a customer buys a notebook, then recommend laptop accessories like a USB mouse or bags. Just recommend! Don’t add them automatically to the shopping cart, otherwise it will lead to shopping cart abandonment

Add a buy button to your recommended list or wherever you show a product.

Also show product prices for each product in your recommended product list or anywhere else you display your products.

Make sure your content has compelling call to actions – buy now, limited offer, etc.

Wow customers by offering surprise gifts, offers, and price discounts.

Have good site search functionality within your site.

Also include advanced search functionality, such as search by color, size, etc.

Add breadcrumb navigation, which helps users understand their depth of their visit to your site.

Allow users to modify their shopping cart lists. They should be able to add or remove products and change the quantities that they want to purchase.

Avoid hidden cost – imposing additional cost on the total value of the purchase. Allow user to add associated products manually. Don’t ever automate it. Hidden costs lead to shopping cart abandonment.

Don’t force users to register, even for adding items into their shopping cart.

Glean only necessary information during the sign up process.

Display security badges clearly.

Give alternate payment options. About 74% of online merchants provide alternate payment options.

Offer free shipping for a certain price threshold.

Install an analytics program to help you better understand user behavior.

Use a visual analytics program to facilitate easy interpretation.

Avoid a long check out process.

Provide all necessary information, such as shipping, privacy policy, return policy, delivery date and time, etc.

Ecommerce design tips:

Ensure that the site’s html code meets web standards.

Minimize graphics like flash, scripts, etc.

Graphical links has minimal value. Make sure that your links are text based because it is good for search engine spiders.

Ensure that your site loads quickly.

Use secure server include (ssi) files.

Be creative with your 404 page. You can merchandise it with other related products or add site search functionality or link it to another section of your website.

Never optimize your website without user in the mind

Never start your SEO campaign without planning and benchmarking

You can provide multiple paths for the user to reach a product page, but have only one path for spiders

Conduct SEO competition analysis to understand your competitor’s SEO strategy

Conduct category and product level keyword research.

Don’t stuff keywords on your product page

Focus on long tail keywords (e.g. canon power shot 4x digital camera).

Don’t use the manufacturer’s product description. Use your own instead.

Use keyword rich titles and meta tags, headings, etc. However, make sure you don’t spam. If you do it right, you get it right.

Use keywords in your product descriptions.

Get quality back links to your product pages steadily, but not suddenly.

Recommend products and accessories on your product page. Smart and sophisticated interlinking helps in SEO (a good example is shopping.com).

Ask customers to review products that they have purchased from your site. Unique content helps in SEO.

Allow customers to tag the product.

Use keywords in interior links.

Don’t have more than 100 outgoing links.

Optimize images for fast loading and for search engines – 6 steps to optimize images

Create a sitemap – it ensures that none of your webpages are orphaned.

Create search engine friendly (SEF) URLs that are easy for both users and crawlers. Opt for URL optimization like mod_rewrite to static URLs.

Write blog posts about the products you sell and give a back link to that page.

Ecommerce email marketing tips:

Conduct an opt-in email campaign.

Invite users to sign up for your newsletter after a sale.

Avoid spam words like free in the subject line.

Make sure you have an unsubscribe option on your email content.

Provide a proper mailing address on your email content.

Include tell-a-friend functionality.

Conduct periodic email campaign.

Offer exclusive discounts to opt-in customers.

Include compelling call to actions in your email message.

Make sure your offer is visible above the fold in the email.

Pay per click (PPC) marketing tips:

Start by advertising top-selling products.

Bid on popular and relevant keywords.

Use negative keywords as well.

Use keyword options like phrase and exact match.

Focus on improving your quality score.

Add keywords in the ad copy.

Add call to actions in the ad copy.

You don’t have to hold the very top position. Find a balance.

Make sure you give the right landing page, otherwise you’ll meet with a high bounce rate.

If you don’t get enough return on ad spends via Google’s Content Network,
then turn it off.
Test your ad copy with different keywords.

Test your PPC ad campaign.

Experiment with your landing pages.

Comparison shopping engine (CSE) marketing tips:

Choose the right comparison shopping engines for your campaign and start slow and steady. (Steps to conduct CSE campaign)

Identify the right combination of product, price and shopping engine channel

Prepare feeds according to the shopping engine’s requirements.

Use common product names or street names in the feeds.

Don’t forget to use recommended data feed fields.

Make use optional data feed fields as well.

Make sure your feeds are placed in the right taxonomy of each shopping engine.

Use the exact MPN or SKU..

Update your data feeds daily, weekly or monthly (daily is highly recommended).

Send feeds to Google base.

Don’t advertise out of stock products.

Provide an appropriate landing page.

Remove poor performing products.

Conduct Shopping Engine competition analysis with other merchants in context with title, price and other promotional offers within each CSE.

Track your rankings in the comparison shopping engines.

Track clicks and sales at the product level.

Social Media Tips:

Create, maintain and market your blog along with your web store.

Make tagging and bookmarking as easy as possible

List blogs which link back to you via permalinks, trackbacks

Encourage the mash up by letting others use your content

Make regular and valuable contributions in relevant forums

Be positive and straightforward in your comments

Be receptive to comments and let the world know that you care for your customers

Ecommerce customer support service tips:

Provide exceptional service to repeat customers.

Provide good customer service to first time customers as well.

Make sure you respond to customers in a timely manner.

Get a toll free number.

Train customer representatives properly. For example, offer product and sales training.

Make sure your contact info is available in all your pages.

Thank the customer either by calling or sending an email about the purchase they have placed.

IM is very effective for servicing frustrated customers.

Offer different channels to your online shoppers, so that they can reach you easily. Example: Telephone, Online Chat, Email.

Please Note: These are a few tips from Twisted Minds Services Pvt Ltd. They are not the essential formula for success.

Previously, when a search query was entered into Google’s search field, the result pages were not from the live web, instead they were taken from Google’s index of the web. This system does not meet the changing trends in Internet. Today, the web is bombarded with content. The web content is becoming more complex with videos, news, images, real-time updates and more. Online users are also looking for fresh and real-time content. The rich online content and searchers’ need for latest and relevant content have contributed to the invention of Caffeine.

The old search index system had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others. But, the main layer was updated once in every two weeks. In order to refresh a layer of the old index, the entire website was analyzed and there was always a significant delay between when a new page was found and when it was made available for users.

On the other hand, Caffeine analyzes the web in small portions and updates the search index continuously. Any new page added to a site or any update in content in the existing pages is immediately identified and indexed. Now, Caffeine can get fresher and better results for users.
Caffeine indexes web pages not only at a faster rate, but also on a larger scale. It processes hundreds of pages simultaneously and takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database. Moreover, new information is added to the existing database at the rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day.

The advent of Caffeine will take the search experience to the next level. This robust search index system not only yields fresher results, but also helps build a comprehensive search index. Google has also planned to make improvements to Caffeine in the future.

Product : Sony Cyber Shot

Big idea : Say Cheese

Connect : Camera ( Product) is used to Capture your say cheese expression ( Smile)

The Effect: Garnered Rave Reviews and leaves a smile on the consumers face.

Our Verdict: Thumbs up!!

There is a thought process that goes in while figuring out a way of expressing the product. Its not random, even if it appears to be random there is a bit of method involved.

In the above case lets try and chart out the probable paths that would have taken them to the final  culmination of the idea.

Product : Camera : Sony Cyber Shot!

Camera functionality basic: Use to capture Photos, Videos, Interesting moments etc

When do we use a camera generally : To capture happy and cheerful moments, Wow moments!

Adjectives we use in association of Camera : Click me, Smile, Say Cheese, Take a picture

Its about connecting the dots :

Product to Functionality to User association to USP & Adjectives association to The Idea.