In today’s interactive environment, customers want and demand more interaction about the products they are purchasing. Sixty-one percent of purchasers consulted online customer reviews as they were making product or service selections, according to Opinion Research Company, a leading marketing research organization in the United States.

Over eighty-three percent of respondents said that those reviews had at least some influence over which products and services they purchased. People like to read reviews about travel/recreation/leisure services, electronic goods, household products, clothing, automotive goods, personal care items and food products before making a purchase.

Why not combine the online customer review phenomenon with another huge growth area on the Internet, the use of video online?

For a long time video was rather infrequently used for two reasons. First, many people were still working with dial up connections which made downloading videos a punishment and simply not worth the effort.

Second, most people did not know how to make a video and did not have the money to engage a professional videographer for their low budget online business. Now all that has changed. The spread of broadband access combined with cheap video cameras and free online editing software have made it simple for just about anybody to put together a reasonable looking video for online use.

We know that one of the issues people have with buying online is a concern about trustworthiness. Because your potential customer can not touch and feel your product or look you in the eye when asking questions about reliability, quality or warranties, you need to find other ways to establish and maintain a trusting relationship. What better way to establish trust than to use other customers testimonials about your product to encourage others to buy?

But, how do you get a customer video when you almost never meet customers face-to-face? In fact, some vendors do meet customers at trade shows and that is a great place to tape testimonials. The ambience of a trade show will come through and make it very clear that the person talking is willing to endorse your product.

Alternatively, you can solicit testimonials from your customers. Asking that they send them to you so you can post them on your website and possibly host them on Youtube or some other video sharing site. The magic of that approach is that when you explain to your potential customers that people have taken the time to send in a testimonial, you have sent a powerful message about customer support.

But how do you get people to take the time to send you a testimonial? First, your product and your service need to be something worth talking about. If you think you have problems in either area, do not begin this kind of project until you can feel fairly confident about the response. Even though it might be nice to think about rewarding a customer for taking the time to video a testimonial by offering some sort of gift of thanks, your gratitude could be interpreted as paying for reviews.

Instead, encourage people to send in video of themselves using your product, showing the interesting ways they use it and, by the way, mentioning its value. Or, establish a panel of experts whose videos about your products are instructional and at the same time, promotional. People love to be recognized; make your customers your advisors and experts and you are bound to get lots of good video material to use.

Source wholesale, importers, distributors, dropshippers and drop shipping wholesale suppliers. Browse wholesale by country: Wholesale USA suppliers & Italy wholesale & Italian wholesalers.

[tags]business,videos,video marketing,youtube,wholesale,wholesalers,dropshippers,dropshipping[/tags]

Now more than ever, businesses are looking for creative ways to save money and raise profits. And in today’s economy, utility bills are among of the highest expenses the average business shoulders. Organizations use KWH meters to monitor energy use in order to share the cost with other entities or to find areas of energy waste.

Home Business Deductions

Taxpayers operating home businesses can deduct utilities from their annual taxes. The amount that can be deducted is proportional to the size of the office. A 200 square foot office in a 2,000 square foot home would allow 10% of annual utility bills to be deducted on the owner’s income tax. However there are many cases where the office uses a disproportionate amount of power.

A west facing home office might require a portable air conditioner to keep it comfortable during hot afternoons. Copiers, fax machines and other equipment means more electrical equipment is in the office than anywhere else in the house, raising electrical use. Home businesses such as laser engraving or carpentry may use equipment with very high energy demands.

A KWH meter allows the business owner to document the power used by the home office and deduct the actual amount used rather than a percentage of the total.

Passing Energy Costs to Tenants

Any time an office landlord is sharing energy costs among tenants, the problem of dividing up utility bills arises. The situation could be a homeowner renting out a spare room or a building with hundreds of commercial offices. In the past, individual KWH meters were expensive and difficult to install so owners used strategies such as adjusting rental fees to cover utilities or dividing up total energy costs by square footage.

The problem with these policies is they give no incentive to conserve. An energy-gobbling tenant pays the same as the one who struggles to reduce power consumption. Modern KWH meters are inexpensive and simple to use. Utility bills can be calculated for each tenant, allowing fair pricing and encouraging individual responsibility for energy use.

Conservation on an Industrial Scale

KWH meters aren’t meant just for computers and other small electronics. Large manufacturing operations use far more energy than standard office environments and find that conservation leads to significant cost reductions.

KWH meters allow a manufacturing facility to determine what operations are using the greatest amount of power. Attention can be directed at the most energy-hungry processes since small changes there will have the largest impact on energy consumption. Plants with multiple divisions can monitor each division separately, leaving it to managers to find ways to cut power consumption to lower levels.

As changes are made, the meters demonstrate whether they are having an effect or not. When employees and managers see tangible proof of their efforts, they are motivated to conserve more. Departments can be rewarded for conservation efforts, saving money and improving morale.

Author is a freelance copywriter. For more information on a KWH meter, visit http://www.hoytmeter.com/.

[tags]kwh meter[/tags]

That’s right, farm succession is not an event, like going to the Dentist’s office - something you probably do only when you have a tooth ache that has beaten out your usual remedies. Farm succession should be more of a life style. It should start early, is adjusted often, and be constantly in focus.

Needless to say farm succession is typically about developing leaders and managers from within your immediate family to own and run the farm in the future. That may not be your situation though. You may have a nephew or neighbor who will fill the role of your successor. My comments below are still valid - the matters of ownership transfer should be taken up with your professional advisors.

For most of you figuring out which or if one or more of your kids will be part of the farm’s future is job #1. Historically farmers have taken one of two approaches with their offspring when it comes to determining who’s going to run the place in the next generation.

Some choose their potential successor very early, based on their seeming interest in the farm - in the actions of farming such as riding the tractor on their daddy’s knee as soon as they could sit up. Or they take a hands-off approach, maybe even encouraging their kids to choose a different profession as a result of this apparent disinterest.

In the glamorous world of the 21st century, along with all the cool things their kids are learning at their consolidated high schools - it’s easy to see how the farmer might feel unable to compete, to the point that they unconsciously push away all but those who show the greatest interest in farming.

What a tragedy! Today being a successful farmer is a lot more than being able to handle the actual chores associated with your day to day activities. It is about global competition, government regulation, Internet marketing, financial management and every other business technique and strategy we can think of.

Being able to plow straight rows, mow into the corners, haul water, and fix fences is important - but they are not the key components you are looking for in your successor are they?

My observations have demonstrated that both the hands-off approach or the early recognition of interest in the act of farming are huge mistakes. Time and time again I have seen people leave the farm who should have stayed. And I have seen them return after years working off the farm to try and recapture years of lost momentum.

Farmers should be more aggressive from the very beginning when trying to identify and motivate future successors, especially considering the many ways the younger generation can be involved in the farm operation today - even without living there, rather than leaving the outcome to chance.

Don’t let them overlook the important opportunity that being part of a successful farm operation offers! Ok, so maybe it’s not about the big paycheck from some important company, it is however a chance to accomplish something that will be around long after they’re gone, a chance to expand the business as a continuing symbol of your families accomplishments, and something they will own they can pass to those who follow them. This is no a dream, this is a reality.

One farm succession myth I’ve heard talked about by the experts is that you should never talk about business problems at the dinner table. That assumes everyone sits down under their framed Norman Rockwell cover from the Saturday Evening Post and listens attentively as dad complains about his day.

In reality successful farmers take every opportunity, whether it’s at the rare family dinner or in the pickup going through the McDonalds drive-through, to talk about the problems and challenges of farming - always looking for input and ideas they may not have considered or knew about and forgot. You’ll be amazed how a 12 year old can ask questions that will bring you up short and bingo the light goes on.

These successful farmers make talking about the farm a never-ending story. They bring others into the conversation early and often, report how their last suggestions turned out, and show how they value the opinions of there children no matter how young they are.

In so doing they unleash the power, creativity, and imagination of these energetic youngsters - people not bound up with the presumptions of what will and what won’t work.

When Wayne Messick decided it was time to create a version of Passing Down the Farm for the new millennium, he first had to ask and answer three important questions. “In two decades, what’s changed, what’s stayed the same, and what should we do?”

If you are serious about farm succession or if you are a professional involved in farm succession planning, visit Passing Down the Farm and add your name to our announcement list.

[tags]farm strategic planning, farm succession, farm succession planning[/tags]

A business strategic development plan serves as a framework for decision-making or for securing support and approval from partners, employees or stockholders. The plan itself can be as simple and straightforward as the organization wants it to be, based on the way it normally makes its decisions.

The key is not what the plan itself looks like, rather how the conclusions are reached. In our experience in order for a business strategic development plan to be actionable - it must be a sincere effort by a group of knowledgeable individuals with the short and long term success of the organization in mind.

A plan for a strategic competitive advantage may also be included. Let’s face it, if the plan is perfect in every way but does not take into consideration what the market is saying, what your competitors are doing, and addresses ways around any possible competitive roadblocks, what real bottom line benefits does it create?

Most leaders agree that a business strategic development plan is a practical necessity. Without plans in place, it is very easy for owners and managers to become blinded by immediate issues, losing sight of their long-term goals or objectives. Even the simplest most elementary plans can be used as a basis for action today and more detailed planning, when that is needed.

When it is properly written, the plan will explain the business to others, to give all the stakeholders both the big picture and somewhat of a road map to the future, even serving as a mission statement for the here and now along with the not too distant future. It can also serve to motivate people to do the right things and get them involved moving their area - large or small, in the preferred direction to achieve overall success.

The cornerstone of you business strategic development plan is the assessments made about your competition. Everybody has competition and in order to succeed long term you must get and/or maintain a strategic competitive advantage. I know it’s simplistic to talk about competition, but I am not referring to whether or not you offer the same service for a better price or whether or not your company’s advantage is it’s cost leadership, whether or not your model is to offer “more” for an equivalent price, etc.

I am referring to the entire spectrum of competition you face, whether it is within your control to do anything about it directly or not. Most often when businesses are run effectively in accordance with a price, production, service, and marketing strategy they will get as much business as they are capable of getting on their own - through the things they have been doing right over the years.

Beyond what you can achieve yourself in the normal course of things - achieving superior competitive advantage is often a result of collaboration with savvy industry peers that results in the strategic implementation of strategies synthesized from an ongoing series of strategic conversations.

Many years ago a successful business owner told me that “it’s not the things you don’t know that get you in trouble, it’s the things you know for sure that are wrong” so consistently achieving your maximum strategic competitive advantages is most likely to result for having that same group of knowledgeable industry peers test your assumptions before you act on them.

When it comes to keeping your business strategic development process moving forward and keeping focused on your competitors, you should consider a regular process that keeps everything important on the boil.

That ongoing process is one that harnesses the power of your relationships in your industry and beyond, continually forcing you to consider alternatives, and cause you to take actions based on mutually determined sound judgments.

Business owners and family business consultants who think strategically, plan comprehensively, and execute flawlessly will certainly outpace those who simply set goals and hope for the best. If you want to be even more successful in the future than you are today, visit business strategic development to learn how to focus more clearly on what’s important to you, you family, and your business.

[tags]business strategic development, strategic competitive advantage, strategic planning[/tags]

In my opinion, yes. Farm succession planning encompasses all those things you do to insure that the farm will live on successfully in the next generation - whether that is next year or twenty years from now. Strategic planning is a blueprint to follow - the measured steps you take along the way, plans which when they unfold will allow the pieces of the long term puzzle to fall into place effectively.

So if the farm owner wants the farm to succeed beyond his or her lifetime and knows that good things rarely happen by accident, why do they always seem to drag their feet when confronted with farm succession? Maybe the word ‘confronted’ has something to do with it?

Over the years farmers told me that they were too busy to plan for the distant future, we all want to think these things are in the far distance - because they were consumed with what needed doing right them.

Let’s face it, we’re all busy - but there always seems to be time to do the things we want to do. Have you ever noticed how many times you were too busy to paint the milk parlor but could find the time for other things, like the State Fair or the Homecoming football game?

If you had a group of peers, an unofficial board of advocates, who were holding you accountable for doing what’s important to your short and long term success - wouldn’t you find time to get started with your strategic and succession planning?

We all know that” once begun is half done” is true whether it’s clearing a field, changing your oil, or anything else you don’t want to do right them.

The beauty of doing strategic and succession planning with the input of your peers is that the very process creates its own rewards.

Once begun you start to get clarity around the number one issue - the reason most of you put this off, thinking about and articulating what’s important to you and your family as you move down the road toward your exit from the farm.

The result is to help you do a better job, because now that you have created the picture of what’s important you will begin to move toward it.

You will begin to consider seriously where you are right now and measuring the distance and the direction you’ll need to go to get where you want to be.

As you more clearly see where you want to end up, you strategic planning efforts will help you and your family, along with the insights of your peers chart a path to get there.

This planning process focuses your energy, ensures you all are working toward the same goals and enables you to adjust your direction in response to the ever changing environment.

When you have determined where you want to be 3, 5, 20, or more years from now, and have your peer group - your free strategic planning team holding your feet to the fire of your commitment, you will set real goals and then develop a plan to achieve them.

Strategic planning, when done in conjunction with succession planning, focuses your energies and those of everyone around you in a common targeted direction. And by clarifying what actions you need to take to get where you want to be, lots of other things become unimportant and can be discarded out of hand.

Every action we take leads us toward or away from our goals. Nothing is neutral - so doing only those things that are goal achieving and forgetting about those that are simply tension relieving will make your life simpler.

Strategic planning helps you first focus on fundamental decisions and actions that will take you toward success as you define it. While you may want to read some books about it, long term strategic planning is a do-it-yourself process. The last thing any of us need is some sort of strategic planning expert hanging around telling us how to do things.

The ideal process, based on my observations over three decades is one consisting of a group of peers, people in your industry who live a long way away from you, who will meet with you regularly over the phone to help you identify what’s important, clarify your and your families expectations and help you with the fundamental decisions you must make today, tomorrow, and tomorrow after that.

Their creativity around what’s possible will be based on their experiences, successful and otherwise, and on those of their peers - people just like you that you will never meet. Their fresh insights may cause you to reverse past decisions because they are not trying to protect the previous, perhaps outdated, advice.

You will be able to move forward with confidence.

When Wayne Messick decided it was time to create a version of Passing Down the Farm for the new millennium, he first had to ask and answer three important questions. “In two decades, what’s changed, what’s stayed the same, and what should we do?”

If you are serious about farm succession or if you are a professional involved in farm succession planning, visit Passing Down the Farm and add your name to our announcement list.

[tags]strategic planning for business, farm succession planning[/tags]

You’ve worked hard to establish a thriving online business, but what happens to it if suddenly you are not there to manage it? A sudden illness, injury or worse yet death could leave your company stranded. Learn how to protect your investment with a Contingency Plan.

So you’ve built a successful Internet-based home business. The revenues are rolling in and you are reaping the rewards. Have you considered what would happen to your business if you were suddenly not able to take care of it? What about vital information that your business depends on and others are not privy to? This is where a Contingency Plan comes into play.

A Contingency Plan assures that important assets and vital information within your business is not inadvertently disposed of in your absence. This would require you having to clean up a confusing mess when you return or worse yet, you may need to start all over.

Some websites require a lot of management, while others, such as Adsense sites, would be able to produce income without any management at all. So before writing a contingency plan consider whether the site should be sold or maintained in the event that you can not. Once you have decided that, then you may begin writing your Contingency Plan.

A Contingency Plan for a web-based business will require some work on your part, but will eliminate confusion and loss in the end. Writing the plan should cover some basic points. Take some time and begin writing one section at a time for each of the following categories:

Start by Creating a Business Profile ~ Take some time to sit down and describe your online business. Do this by highlighting key elements that have led to its success and then explain how these elements must be maintained in your absence in order to see continued growth and sustainability of your company. The amount of detail that you provide will essentially make it easier for the person that takes over and runs your business while you are absent and will allow them to more likely maintain the level of activity and viability that you have worked so hard to establish.

Now Write A Business History ~ Write a historical account of all the primary assets of your business. For instance, start with your initial website registration and then work your way up to today. This information is necessary in case there is a dispute about the ownership of the website. If your website was purchased from a previous owner(s) then you’ll want to have a lawyer put together a Chain-of-Title document that traces the website back to the original owner and follows up to your ownership. This document would require that each previous owner acknowledge their previous ownership and state that they legally conveyed the property and then it would provide their signature as proof. You should attach this document to any documents that show to proof of payment by you.

Next, Make a Record of Your Domain Registration ~ Domain registration information should be recorded with the place of registration and all essential information for accessing the domain control panel. You should include detailed explanation as to why a person should maintain this registration and how this should be carried out.

Don’t Forget the Hosting Information ~ If anyone should have to take over your business in your absence, they will also need to know where the domain is hosted and how to access the control panel. Write in detail how and when this is to be paid for and the importance of doing so. In this category be sure to describe your system for content management and how you use that in maintaining the site.

Create a Detailed Revenue Model ~ A revenue model involves describing the various income streams within your business. Include such revenue-generating areas such as: Adsense accounts, affiliate partnerships, merchant account services, and advertiser lists. Be sure to include information about who your shopping cart provider is and your suppliers and fulfillment services. Explain in detail how to maintain these income streams for the top income and also how to manipulate them to obtain a lower effort income stream.

Establish the Value of Your Website ~ Your website is your asset and you should not only estimate its value, but also relate how it should be dissolved. If you have someone in mind, suggest that person or suggest an appropriate person(s) that will provide a legitimate appraisal in the event that such direction is taken.

Intellectual Property Inventory ~ Intellectual property includes all your assets and liabilities. Simply describe all property of value that may be licensed to others or has a potential to become income. Include any obligations or limitations that you may have for intellectual property (software, articles, images) for which you own a license.

Relationship Inventory ~ For a relationship inventory simply make a list of full names, titles, and companies of all the people that you deal with and that are involved in your business. A good place to start is with employees and business partners. Next, work your way down by listing major contractors or suppliers and associates that may be able to provide essential information or solid advice about the business. This list should also include your attorney, accountant, insurance agent(s) and the names of suggested persons that could be hired to take on particular duties within the business.

Once you have completed all of the above categories and you have a Contingency Plan in hand, you may want to bring together those that are most important to you, those that will take over some of the tasks outlined in the plan, and have them read the document. Encourage them to ask questions and make suggestions. What is it that they don’t understand? What information did you forget? Then take the time to add or clarify information.

Lastly, don’t just fold up this document and put it away or store it on your PC. You will need to add, change, and eliminate information on a continual basis to keep the document up-to-date. Also, give a copy of it to a trusted person and place a copy of (always updated) your will and other pertinent papers. Make a point to make changes and updates when there is something significant to record. Or schedule to look it over at least once a year and revise as needed.

A Contingency Plan will save massive frustration and money in the event that something happens to you and will assure that your business is cared for and continues on in your absence.

Janet Giacoma is a business coach and marketer who assists serious entrepreneurs in building a profitable online business with multiple income streams.

[tags]business continuity planning,online business,contingency plan,successful internet based home busines[/tags]

Having a business is a big deal in life especially this time of economic downtrend when there are mass lay-offs and what is left in you is the cash paid by your company. You want to put this in business. But what are the important things to consider when starting a new business?

Having a business plan is the most important thing you should do first when starting a business. It is a proper statement of your business objectives, reasons why you believe they are attainable, and the plans to make those in actions. The statement may also include information on the group or organization who is also trying to reach the same goals. From there, you will have ideas on what to improve, change, or not to do.

Before having the full business plan, you must first know what type of organization you are into. Is it a for-profit organization or the non-profit one? If you are into for-profit, then your plans will basically focus on creating profit or wealth. While the non-profit organization focuses more on their mission which become a root for their legislative status.

You must consider the changes in trends, brands, clients, community population, what’s in and useful before entering into a business startup or what we call the marketing plan.

Carefully planning on finance, management, human resource, property, operations, supplies management, and marketing is the major content of a business plan. Having a professional Human Resource staff that will help you evaluate and choose the right people for different positions. Unless you are a good profiler and can do the job aside from the many tasks that must be done. You must also have support group or services for consulting, training, mentoring, and even written resources. You must also have predictions of cash flow, which are the expenses and income and performance in the future. Predicting the income from the very beginning is a very important task because your business duration and expansion will depend on the monthly or annual financial return. Having a professional financial consultant is a must unless you are very familiar with spreadsheets, balance, and figures.

Having your financial plan is also one of the most important parts of the statement. Always have your figures exceeded than the expected ones because there are always extra or miscellaneous expenses on the way and prices are always unpredictable. Always multiply your expected expenses three times to get a realistic spending quotation. Do not let your budget in a marginal pace. Also make sure you really have it, if not, you can use different method to have instant capital. This can be from the ventures of investors who believe in your plan. You may also apply for a loan in a bank for additional capital. Proper planning is very important before doing any of this to avoid any losses and mistakes.

When all these are done, marketing your products is the next priority. Producing samples for testing and modification, choosing the best advertising method and finalizing market price are things to be considered.

To find out more about business plans, visit http://www.ausbusiness.net/

[tags]business plan, business startup, strategic planning[/tags]

The July meeting of the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Partnership ended with the usual polite speeches and pledges of continuing cooperation. This disguised but did not entirely covered the fact that the partnership is headed for collapse.

The immediate cause is that the respective policies of both partners are mutually incompatible.

The Americans are determined to go on printing and spending money by the boatload while the Chinese are adamant about preserving the value of their huge trove of dollar-denominated assets. There is not one square inch of common ground. As a result both parties are remaining very civil while simultaneously playing chicken as to who can intimidate the other.

There is a remote possibility that the global recession will end quickly and the old status quo restored to general satisfaction. But current reality points to massive U.S. deficits stretching far into the future and leading inexorably to the dollar depreciation the Chinese adamantly oppose.

But even the most optimistic economic scenario will at best gain only a short respite. Beyond the immediate issue of dollar value lurks the fact that key economic policies on both sides are nearing the end of their useful life.

Let us look at China first. The fiction here is that a thriving economy can be built without enriching the great mass of the population.

Aware of the collapse of the Soviet Union under the weight of its economic inefficiency, the Chinese government has created a semi-capitalist sector within its own command economy. But this sector is based on the export model, which requires other states to pay for China’s development while simultaneously creating massive financial imbalances.

Worse, it requires China to keep the bulk of its population poor in order to maintain its labor cost advantage. While some wealth has trickled down to the bottom, social and economic inequality has risen much faster. This is the very formula that has led to massive revolts and government collapses throughout Chinese history. China is not stable and getting less so.

The U.S., for its part, has bet that manufacturing and industrial activity can be replaced by finance.

To that effect it has allowed its financial system to grow far beyond its original role as intermediary between providers and users of capital.

This policy has over the last decades made the U.S. financial system a world and an industry unto itself, with operations only tenuously connected to the real economy. Because of the potential of high profits resulting from speculative operations much of the investment capital needed by the real economy is siphoned into the purely financial sector.

Speculative financial operations produce both huge profits and enormous losses, making an autonomous financial industry inherently unstable. The U.S. government has chosen to ignore this fact during the current crisis, bailing the financial sector out at enormous expense, borne by taxpayers.

This by itself guarantees that the hoped for economic recovery will be deprived of the funding needed to generate economic activity and increased employment.

It is thus likely that the vast and expensive rescue effort undertaken by the government will achieve little or nothing, with a severe political backlash leading to major policy changes.

If current policies on both sides are maintained, the probable outcome for the U.S.-China axis is that both partners will become increasingly dysfunctional, gradually rendering the axis irrelevant. And if the fundamental policies are changed the symbiotic relationship between the United States and China will fade, and with that the Sino-American axis will dissolve into thin air.

In either case the much hyped relationship between the two powers and their economies has little or no future. History will most likely judge that it was a bad idea from the start.

Jacek Popiel’s career spanned military service and international business development. His new book outlines how energy, economics and politics converge on the current world scene. For more articles and information: http://www.viableenergynow.com

[tags]Chinese American cooperation, Chinese American axis,[/tags]

When it comes to creating professional productions in L.A, whether it is a reality show, commercial, movie scenes, or episodic television, the filming location you choose can make the difference between a product that is subpar and one that will be taken seriously. The facility needs to have all the space and amenities necessary plus be easily accessible for everyone involved. Here’s what to look for when choosing a film location.

Proximity and Convenience

Anyone who lives in L.A knows that parking is at a premium and getting to a film location means navigating nightmarish traffic no matter what time of day you’re trying to get somewhere. Experienced staff, crew, and actors are already familiar with how to best get to the most commonly used film locales such as those in the Burbank Media district. Choosing a film location in Burbank or in neighboring North Hollywood is convenient and will be familiar to most everyone involved. Choose a location that has plenty of parking and you’ll be avoiding a real headache. Make an inventory of what your parking lot needs are: does the facility have room for not just cars, but also all of your trucks and trailers?

Plenty of Room To Work

Whether your project is one day or a long term commitment, you don’t want to pay a lot of money and get started then find yourself pinched for space. A good film location will offer a variety of studios, stages, and prep areas to choose from that will suit day to day needs to a tee. If you need to have space to build sets, for instance, make sure the facility has one or more on-site stages so that the sets can be made and used without incurring additional transport costs. For commercials and music videos, already dressed sets can be a real asset by saving both time and money: look for fixtures that work, furniture, and availability of the most commonly needed props.

Does It Have The Essentials?

Pulling off a professional production requires the location to provide everything needed to keep everyone comfortable: look for adequate air conditioning; kitchen facilities; areas that can be used as a green room, styling salon, and makeup area. In addition to keeping the cast and crew well taken care of, there also need to be the basic anatomy of film production in place: ample electrical hookups and power, high ceilings, lighting grid, cargo doors, and room for production offices.

Not all filming locations are alike, so be sure to compare amenities as well as price, and your production is sure to be a great experience for all involved.

Film Location Los Angeles (http://www.filmlocationlosangeles.com/) combines the benefits of a fully furnished loft location with some of the helpful features of professional stages. Art Gib is a freelance writer.

[tags]film location Los Angeles[/tags]

For the longest time, large offline corporations of a certain ilk have used lawsuits and the threat of them to silence their critics. Even when in the right, most individuals don’t have the financial wherewithal to mount a legal defense against a battery of hard-nosed lawyers protecting corporate sharks from exposure. Not many would disagree that this is an immoral use of power and wealth, but since when did those with power & wealth exhibit much interest in society’s morals?

Well, the tide may be about to change, as they say. Apparently offended by a tweet on Twitter recently, one company launched a lawsuit against the tweet’s author. I know neither the person nor anyone from the company involved, so this is neither a rant or a veiled mission - simply a caveat to offline businesses about the power of the new Social Networking world.

Twitter is set up so that only your own followers see your tweets, although some are later indexed by the search engines, where they may or may not be seen by others. In this instance it appears the author of the tweet had 20 followers - extremely limited exposure. And with hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of tweets flowing through for most Twitter users, one can assume a large percentage of followers miss any given tweet.

As a social media expert, I can tell you that left alone, that tweet would have had negligible impact. But it wasn’t left alone…

The company launched a lawsuit purportedly demanding $50,000US in damages, and the story was picked up by the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. The marketer in me shuddered as I read the comments from a company spokesperson, but it was still a mostly-local issue.

Enter the Social Media… (anyone have the Jaws theme music? )

One of the top 10 bloggers in the world, as rated by Technorati, picked up the story and blogged about it, showing both the original tweet and the company’s remarks as quoted by the Sun-Times.

Suddenly this tweet is now being seen by thousands or tens of thousands of people - a far cry from those original 15 or 20 viewers. And it doesn’t stop there…

A number of other bloggers covering the story have provided a link to the original blog post - bringing the attention to their audiences as well. Mot impressively, 1,950 - yes, one-thousand, nine hundred and fifty - viewers have sent a tweet from the site to bring the blog post to the attention of the combined Twitter following, an audience potentially in the millions!

All this the same day the information was posted - and already Google, Bing and Yahoo had indexed the post, as demonstrated by a search at each for the exact title of the posting.

And those are just the search engine results within 12 hours of the article being posted, so it’s fairly safe to assume those will continue to grow for a while yet as new sources are found, new tweets are made, and more bloggers take up the case.

Ignoring the original tweet could have meant 15 or 20 people might develop a bad impression of the company concerned - by making it an issue, how many of the millions will feel that way? What does damage control cost on this new scale - and can it be implemented successfully by any company?

Face it - for offline businesses, the game has changed. Instant access and instant response has put the consumer in a position so powerful as to (almost) match the power of the big business legal front.

Ignoring Social Media is a major mistake for offline businesses - using it wrong or being ignorant of it’s power is far worse, and an offline business might soon sink or swim based on it’s online reputation. Just as offline businesses search Twitter, MySpace, FaceBook and the big search engines for background on employees, potential hires and suppliers, so now do consumers and potential corporate clients before making buying decisions. Can lenders and legislators be far behind?

Using Social Media correctly, however, can be a major boon to offline businesses, from little corner stores and home-based entrepreneurs to the largest global corporations. If your budget allows, hire a professional social media consultant to guide you through the potential public relations minefields to the profitable pastures beyond - and be amongst the first of offline businesses to use Social Media to increase your bottom line while enhancing your company’s reputation world-wide or in your own backyard!

Doug Champigny is a world-famous Internet marketing coach, mentor and speaker and author of the Advanced Twitter Marketing Blog. Follow Doug as SuperAffil on Twitter.

[tags]offline businesses, social media, public relations, business practices, Doug Champigny[/tags]