#iRip and Save your Lost Music
A few months ago one of my external hard drives crashed and I lost over 3500 iTunes files. Can you imagine losing that much music? My music library is pretty extensive meaning I have spent a lot of money purchasing music on iTunes.
Luckily a lot of my music was also on my sons iPod but if you are familiar with iTunes you know you can’t pull music from your devices back into your music library on your computer.
iRip solves this dilemma. I found this app the same day I lost my music. It allows you to import your music from your iPod and put it back into your iTunes music library on your computer. I love it. The music doesn’t import perfectly, songs that don’t have titles or meta data will most likely just repeat but for that music I actually purchased… iRip saved me a lot of money and a lot of heartache.
Give it a try and let me know what you thought. You can download iRip from the little app factory.
Tami Highbaugh-Abdullah
@ariesgdim
http://ariesgdim.com
857 Edgemont Ave Indianapolis, IN, 46208 USA
tami@ariesgraphicdesign.com • 3173454182
Narrow your focus to ensure a more successful Brand
Have you ever thought about the message your brand is sending? First let me help you understand that your brand is more than just your logo. Your Brand includes everything your company is about, your logotype, your services or products, the quality of your customer service, you as the business owner, your employees, even the look of your office. Your brand is the emotional relationship your company has with its customers; a successful brand logotype can even elicit feelings and responses from its users.
“A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company.”
Marty Neumeier – The Brand Gap
Now that we have a better understanding of what exactly a brand is we can now discuss the importance of narrowing the focus of your brand to ensure its success. A powerful brand specializes in a specific type of service or product. An example of some powerful Brands is Rolls-Royce, Nike, Starbucks, Petsmart, Apple, Microsoft, Intel…. Etc. Each of these companies’ popularity is based on the fact that they focus on one type of service or product.
Many companies start up thinking they need to be a one stop for their clientele. They see larger corporations expanding their brands and start-ups think they can do the same. Well… slow your roll a bit… you don’t have the millions larger corporations have and most successful companies didn’t start out being one stop shops. It is better to be well known for a particular service or product than to expand the brand your brand and be known for nothing. Specialization is the key.
When you narrow the focus of the products and services you offer you allow your Brand to specialize and become really good at what it does. Think about Xerox for a second. Xerox is known for making copy machines; their brand is so focused and has become so well known that the company name, “Xerox”, has become a noun. How often have you called a copier a “Xerox Machine” or used the phrase, “Can I get a Xerox of that document?”, even when the actual machine being used was not the Xerox Brand. Now that is a powerful brand. The same can be said for Starbucks, Porche, and Subway.
The goal of any Brand should be to dominate its category, is your brand successfully dominating is category?
Aries – Graphic Design & Internet Marketing / AriesGDIM Tami Highbaugh-Abdullah Creative Marketing Director 317.345.4182 AriesGDIM.com / AriesGraphicDesign.com @ariesgdim – Twitter AriesGDIM Facebook
All About #SMM / Social Media Monitoring Tools [Infographic]
Now that you have set up your profiles on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (and other places) you need to monitor them. Sure, you could log into all of them and check them individually but why do that? I mean really, who has time to be checking several different pages for social media engagement? You don’t if you are busy running your business. If you are serious about marketing via social media platforms it is time to look into some Social Media Monitoring tools.
I know, I know, you aren’t sure if it will be worth your time to even learn a new tool or platform. Maybe you are concerned about which social media monitoring tool is the best one for you and your company. Here is a tip…. I currently use TweetDeck (Free) and Sprout Social (fee based) as my favorite tools. I don’t mind paying a little money for great tool that helps me track my brand via several different platforms as well as make it easy to engage with my users. You may want to try a few different tools to figure out which ones work best for you but before you do that, check out this Social Media Monitoring Tool Infographic to help you learn a little more about SMM.
Flowtown – Social Media Marketing Application
#Creepy! Are you being Cyber Stalked?
Are you sharing too much information via social media platforms? I know we all love to post via Facebook Places & FourSquare, where we have been or where we are going because we are oh so popular right? Oh and don’t forget sharing your location on Twitter…. Well now an App called Creepy is showing us just how easy it is to track/stalk a person based on the information they share via geolocation tools in Twitter, Flickr, FourSquare and Facebook places. Creepy takes the information you share daily and “makes it easy for other users to analyze your location patterns.” (Callingallgeeks.org)
To use the app you simply need to enter the usernames of your stalkees for Twitter and Flickr. The app then begins to scan the tweets and photos of your user for geolocation & meta information. When the scan is done it then lays out a detailed map of your users traveling habits. Creepy right?
The app was created not to assist stalkers but to educate social media users that by sharing too information with geolocation enabled is dangerous. As we become more transparent via social media platforms we need to take a step back and be a little more careful. Criminals and deviants are getting smart. Don’t make it easy for you to become a victim.
“Creepy can be downloaded for free from their official website and it works well on both Windows and Ubuntu.” (Callingallgeeks.org)
Aries – Graphic Design & Internet Marketing / AriesGDIM Tami Highbaugh-Abdullah Creative Marketing Director 317.345.4182 AriesGDIM.com / AriesGraphicDesign.com @ariesgdim – Twitter AriesGDIM Facebook
Your Customers are going Mobile! Are you Ready? [Infographic]
As we become a society that is more accessible via mobile phones, doesn’t it make sense to ensure your business services and products can be purchased via a smartphone? Having a website that is viewable via mobile devices is first step. Making it easy for them to buy via their mobile devices is the second. Don’t believe your users are accessing information about your services and products on the net; don’t think your customers are buying your products or services via their cell phones… check out this Infographic then take a look at your analytics, you will be surprised at how many users are accessing your website via mobile phones. You may want to rethink your current Internet Marketing Strategy by including Moblie Marketing as well.
