(Minneapolis) Nov. 14, 2007- Lyro (www.lyro.com), the Web’s first business destination for broadcasting, expressing, discovering and promoting one’s professional self, launched today. The site is set to take people’s online social networking skills and put them to work – literally – to change the face of business networking.
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“Our goal with Lyro is to provide business professionals with the means to be found, promote themselves, network and learn about new opportunities online,” said Lyro co-founder Lief Larson. “Establishing an online presence and standing out in a crowded Web landscape is increasingly important for people working in everything from freelance positions to large corporate environments. So many people enjoy sites like MySpace, Flickr and YouTube. Lyro is the business alternative to today’s existing social Web sites.”
Lyro launched a beta version of its site in June and since then, more than 20,000 people have created Lyro profiles. Lyro beta users already enjoy increased search engine visibility with more than 40,000 of them gaining top results in Google.
“As a healthcare management consultant, I need to get my name out to as many potential business partners as possible,” said Lyro user Robert Chalice. “With Lyro, I have the tools to creatively position my company and services online. New business opportunities arise more frequently now because Lyro guarantees that my name and profile are found more often by prospective clients.”
Lyro provides customers with a variety of online benefits, including establishing a cost-effective and visible online identity tailored to the customer’s style and needs. Through search engine optimization (SEO), each Lyro member enjoys the benefits of being found more easily by the Web’s top search engines. Essentially, names registered with Lyro are pulled to the top of the list when searchers look for them in an ever-expanding digital world. Lyro users quickly enjoy a higher Google ranking and increased personal brand visibility.
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Lyro enables people to search for colleagues, potential business partners and clients, acquaintances, and experts within an open and highly visible site. Unlike other services, registered Lyro customers’ profiles can be found and viewed online even by individuals not currently registered or logged-in with Lyro. Business professionals in organizations of all sizes, especially small-to medium-sized companies, entrepreneurs and self-employed individuals, can benefit from Lyro’s capabilities.
“While many people have established an online social identity through sites such as Facebook, few business people have created a professional online identity,” says industry expert and thought leader <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Peter Montoya, whose books include A Brand Called You and The Personal Branding Phenomenon. “Lyro customers enjoy benefits beyond Facebook in that Lyro actually helps its users create a personal brand.”
Additional Lyro Features
Lyro customers can create groups focused around today’s most pertinent business issues and upload photos, logos, business files such as sales brochures, pricing lists, articles, white papers, resumes, presentations, videos, press releases and more. Lyro customers also are able to connect with other Lyro users to spark business-related discussion and learn about additional routes to new opportunities and industries. RSS feeds, easily found contact information, uploads to phones and wireless digital devices and networking capabilities available at www.lyro.com make supporting a digital life and business environment simple.
Lyro Pricing
“New customers can visit www.lyro.com and create a profile on the site for free,” Larson said. “Lyro benefits are available immediately to anyone wishing to increase their online visibility and begin expressing their unique skills, attributes and style. Currently we don’t allow banner advertising on the site because our users are the ad and we don’t think they should have to compete for visibility.”
Each free profile created is given 5MB of storage, search engine optimization, a fully customizable online business card, the ability to participate in Lyro group discussions and statistics related to the business profile as well as send messages. Lyro users can also choose to enhance their Lyro capabilities by paying a monthly fee. For $10 per month, Lyro users enjoy increased storage space (50MB), seven messages per day, three professional profiles, and wider marketing exposure. For $20 per month, users receive 250MB of storage space, 15 messages per day and five professional profiles. Power users paying $50 per month receive 1,000MB (1GB) of storage space, unlimited daily messaging and up to eight professional profiles.
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About Lyro.com
Lyro, a website product of Workface LLC, provides an open, fully searchable, and user-driven tool for professional branding on the web. In today’s global economy, it is more important than ever that each of us is discoverable online. Using technology, innovation, and user-driven features, it is the mission of Lyro to empower business people through the formation and marketing of their personal-level professional brand, resulting in improved visibility and broader opportunities.
About Workface LLC, Parent Company of Lyro.com
Workface LLC is a company focused on designing, developing, and deploying software-as-service tools that meet the needs of the small business market, including entrepreneurs, independent consultants and contractors. Workface empowers this market with powerful web-based applications that allow them to discover more opportunity on the internet.