25 Killer Websites & Web Services for Business

25 Killer Websites & Web Services for Business

Shared via AddThis

Personal Publicity

Remember back in high school when you wrote your first resume?

It was a nice, clean, well formatted list of what you had accomplished in your working life thus far.

So does your resume with updated accomplishments still look the same as it did all those years ago?

If it does you might have a problem.



With the digital age comes the ability to have a much stronger resume. Instead of simply listing what you’ve done, you can now maintain a portfolio of work with ease. Your resume and portfolio reflect what you have successfully accomplished, and can include any media you may have garnered and some examples of your work. Avoid flash without substance but use digital mediums to show instead of tell your prospective employer the benefits of hiring you.

At OutRight Communications we write and edit comprehensive resumes, and CV’s to compliment any portfolio. If you want to have it done right- call us.


OutRight Communications is a marketing, design and PR firm that can skillfully craft your public image. Our team works together to ensure that your message is delivered to the public, whatever your message may be. We specialize in long term image crafting, publicity, web & graphic design, press releases & media interviews, author services & book publicity, media buys, and creative writing. Get in touch today to solve your media problems!

Publicity Tip - Embrace your fans

The internet has completely changed economic thought. And not just in a grand, hyperbolic sense. There is a fundamental shift when a company begins to sell its products online.
A brick and mortar company is bound by the limits of its storage capacity. It can’t sell 500 000 cds because it can’t afford to have 500 000 cds on hand. This is an undeniable fact. But if you move online, you can exploit a limitless amount of inventory. Since buyers expect to wait a day or so for shipping the product, you can store those cds in a cheap warehouse. It can cost money to have a single cd under the bright lights and watchful eyes of a salesman in a store, but mere cents in simple warehouse.
The Long Tail by Chris Anderson goes into depth about what if means for the future of businesses. If you want your business to flourish in the digital age, I’d recommend this book. The general gist is this – as we move forward, the brick and mortar stores simply won’t be able to compete with the online retailers’ endless stock and cheap pricing. Instead of economics based on scarcity, it’s economics based on abundance. Chris goes over what it means from the supply chain end and what it means from the consumer end, but he doesn’t have the chance to cover the impact it has on the marketing.
So what does this change mean for you?
You need to work on marketing your product with more than ads. Ads should always be used in addition to an actual marketing plan. Online sales are generated by the most trusted and most publicized by fans of the product. That’s we why suggest embracing your fans. Try utilizing a message board, a testimonial form for them to fill out, exercise your social media tools and use publicity. Show off the satisfied people who are urging everyone to buy what you are selling. People are passionate about what they spend their money on. Let your fans work for you and give them the tools to help sell your company.



OutRight Communications is a marketing, design and PR firm that can skillfully craft your public image. Our team works together to ensure that your message is delivered to the public, whatever your message may be. We specialize in long term image crafting, publicity, web & graphic design, press releases & media interviews, author services & book publicity, media buys, and creative writing. Get in touch today to solve your media problems!

An every day question list

Losing the big picture isn’t fun. Spending your days chasing clients you don’t want, readers that won’t buy your book or sending emails that lead to nothing will suck the soul from your business in a hurry.

If you can answer these positively every day, things are going to be going well

• Why am I doing this? How will this help me sell my product? If you don’t have a good answer, stop and move on to something else.
• Is this the correct long term plan? Are all my actions geared towards the best long term results?
• What can I do today that will help make me a house hold name tomorrow?
• Spend a moment to remember who your target clients are. Are you consistently working to attract them?
• Remember what makes your product unique and focus on that area
  

4 questions, one focal point. It's all you need.


OutRight Communications is a marketing, design and PR firm that can skillfully craft your public image. Our team works together to ensure that your message is delivered to the public, whatever your message may be. We specialize in long term image crafting, publicity, web & graphic design, press releases & media interviews, author services & book publicity, media buys, and creative writing. Get in touch today to solve your media problems!

What we're reading

As a follow up to our previous post on Staying Ahead of the Curve, here’s a list of what I’m currently reading to do just that:

The Strategy Paradox by Michael E. Raynor

An excellent book, although very dry at times, about how companies should be planning for the future. Filled with information for all levels of management and employee, it’s a great read if you want to know how to plan for the future. The key point is that what makes a business successful, its innovation, risk-taking and going against the status quo, is the same qualities we find in unsuccessful businesses. Shows us how to balance risk taking and mediocrity so we end up producing the mp3 player instead of the mini-disk player while giving you ways to avoid this.

Small is the New Big by Seth Godin

A nice collection of musing by the godfather of digital marketing. Filled with blog posts, Seth covers many issues, some important, some not on marketing and running a business. Not a cover to cover read, but a great book to have handy for some tidy inspiration

Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

Re-reading my favorite book on one of my favorite Presidents. Morris spins this biography to the point where you’d swear you were reading a fictional tale. And you have to love how Roosevalt is the last president to ever knife a cougar to death. He was also the inspiration for teddy bears. All in all, it’s a great book to learn some history and the writing style is simply incredible for a biography.

Pygmy by Chuck Palahnuik

Following in the lines of many incredibly different books, Pygmy doesn’t disappoint. Written in a very, very strange manner, Pygmy is a fun read once you get used to the wordings. Another great book by Chuck.

OutRight Communications is a marketing, design and PR firm that can skillfully craft your public image. Our team works together to ensure that your message is delivered to the public, whatever your message may be. We specialize in long term image crafting, publicity, web & graphic design, press releases & media interviews, author services & book publicity, media buys, and creative writing. Get in touch today to solve your media problems!

Lebron James, Kobe Bryant and poor strategy

Why it’s important to never put all your eggs in one basket

This years NBA finals had a potential dream match up for the NBA. With the favorites to meet in the final being the leagues two biggest stars, marketing execs were drooling at the chance to put these two at the forefront. These two athletes, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, are constantly rated as some of the worlds most famous individuals, recognized in all corners of the globe. They commanded immense amounts of extra security at the Olympics; they have both been featured in documentaries, books and on more magazine covers than one could conceivably count. Since both teams were heavily favored to meet in the finals and breezed through the first few rounds, the ad campaigns started early. Nike, Vitamin Water, ESPN and even the NBA itself started to promote this “dream” match-up. Everyone with a vested financial interest had decided that the Lakers and the Cavaliers would be meeting in the finals and they all hedged their ad campaigns on this. Unfortunately, sports don’t go to script that nicely and LeBrons team never made it as far as everyone thought they would. When the Orlando Magic, led by fellow Olympian Dwight Howard, ran up against the Cavilers, they were victorious in a mere 6 games. This led to having just Kobe in the finals, facing an Orlando team that no company has been running ads about.

Nike and Vitamin Water, two companies who have become synonymous with great ads for the world of sports, failed terribly this time around. The two companies hedged all their campaigns during the most watched games of the year around a possibility. Yes, it was a likely one, but far from a guarantee. Now these companies are scrambling to get out relevant ads as well as doing some damage control over their lack of anything Orlando Magic based.

It’s important to position yourself to take advantage of likely events, which Nike did in this case. Both Kobe and LeBron are Nike spokespeople and Nike knew they would be selling millions of shoes if the two made the finals. The ads were in place, both on Television and on websites to make sure everyone watching basketball knew that the two people likely squaring off in the finals were Nike men. Unfortunately for them, they are now stuck with the fact that they backed the wrong horse. Orlando’s all-star Dwight Howard is an Adidas man and Adidas simply stop placing ads featuring him because they too believed the James-Bryant Hype. This isn’t the first time this type of failure has happened in the sporting world (see Dan vs Dave with Rebook and 19-0 with the Boston Globe) but no lessons have been learnt. Now millions, if not more, have been lost. Again.

It’s a very simple lesson too, a cliché we all learnt when we were young – don’t put all your eggs in one basket. It’s fine and quite advantageous to put more weight on the future you see as most likely, but if your campaigns are based on something as unpredictable as the sporting world, make sure you spread your eggs out. Adidas didn't even bother competing with this idea and has completely blanked on running ads for the superstar who took down James, Dwight Howard. And when you're buying into your competitors hype machine, that's never a good sign.

But for a company as big as Nike, it’s ok to take a big risk and fail occasionally. But for a small company, this type of error can be devastating. So next time you’re reviewing your marketing, think about what you’re relying on. Make sure you are relying on things that will come true. It’s true that you can always bet on death and taxes, but you can also always safely bet on sunshine in July, snow in February and hockey year round in Canada. You can’t safely bet on the publics’ opinion regarding politics, the shape of the stock market or the hotness of a celebrity. There are times for taking big risks as a business owner, but make sure you have some control of that risk. And unless Nike was going to give James some better teammates, they had no control.

OutRight Communications is a marketing, design and PR firm that can skillfully craft your public image. Our team works together to ensure that your message is delivered to the public, whatever your message may be. We specialize in long term image crafting, publicity, web & graphic design, press releases & media interviews, author services & book publicity, media buys, and creative writing. Get in touch today to solve your media problems!

A Case Study in Terrible Advertising:

All too often, we see ads that were based on a great idea, but then executed terribly. Coors Light recently put up a new billboard on my way to work. It’s the same design they’ve been running for a long time now with a frosty beer can on the right, and a witty saying on the left. This month’s witty saying? “You’ve just been poked by an Ice Cold Beer”.

I can picture the 50 year old Ad execs of Coors now… “I know! We will run an ad making a reference to that popular FaceBook site! Kids love that place!” Correct they were. Kids of all ages do love that place. FaceBook has been a massive success and leveraging an ad campaign with reference to it is almost a sure fire hit. Unfortunately, they referenced one of the worst things about FaceBook.

The Poke feature on FaceBook is ridiculed in the majority of social circles, mocked by internet commentators and is generally frowned upon by the users of FaceBook. Site users have made valiant attempts to rid the site of this feature, calling it “childish, lame and a waste of space.” The only thing keeping it alive is FaceBook’s stubborn love of their original project. This isn’t anything I would want my brand referencing in a positive light. With a little more research and a little more time spent talking to actual FaceBook users, and Coors could have had a much stronger advertising campaign. “Get poked in real life” is a much better reference than “I’m the creepy guy who pokes people late a night” (on FaceBook of course).

OutRight Communications is a marketing, design and PR firm that can skillfully craft your public image. Our team works together to ensure that your message is delivered to the public, whatever your message may be. We specialize in long term image crafting, publicity, web & graphic design, press releases & media interviews, author services & book publicity, media buys, and creative writing. Get in touch today to solve your media problems!