I’ve been meaning to write this post for several days now, ever since I read an article in our Las Vegas Review Journal dated Monday, February 16th. In fact, it’s been sitting on my desk just waiting for the right moment to go from paper pile to post.

What really caught my attention was the headline, “Cultural differences: Economic values may explain why businesses owned by Chinese-Americans are faring well in the recession.”

We see all too often people pulling away from the very thing they should be doing during down times or slow times or tough times – especially online. The energy exerted to build a business is tamped down (or shut down) in the hopes that somehow, magically, sales will continue – in spite of no advertising or marketing.

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Here’s something that very well may (and should) change your perspective on “should I or shouldn’t I be advertising and marketing or even blogging?”

“The fortunes of a newspaper published out of a second-floor Chinatown Plaza office may give us insight into differing attitudes about money and ways of surviving tough economic times.

In a time when a 162-year-old national news chain such as the Tribune Co. file for bankruptcy protection, the Las Vegas Chinese Daily News is actually growing, fueled by an increase in advertising. The paper has gone from 16 to as many as 36 pages since printing its first copy five years ago.”

The article goes into further details by defining how different cultures view our current times; “…many Chinese business owners consider a time of economic stress a time to spend money on advertising.”

This advertising “outlook” is considered to be a definite separation of U.S. and Chinese cultures. Where the former sees nothing but doom and gloom when it comes to doing business, the latter are taking advantage of great rates and exceptional deals. These factors also attribute to the fact that over 20,000 valley residents of Chinese heritage are surviving the highest unemployment rates in a generation.

“Chinese attitudes about money include the notion of saving profits and growing slowly, instead of leveraging long lines of credit and expanding rapidly, several business owners said.”

Now here’s the best part, and what I’d really like you to come away with (having read this post… thank you):

“The Chinese rely more on what is known as a relational economy, compared to Americans, who function more in a “me economy.” The Chinese system is based more on, “I do something for you, you do something for me,” with everyone being on the same level.”

Sounds a lot like the Golden Rule applied with a fine paint brush to the art of keeping customers coming back by treating them right.

So if you’re asking yourself, “Is now a good time to slow down with my marketing and advertising?” we think it best to tell you the answer is no.

Recovering lost ground is costly.

Instead, plan and budget for an amount comfortable (and affordable) for you in today’s economy. Be it $10 or $1000, keep your business plans afloat and keep them growing.

We’ve said it before and we’ll keep on saying it. The internet waits for no man, woman, or child. Let up for even a tiny bit of time and your competitors are going to sweep right over you.

Your wise move is again budgeting. Keep your ads out there, continue investing your time and energy, too.

These rough times will not last forever, even if (in the moment) the light at the end of the tunnel doesn’t shine very brightly.

Stay on top of what you’ve been doing, and when the sunshine hits, you’ll be well positioned – ahead of your competition – in the months and years to come.

Rarely do Scott and I sign up for anything. Frankly, we’re way too busy helping other people market and advertise to take on additional 3rd party offers that also need telling about.

However, we’re making an exception for this one:

Click To See Which One

At the moment, during prelaunch it’s absolutely free to sign up. Listen to the short video and/or read along as the presentation happens at the bottom of the screen.

What it is is a large “must have” package of marketing tools.

The founders of Getresponse (Implix) and other major players are involved.

The tool we’re most interested in, which will come with the package, is the “gotomeeting” type service. We’re in sore need of something like this for training.

But that’s just one of many “must have marketing tools” with, of course, the added benefit of making residual income from a program that provides not junk, but real tools everyone needs to market effectively online!

We have many of them, but it turns out that by packaging them up come January 6th, when the program launches, we’ll be saving a ton of money, too!

So stop what you’re doing and go take a few minutes to get yourself positioned for this wonderful program launching at the New Year.

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We love descriptive blog post titles. However, like any type of advertising, especially solo ads, article titles, and (of course) blog post titles, create them too long and you’re wasting not only a lot of usable space, but hindering your search capabilities.

That’s why we are testing (more…)

If you’re out today shopping and facing the “black Friday” crowd, all the best to you; however, if you wait, apparently come Monday you’ll be able to find a ton of even better bargains online. (more…)

This past week, Janet Giacoma, a Whole Hog Blogger and extensive article writer, wrote to ask how does one add their Twitter feed to EzineArticles.com. Apparently, she’s heard through the grapevine, and has demonstrated proof from those sources, that adding (updating) your EzineArticle profile to include your other social identities can have real benefits.

Well, it could be me, but it did take some doing to locate the steps. Actually I had to finally just hold my breath and head to the EzineArticle blog, do a search for “twitter” and voila! here’s the results (quoting a bit of that forum post):

“Here’s the 6 simple steps on how to quickly add your social media links: (more…)