How Double Chocolate Changed PR

Today I had the fortunate experience to relive what it truly means to be in PR and the power that it can have in online marketing. When you want to really thrive learning from what others have done is key in making great improvements. Here’s the story:

Its not secret that many large, hotshot companies want their products in the faces of customers around the globe and that a lot of that happens through social media and popular bloggers. In this particular case it was a combined effort. Scott Stratten is one of the many online social bloggers I follow. I always find that his posts show facts and his personality. So instead of just reading words blindly I’ve come to understand and know Scott more. That said in his most recent post he talks about the caliber of the PR/Agency People that are “Awesome”. You’re welcome to go and read his post but what I really wanted to emphasize was the matter in which things happened not only for him but the company in general.

When we approach customers with our products and ideas it’s important to always remember they have the freedom of choice. They can choose to accept or reject our offer. Our main goal in marketing is to provide the customer with the information and the ability to get what they want. When Scott was approached Duri and Magnum he tells us that they just wanted him to be him. To be honest about what he thought, to blog and tweet only if he wanted to. And it paid off big time, but only After a follow-up. We’ll come back to that. After shipping a crate of ice cream to Scott and trying several flavors Scott got on and made a quick little video talking about how dumb the title was of one of the ice creams. It was labeled something like double chocolate. In the video he expresses, that’s impossible, it should be called quad chocolate because there’s four layers of chocolate. Scott mentions how his regular readers, family and friends enjoyed the video. He also mentions that he really wasn’t trying to sell the product. In fact, the title of the video was “Magnum’s False Advertising”. Now lets skip ahead to the follow-up.

The main reason this became a big story and that Scott wrote the post was based off of the follow up. The PR group from Duri and Magnum watched the video and then shipped Scott a special package. Four cartons of “Magnum Quadruple Chocolate”. It also had his name across the top.

This type of follow up is key in our efforts to not only get on the good side of our customers but to get a better idea of how we can improve ourselves as a company.

Quick Cash - Thrive Learning Institute

There are a ton of ways to make money in this world and in this article I'm going to outline a method that I've found to be very effective at bringing in a good amount of cash to help pay the bills. Now this method probably won't make you millions but, if you work it right, you should be able to bring in a few thousand every month and could probably make enough to to quite your job.

The model is a combination of offline and online marketing. Lets start with your source of income. There are many companies on the internet that promote their products through affiliate programs. Companies like Amazon and Barnes Noble have enormous affiliate programs and there are thousands of small business that promote their products through affiliate networks like Clickbank or Commission Junction. But in this article we're going to deal solely with web hosting affiliate programs.

Web hosting companies pay handsome commissions for referring a new customer to them. Hostgator pays at least $50 per referral and FatCow pays out $100 for every person you send their way! All you'd have to do is refer 30 people per month to Fatcow to make $3000/month! So the question is how do you find these 30 people per month and how do you get them to sign up for hosting?

This is where the offline part comes in. You're job is to sell free (but legitimate) websites. Do you think you can sell a free website? I think you can too. Think of all the small time professionals that could benefit from having a nice website up that they can refer people to: Photographers, Real Estate Agents, Summer Sales Reps, Insurance Reps, brand new businesses, MLM networks and the list could go on and on. All you need to do is show these people how having a website will improve their business and your in!

Once they've signed up with hosting through your affiliate link have them send you their login information and then go in and install Wordpress. Wordpress is great because they have a lot of great FREE themes for you to use to make a site look really nice. Once you got it set up you hand it over to them and your done! TADA! At most it should take you an hour and can often take no more than 30 minutes. not a bad hourly rate if you ask me.

Utilizing Support Sites

Support sites are great resources to two main things: build traffic and build back-links.

What are support sites?

Support sites are categorized primarily by their function. These are websites that you build to strengthen your primary, money site. A support site could be a website you build completely yourself, A support site could be a Hubpage or a Squidoo page. They can be ehow's or epinions or they can even be a Yahoo Answers answer.

The support sites that you build on these user generated content sites are great because you can get listed in the search engines very quickly. These sites have a lot of authority and because of that authority if you link to your main money sites those links will carry a lot of strength from that website to yours.

My personal favorite is Hubpages because they give you a cut of profits generated from adsense ads and amazon and eBay sales. In reality you could just focus on building tons of “hubs” and make a full-time living within a few months if you target profitable keywords. Here's an example of one of our Hubpages that brings in a considerable amount of traffic: Thrive Learning Institute - Ebay Feedback

Imagine how much traffic and authority you'd receive if you were to hunker down and build 30 optimized Hubpages, 30 Squidoo Pages, 15 Ehow's and were active in answering questions in your niche on Yahoo Answers. People would stream to your websites because you provided them with the opportunities and inroads (links) to get there.

Don't underestimate the power of building a tight network of optimized and useful support sites to build traffic and authority for your main money making website. To learn how to build offline income using internet marketing just click this link: Thrive Learning Institute

The Power of a Logo

One thing that commonly comes up during the creation of a business is building a Logo. Many people feel that having a company logo is unimportant, or at least not something that should be a preliminary concern for their business. Others (often those trying to sell you the logo) argue that a logo is the single most important thing you can do to help your business. As usual, the truth lies somewhere in-between the two extremes.

So, what is a logo? What is the real power of a logo? What does it do for you? Why is it important? What's a good amount to pay for one? What should you keep in mind in designing your logo? These are just a few of the common questions regarding logo design, and I'll go into each of them briefly.

What is a logo?
A logo is an image or stylized text (or a combination of the two) which identifies your business. It is not a photograph, it is not a picture of your product, and it is not a description of your business.

This logo should definitely be located on your website. It should also be located on all printed marketing materials, banner ads, business cards, etc. People should come to associate your logo with your company, so using it repeatedly will help ingrain the image into the minds of your clients.

Here are a few famous logos to help give you the idea of what a logo is:




What is the real power of a logo?

There are two major points to mention with a logo. The first major power of a logo is professionalism. Having your own logo gives a clear sense that your company has invested into itself. This makes your company feel more legitimate to your buyers. This is the primary way a logo will pay for itself. People are far more likely to buy from an online business that looks and feels professional.

The second major power of a logo is memorability. It is easier to remember your company when you are using a logo. You may know McDonalds without its logo, but when you see the golden arches, you instantly recognize "This is McDonalds." And what does this mean for you and your business? First, it makes marketing more effective by making your website and company more memorable. Second, it makes your website itself more memorable. Customer loyalty is one of the major keys to success, and having a solid logo can strongly help with this.

These are, of course, the reasons why a logo is important as well. No, a logo will not double your sales! No, it will not make your business miraculously appear on the first page of the google search engines. But it will increase your conversion rate, and it will increase your return customers.

What's a good amount to pay for a logo?

This is a difficult question to answer, but mostly because there are a lot of details that go into a logo. How complex is the logo? Is it just stylized text, or does it include a custom image or graphic? How many versions of the logo will you receive? How many revisions are you allowed to make?

A good price may be anywhere from about $99 to $999 for a solid logo for a start-up company. What we recommend is that you find a company that will give you at least 1 set of revisions (in other words, doesn't hand you a logo and refuse to do extra work on it), and preferably will give you two sets of revisions or more. We also recommend that you either find a logo creation company that will give you multiple logo concepts up front, or will give additional logo concepts if you are not satisfied with the first version. We also recommend that you find a company that will provide more than simply stylized text.

A good cost to pay for this type of logo is between $300 and $400. As an example of a good company, Clover Logos is the primary logo design company we recommend at Thrive. They have assisted dozens of our clients in creating an excellent, professional logo to help their business succeed.

What should I keep in mind when designing my logo?

You should keep in mind about 80 different things while designing your logo. However, there are a couple of basic principles to follow.

First -- make sure it reflects the tone of your business. Don't have a black and gray corporate logo for your children's toys business, and don't have a pink, yellow, green and orange bubble text logo for your office supplies business.

Second -- keep it simple. You should be able to shrink or expand this logo to the size of a business card or the size of a billboard, and it should still be recognizable.


In short summary, a logo is important for every business that wants to come across as authentic and legitimate. It is important to increase return customers. Don't kill yourself over the cost, but put it pretty high on your priority list (probably just below setting up your legal entity, website, and getting your products or dropshipper).

For more information on how a coaching company can help you with the creation and branding of your business, simply visit www.thriveli.com.