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Videos on the Web are a good instrument to market your company’s products & services. Sure, there are numerous other marketing strategies around from editorial writing to blogging, from PR to e-mail. But nothing says “cool, connection, & creativity” like an Internet video.

Each month more and more businesses of all sizes are creating professional videos about their products. They are not only putting them on their company sites, but They’re posting them on their blogs. To gain global twenty-four-seven coverage, professional videos are being posted to a lot of video-sharing sites like that of YouTube & Metacafe. And why not ? it is free, easy-to-do, and can have an important difference, in some cases, on the traffic it brings to your firm’s site.

There are various other reasons why video commercials are a terrific way to promote your firm.

Professional videos benefit from an extensive circulation: Videos by their own nature are straightforward to “package” which means they are just right to be added to a selection of different distribution circulations. You can add them on your businesses site or blog, you can upload them onto your laptop and show them time after time at a selected company show. You can upload them to hundreds of online video-sharing websites. You can burn them onto DVDs and give them away or sell them. You can even send them by email.

Promotional videos are an effective way to communicate. As our knowledge of technology evolves, so do the ways in which companies like to interact with others. Most individuals are visually oriented meaning that is how they best understand and interact with their world. This makes professional videos the perfect advertise strategy to communicate with today’s consumers.

These are just some of the many reasons why Internet videos might be a fabulous way to promote your firm’s products & services. Find out more about this area to see how you might leverage your precious time, assets, & energy to communicate with your target industry in an inventive & appealing way. Vidify is a video production company that specialise in creating short format online video commercials for local independent neighbourhood businesses.

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If you think only big corporate names need to think about things like brand names, think again. Your brand says a lot about you and your business, and that’s as true for a one person home-based operation as it is for a multinational conglomerate. In this article we look at how creating a strong brand for your business can help you set yourself apart from the pack and lay the right foundation for the future growth of your business.

WHAT IS A BRAND?

Your brand is more than just the logo on your letterhead and business cards or your business name. It is your corporate identity. An effective brand tells the world who you are, what you do and how you do it, while at the same time establishing your relevance to and credibility with your prospective customers.

Your brand is also something more ethereal. It is how your business is perceived by its customers. If your brand has a high perceived value, you enjoy many advantages over your competition, especially when it comes to pricing. Why do you think people are prepared to pay stupid money for items of clothing with the initials “CK” on them? Perceived value. Perceived value as a result of very effective brand promotion resulting in very high brand awareness.

Now, I’m not saying we all need to rush out and start creating brands that are going to be recognized the world over. Most of us simply don’t have the time or other resources necessary. What I am suggesting, however, is that it is possible for your brand to dominate your niche.

WHY DO I NEED TO CREATE MY OWN BRAND?

=> Differentiation

We touched on this in the previous section when we looked at what a brand is and how it can be used to increase the perceived value of your products and services. The main reason for creating your own brand is to differentiate yourself from your competition. New websites are a dime a dozen. So are home-based businesses. You need to constantly be looking for ways to set yourself apart from your competition. Your brand can do that for you.

=> More Effective, Efficient Marketing

Another good reason for creating your own brand is to make your sales force (even if that’s a sales force of one - you) more effective and efficient.

Imagine if you didn’t have to spend the first 50% of your time with a new prospect explaining who you are, what you do and how you do it. What if your brand had already communicated that for you? You can spend 100% of your time focusing on sales rather than educating your prospects about your business

Another benefit of branding is that the efforts you expend increasing your brand awareness through promoting and marketing your brand to your target market automatically transfers to your products and services. So, even when you’re advertising your brand, you’re indirectly also marketing your products and services.

HOW DO I CREATE MY OWN BRAND?

OK, so you’re convinced you need to create your own brand. Where on earth do you start?

We saw earlier that your brand needs to say who you are, what you do and how you do it. It needs to do all these things at the same time as establishing your relevance to and building credibilty with your prospective customers. Needless to say, it is absolutely essential, if you are to build your own brand, that *you yourself* have a firm grasp of who you are, what you do and how you do it. If not, you’re going to have the devil’s own time getting that message across to anyone else, let alone establishing your relevance and credibility.

=> Write A Mission Statement

So, let’s start by creating a mission statement. What is the mission of your business? Obviously you’re in business to make a profit. But making a profit is a byproduct of a successful business. Focus instead on how you choose to achieve that profit. What are your core values?

A good place to begin thinking about your mission is to put yourself in the shoes of your customers. Put yourself in their target market. Let’s say your business is web hosting. If you’re in the market for a web host, what things are important to you? Different people will be looking for different benefits but you can bet that they want their website to be accessible to site visitors so reliability will be high on their list. Price is also likely to be high on the list as is 24/7 technical support. What about add-on features such as unlimited email aliases, cgi support and what-not? These things will be highly important to some and less important to others. So focus on the benefits that are likely to be highly relevant to the majority of your target market. Let’s settle for our purposes on reliability, price and technical support.

Your mission statement might read something like this: “I strive to earn a fair return on my investment of time and money by providing affordable webhosting with guaranteed 99% uptime and 24/7 telephone technical support”. That’s a pretty general statement and if you decide to focus on a particular niche of the webhosting market, such as small business, you may want to more narrowly focus on that group in your mission statement.Now that you’ve written your mission statement, you can begin thinking about creating a brand that reinforces and supports your mission. So, getting back to the fundamental questions of who you are, what you do and how you do it, you can now begin to think of your business in these terms. You’re a webhosting provider, you host websites of small businesses and you do that by offering cost-effective webhosting solutions, guaranteed 99% uptime and 24/7 telephone technical support.

When you create your brand, you need to keep the who, what and how firmly in mind but also use the brand to establish your relevance to your target market and build credibility with that market.

Let’s turn now to the nuts and bolts of creating your brand.

=> Describe What You Are Branding

List out your business’s key features and characteristics, your competitive advantages and anything else that sets you apart from your competition.

Using our webhosting example, you’ll focus primarily on the objectives from your mission statement namely, reliable, cost-effective webhosting solutions supported by 24/7 technical support.

=> Identify and Describe Your Target Market

Decide whether you want to target lthe entire webhosting community or only a segment of it such as small business websites. Describe your market.

=> List Names that Suggest the Key Elements from Your Mission Statement

The key elements from your mission statement were reliability, cost-effectiveness and customer service. List names that are suggestive of these elements. Let’s use Reliable Webhosting for our example. (I don’t claim to be a creative genius.)

Don’t limit yourself to real words, though. A coined name with no obvious meaning is a perfectly legitimate name provided it conveys something about your business. You will find coined names easier to trademark and secure domain names for too - a definite plus!

=> List Tag Lines that Reinforce Your Mission Statement

We’ll use: “Outstanding reliability and technical support at a price your small business can afford”. I know, I know. You can do much better, I’m sure.

HOW SHOULD I USE MY BRAND?

=> Create a Logo for Your Brand

Your logo is NOT your brand but your logo should allow your brand to be instantly recognized by those familiar with it. To this extent, your logo helps create and reinforce brand awareness.

The logo you create should be able to be used consistently in a variety of different media. It should be suitable for corporate letterhead and business cards, as well as for your website and corporate signage (if any). You do NOT want a confusing mishmash of logos and banners and heaven knows what else. Everything you produce needs to use the same, consistent style of logo so that, over time, your logo becomes synonymous with your brand. Instant recognition is what you’re going for here, so don’t dilute it by using several different logos for different purposes.

=> Consistent Usage of Company Name, Logo and Tag Line

Going back to our webhosting example, putting the brand name and tagline together, the physical manifestation of your brand will be:

RELIABLE WEBHOSTING

Outstanding reliability and technical support at a price

your small business can afford.

To establish brand awareness, this branding needs to be used consistently and frequently in everything your produce, whether that be letters to clients, business cards, brochures, quotations, invoices, advertising, promotion, on your website, on the front door of your principal place of business and on your products. And don’t forget to be consistent in your use of color schemes. These can be powerful brand reinforcers.

=> Marketing and Promotion of Your Brand

Once you’ve created your brand, you need to market and promote it, in addition to your products and services. This is how you establish your credibility and relevance to your target market. You can hopefully see why your brand needs to be suggestive of your mission statement. If, at the same time as you’re selling your products and services you also push your brand, your brand becomes synonymous with your products and services. And vice versa.

A properly descriptive brand and high brand awareness amongst your target market will allow you to more easily introduce a wider range of products and services when they’re developed without having to start by again selling who you are, what you do and how you do it first. Your brand has already presold YOU. Your job then is to sell your products and services.

About The Author

Elena Fawkner is editor of the award-winning A Home-Based Business Online … practical home business ideas, resources and strategies for the work-from-home entrepreneur. http://www.ahbbo.com

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The Bill of Rights to our Constitution caused — and still causes - some contradiction, confusion and danger with the Constitution itself. It is unfortunate that a bill of rights was included with the Constitution. Due to a general misunderstanding about the Constitution at the time of its ratification, a bill of rights was added to the Constitution in order to obtain ratification of the Constitution itself:

“In the course of the foregoing review of the Constitution I have taken notice of, and endeavored to answer most of the objections which have appeared against it. There, however, remain a few which either did not fall naturally under any particular head or were forgotten in their proper places. These shall now be discussed. … The most considerable of these remaining objections is that the Constitution of the convention contains no bill or rights.” Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers #84.

Indeed, during the convention itself, a motion to prepare a bill of rights to the Constitution was “passed unanimously in the negative.” September 12, 1787; Notes Of Debates In The Federal Convention Of 1787 Reported By James Madison.

But why no bill of rights?

“A minute detail of particular rights is certainly far less applicable to a Constitution like that under consideration, which is merely intended to regulate the general political interests of the nation, than to a constitution which has the regulation of every species of personal and private concerns.

It has been several times truly remarked that bills of rights are, in their origin, stipulations between kings and their subjects, abridgements of prerogative in favor of privilege, reservations of rights not surrendered to the prince. Such was Magna Carta, obtained by the barons, sword in hand, from King John. Such was the subsequent confirmation of that charter by subsequent princes. Such was the Petition of Right assented to by Charles the First in the beginning of his reign. Such, also, was the Declaration of Right presented by the Lords and Commons to the Prince of Orange in 1688, and afterwards thrown into the form of an act of Parliament called the Bill of Rights.

It is evident, therefore, that, according to primitive signification, they have no application to constitutions, professedly founded upon the power of the people and executed by their immediate representatives and servants. Here in strictness, the people surrender nothing; and as they retain everything, they have no need of particular reservations.

The truth is, after all the declamations we have heard, that the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful, a bill of rights. The several bills of rights in Great Britain form its Constitution; and conversely, the constitution of each State is its bill of rights. And the proposed Constitution, if adopted, will be the bill of rights of the Union.” Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers #84.

However, in the debates of the state conventions, the most criticized feature of the Constitution, voiced by the opposition, was the lack of a bill or rights:

“One criticism repeatedly advanced (against the Constitution) was the absence of a bill of rights. This matter had been discussed very briefly on the floor of the Philadelphia Convention, where George Mason had introduced a resolution, supported by Elbridge Gerry, to appoint a committee to prepare a bill of rights. Roger Sherman had replied briefly that the various state constitutions already had bills of rights, which should prove sufficient under the new government, and Mason’s motion had then been defeated 10 to 0. But in the ratification controversy, absence of a federal bill of rights became a focal point of attack upon the Constitution by the Antifederalists, who pointed out that since the new government had a sphere of sovereignty of its own and functioned directly upon individuals, the absence of a bill of rights prepared the way for encroachments upon the liberties of the people.

The absence of a bill of rights proved a bargaining point for the Federalists in some of the state conventions, for they were able to pledge the adoption of a new bill or rights by amendment once the new government was established. In several conventions, among them those in Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia, the Federalists at the last moment won over certain moderates in the opposition with this understanding. Several of the state conventions submitted proposed amendments containing bills of rights at the time that they ratified. These were made the basis of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, adopted by Congress in 1789 and by the states within two years after the establishment of the new government.” The American Constitution; Its Origins And Development, 5th Edition, by Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, 1976, pp. 142-143.

And what danger did and does the Bill of Rights present with the Constitution itself?

“Bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?

Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power. They might urge, with a semblance of reason, that the Constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government. This may serve as a specimen of the numerous handles which would be given to the doctrine of constructive powers, by the indulgence of an injudicious zeal for bills of rights.” Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers #84.

To maintain the integrity of the Constitution an amendment was drafted and included in The Bill of Rights. It reads:

“The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Amendment 9, Constitution of the United States.

Its inclusion was to prevent the rights listed in the other amendments (as well as those amendments which have been added since then) from being construed as the only rights of the people. Indeed, the constitutional operation of the federal government would be exactly the same if The Bill of Rights were not there at all.

However, The Bill of Rights is a part of the Constitution. A result of a comprise based upon a misunderstanding of the Constitution itself.

_________________________________

See Griswold v. State of Connecticut: 381 U.S. 479, 486-493, at footnote 4 (concurring opinion of Justice Goldberg, The Chief Justice, and Justice Brennan) [1965] get case

© 1993 Daniel Joseph Goodman

Questions? Comments! xGoodmanx@excite.com

Dan Goodman, known as J.D. Goodman or “J.D.” is a legal researcher. Other articles authored by “J.D.” relating to the area of law are, How Well Do Know The Constitution and State Citizenship Is Alive And Well.

Like doing your own legal research. I invite you to try my website, The Legal Connection, at http://www.angelfire.com/nb/thelegalconn/index.htm.

This article is written to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is written with the understanding that the author is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or, other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

The author, therefore, disclaims any responsibility for any liability or loss incurred as a consequence of the use and application, either directly or indirectly of any information presented herein.

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The aftermath of Katrina has affected more that just New Orleans and the surrounding gulf coast. There are huge financial implications associated with the catastrophe, from the initial humanitarian aid to the rebuilding and repairing needed to get the local area back on its feet. Eight oil refineries shut down as a result of Katrina could take many months to restart. The Gulf Coast is a prime supplier of oil, through pipelines now shut due to lack of power and ocean-going barges unable to load from ports eradicated by the storm.

From a global perspective, the loss of oil production in the area is sending shockwaves through the world’s financial institutions and economies. Even before hurricane Katrina’s damage to oil production the price of fuel has increased to a major degree. The following data compares price increases from September 2004 to August 2005 in the United States of America and the United Kingdom.

US Fuel Price Increases

September 2004

Unleaded: £0.28 ($0.48) per Litre

Diesel: £0.29 ($0.51) per Litre

August 2005

Unleaded: £0.38 ($0.67) per Litre

Diesel: £0.39 ($0.68) per Litre

UK Fuel Price Increases

September 2004

Unleaded: £0.87 ($1.59) per Litre

Diesel: £0.83 ($1.52) per Litre

August 2005

Unleaded: £0.96 ($1.76) per Litre

Diesel: £0.94 ($1.73) per Litre

In the United Kingdom, motorists are burdening more fuel increases with the price of 1 litre soon to exceed £1 ($1.84). About 65% of the price UK motorists pay goes to the government in tax so the additional revenues generated are unlikely to direct the government to rebalance tax levels on fuel unless the wider economy comes under threat.

“…If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break

And the water gonna come in, have no place to stay…”

When The Levee Breaks
Memphis Minnie
recording of 1929 written after the devastating Mississippi flood of 1927

My next visit to fill up my car is once again bound to force a whimper from my wallet especially when the litre dial spins at the same rate as the total cost dial. But as my day to day problems range from the extra few pounds I have to pay on the weekly fuel to what colour to paint my children’s bedrooms, I consider myself very lucky and certainly very selfish… shame on me!

About the Author

Gordon doesn’t usually like to talk politics unless it involves money, he writes articles for the personal finance articles website www.search-4-loans.co.uk. He also maintains content on www.loansense.co.uk and www.the-loanshop.co.uk.

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