Urgency Flow

Business blogging and other forms of business-related social media seem to be innocent enough, but the content you post could get you into serious legal trouble. Chicago attorney and media law expert Damon Dunn, of Funkhouser Vegosen Liebman & Dunn Ltd., cautions any company that publishes content on the internet to vet that content, particularly any photographs, as carefully as any media company should do.

“Whether you post it on a billboard, company website, or tweet, liability is triggered by false or deceptive statements of fact. In the commercial speech arena, courts are more willing to impose liability for speech that creates a misleading impression even if the words were literally true.” ~ Damon Dunn, Attorney and Media Law Expert

To protect yourself and your business from legal liability related to the content posted on your website, blog or via other online social media outlets, Dunn recommends the following: read it on entrepreneur.com

EPC Cigar Company manufactures and distributes cigars that are hand-rolled in the Dominican Republic from Ecuadorean, Nicaraguan and Dominican tobacco. It has been in business since April, although the family that owns it previously ran a successful cigar company that was sold to Swedish Match in 1999.

The challange
To develop a cost-effective and efficient marketing strategy to promote the company and its new brand, E. P. Carrillo, while building on the family’s legacy.

The background
EPC Cigar, based in Miami, is owned and operated by the Perez-Carrillo family, whose Cuban-born patriarch, Ernesto Perez-Carrillo, established El Credito Cigars in 1968; its best-known brand was La Gloria Cubana. After Mr. Perez-Carrillo’s death, his son, Ernesto Perez-Carrillo Jr., sold El Credito to Swedish Match in 1999, working there until March 2009. Mr. Perez-Carrillo Jr., 58, remains a big deal in the cigar world.

He was encouraged to start EPC Cigar by his daughter, Lissette, 36, a lawyer based in Miami, and his son, Ernesto Perez-Carrillo III, 28, a management consultant based in New York, both of whom had worked for El Credito while growing up. The three family members run the company, which employs 34 people in Miami and the Dominican Republic.

Its first product was a $13 limited-edition inaugural cigar released in December; it will be followed this spring by the core E. P. Carrillo line, which will be available in five sizes priced from $6 to $8.

Last year, Mr. Perez-Carrillo III, who oversees the company’s marketing, hired an advertising agency, DeVito/Verdi, to develop a logo, labels, packaging and a marketing campaign to introduce the new company and its cigars. Mr. Perez-Carrillo III estimates that EPC Cigar will spend $300,000 on the campaign, which began in April 2009 and will run through December.

Read more on nytimes.com

Social Media is essential for your business. But as stated in many blogs before, it is also essential to use it correctly. By correctly I mean efficient, useful. The internet is full of tips and tricks, but this Youtube video may help you get along. It’s only focused on blogs, but still pretty useful!

We get it. You’re already juggling scads of operational, sales, tech, administrative and marketing tasks, and you’re not totally sold on the value of social networking spaces. Are they gigantic time wasters or strong brand-building sales drivers? Multiple experts opine on the benefits (or lack thereof) of social networking portals like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook with gusto, and if you take a poll of your peers, you are likely to gather ardent differing opinions as well. Before you invest any time or money in social networking platforms or campaigns, here’s what you should know.

Fact one: There are fabulous success stories of intrepid entrepreneurs who have immersed themselves in one or more of these venues. Take, for example, Massachusetts-based Laura Fitton–aka Pistachio on Twitter–a single mom who went from obscurity to being quoted in The Wall Street Journal and meeting with Google gurus as a result of her creative and insightful tweets on life and social media use. Read more

This article was originally published on entrepreneur.com

the economy starting to show signs of improvement, businesses are shifting their focus from how do we survive to how do we grow. When the recession hit, we saw a gradual shift by marketers away from traditional marketing practices and toward online, on-demand venues that eventually fueled a significant deterioration of the traditional marketing model.

The move from traditional to interactive–from push to pull marketing–offered ground floor opportunities for start-ups and businesses of all sizes to combine marketing and advertising with true customer engagement, which is something traditional marketing never offered. Now, with social media, companies are starting to realize that they can tap into timely interaction with customers and prospects at a fraction of the cost associated with traditional marketing. Read more

More and more people are using social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to talk about companies and products with their friends and colleagues. Learn what drives people to share information and opinions online and learn scientifically proven best practices for spreading your content virally through social media. You’ll have plenty of time for Q&A with Dan Zarrella, social media and viral marketing scientist and author of “The Social Media Marketing Book.”

Recently we wrote about the importance of social media, and showed a video about the fast growing importance of it. The website sitepoint published an interesting article about using your facebook for business, with examples and graphs. You can find it here. Do you already have a Facebook site, and if not, why? Is it a strategic choice, or is it lack of time? Studies showed that most people using social networks don’t do it effectively, by either not frequently using it, or putting the wrong content online. Urgency Flow can help you out, social media is the key, but we know how to open the door. Contact us for more information.