Rose B, Author at Ensembleway

Create An Online Brand

Brainstorm and Research Your Brand

That’s why in order to get a good one, you have to start to brainstorm early. It’s going to take a while to come up with a brand name that you love and that is also available as a domain name. One thing is certain: most two-word-phrased domain names are already taken. You will probably have to go with three words or more, or you might try purchasing a smaller domain name from someone who is squatting on it and waiting for a buyer to offer him/her some money.

Do Reserve Your Personal Name

Even if you’re not going to use it for business, you will want to reserve as many profiles and even a domain name with your name in it. Celebrities with established careers already have lawyers who do this on a regular basis for them. However, if you start your business brand and then you suddenly achieve fame in the middle of it all, you’ll probably end up paying someone else to give back your personal brand name on the Internet. There are many opportunists out there who go out and try to reserve names like Paris Hilton or other notables with large followings. If your following increases, so will the number of fake spammers out there, and you want to be ready by having already reserved your name on the biggest sites like Facebook, Twitter, and a personal branded .com name.

Research Availability

Hop online now and check to see what’s available for your domain name possibilities using Whois.net. You can check a variety of different extensions besides .com sites. If the domain is already reserved or bought, you will see the owner of the domain name. It will also tell you who you can contact should you want to try and buy the name. Otherwise, you can get onto popular hosting sites of your choice and try to register the domain name. Whois.net will also tell you (when it’s not available) what other names you might try to reserve instead that are available. Typically, they are prefixed with the word my or something similar, but are slightly different. You can even register the domain name right there for a charge of $9.95/year.

Promote Your Brand

Online, if you want to be known as an expert, all you have to do is to claim to be an expert and then help others with your expertise. People learn who you are by interacting with you and can make up their own opinions about you and your company. The interactivity and the ability to reach people all around the world for very little money is what levels the playing field between companies and individuals. Information isn’t as segregated as it once was, and it’s also quite a bit more transparent. Now, no matter how much a big company spends on promoting some defective product, odds are that there will be numerous online complaints that are easily accessible and that dissuade new customers from purchasing a defective product. In the same vein, if you have a spectacular brand and some wonderful product or service, you can promote the brand and the positive vibes by sharing that information online to attract new customers.

What You Should Do Online

There are a few places online that you can leverage to get the most positive publicity with minimal effort. You could spend a lot more time plastering the World Wide Web with your own press release, but ultimately, as a business owner, you just don’t have the time to do too much promotion. Even if you can do the following list, you should seriously think about hiring a company or an individual to help you publicize your offerings online in a manner that will get you more exposure.

Online business cards
- Replace your paper cards with a digital version that allow you to share it much more easily online.
Digital resumes
- If your personal experience is important to your business, be sure to update archives with your personal digital resume.
Portfolios
- You might have a freelance company or be a solopreneur who is interested in showing off some of your work via your online portfolio.
Website
- This can be a formal site or a blog, as long as it is a central place to show people who you are and what you’re up to with your business.
Social networks
- These include Facebook and Twitter and are great for getting traffic back to your site.
Email campaigns
- Simple ways to directly market to your audience.

Online Business Cards
In the past, you would do business and help to create brand awareness through a paper business card. While there is still a place for these quaint relics of the past, the more modern versions use an online, interactive component to share your personal brand digitally so that there is less chance that it will get lost or overlooked. Besides, when was the last time you saw anyone pull out a rolodex of business cards to contact anyone? With so many businesses promoting their brands online, which costs far less and is more effective, it pays to step into the information age with enthusiasm.

E-Business Cards

A copy of the paper business card in digital format is easy enough to create. Distributing it is far more efficient than trying to hand someone a paper card. You can go to places like www.Businesscard2.com to use the service to create your own e-business card. These types of cards have the advantage of being able to be transmitted to other people’s electronic gadgets, like their cell phone, and will store your email in their directories. With so many phones having messaging capabilities, it puts your online email address right at their fingertips, with little intervention on your part.

In addition, you can add other types of links to these business cards that can be viewed on phones with Internet capabilities. You might want to add your Facebook and/or Twitter profiles or any other site that you use for branding you or your business.

Brand Your Digital Media

Your digital media can include ebooks, CDs, and videos on YouTube. You alone know where all of your digital media ends up residing. It can also be sales promotional tools like DVDs and USB drives. Add your brand information there and make sure it comes up in auto-run mode so that when people use your products or services, they are also seeing your official e-business card that tells them where they can find more of your products or services or learn more about your brand.
People love getting novel gifts for sales promotions and having your brand printed on them and in digital format is not going to bother them. If it is an item that they use frequently, it’s like having a mini-commercial installed on their tool that will be a little annoying, but will also be very valuable for when they want to know who to contact for more of the same products and services. Never underestimate the power of a clever business card. It can lead to referrals and more business with very little upfront work.

Digital Resume

Paper resumes are good if you’re looking for a job, but they aren’t very good if you’re trying to promote your business online. Putting up a list of your accomplishments and some of your past achievements is a good way to let people know what circles you travel in and what type of quality they can expect from you. Businesses that are in consulting or freelancing can also benefit from digital resumes that list their previous projects. You can write up several, differently formatted resumes that highlight your strengths and promote your past experience. In some cases, you can even add that to your business profiles.

Branding On-Job Boards

When you’re on a job board, you are competing against hundreds, if not thousands, of other people who are looking for work during this recession. It’s a shame, but many human resource people aren’t even going to read your resume. They might grab a bunch of electronic resumes and stick them through a resume reader looking for specific keywords. That’s why part of branding your resume is to use keywords that will best describe your skills and experience, and that might also be searched by offline companies.
It’s important to be as detailed as possible, like including the names of the equipment you work with, software programs and versions, or languages that you speak or program in. Include keywords for the type of experience you have, whether it’s technical, management, or retail. It’s also important to include several different copies of your resume, one in HTML format and one in text format, so that they can download the right format and chug it through their resume readers.

LINKEDIN

In addition to using bulletin boards like Monster.com, you are sometimes better off using a social network like LinkedIn.com that allows you to post resume information for other professionals to view. It’s also a great place to post this type of information because, unlike Monster.com, LinkedIn.com allows you to request recommendations from people. This way, you not only have a viewable resume that is searchable in search engines, but people viewing it can see how many other people have nice things to say about you.
LinkedIn.com is a great place for professionals who are out of work and for those who still have a job to network. It’s great for people who are business owners who want to network with their customers and who want to offer a professional look at who they are and what they do. However, this isn’t really enough to make up someone’s mind. A portfolio of past projects will give your profile life.

Portfolios

Portfolios provide a visual and audio way to influence someone with your brand, not just with written text. A good portfolio has samples of your best work for new customers to review before making a buying decision. Artists have long used paper portfolios to get into the best schools and to show new customers their work.

Digital portfolios can include anything from photography snapshots of offline work, music .jpgs, and video content. It doesn’t have to be just about your written work. The more you wow and dazzle your viewer, the more likely they are to buy from you.

Exhibit Your Niche

The sample within your portfolio should be used to showcase your brand. What is your niche and what makes these pieces representative of your expertise? If you’re a musician with a specific style, you might want to showcase that style to attract more work. If you’re a writer with a talent for specific niches or styles of writing, be sure to include pieces that reflect that information in your portfolio.

When trying to project your brand online, don’t mix it with too many other styles or niches that aren’t related to your own brand. This just dilutes the power of your portfolio and leaves people confused about who you are and what you are offering. Try to stay within your niche of expertise and try to send a strong message that you excel in this area.

Sites With a Portfolios

You can include your portfolio on freelance sites, like GetAFreelancer.com and MySpace.com. Some sites do better with different audiences, and it’s not unusual to have one portfolio in one area be different from another portfolio to cater to different audiences. For instance, MySpace.com caters to a younger audience, and their style is more bold than professional places like GetAFreelancer.com.

However, this is just the audience that buys music and loves to experiment with musical styles and videos. You might put music on here that appeals to this demographic and include different music in a different portfolio elsewhere. Match the portfolio to the site you’re posting on.

Include multiple formats so that if one format isn’t easily viewed, another one will be. That goes for Word documents, images, and musical files. You don’t know what people have on their PCs, and when a file doesn’t play, it can make you look bad, even if it’s not your fault. Including some helpful hints for playing files and opening them can help people be aware that proper software needs to be on their systems in order to view those files.

Using Social Networking Websites to Promote Your Blog

Do you know what is the main purpose of a social networking website?

If you are an avid internet user, you likely do. Social networking websites are online communities that make it easier for internet users to meet and communicate with each other.

If you are an internet user who enjoys using the internet to meet new people, there is a good chance that you already belong to a social networking website. What about an online blog? Do you have one of them? If you do, do you know that you could use your social networking website to promote your blog?

Promote your blog? Why would you want to do that? Honestly, if you have to ask yourself that question you probably shouldn’t even have one. The whole purpose of a blog is to document your thoughts, views, and opinions on a particular topic, issue, or subject. What good will your blog do if no one reads it.

In addition to sharing your thoughts with the rest of the world, did you know that you could also make money from your blog? You can sign up for affiliate programs or other programs like Google AdSense. If you are using your blog to make money then you will defiantly want to promote it.

When it comes to promoting blogs, there are many blog owners who decide to let the search engine do the work for them. Search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN use special techniques that reads the content on your website. That content is then used to rank your website with particular keywords.

This means that you run a blog on graduating from high school in New York, there is a good chance that your blog will appear in searches done on New York high schools. Although many blogs are successfully ranked in search engines, not all are. That is why you are advised against relying solely on search engines, when it comes to promoting your blog.

As previously mentioned, if you love meeting with or talking to people online, there is a good chance that you belong to a social networking website or community.

The individuals that you talk to and that are in your community are likely the individuals that you wish to target. Since most social networking websites work to connect internet users who have the same goals and common interests, there is a good chance that your online friends will enjoy reading your blog. But, before they can read your blog, you have to let them know that it exists.

When it comes to promoting your blog on social networking websites, you have a number of different options. Your first option is to include a link to your blog in your community profile or profile page. This will allow other community members to checkout your blog, only if they wish to do so.

The other way is to inform your online friends of your blog through private messages. Once you join a social networking website and create or join a network of friends, you should easily be able to communicate with those friends.

Sending each of your friends a private message with information and a link to your blog tends to be more effective than just placing a link in your profile or on your profile page.

Although there is a good chance that you are already a member of a popular social networking website, you may not be. If you are not already a member, but would like to become one, you will need to find a social networking website to join. This can easily be done with a standard internet search.

In your search, you will likely find a number of popular network sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, FriendFinder, Yahoo! 360, and Orkut. Before becoming a community member at one of these networking sites, you may want to first examine the website to ensure that it is everything that you want it to be.

As you can easily see, there are a number of different ways that you can go about promoting your blog on online social networking websites.

You never known, but, in addition to promoting your blog, you may also make new friends along the way.

Staying Safe with Social Networking Websites

When it comes to internet safety, a large amount of focus has been placed on teenagers and the use of social networking websites.

Although it is important for teenagers to be careful when using these popular websites, they are not the only ones who should be concerned with their safety. If you are an adult, who enjoys networking online, you should also be cautious when it comes to meeting and communicating with other internet users.

Although social networking websites are a great place to meet other internet users, especially ones with interests that are similar to yours, they can also be dangerous. In recent years, there have been numerous reports of instances when individuals were harmed when they went to meet an individual that they met on an online social network, which includes dating websites.

If you are not careful and cautious, the same thing could happen to you. This does not mean that you should be filled with fear; however, it does mean that you need to be cautious online.

One of the many ways that you can protect yourself, when it comes to using online social networking websites, is by watching what you post online, particularly in your profile. You may not know this, but a large number of networking sites, including MySpace, FriendFinder, and Yahoo! 360 allow all internet users to see your profile or profile page.

These internet users do not necessarily have to be a member of your online community. This means that although your networking community may be safe, there are still unsavory individuals out there who could easily obtain your personal information.

In addition to the information that you make available to other internet users, including member profiles, you are advised to be cautious when making contact with other internet users, especially those that contact you. A large number of social networking websites have open memberships.

Essentially, this means that anyone can easily join and become a member. Just because someone says they are who they are doesn’t necessarily mean that they are telling the truth. If at any point during your conversations you feel that you are speaking with someone who is making you feel comfortable or not telling the truth, you are advised to end your conversation.

For many individuals it is enough to chat with others online, but for some it is not enough. Whether you are asked to meet with an online friend or if you initiated the meeting yourself, you are advised to be cautious. You will not want to meet with an individual who you have only known online for a short period of time.

For safety reasons, it is advised that you speak with one of your online friends at least a month before agreeing to meet with them. If and when that meeting does take place, you are urged to have it in a public place. That way if your meeting does not go as well as you had originally planned, you will be able to ensure your safety by having others around you.

The above mentioned precautionary measures are just a few of the many that you should take. Although you may be worried about hurting someone’s feelings or losing an online friend, you shouldn’t be. Your safety is far too important to be concerned with what others will be thinking or feeling.

Top 4 Ways – How to make money at home

A lot of people are now making money at home, and everyone is doing it differently. If you are wondering how you can make money at home, here are the answers.

The Internet is a thriving haven of money-making opportunities. If you know where to look, and is prepared to maximize your skills and knowledge, you can find plenty of ways how to make money at home, simple with the use of your computer. Venture into the online work environment and choose from any of these top five money-making opportunities online.

Website Marketing

Website marketing is one of the top ways to make money at home. As more and more people are becoming exposed to the world of media discourse and the Internet is becoming easier to manipulate, the number of websites on the World Wide Web is also increasing.

Nowadays, anyone can create his own website, publish it to the Internet, and earn money from it. The world of website marketing may be a bit tricky, but once you learn the tricks of the trade, you can drive traffic to your website, get people to advertise on it, and get rich as you sit in a comfortable chair at home.

Freelance Professional Services

Offering freelance professional services is now a widely known way to make money at home. A lot of people are now offering their professional services online to clients worldwide. With no other effort needed, a person can make use of his skills and knowledge to make money at home.

There are online communities where service providers and customers are interacting and transacting. If you are an artist, you can offer web design, graphic design, and even photography services. If you are a writer, you can offer writing, proofreading, and editing services. In addition to that, if you are looking for a pressure-free job, you can simply offer data encoding

Entrepreneurship

If you can provide services online, you can also sell goods. This is where Entrepreneurship comes in. Majority of goods that are being sold nowadays are also being sold or advertised on the Internet. The shift to a web-based society has also affected the world of entrepreneurship and has transformed it into “entrepreneurship” instead.
There are now a lot of community websites wherein people are trading and selling, and websites that are dedicated to selling. You can sell virtually anything online, and the benefits are plenty. You can reach more people with your products when you decide to sell it on the Internet.
More people, even outside of your network, and even those who are not on the lookout for the kind of product you sell, can easily come across your product on the Internet and be lured into buying. Through entrepreneurship, you can sell products and make money at home, without having to face the woes of a full-fledged, actual business.

Hassle-Free Online Opportunities

If you haven’t decided to make money at home, why not just increase your present income through hassle-free money-making opportunities online, such as taking surveys? Now, companies are shifting their market research online, and to extend across boundaries, they are offering to pay people to simply answer some surveys.
There are a lot of survey sites on the Internet nowadays. All you have to do is sign up for these survey sites to get access to a lot of surveys. You can take as many surveys as you can, so your income will be entirely up to you.
Each survey will only take you a few minutes to answer, so you can gauge the number of surveys you can take every day. This is a good way to make money at home, even just during your free time.

Learn How To Make Money By Starting An Online Business!

One of the easiest ways you can make money fast with your online business is to create your own products and sell those products to other people over the Internet.

The set-up process may take you a few weeks, but once the products are ready they work almost entirely by themselves.
This is a very profitable and satisfying experience. Imagine having sale agents that work tirelessly for you 24 hours per day, 7 days per week the whole year. Moreover, these agents produce money constantly like robot machines for many years.

What I share with you today is an idea that you had probably not gave it a serious thought before. It doesn’t matter where you are working right now. The fact is that you could be making some nice extra money by just starting your very own online business. There are different branches or streams of income you can choose.

There are three BIG methods to make money fast on the Internet today. These are those methods:
1) Self-publishing your own digital products.
2) Affiliate marketing.
3) Trading.
Trading is the hardest to learn. In the other hand it could be the most profitable activity of all. Think about it. For example, if you trade currencies at Forex, some brokerage firms could lend you as much as 100 times your initial investment to trade. This means that you are receiving a LOT of leverage. You are magnifying the power of your trading capital.

I know that many individuals don’t like to trade at all. I am just expressing my comments about this business here because I know it has good income potential. It could make you money fast if you understand how it works. That’s my personal opinion.

Make Money By Starting An Online Business

Increasing cost of living is making it hard for parents, especially with children, to make both ends meet.

They usually both work to pay bills and expenses, often leaving their child with a babysitter or a day-care center.

However, some parents cannot stand the thought of leaving their child with strangers. They feel the need to personally keep an eye on their child.

To contribute with the household expenses, a stay at home parent usually starts his or her business at home.

In the past, this could be cooking or baking food and sell it to their neighbors, but with today’s technology, the internet can produce a wider variety of businesses and broader number of customers.

One type of online business is internet marketing. All a stay-at-home parent has to do is create a website and affiliate with other websites.
This works by advertising the products of other websites on your website, the company you are advertising will usually give you a commission if a product has been sold as a result of your efforts. To be successful in this business, your website traffic should be high.

Targeted traffic is also important to make sure that people who are visiting your website are at least interested to consider buying the products you are advertising.

One great way to generate targeted traffic is to write an article about the product you are advertising.

After you finished writing the article, submit it to article publishing websites. Include your website’s URL after the end of the article. Readers who are interested in the product will most likely visit your website.