When Robert Keane launched Vistaprint in 1995, he never could have envisioned it would become the world’s leading provider of printing services to small businesses. What are those printing services? For many, it’s all about the low-cost business cards Vistaprint has become synonymous for. But it’s much, much more than that. The company recently launched branded apparel to add it to its extensive list of offerings for small businesses. Moreover, for the 2011 fiscal year, global revenue is expected to net around $785-$800 million, with business cards only estimated to be 1/3 of that figure, according to Keane.

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Vistaprint CEO Robert Keane on Small Business Success, Globalization, New Age Digital Marketing and the Future of the Business Card

Over the past year there has been an increased interest placed on local search and location based advertising. Sites like Yelp, Google Places and Citysearch, just to name a few, have continuously made strides in the local search market and local businesses have jumped on the wave. But no one ever talks about what happens once you have joined these directories, You’ve added your business but now what? Are you going back to check on the progress of your business? How are you measuring success?

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Beyond Local: Have You Taken Control of Your Online Reputation Yet?

Thomas Pisello, in his post at the end of January 2011, hoped that technology and innovation would eventually cut through the inevitable social media noise, or messy web of “strings”. I agree with him on one point, some social media platforms are getting a bit noisy, but that doesn’t mean social media will empty out like a high school on Friday afternoon.

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Reducing Noise in Online Communities

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Groupon in the Red Zone

According to a recent article by eMarketer, “US marketers will spend $3.08 billion to advertise on social networking sites this year. Spending will be up 55% over the $1.99 billion advertisers devoted to social networks in 2010 and will rise by a further 27.7% next year to reach nearly $4 billion.”

Are the next innovations in social dependent on first upending our very premises and expectations?

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No Ghost In The Machine: The Case For a Social Renaissance, Part 1

Don't you really hate these? There’s a sea change in consumer advertising, and it’s tangible. Traditional mass media advertising has been blindsiding consumers with the “commercial” for almos...

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Brand advertising doesn’t fulfill real time consumer needs

Lead generation techniques that include direct mail and cold calls are becoming less effective as new communication channels and technology have greatly altered prospective client behavior. ...

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The New Rules of Engagement for Ad Agency New Business

The influence of relationships is greatest when consumers are buying a product for the first time or when products are relatively expensive- factors that tend to make people conduct more research, s...

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Are Marketers Wasting Money with Advertising?

Many companies have trouble convincing their “c-suite” to buy into social media and word of mouth as an online marketing or online branding tactic. Many other companies are already participating. By...

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Social Media and the Bottom Line

As Twitter continues to edge towards more of a business model that will offer something close to a premium level offering, something else caught my eye this week and it was this… Ning annou...

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The free ride in social media is coming to an end

To celebrate the release of Engage!, I was recently asked to share my thoughts on how social media impacts the advertising landscape for the current issue of Winning the Web, a popular magazine rela...

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Q&A: Social Media Continues to Rewrite the New Rules of Advertising and Marketing

The word on the street is that Twitter has finally developed a business model. How do they plan to make money in less than 140 characters? Sponsored Tweets.    According to several sources including M...

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Sponsored Tweets: Cooler Than You May Think

I have to say I felt a bit guilty, reading Patrick Keane’s article in Advertising Age. His point: Many people are confusing social networking with social media. But that’s not the part...

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Are we crashing the conversation using social media?

Whenever I present or give classes on monetizing social networks and online communities people usually have two questions. One, should we monetize other people’s activity? Two, how can Twitter make ...

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22 Twitter revenue streams – monetizing tweets