In order to keep fares low, budget carrier Southwest Airlines doesn’t have in-flight food service. Instead, its flight attendants hand out bags of Southwest-branded honey-roasted peanuts. The foil bags feature a self-promotional punny line, like “Byte-Sized Fares” and “Go Site-Seeing.”

So you start a business that has an unusual angle. You sell something rare and exotic, you’re “green” in an industry not known for environmental sustainability, you offer a unique service, you have a celebrity partner or you’re a celebrity branching out into a completely different field. The week you open your doors, you get tons of publicity from local – or national – media outlets. Googling your name brings up a page or two of results. Store traffic is brisk. It looks like you’re well on your way to success.

But as weeks and months pass, the buzz goes silent. No new results show up on Google. Traffic drops off. It’s harder to keep the doors open.

It’s the ad campaign everybody’s talking about – and apparently loves to hate: those commercials for the Palm Pre smartphone. Centered on a serene woman who directly addresses the audience in an oddly detached monologue musing on such topics as jugglers and reincarnation, the commercials have done a better job of calling attention to themselves (and actress Tamara Hope) than of branding the phone itself.

Without resorting to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s now oft-repeated reference to newly emerging greenery to describe the beginning signs of economic recovery, there are indications that business is getting back to business. The Dow Jones Industrial average surged 8.6 percent for the month of July – making it the best July since 2002 – while Google reported second-quarter spending up on Google AdWords over the second-quarter of 2008.

Organizations of all types and sizes are using the power of social media to their advantage – even the federal government. Heralded as the first digital age United States president, Barak Obama is actively promoting a dialogue between the American people and the White House.