I’ve watched an intriguing video on TED.com that talked about a simple way some companies are increasing their profits. In short, they’ve found that offering their customers fewer choices can lead to more purchases than offering many choices. Sheena Iyengar (the inaugural S.T. Lee Professor of Business in the Management Division at Columbia Business School) who gave the talk, says that we have a “choice-overload problem” in today’s world. She had held an experiment at an upscale grocery store to see whether or not having too many choices affected a consumer’s ability to choose and ultimately buy a product....

TheNextWeb.com recently posted an interesting article by Dan Taylor, which focuses on how often business websites are updating their content. It concludes that many small business websites are missing out, because they aren’t taking the time to create fresh, relevant content. Why is this important? For one thing, those websites that update their content at least 5 times a month stand to gain an extra 300% in web traffic! Last year, a survey by SiteKreator which included over 100,000 small business website owners, discovered that those who regularly updated their websites (5 times or more a month) had 300% more traffic than those who...

A recent article on allfacebook.com shows that your Facebook page may not be attracting fans as much as you might hope. In fact, they’ve discovered that the average page post reaches only 17% of its fans. What can you do to make your page more valuable? In short, you must increase the amount of likes and comments on your posts. Knowing whether or not your posts remain visible in front of Facebook users can be somewhat mysterious, especially since Facebook is constantly changing its privacy and notification settings. A post that has been liked, shared or commented on is more likely to help your page’s visibility and increase your...

At the grocery store one day, I found myself looking for MSG-free salad dressings (which turned out to be a difficult task). I finally found a brand, but while I was reading over their ingredients, I noticed a weird “story” on the back of the bottle. If you’ve ever bought a Newman’s Own product before, you may have noticed these bizarre short stories on their packaging. Here’s the strangest one I’ve seen… On the back of Newman’s Own Low Fat Sesame Ginger dressing, the copy reads as follows: “The Great Salad Dressing Balloon Race. An Armada of balloons loaded with Low Fat Sesame Ginger....

Bored, sitting in the doctor’s office one day, I came across a Lennox ad in a magazine that had a strange-looking 1-inch graphic in the corner. I’ve seen plenty of QR Codes, but this one was nicely branded specifically for that company. From a marketing standpoint, it was intriguing. So, I went online to learn more. I found out that it was Microsoft’s new barcode for smartphones, called “Tag.” Microsoft had announced their new technology back in 2009 at CES. But I had never even seen a “Tag” on a product, ad or otherwise until now. Tag allows marketers to create either a HCCB (High Capacity Color...