Distributor News

If you're doing business, you've got to go social. As "social media" morphs into "social business," the conversation is broadening within the enterprise. In addition to Marketing and Communications, we're now seeing Legal, HR, Customer Services, Sales, and other departments adopt social technologies both internally and externally. The adoption curve is maturing.

The world's leading companies are realizing that a solid grasp of social technologies and social platforms, along with the concepts of authenticity, transparency, and trust will become critical to building global brands, transforming product development, enabling real-time customer service, and fostering social collaboration with customers and key stakeholders.

Effective August 14, 2011, children's products marketed and sold in the U.S. must comply with the new, reduced lead content limit of 100 parts per million (ppm), as set forth in the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA). Manufacturers, retailers and importers will need to ensure their regulated products are in compliance or they could face monetary fines or removal of their products from the market. Intertek, a leading provider of quality and safety solutions serving a wide range of industries, offers comprehensive CPSIA services to help manufacturers, retailers and importers identify compliance requirements and conduct required testing.

The hard work and creativity earned the employees of Newton Manufacturing and their float a second place finish the in Newton Fourth of July Parade for their "The Game of Newton Life" float.

Promo Marketing has launched the industry's only free product search and social sharing platform for distributors at PromoMarketing.com. The social media integration includes Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter sharing tools. 

Business-to-business sales is supposed to be about a mutually beneficial relationship between buyers and sellers, but that is increasingly not the case, according to New York Times best-selling author Frank Rumbauskas of "Never Cold Call Again" and several other books.

"The process of business-to-business sales is supposed to be about a salesperson analyzing a business's problems in a particular area, and presenting solutions to solve those problems. However, the sales methods taught by today's companies—and even most books and seminars—foster exactly the opposite environment," says Rumbauskas.

While many businesses have developed a strategy for using social media, many more are still fumbling in the dark. How can business owners join, update, and respond to users on Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp, CitySearch, blogs, and other socially-driven sites while still managing their day-to-day operations? The task seems daunting before you've even started.

A panel discussion in New York brought together four small business owners and one writer who explained how they use and manage sites like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Yelp, and CitySearch. Surprisingly, not all the panelists spoke with great enthusiasm for the social sphere.

iPROMOTEu, Wayland, Mass., announced today that 12 promotional products distributors have affiliated with iPROMOTEu in June 2011. These new affiliates, in the aggregate, have an estimated annual sales volume of over $2,000,000. 

InnerWorkings Inc., Chicago, a leading global provider of managed print and promotional solutions, will announce its second quarter 2011 results after financial markets close on Thursday, August 4, 2011.

Carolyn Betts is more knowledgeable about social networking than the average small-business owner. Back in 2004, when she had just started working for an executive recruiting firm, she saw how her sister in college was spending a lot of time on this student-focused site called Facebook and immediately started using it to reach out to sharp graduates to fill junior-level positions. She soon became a relatively early user of LinkedIn and Twitter, using them to expand her online presence.

The etymology of the word "entrepreneur" is well established. Since the earliest of French times, it has meant "someone who breaks into hives when coming within 20 feet of a lawyer."

While I'm joking regarding the word's origins, I'm quite serious (albeit figurative) regarding the entrepreneurial response to lawyers. Most young entrepreneurs see themselves as an unrivaled visionary and the last thing they need is some old dude in a three-piece pulling on the handbrake.

Until something else does.