What Political Campaigns Can Teach Us About Business.

Any kind of business. I want to make that clear before starting with this post. We all have seen candidates on tv promising to give everything to the people in exchange of their support and their vote, in some occasions in exchange of their money. What this guys are doing is the same thing as a company. They’re trying to sell their image as a company tries to promote it’s brand, they are also trying to convince people about something valuable and different,that no one else can offer.

You already know how this works, it’s the same thing in the U.S , in Mexico, India or Canada. But, what can this campaigns teach us about business? well, a lot in fact. Let’s take a look to some interesting points.

Be controversial. Theres a quote that says “Big dogs don’t bark” this means that the real big important guys don’t need to be spreading the word or showing off. But the truth is that a controversial person with a controversial story can bring a lot of attention, People love strange and unusual things, they love that, so if you want more attention than usual, you know what to do.

Give Power to your people. Not just to your supporters and partners, but also to your followers, customers and even competitors, this las arguments might sound a little strange for you, but just analyze it, if you give a piece of the cake to each person you work with they’ll be grateful with you and they’ll want more from, you, this will make them to stay, of course be careful and don’t give them everything at once. Do you get my point?

Always accept advice. Never, never think you know everything. We all need an advice from time to time, one advantage of presidential candidates is that they are surrounded of great advisers, so don’t be afraid of asking for help.

Be Transparent. If you’re promoting your company, say so. Nothing is worse than creating a fictitious profile that is later uncovered by your target audience. You and your company’s credibility will take a nose dive.

Be careful of what you promise and offer. Customers are intelligent (well, let’s face it, not all of them) but they know when you are promising more than what you can actually give, this will make you lose credibility and of course support and money.

Ok, that’s it, there are many great tips we can learn from political campaigns, but these ones are the most relevant and useful, if you know another one, please share it with us.

New WordPress Theme. iLeather 1.0!

This is my newest design for WordPress. It is an original 3 column theme called iLeather 1.0. This new creation has a very outstanding design with eye catching visual effects and colors. The header displays an image of brown leather texture, and the colors in the background create a perfect modern and sophisticated atmosphere inside the blog.

By the way, the sponsor of our themes decided to stop sponsoring new designs, so right now this new creation has no sponsored links. I’ll need new sponsors for future themes, and believe me, the new ones are going to be amazing. If someone decides to support my themes he’ll receive a lot of backlinks , my previous creations have been downloaded almost 2,000 times in total, just imagine the amazing number of backlinks you can receive. I’m planning to launch a new collection of premium designs but I’ll need support. So if you are interested, please let me know.

Click here to Download and Preview.

The Amazing King Midas

As you know, each year Forbes releases a list of The World’s Billionaires for two years the top 3 was dominated by the same 3 titans, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Carlos Slim Helú, until now. It seems that a few days ago the Mexican billionaire, best known as “King Midas” reached the second position removing Buffett of his place of honor. Forbes hasn’t updated the list, but they announced it in this article.The most incredible thing is not the fact that he’s worth $53.1 billion, but the way he achieve it in very few time. It took him less than two months to add the amazing amount of $4 billion to his personal fortune. Some experts say that if Slim continues with this tendency he will remove Gates from the first place very soon, and he will become the World’s richest man.

He’s only $2.9 billion bellow Bill Gates. But remember that he’s currently making $2.2 million per hour!. Some of his many talents are that he is an excellent economist and that he has the ability to rise broken companies. He’s really an example of success and vision. But what can we learn from the titan? obviously a lot of things like for example:

– Never guide yourself for other’s opinions.

– Never accept “Impossible” for an answer.

– See further than others.

– Have the ability to see the potential success where others only see failure.

The Lounge is Back!

There was a small problem with our server in California, maybe you were receiving an error or a blank page while trying to access to The Lounge, It seems that our hosting provider is making some changes, that’s why our blog was offline for some hours, I apologize for the inconvenience and thanks you for your patience, but now everything seems to be just fine, we’re back!. I’m going to leave the previous post until tomorrow to give you time to read it, tomorrow I’ll publish a new one.

If for any reason you continue experiencing problems, please be patience, I can assure you that I’m doing everything to solve this issue. I’m even planning to change to another hosting company.

10 Famous Quotes About … Blogging

So far I’ve published only two posts on “10 famous quotes about…”; success, and dreams. Now I think it is time to try something a little bit different, I’ve also noticed that there are not famous quotes about this medium, I mean, maybe there are two ore three out there, but we need something more let’s say…. relevant, more inspiring, that’s why I decided to write this post, I want to invite all of you to participate in this small contest, there’s no prize this time, but you can make a big difference, it’ll only take you less than two minutes and you can even achieve immortality in the blogging world if you come up with a very creative and inspiring phrase ;-).

Try and show us why you think you are a rising star, let us know that you dare to be outstanding, give it a try and show us all that you can, that you really have what it takes and that you really have a creative side and that you can come up with a good quote about this amazing industry. Your contribution can be positive, neutral or negative, the best 10 quotes will be featured in this site, and credit will be granted to each author, so at least you’ll receive a nice backlink from The Lounge.

Send me your quote by email or just post it in a comment, after that spread the word! Let everyone know that your quote can become famous. Contribute and share. Who starts?

Best Of The Best 2

It is time for another edition of Best of The Best, the result of our Blog Relations campaign, where you can get a backlink from this blog for each post you write in your site that makes reference to one of our articles. These are very interesting posts from our neighbor blogs, I hope you like them, really interesting and useful information. Ok, so here they are, hope you like them and most important learn from them.

The Write to Right Blog is one of those great sites where you can find resources and blogs that offer link exchange programs. The Lounge was included in this site, but it also has interesting articles about business and sales, check it out.

Court has an excellent article called 102 ways to make your site a backlink superstar , I enjoy reading this kind of posts because first, I like lists, and second because they are very inspiring. Good work Court.

Sean owns a great blog which I really like, I discovered just two days ago.One of the things I like from Sean’s blog is his logo, please check it. it’s really amazing, simple but creative and direct. it forms a $ symbol. good work Sean.

Another blog I really enjoy is GarryConn.com He gave me a very good idea when I was reading one of his posts, The Blog Money Tree basically Garry’s idea is to gather 15 blogs that are making money and put them in this tree, simple, but it is a good way to gain backlinks and exposure.

Ok, that’s all for now. Many interesting posts will be published soon, so stay around as always. If you want to be part of our next Best of The Best edition just read this post and follow the very very simple instructions!

We Have a Winner!

Comment.Zation V1 is over, the first edition of our top commentators contest is officially closed and we have a winner of a logo design! Congratulations to Santosh he wrote 12 valuable comments. I must say that I’m satisfied with the results of this contest, I was expecting more comments and more participation but it’s ok, I think that 65 in one week is excellent number, I hope to receive more from you for the next edition.

As I said, and as you know the prize was a complete logo design for a blog or website, this is because we are discussing the importance of branding and the importance of a good brand. That’s why Santosh is going to receive a great logo design and branding for his blog. Thanks a lot to all of you for posting your comments in our articles, and please dare to comment more, get prepared because all comments from now on are going to be counted for the next Comment.Zation V2 count starts at zero again, so participate!. As soon as the new logo is finished I’ll present it to you Santosh, now come and claim your prize!

Six Signs Of a Weak Brand

We still are in our Blog Branding Week, in this post I’m going to explain you how to define if a brand is weak, since we still are in the Blog Branding Week, just transfer my words to the blogging medium, but these signs make evident the weakness of any brand.

It’s not easy to convince people to invest their valuable time, attention and of course money in your brand, at least not as it used to be, and it’s not easy either to convince business owners and entrepreneurs to invest time and money in their brands. Why? there are many reasons to explain this situation, some of them are:

• Because the don’t know about the importance and power of a good brand.
• Because they simply don’t want to invest in something they think is worthless (Wrong)
• Because they don’t believe in intangibles
• Because they prefer to focus on other aspects of a business.

But there are hundreds of reasons. The truth is that nowadays with an increasing amount of competitors in all fields and industries it’s more important to focus on the soul and image of a business. Maybe there are thousands of people that offer the same product as you do, and with the same quality, then you’ll need something more, a powerful and relevant brand. Ok, now let’s say you have a brand, a good one, at least that’0s what you think, how can you determine if you have a good brand? is it powerful? or, is it weak? well, here are some thing you might want to think about to see if you have a weak brand.

– No one can remember your logo and image.

– The value of your company is the sum of your tangible assets.

– You can’t define in one sentence your brand.

– You can’t define what differentiates you from your direct competitors.

– Your brand has no vision, mission or values at all.

– If someone knows your business, they know about it because of you and not because of the brand.

Those are strong signs telling you that you have a weak brand, if you have at least one of them, you must be doing something wrong. Try to define what the problem is, and focus in solving it, remember that you have to take care of your business image and above all of your brand.

WordPress Theme. Capri 1.0!

Ok, It’s been almost a week since I released my third WordPress theme, Tarento 1.0. Now it is time for a new one, the brand new Capri 1.0! a two column , widget ready theme very easy to use with a very stylish and clean design, main colors are beige and blue, with some details in orange. Capri gives an fresh look to any blog, and it is great for all kind of topics, the image in the top is very easy to replace and colors are very easy to match.

This new theme is ready for you to download. Since I released my first theme for public use my two previous themes have been downloaded more than 1,000 times, let’s see how this new creation works.

Click here to visit the Download and Preview site

Comment.Zation V1. 4 Days Left

Only four days left of our first Comment.Zation edition, you can still be the lucky winner of a logo design for your blog or website, just leave a comment in any of the posts of this blog, but remember that only relevant comments will be approved. Our current top commentator has 11 comments so you still have enough time to climb to the top and become the lucky winner of this simple contest, posting a comment only takes you less than a minute , this means that if you spend only 5 minutes you can reach the first position and win a logo design. So what are you waiting for, just take a look to our archives and choose an interesting post (all our posts are very interesting) and start commenting! Don’t let this great opportunity pass you by.

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