The Daily Dose

For those of you who are not signed up for the Dark Rising Grafx E-Newsletter, this month we outlined some techniques for a more relevant social media campaign. These aspects are brief in length but very effective. The focus was on Facebook and Twitter updates. The world is now filled with the “Like” button, and Tweets, most of them useless nonsense when it comes to business marketing. We have noticed that companies really don’t “get it” as far as good posting practices. So to steer you clear of some potential pitfalls, we have devised short list of ways to engage your audience and maintain your company’s integrity. Before we get started, we must mention that we too, are far from perfect and still implementing our own advice. If you have any additional tips that you deem as helpful, or you notice that these few have really helped your campaign, please provide feedback. We love to hear about businesses thriving through social media advertising, especially in tough economic times. So without further ado… Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, the buzz surrounding social networking concerned “data portability” — giving Facebook and MySpace users, for example, an easy way to connect to one another without the need to create new profiles. That once-deafening buzz has now fallen silent, and the social networks are back working to corner more of the Web in exclusion of others.

“Facebook and MySpace are having trouble monetizing their database,” said Tony Roth, chief executive officer of Celect.org, part of the VComm Network. Celect.org provides Web-based network services, including integrating a variety of different social networking tools, for its various membership organizations.

Facebook friends, for instance, are valued at 5-to-10 US cents each, Roth estimated.

“Social networks are indeed becoming more antisocial,” he told TechNewsWorld. “If they start to commingle, they will find their member values decreasing even further.” Read the rest of this entry »

This is a pack of over 100 icons that can be used to fully customize any website with a similar theme already in place or perhaps you will take a look at the set and be inspired to build your site around them. Either way, we hope they are useful and most of all… enjoy!

Click Here For Free Download

Icon set comes to us courtesy of Web Treats Etc. Be sure to visit the site and follow them on Twitter for updates.

With the internet and all of it’s glory becoming a more and more popular form of communication with each passing second, sites like Twitter (a mini blogging service), Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, WordPress, and many others have become essential to a business marketing plan. It is the number 1 way to get on the ground floor and interact day to day with the exact customer base that is using your product. It allows you to keep them updated on new products, improvements to existing products and gain REAL feedback directly from the client. Im quite sure that if you run a business, you have invested in a website and perhaps you have some stick in the mud answering phones for you with the drab scripted ” It’s a great day at blah blah blah how may I yap yap yap?” And I am positive that you have a nice set of corporate or business minded business cards. These are some of the basics. So here is the awesome opportunity to leave the professionalism behind, be fun and free! Do things that ten years ago might have lost a customer but today will actually grow your company and the market it reaches. Create Social Cards! These are quite like business cards in the sense that they may have your name and contact info somewhere on them but they are quite different in the sense that the target audience that will recieve them are young, fun and computer savvy. Therefore, the card itself should be reflective of the population. Include a goofy picture of yourself, think outside of the box… Even further than you may already do within your market. Include the URL’s to all the major networking and social sites that your company is part of and perhaps some fun facts. Most of all MAKE IT FUN! Here is an example of our potential social cards for Dark Rising Grafx. Take notice that the company name is not pushed or even present on the card as we are counting on click through traffic once the intended audience lands on one of our social sites.

Here it is, the DRGFX background for twitter.

Free for all to use. Please be sure to follow us if you choose to use this background. www.twitter.com/darkrisinggrafx

Download the full resolution here http://www.darkrisinggrafx.com/DRGFX_blogimages/twitter_bg.jpg

For best results, set your background color to 9e9999 and set the image to no tile.