It's Wednesday, so it's time for the Wednesday Minute - the weekly audio tip for marketers. This week I am going to tell you about Name Generation For Brands.

It gives you some history on how some recent brand names like Lego, Google or Verizon came to be...

Anyone who's ever had to form a company can sympathize with how difficult it can be to create a company name that is descriptive yet unique. The attached article is about how some companies have gone a less-traditional route and used some pretty unique naming conventions.

I have also included a quick summary chart which reminds you of some other approaches to name generation where you consider a Proper Name, Descriptive name or evocative name for your brand. No single approach is right or wrong they just are fun and part of the challenge and what you have to add to your objectives when generating names and then selecting the one that fits your brand best.

Read The Article

Name Generation Chart

This week's food for thought is here:

It's Wednesday, so it's time for the Wednesday Minute - the weekly audio tip for marketers. This week I am going to tell you about Online Marketing Tools.

It's about free web based applications that you might be interested in knowing about.

I am sure many of you have used tools like PayPal to do a transaction of being paid and or paying someone for a product or service. I was recently checking out a number of tools like Indinero, Mint, Outright, Billing Boss, Zoho and came upon a couple of new tools you might like to know about.

One was Sendfont which lets you down load for free additional font styles and there was dwolla which is a new way to do online payments. You pay only $0.25 per transaction which is quite a bit cheaper than PayPal. I am not complaining about the fee structure but I am always amazed at what you can download and use easily for free online. Check out some of these tools they are particularly helpful for small business owners.

www.SendFont.com

www.Dwolla.com

This week's food for thought is here:

It's Wednesday, so it's time for the Wednesday Minute - the weekly audio tip for marketers. This week I am going to tell you about Online Surveys and Social Media.

The attached article is quite persuasive on the reasons why you might like to do some research with your database, in particular it can help you grow your business. As many of you know there are inexpensive tools like Survey Monkey that you can download and use to so some research. But I also want to point out that there are free research tools that you can use on your Facebook Fan Page with your followers. These are also included in this Wednesday Minute. I recently started to use the polling tool at Facebook and we have been having some fun with your research findings. Enjoy the article and check out the facebook polling tools. If you want to test drive the tool check out the one I have used at the riceworks wall in Facebook.

Online Survey Article

riceworks Facebook Poll

Facebook Polling Apps

This week's food for thought is here:

It's Wednesday, so it's time for the Wednesday Minute - the weekly audio tip for marketers. This week I am going to tell you about Why People Follow Brands on Facebook.

Google has shared some results from recent research it conducted on consumers becoming friends/fans of brands on Facebook. According to these findings, close to half of Facebook users actually do "friend" brands (the term is technically "like" now), with 55% friending/liking zero brands.

Google says that the biggest reason consumers are friending brands is for the possibility of discounts (25%). Brands might like the second reason even better though - to show others they support the brand (18%).

"So when developing your social media strategy, keep in mind that consumers are looking primarily to receive promotions, with secondary goals of learning new information first and being entertained.

The Google Article

Facebook Top Brands

This week's food for thought is here: