Kevin Dwinnell - Director, Product & Marketing
Kevin has over 15 years of experience in the online industry with AOL, CompuServe and Netscape. His experience in business, product and promotion management also includes positions at Hanna-Barbera, Liebert and Turner Broadcasting. Kevin received his B.S. in Marketing from George Mason University and his M.B.A. from The Ohio State University.
Oct 28
Image via CrunchBase
Patrick Murphy recently did a Brand Thunder interview with Shoestring Ventures, The Startup Bible Blog. One of their questions was “What other web-based products would you recommend to entrepreneurs, business owners or freelancers?” I realized the recommendations fell into categories discussed in our blog post about Sales Strategy: Browser Theme – Hunter vs. Farmer.
Given that start, here’s a short list of tools useful to that category of startup, small or medium business or freelancers. Tools to help you and your clients. Add your favorites in the comments.
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Posted in Commentary | Tags: browser theme, Customer relationship management, Google Alerts, Jigsaw, LinkedIn, marketing, Patrick Murphy, sales tool, Social network, Twitter | No Comments »
Oct 21
Brand Thunder often finds itself lumped into the category of toolbar. It’s not a comparison I necessarily agree with, but anything that’s a recurring perception is worth a look.
Here’s an overview of toolbars, browser themes and what each can do for your web site, business or community.
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Posted in Commentary | Tags: brand thunder, browser theme, Clients, Conduit, Facebook, Toolbar, WeatherBug, Web browser, YouTube | No Comments »
Oct 14
Image by TerryJohnston via Flickr
Brand loyalty is nothing new, but we usually think of Coca-Cola or Nike. Huge global behemoths that consumers ask for by name and wear proudly on their heads, lips, body and feet.
But online marketing has changed the way brand loyalty is acquired and earned. With the explosion of social media, businesses are making a solid attempt to be honest and open in their marketing communications. This plays to the strength of the small or medium business (SMB) since SMBs don’t have the deep pockets for huge marketing spends and agencies leading the social media charge. We do it ourselves and we’re the most knowledgeable and open about our products and companies.
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Posted in Commentary | Tags: American Marketing Association, Brand Keys, Brand loyalty, browser theme, Coca-Cola, Nike, online marketing, smb, Social media | No Comments »
Oct 06
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Think of widgets as little single-serving pieces of your web content – easy to pull from your web site and put them wherever they can best boost traffic to your web site. When you first go to create your own browser theme at BT:Engage, you’ll discover a features tab called Widgets. You’ll also uncover how powerful a browser theme can be at increasing traffic and visits to your web site.
Here’s what you need to know.
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Posted in BT:Engage | Tags: browser theme, Clearspring, Facebook, Twitter, Web browser, Web traffic, Website, Widget, Widgetbox, widgets, Yahoo | No Comments »
Sep 30
Image via Wikipedia
A browser theme is more than a pretty picture, or it should be. That’s why we call ours “interactive browser themes” and we’ve seen browser themes deliver 6 – 12x more clicks than the average visits to our partner sites. You get this return traffic by utilizing the content you’ve already created for your web site. It’s a simple matter of exposing it and directing users back to your site through the browser theme.
Here are some tips to help you get started.
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Posted in How-to Tutorials | Tags: brand thunder, browser theme, Feedburner, NASA, RSS, Web browser, Wordpress | No Comments »
Sep 23
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
We’re all in sales. Whether you’re Coca-Cola or the GateWay College Gecko soccer teams, you’ve got an audience you’re trying to reach and some action you’re trying to inspire. These two groups may be miles apart in terms of scale, but they’re both actively engaged with their communities online. Coke has it’s MyCokeRewards.com and the GateWay Geckos use Facebook, Twitter. and their Browser Theme. They are strengthening their ties with their existing audience, and, in effect, selling more.
For many businesses, the sales strategy falls into two roles: Hunter and Farmer. Every company will have a mix of these two that fit best with its overall objectives.
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Posted in Commentary | Tags: brand thunder, Coca-Cola, harry potter, sales strategy, Web browser | No Comments »
Sep 09
Image via CrunchBase
Browser themes are great engagement tools and a strong reason they’re popular with online communities. Keeping in touch and driving up visits to your site deepens your relationship with your community. Plus, advertisers love an engaged audience, so you’re already doing yourself and your profitability a favor.
There’s even more opportunity and it’s easy to take advantage of. Engagement in the browser theme leads to commerce as well as increase visits to your site.
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Posted in How-to Tutorials | Tags: brand thunder, browser theme, commerce, Commission Junction, ecommerce, LinkShare, Mozilla Firefox, Pepperjam Network, Toolbar | 2 Comments »
Aug 26
Image via Wikipedia
I talk a lot about using BT:Engage for helping sites and communities deepen their engagement with their online audience. It’s also extremely easy (and fun!) to create browser themes for your own use and pleasure.
In the following post and accompanying video tutorial, I’m going to show you how to spin a browser theme that includes news from your favorite news site.
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Posted in How-to Tutorials | Tags: brand thunder, browser theme, CNN, Fox News Channel, Huffington Post, MSNBC, RSS, Uniform Resource Locator | No Comments »
Aug 19
It probably seems strange that it’s almost guaranteed the browser theme you create with exacting care in our theme creator will look different once it’s downloaded. I went into some detail on this point in the post BT:Engage How To – Browser Dimensions and Design. Now I’m going to offer up some tips and suggestions for making it a non-issue through your use of background images and colors.
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Posted in How-to Tutorials | Tags: Adobe Photoshop, browser theme, Color Picker, Color tool, GIMP, Portable Network Graphics, Web browser | No Comments »
Aug 12
You’ve got to share to win. If no one knows about your browser theme, no one’s going to use it. But, we’ve not given you a lot of tools to work with – what should you do? I’ll offer a few thoughts and ideas about that.
And, just so you know, when I write these – they are also used on the product side of what to fix so these How Tos become unnecessary.
Share the URL:
First, find the Public URL to share with your audience.
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Posted in BT:Engage, How-to Tutorials | Tags: brand thunder, browser theme, engage, firefox, GIMP, IE | No Comments »
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