There is a growing trend in this economy about buying locally to support your community. This is a great idea and national companies can benefit from it as well. After all, even a national chain employs local people in any given community, pays local taxes and supports local causes. There are some great online applications to reach people and engage them locally while existing nationally. Location based tools will have to be part of your marketing arsenal if you are to remain competitive and inspire brand loyalty.

Since many are working on budgets this time of year and many are reevaluating some o f their applications I thought I would help on one small level. There are a number of technologies that are available now that were not even dreamt of a few short years ago that will help save both time and money. Too many people are stuck on the more traditional routes and dont take advantage of these new service applications that could increase their bottom line. Because of the fast ROI of cloud services any business can take advantage of money saving and brand enriching technologies quickly and inexpensively. Trust me, it is worth your time to do a bit of investigating to see if your current service providers offer cloud services, or if their competition does. If your head is not in the clouds, maybe it should be.

The marketing firm Flowtown has recently re-created a map of online communities that has gotten some raves from social media experts. It visually depicts these countries and their current populations including rising nations, the Land of Defunct Social Networks and the Former Kingdom of MySpace. With some guidance this depiction can also be used as a map to help safely navigate a business through this virtual world.

With so many social media and restaurant review sites how is the busy restaurateur supposed to keep up? How can he or she stay out of the weeds yet still make time to utilize these tools to add value to their business? Try Fanvertising.

The response from the title may sound like a big duh, no kidding, but I see far too many companies needing this reminder. On a weekly basis I come into contact with companies not utilizing or developing cohesive short, medium and long term goals into a complete marketing strategy. The reason why? Technology. New, and in many cases not so new technologically advanced marketing tools have inundated businesses with options and possibilities on how to promote their brand. Sadly the side effect of this sudden evolutionary leap is that the marketing department may not be able to keep up quickly enough to get a good grip on the new tactics now available.