Writings from Force 5 Basecamp

03/19/10

Robots.txt – Telling bots where to go and where not to What is the robots.txt and why is the robots.txt file important? The robots.txt file is placed in the root folder of your website. This file instructs search engine bots what can and cannot be indexed. All you need to do is to define some criteria of what can be

03/11/10

L.L. Bean is taking a leap into new territory! They are creating a brand extension called L.L. Bean Signature. The new line is a collection for men and women with updated styles and cuts. One of their new offerings is called the “Plain Weave Signature Suit,” and sells for just over $200.00. I have looked at the video preview on

02/25/10

Unfortunately last year many business’s pulled back on their marketing and advertising efforts. “Well, something had to give”, a business owner told me. Unfortunately, marketing initiatives may have been the last thing he wanted to pull in a bad economy. Study after study has shown that during down times, the companies that continued marketing came back to “the black” quicker

02/08/10

If you’re a marketer in any capacity and you’re reading this post then I’m 99.9% sure you’ve also read about, or thought about, or discussed some sort of Top 10 list – goals, trends, etc. – for marketing in 2010.  Around the New Year this topic is often fodder for bloggers, trade publications, and the like.  Now that the dust

09/09/09

-Deb DeFreeuw, Certified Brand Strategist, Force 5 The title of this article seems to have mutually exclusive terms – “Buying” and “Friends” An article in Advertising Age September 4, 2009 reported on a company offering to sell you friends for your  Facebook and Twitter Account.  Amazing! The Brisbane-based firm, USocial, offered this week to sell Facebook users 1,000 friends for

06/05/09

My Friend A.J. Fox at Ad-ology Research sent me some interesting facts that his firm conducted regarding reducing advertising during this recession—the botton line?—not  such a good idea!  Here are some facts from the study: Nearly half of U.S. adults believe that a lack of advertising by a retail store, bank or auto dealership during a recession indicates the business must

05/20/09

  (What you really need to know and understand about brand development) There’s a lot of talk about Brand, Branding, and Brand Development. Its all important, and its all straightforward. The problem with most companies in regards to branding is that they haven’t taken time to understand the differences and more importantly, why they need to develop their brand. Defining

04/20/09

As a website owner it’s important to understand website analytics. How many people are going to your website? Are they reading what you have to say? Are they buying your products? There is only one way to know. Good site analytics. The problem is there are so many statistics available sorting through these numbers can be a daunting task. Below,

04/10/09

Here at Force 5 Media, we see the blogging movement picking up speed as businesses begin to realize the benefits of blogging. The boom of weblogs (blogs…) happened in 1999 when several companies & developers made easy blogging software and tools. Since 1999, the number of blogs on the Internet has exploded from a few thousand to over 100 million.