Clinton's Ideas

Bring Your Photography To Life With Stunning Video

2011-12-17T00:00:00.001-08:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Adam Harding

I want to let you in on my little secret.

It is about how I bring photographs to life by creating professional video slideshows that look like they cost hundreds of dollars.

My secret is that I am not an expert in video editing. My secret is that anyone can create their own professional video slideshows using the online video creation software that I use.

My secret is Animoto.

There. I said it. And I must admit that I feel a lot better for it!

When I first started out with these videos, I would guard this secret with my life in the fear that people would rather go away and make these videos by themselves instead of paying me to do so!

I have since realised that my fear was somewhat unfounded and that my job is safe.phew.

Most people do not want to have to spend the time and money on making their own videos. Most people don't care how these videos are made.they just want one made for them!

But there is a certain group of people that I believe will be interested in learning how to create these videos for themselves. This wonderful group of people is known as.photographers.

I now see just how valuable Animoto videos can be to photographers, whom are much more likely to want to go away and create their own videos of their photos than the typical "normal" person. Not that photographers are not ormal people, of course.

The creative freedom to be able to go away and put your photography together in a slideshow with emotionally moving background music is likely to be very appealing to many photographers.

How To Create Your Own Video Slideshows

Animoto videos are created online. You log in to your account, upload your photos, and drag and drop them into place.

You then add in your own custom text and select a backing track from their huge royalty free music library.

Now, this is the best thing about the videos.the photo transitions are done in time with the music. People will think you are a genius when they see how amazing these videos look!

Once you have added your photos, text and music, you just click "Done" and Animoto magically creates your video.

It really is that simple, and it does not cost too much either. I have seen professional looking videos on photographers websites that have obviously cost them hundreds of dollars. If only they had known about my little secret!

3 Ways To Use Your Video

Here are some great ways of using a professional video slideshow of your photographs.

1. Showcase your work

A video slideshow is an excellent way for someone new to your photography to get an overview of your best work in just a few minutes. The videos really do make a great first impression, and it is much more exciting for your visitors than having to trawl through your portfolio, photo by photo.

2. Social networking

Whether a professional or a hobbyist, you will easily be able to share your videos online. Simply upload the video to YouTube, post the link on Facebook, and a nice viral effect may start to take place as people share your video with their friends.

3. Sell the videos

Many photographers choose to show their clients (from a wedding or senior photo shoot etc.) a video slideshow of their photos. They then offer their client that video for free if they upgrade to the premium package.

Clients are usually so blown away by the video, that upgrading to the premium package is a no-brainer for them.

It's A Wrap

So there you have it: a quick and easy way to create your own exciting video slideshows and use them to get your photography out there.

There are many ways to use video to show off your work. The opportunities for are endless.

Whether you go away and make your own videos or decide to hire someone to make them for you, I just hope this post has got some exciting ideas floating around in your head!

About the Author:
To learn how to create your own professional video slideshows that look like Hollywood movie trailers, check out the Animoto tutorialvideos posted to the website of Adam Harding at http://www.AdamCreates.info/.

Read more Articles written by Adam Harding.

How To Build a Strong and Powerful Business During a Recession

2011-11-18T18:00:00.001-08:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Trey McMartin

If you are watching the news, you are seeing daily stories about how another government institution is in financial trouble.

And while I despise the phrase "too big to fail", it is true that governments are actually, "too important to fail".

At home and in business, we don't have the luxury to be "too big" or "too important" to fail, so we must be more responsible and either reduce spending or increase revenue. Unfortunately, most politicians feel like they are exempt from having to reduce spending, so they are inclined to always seek methods to increase revenue, which makes our jobs harder when managing our personal or business budgets.

While politicians tend to put too much focus on increasing revenue, small business owners tend to put too much focus on reducing spending.

Bring Balance To The Force, Young Skywalker

During a recession, most business owners pull the reins on advertising budgets, fearful of what tomorrow might bring...

Those who remain fearful have forgotten what made them the success they are today... They have forgotten that they have a God-given talent to overcome the incredible obstacles in their paths.

Some of the largest companies formed in the history of man owe their success to HOW they adapted to the economy during a recession. They reduced unnecessary expenses and focused completely on those things that made them the most money!

Examples of large, successful companies that launched during a recession include:

Burger King - Started during a recession in 1954.

FedEx (Federal Express) - Started during the 1973 recession, a recession that resulted from the 1973-1974 oil embargo.

GE (General Electric) - Started in 1876, by Thomas Edison during the Panic of 1873.

HP (Hewlett-Packard) - Founded in 1939 at the end of the Great Depression.

CNN - Started during the recession of 1980, at the tail-end of the Carter administration, when the economy had been struggling for nearly a decade.

Hyatt Corporation - Opened its first hotel in 1957, during the Eisenhower recession (1957-1958).

IHOP - Also started during the Eisenhower recession.

LexisNexis - Launched as a computerized legal research service in 1973, during the 1973-74 oil embargo.

Microsoft - Started in 1975, during the recession created by the 1973 oil crisis.

MTV Networks - Launched during the economic slump of 1981.

Sports Illustrated - Was launched at the tail-end of the 1953-1954 recession.

These companies illustrate that a bad economy will not prevent success, but rather offer opportunities to grow fast and strong.

Studies have shown that rather than to reduce advertising during a recession, the wisest business persons will increase the advertising budget during the recession.

It Seems Counter-Intuitive, Doesn't It?

The truth of the matter is that recessions bring consumer volatility, which means people are primed to change their spending habits.

Most consumers buy goods and services based on habitual behavior. This is the reason that Bing is having such a difficult time taking market share away from Google...

If you have used both, most people agree that Bing consistently delivers more relevant results. But consumers are habituated to using Google, because they believe that "Google provides the best search results..."

Since the summer of 2009, Bing has been the clear winner in the quality contest... In fact, the quality was so good when Bing was launched that Google raced to upgrade its own search algorithms... In a record time, about six months, Google completely rebuilt its search engine from the ground up...

Lucky for Google, its users never noticed how much better Bing was, because they had been drinking the Google Kool-Aid, forever believing that Google was "the best".

During the fall of 2009, Google released the Beta-version of its new search engine, and then in Jan 2010, Google took its new search engine public with the Google Caffeine Update.

Once Google's new search engine had been released, I imagine that its owners and managers sighed a collective sigh of relief... They had managed to return from the quality-underdog to an almost equal search engine, without losing any market share!!

Your Competition Wants You To Drink The Recession Kool-Aid

During a recession, your competitors are weakened, because its customer base is also looking for cheaper or better alternatives.

If you tightened the noose on your marketing department, then you will have given your competitors the breathing room they needed to retain their market share, the same as Bing seemed to have done with Google.

Lessons From Failures and Successes...

Bing did not tighten the purse strings on its new search engine, but opened the flood gates of spending. And in the end, Bing's campaign floundered, because they did not clearly define for the global audience what made them better than Google.

Bing had the best opportunity in the history of Google to steal market share from Google. And they blew their opportunity to win market share!!

Let Bing's experience be a lesson to you... Open the taps for your marketing and advertising budget, but also be aware of the message you are trying to send to consumers...

Don't leave consumers wondering why they should test their money at your company.

Be clear, concise and forceful that your product or service is better... And tell consumers how they can find you.

When the recession finally ends, consumers will fall back into the habits they had before the recession began, unless they have adopted new habits in the meantime.

You have absolutely got to convince consumers to give you a chance, and while they are taking their chance on you, convince them that you should be their new, favorite habit to keep!!

Burger King did it; CNN did it; IHOP did it, and Microsoft did it!!

And if you are clever, you can do it too!!

Recessions are an opportunity for the business-savvy to win new customers and market share... Are you going to accept the challenge before you, or let this opportunity pass you by?

About the Author:
If you are not competing for new customers on the Internet, you are making it easy for your competitors to crush you!! Your future customers are on the Internet NOW, looking for new merchants in your local area to serve their needs. Will those people find and choose your competitors or YOU? If you need help with your Local SEO and Local Marketing, then make it a point to find us at: http://MysticMountainMedia.com/ Author: Trey McMartin.

Blog Writing - Finding the Right Person

2011-09-29T08:00:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

Every blogger has a different approach to things. Some talk about politics, others about their personal fiction projects. Some adopt a more serious tone, while others go for satire or outright comedy. Certain blogs might be more confrontational than others, and the topics covered can range from niche to popular appeal, often within the same blog.

There are a host of articles and sites covering advice on how to address various topics, but one area that doesn't get a lot of attention is what "person" to write the blog in. Each linguistic person has its own strengths and weaknesses, depending on the message that needs to be covered. Ultimately, most will simply write in whatever person is most natural to them, but there is some merit in taking a bit of time to think about the implications, advantages and disadvantages of each.

First Person

I think, I want, I feel, I know... the first person is generally the default for blogging purposes. It's an instinctive way to think: We view the world from our own frame of reference and it's entirely natural to carry that perspective into the realm of blogging. After all, they're our own thoughts, so we're going to frame them from our perspective.

First person is an excellent choice for writing a personal blog. As said, it's a natural voice to write in, so extending that to speaking about highly personal topics is a good way to capitalize on the effect. People like the inside look at things, and want to feel they have a special understanding of a subject. When people they care about be they authors, politicians, theorists or actors talk about their personal feelings, it offers a glimpse into their window of thought. This effect can be lost in a third-person blog.

On the other hand, the first person can portray a degree of self-involvement that might put readers off. Not everyone cares what any particular individual thinks about a particular topic. If you say, "I believe the following..." then some readers have a natural tendency to ask, "Well, who are you?" This effect can be countered with the citation of facts and figures or quotations, but it's still a phenomenon the first-person blogger has to overcome. The reaction may not even be a conscious one on the part of readers, further complicating this choice.

Third Person

Third person is the perspective of choice for blogs about business or broad-reaching topics that aren't specifically focused on the personality of the blogger. The third person displays a degree of detachment and professionalism that allows for cool and apparently impartial assessments of any given matter. However, third person writing can also be emotionally powerful. Telling the story of a third party without the overt interjection of the writer's opinion is an excellent use of the third person device. It allows readers to get past the idea of someone writing the blog and get right to the emotional impact of the story itself, to get drawn in and engage with the subject matter.

Comparatively, few blogs about personality are written exclusively in the third person. After all, the point of such a blog is to get into the mind of the writer, so what value would a more divorced approach like third person have? In such cases, the use of third person should be employed selectively rather than as the default. The personal "I" is too important to a blog centered on the personality for the third person to make any impact.

Second Person

Very few perspectives are as controversial as second person. Less than one half of one percent of any written works is published in the second, or "you," person. It's just not something that people instinctively work at. Folks don't know how others think it's a defining trait of individuality. Assumptions can be made, but without the ability to actually get into someone's head, the ability to understand and interpret their thoughts is limited to context, past experiences and a healthy degree of intuition, so most people avoid writing in second person because it's too unpredictable. The weakness hinges on, "You know that..." often being answered, "No, I don't."

For these reasons and others, the second person is often ignored. It makes people too uncomfortable when used on its own, and it's often dismissed as nothing more than a literary attention getting stunt rather than a serious writing effort.

However, once again, there is a value to the second person, particularly when mixed with first person. An instructional blog talking about something of interest to reader and writer is a great example of this. "I find that you'll want to spoon the mustard before the honey, so the honey doesn't stick to the spoon." This blending of persons makes the entire discussion more personal, drawing the reader in to a cooperative element with the writer.

Furthermore, the second person is an excellent choice for confrontational blogs. Sometimes a blog is written for an angle of activism and education, and presenting uncomfortable facts and figures with the association of "you" can do a lot to bring the message home to the audience.

So whatever choice I/you/one uses, spend a little time thinking about the others, and if they might find a place in a particular piece.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more of Enzo F. Cesario's articles.

Leveraging the Social in Social Media

2011-09-26T04:45:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

So, social media marketing is about the conversation, not the pitch. People are starting to get that. This is a good step, but what does it mean in practical terms? Having conversations with people is nice, but the goal of a brand is ultimately to get people interested in spending their time or money on the brand, after all. What does having this conversation accomplish, and just how does a brand use that conversation to get the critical conversion from conversation to customers?

The Key Thing: Customer Investment

Just about everyone's familiar with the smart and trendy Mac commercials. They've been seen, redone, spun off and parodied just about to death, and will stand as icons of excellent advertising. But think about it when was the last time you saw one of these commercials on TV? How often do they actually come up anymore?

The fact is, Mac's most consistent and open advocates are its users. People with an Apple notebook can't wait to tell their friends about it, take it around in public and talk up its virtues. This is true in other areas as well Honda users have fan sites for their chosen vehicles, most people get into novelty diets or exercise programs as a result of their friends' influence and so on.

So, give people a reason to talk about your brand by making it their brand.

Step 1: A Place to Talk

There is no reason whatsoever not to have a public, open discussion forum for your brand on your site. This can take the form of the comments section if your brand consists of a simple blog, or it can be a whole message board. Definitely have a Facebook page and enable comments so that people can provide input on your frequent, informative updates.

Step 2: Other Places

People like to put up fan sites of their own, in addition to official ones. This should never, ever be discouraged. Yes, there are some risks with having a site that isn't under your direct control. However, very few people are going to respond favorably to "big business" quashing the "little guy" who only wanted to show off how much he liked a certain product the business makes.

Instead, leverage this as an excellent opportunity. Contact them as an official representative and mention how much you appreciate their interest. If someone has a whole webpage dedicated to your bestselling line of how-to books, make a friendly "how to be an awesome fan" spotlight on your page showing off their site. When people see how well the brand treats its fans, they will talk about it.

Step 3: Talk it Up

Wherever people are talking about your brand, make sure they have good quality information on things, and that the information you give them is tailored to your audience's expectations. If your brand is high-class technical engineering tools, provide rigorous specifications your users can dig into. If it's a fashionable line of casual Sunday wear, offer interviews with the fashion designers and what their inspirations were. Give them some real meat to talk about, and they'll be chattering for months.

Further, remember the reciprocity principle. If a conversation seems to be really taking off, jump in on it. If someone raises an interesting point in an otherwise quiet thread, give it a boost with some official insight. However you see fit, get involved in the discussions and help people see that you want to talk about the brand as often and as early as possible. Spur the discussion, encourage the argument, do whatever you need to keep the party going just one point longer.

Step 4: Reward Interest

This was touched on slightly in Other Places, but it can be expanded further into its own point. McDonald's recently gave an award to one of its most loyal customers, Don Gorske. The restaurant recognized him as the world's premier Big Mac enthusiast, since Gorske has eaten more than 23,000 Big Macs over the course of his life. An odd award by most lights, but McDonald's certainly reaped the attention, and Gorske has gone on to be a guest on Super Size Me and The Rachel Ray Show.

Most brands can't quite leverage that degree of influence, but there are many ways to reward a fan for loyal interest in a brand. Perhaps your biggest fan deserves an advance shipping of the newest product you're planning. Maybe she's read every one of your novels to date and maintains such an active author-fan community that you'll use her name for the heroine of your newest work. Or perhaps the reward is a friendly lunch where you talk about ideas for the brand, and other things you have in common. Maybe you even hire your No. 1 Fan because he has some genuinely excellent ideas.

In General, Think Humanely

No list can comprehensively contain all the material that will get people interested in and talking about any brand. There are so many verbal tricks, psychological cues and special gimmicks that even trying to Google them would take months of research.

The biggest key is to think like a human. Remember the advertisements or conversations that got you interested in something, that made you want to participate in a brand as its advocate. Try to extend those same thoughts into what you put into your brand, and you'll draw in people just as interested as you.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more Articles written by Enzo F. Cesario.

Dynamic Content: Using Analytics to Write Your Blog

2011-09-25T02:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

The role of web analytics in setting useful metrics for a site has been discussed in-depth in any number of places, but this is far from the only useful function that web analytic practices can offer. As in any field, a little thinking outside the box can offer extensive rewards to the creative researcher. Perhaps most usefully, creative cultivation of web analytics can help conquer blogger's block and help a good writer come up with some unique angles for content they thought they had peaked out on.

First, of course, there are keywords. Analyzing keyword trends is an important part of any attempt to create an optimized site. There are some people who can get away with ignoring this because they write gripping enough topics, but by and large a good site will make at least a few genuflections in the direction of keyword-oriented content.

If stuck without a good topic idea, a blogger can easily hop over to Google's AdWords or any other publicly accessible keyword-evaluating site and put in words relating to the topic the blog tends to cover. Once about 10 high-ranking keywords are identified, he can pick the best ones and build a solid article around them, using the trends others are talking about as inspiration.

On the other hand, some keywords are particularly unwieldy, and are only useful for their broad relation to a topic. Take a blog focused on popular vacation destinations: If the main keyword that comes up is "places to eat on vacation," that's a bit of a bulky keyword to try to optimize around. However, creating a series of posts on "places to eat" with subtitles appropriate to each entry could be just the ticket to taking advantage of that keyword without shoehorning it in. Remember, titles are part of a good optimization effort as well as the body of the text.

Next, a blogger should focus on analyzing his own blog's performance and trends. By the time it's generating significant traffic, the blog's analytics should show that certain topics are producing more hits and page views than others. This is a bellwether that should nudge the attentive blogger into writing toward those trends. After all, the audience drives the success of any brand, be it blog or book.

However, there is a lot to be said for remaining true to one's creative vision. Bloggers generally start writing because they're passionate and informed about a particular topic. Looking at the page views and tailoring content is important, but it should not extend so far as to compromise or completely change the message of the blog. People still enjoy the unexpected from time to time, so if a particular topic takes a writer's fancy, it should be written. As always, the key is to strike a balance between integrity to vision and attention to readers.

Now, new content is vital to any production, but there is something to be said for a look back at the classics. Older content is what initially drew readers to a blog in the first place, and it can remain topical over time. There are a number of techniques for refreshing older content, each of which has its own advantages.

The first is the straightforward reposting: A year or two after an old post, put it back up on the front page with a small addendum or introduction explaining why it's relevant again. This is particularly popular with political blogs that make major predictions that end up coming true, but it can also apply to any other blog. A cooking site might post the same classic holiday recipes once a year, or an educationally minded one might post a major article to remind people of a specific message.

Alternatively, there's the linkback and update approach. A new post is made with a link to the old post. The new post goes into brand new content that refers back to the older post, raising views on both pages and increasing the sense of relevance over time. This approach also can cement the overall message of a blog in reader's minds quite handily.

Then, of course, there is the retraction or redaction. Our content is like our lives, both growing and changing as we gain more experience and, hopefully, wisdom. Sometimes we write something that makes a great deal of sense at the time, but makes less sense as the years go by.

In cases such as these, the linkback or reposting strategy can be modified to include a bit of commentary explaining how one's views have changed, what new information is available and the reasons for the adjustment. This kind of honesty takes a lot of courage; shows great respect for readers and can often create a lively commentary thread.

Speaking of commentary, this is also a great way to refresh older posts. A blogger can go to the oldest threads, find the ones with the best views say the top five and ask the readers to rank them in a voting contest. The best one will be reposted with new commentary. This is a clever way to get more readers to look at older posts, and give some old content new and exciting life at the same time.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more Articles written by Enzo F. Cesario.

That First Impression: Title Considerations

2011-09-24T00:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

While it certainly isn't as much work as crafting the body of a superior article, selecting a title for a piece is definitely an important element of the entire process of content creation. The title of an article is a multifunction web tool, providing opportunities for engagement with the reader and search engine in equal measure. Putting some thought into the title and how best to leverage its effects will help title choices provide a solid return on investment instead of burdening an otherwise good project needlessly.

Making Wordplay Work

The necessity of a good title is rather self evident if one plays a small game. Borrowed from Christopher Hitchens' autobiography, Hitch 22, the game basically goes like this: Pick a popular movie title and change it just slightly to get a "title that didn't quite make it" Quiet of the Lambs, American Pastry, Mister Zhivago, the American Samurai and such all demonstrate the importance of getting things just right. A small change can eliminate the value of good wordplay or an entertaining twist of phrase in favor of something more bland and pointless.

To that end, try to put some thought into the title. Reference popular works for example, a comparison piece doesn't go wrong by referring to "A Tale of Two..." Alternatively, the title could reference a key quotation or phrase within the body of the text itself. Don't ignore something that seems to work, but double check creative title ideas against someone else's opinion, just to be sure.

Words are Key

The title is a crucial part of the Search Engine Optimization process. Keyword spiders and algorithms often look at the first words in an article, and the title is no exception. Having the core keyword worked into the title will consistently help return better results within Internet searches.

However, this comes with particular caveats: Some keywords, particularly keyword phrases, are long and clunky and can interfere with the aesthetics of a title. If the keyword phrase in question is "how to brew your own beer," that's one thing. A clever preface can be put before it, with how to brew your own beer as a subtitle or addendum to the main line. On the other hand, the keywords might be "Legal Advice Auto Accident," which is more difficult to work into a clever title. Experiment with a few approaches, and consider putting only a few of the keywords into the title or breaking them up into a fresh sentence.

Another trick concerns where to put the title. In many blog posts the title will have its own section. However, also consider putting the title and its keywords into the body of the paragraph itself. Some search engines ignore separate title fields and focus on the content of the article itself, so this can help keep a writer from robbing themselves of good keyword return.

Brevity, Please

Particularly in the academic world, titles of articles and papers tend to be long and quite dense. "An Analysis of the Savior Archetype in Modern English Literature" certainly tells us what the paper is about, but could also easily be summed up as "The Savior in Modern Literature" and loses nothing of its statement of intent.

Further, keyword optimization becomes less effective the further into a document one gets, and this includes the size of the title. Proper keyword effect selects for shorter, more efficient use of titles, so avoid the temptation to put the whole topic into the title line. Go for simpler, brief word choices that allow expression of the important information without going on and on.

Hyphenated titles are very popular for this reason. A single word can capture the intent of the message, such as "Betrayed," and then be followed with keywords. To take an example from the news, perhaps the keywords are "WikiLeaks" and "PayPal." The title could then be "Betrayed WikiLeaks Banned from PayPal."

To Joke or Not to Joke

Not every lighthearted article responds well to a joking title. People are oddly finicky and picky about when they'll accept humor, and the use of puns in a title is a risky gamble. Yet it undoubtedly works consider the example of the Focker movie trilogy starring Ben Stiller.

Obviously if the article is a serious piece, a pun should be avoided unless it's executed in the vein of dark humor. Serious work demands a serious title.

However, an important rule of thumb is to be very cautious about industries or groups in jokes. Consider for whom the article is intended. If it is aimed at a wider public audience, such as a newsletter or advertisement intended to bring people into a site for discussion or purchases, then an excellent inside joke would be misplaced. Not everyone understands the jargon, so it should be limited. On the other hand, a specialty letter crafted specifically for professionals of the plumbing craft could easily get away with jokes about piping and other internally-recognized puns. As with any online venture, the goal is clearly to keep the audience first and foremost in mind when selecting a title, rather than simply hoping they'll "get" it.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more of Enzo F. Cesario's articles.

Understanding Cloud Computing for SMBs

2011-09-19T05:45:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Audre Hill

The buzz about cloud migration , or taking your business to the cloud , is all over the internet. But between the geek speak and the sales copy, it's hard for small and mid-sized business owners to put cloud computing in perspective with their real business needs.

Here's a brief overview of the different types of clouds and the various vendors in those markets right now. As you read, keep in mind that the internet changes quickly. Cloud vendors will continue to come and go, so longevity, stability and portability will become increasingly important factors when choosing vendors.

Cloud computing for SMBs

The three main types of clouds right now are SaaS, PaaS and IaaS (descriptions will follow). As a SMB owner, you and your staff will usually only have direct experience with SaaS the applications that deliver software like Microsoft Office and Google Docs. Here's an example of how the three layers work together.

SaaS (Software as a Service)

You and your employees use it as off-the-shelf application software. For example, if you use SalesForce to manage your customer database, you're using SaaS. It's hosted on the cloud, and you download apps to connect with the cloud version.

PaaS (Platform as a Service)

As an example, let's say you decide that the off-the-shelf version of SalesForce still requires too many hours of manual data manipulation -- you're paying overtime in the accounting department because they need to use create spreadsheets every month to sort and extract data that's specific to your company.

At this point, you hire a custom software developer to code SalesForce to produce the reports your accounting department needs. He'll code and test your customized version on Force.com (owned by SalesForce) --a bare-bones software platform, or PaaS.

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

These are the virtual machines that developers love because they provide a basic development environment in a push-button scalable form: processing, storage and networking can all be sized to fit the project almost instantaneously. There's no waiting for a human to configure and network a new server to create more storage space. And there's no large up-front hardware investment necessary to expand a system because the fees are set up to pay-as-you-go.

As a business owner, you won't need to get involved with the details of cloud migration, PaaS or IaaS especially once you have your custom software developer on the project. Good developers are lifelong learners and have a network of professional contacts they can tap into for news about the latest software trends. Your time will be freed to run your business and manage customer satisfaction which is the real goal of adding custom software to your operations.

About the Author:
To see a cloud computing infographic for a visual perspective, check out http://boomcycle.com/how-smbs-use-saas-paas-iaas/. Visit the Boomcycle.com website to find out more about how this Los Angeles custom software development team can handle your cloud computing needs and add value to your business.

Read more Articles written by Audre Hill.

5 Tips For Writing Great Content For Your Blog

2011-09-19T02:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Lee Dobbins

The goal of any blogger should be to attract repeat visitors that devour your content and are left begging for more.

You want people to come back to your blog over and over again, and you want your content to earn their trust so that they will link to your blog, tweet your posts, like you on Facebook and eventually buy stuff from you.

That's why learning to write good web content is a must if you want to be a profitable blogger.

5 Tips For Writing Good Web Content

1. Good Web Content Focuses On Providing Value, Not Setting A Stopwatch

I often have people ask me how much time they should spend writing an article and my answer is "as long as it takes". You should be focusing on writing the best article possible on your chosen topic and not on how long it is taking you. A few extra minutes (or hours) spent making your article spectacular will pay off in spades in the long run.

When writing content for websites, one must adopt the mantra of quality over quantity. Better to spend several hours crafting a killer blog post then push out 4 substandard posts in the same amount of time. The killer blog post will get you readers and links while the 4 substandard posts will harm your credibility and drive readers away.

2. Good Web Content Is About The Reader NOT The Writer

Writing good web content is about providing a benefit to the reader. No one wants to hear about you, they want to hear about what's in it for them and how they can benefit from your article. In order to keep the reader interested, you must give them what they want.

How do you do that?

By targeting your writing to the reader instead of writing about yourself. Sure, you can write about your experience on the topic and how the tips you are going to give out helped you but don't go overboard and tell your life's story. No one, with the exception of perhaps your mother, is interested.

What you should do , however, is give out information that will help your reader. Let them know what benefit they can expect from following the advice in your article. For example, this article lets readers know that if they follow the advice on writing good content for websites they may benefit by increasing their following, getting their articles tweeted and liked and gaining readers trust.

3. Good Web Content Is Easy To Read

If you want to write great web content, then you have to brush up on your writing skills. You need to make your articles flow. They need to be easy to read or your reader will click away from your site and probably never come back.

One of the tricks of writing good web content is to make sure your article has good structure. Having different sections is good because it allows the reader to skim along and pick up the essence of the article by the headings. Make sure your article has enough information to be complete but don't be too wordy. Write only enough to convey the idea and not a sentence more.

It goes without saying that good grammar and spelling is a must. You also need to be sure that your sentences flow together and aren't stilted which makes it difficult for anyone to read.

4. Good Web Content Solves A Problem Or Gives An Answer

People read articles because they want an answer to a problem or want to learn more on a topic. Therefore, you should strive to give people answers to questions in your articles. Of course, you must know what questions people are asking first which you can find out when you do your keyword research. And then you must research the answer, if you don't know it already.

The key to writing good web content is to provide a thorough answer and not just gloss over the answer with fluff. Most content for websites is inadequate in this area and you can really make your blog stand out from the crowd by giving good solidly researched information.

Another thing to note is that you must deliver on the promise of the headline. If your title or headline is "How To Get Rid Of Stretch Marks With Natural Methods", you must tell them real natural methods to get rid of their stretch marks in the body of the article. Many people make the mistake of not actually revealing the real answers in the article in the hopes of selling them a product that does later on.

5. Great Content Has YOUR Voice

Last but not least, you want to make sure that your web content has your voice. You want your articles to sound like you talk. You don't want to write a boring essay like the ones you did in school no one wants to read articles like that!

Develop a certain "voice" that exudes your personality so that anyone reading your content will feel like another person is "talking" to them. One way to do that is to get voice recognition software like Dragon Naturally Speaking and actually talk out the article. Or, if that doesn't work for you, simply picture that you are talking to a friend and just type out the words as they are coming into your head.

Writing good content for websites is critical if you want to develop a following. There is a ton of other bloggers out there clamoring for readers attention and you must differentiate yourself with quality if you want to stand out from the crowd. With social media becoming so prevalent today, it is critical that you provide great quality content which has real value that people want to share. Do this, and you will find that your blog subscribers grow exponentially over time.

About the Author:
Writing good web content is just one piece of the puzzle to getting traffic to your site. The other piece is having a good back linking plan which you can find out more about in this free report. You'll also want to visit http://www.websitepromotionblueprint.com to get more tips on blogging, content creation and website promotion.

Read more Articles written by Lee Dobbins.

Why Anchor Text Could Be The Most Important Aspect Of SEO

2011-09-18T01:00:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Lee Dobbins

Anchor text is perhaps one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization but it is also one of the least talked about.

This one element of SEO is important to understand because it can help your page get ranked for a target keyword and also help you evaluate your competition more precisely.

The latter is critical and, in fact, if you don't take anchor text backlinks into proper consideration when looking at the competition for a keyword you could be missing out on some hidden gems that are easy to rank for.

What Is Anchor Text?

Anchor text is the hyperlinked text you see on a webpage. It is the visible words that you can click to take you to another page. Anchor text html code looks like this: <a href="http://www.yoursite.com" target="_blank">Your Anchor Text</a>

On most websites, you typically see this as blue text that is underlined and when you click on it with your mouse, you are taken to the corresponding url.

How Bloggers Use Anchor Text

Bloggers and website owners use anchor text naturally to point to other pages on their website as well as pages on other sites that they find relevant to what they are blogging about. You've probably even done this yourself when writing a post where you referenced another post on your site, an affiliate product or even a post on another site.

Usually a blogger will use a phrase that indicates what the page is about in the anchor text, as opposed to a url, so that the sentence reads correctly.

The anchor text in these links helps both the visitor and the search engine spiders figure out what the 'linked to" page is about.

How Search Engines Use Anchor Text

Search engines use anchor text to help them figure out what the hyperlinked page is about. So, as you can see, getting anchor text backlinks with relevant phrases in the anchor text is pretty important if you want the search engines to rank you for a particular keyword phrase.

In fact, anchor text is such an important factor in ranking a page that pages can rank for a keyword phrase even when that phrase does not appear in the url on on the page!

There are several cases where this has happened, but perhaps the most famous is where the Adobe Reader download page ranked #1 for the search term "click here" for many years even though those words were nowhere on the page. So many people had linked to that page using the anchor text "click here" that it got to the #1 spot without any on page SEO for the term.

Search engines place a large importance on external anchor text (links coming in from other sites) and some importance on internal anchor text (links from within your own site) when ranking a page so it stands to reason that you should make getting anchor text backlinks with your target keyword phrases a priority.

One important thing to note is that it is widely thought that if two links on the same page target the same url, that only the first link is counted by Google so you want to be sure that you use your desired anchor text in that first link.

How Anchor Text Is Important When Judging Competition For A Keyword

If you think about how important anchor text is to the search engines when determining ranking for a keyword, then it's easy to see why it is a critical component of analyzing the competition for a particular keyword phrase.

Google even provides you with a search operator to do this - the allinanchor operator. You can use it by typing the following into the google search bar:

Allinanchor:"your keyword phrase"

This will return the pages which have anchor text pointing to it that contain the quoted keyword phrase.

I hope you can see how powerful this is - first of all, Google must think it is an important element of a page because it provides the allinanchor operator. Just the existence of the operator would seem to indicate that it uses the anchor text when deciding what a page is about and ranking it.

Secondly, using this operator will show you which pages are optimizing for your chosen keyword phrase!

It makes sense that only the pages that have anchor text backlinks with your phrase are the ones optimizing for it so you can forget about searching for your phrase in quotes or any of that non-sense.

Not only that but, you can take a look at the actual backlinks for each of your competitors and see how many of them have that anchor text and what the strength of those links are to make a more educated guess as to how difficult they will be to beat out for that top spot.

Anchor Text "Best Practices" For Your Website

Now that you know how important anchor text is to your rankings, I'm sure you will want to pay more attention to it in your SEO efforts but you don't want to go hog wild and create tons of anchor text backlinks all with the same keyword phrase or you might find that your efforts don't yield the results you want.

Here are some things to consider:

1. Vary Your Anchor Text - We all know that Google prefers it when people link to you naturally and when that is the case, they don't all use the same anchor text. So, when you are linking to your site from your articles or web2.0 properties you want to make sure you don't always use the same phrase as well. Using your target phrase in about 50% - 60% of the links is probably a good idea.

2. Links From Relevant Pages - For the best results, you want your anchor text backlinks to come from pages that are related to the topic because this is what would happen naturally if people were linking to you because you had great content it would most likely be from a blog post on the same topic.

3. First Link On Page - Don't forget that Google only counts the anchor text from the first link that it sees so if you will have more than one link to the same url on a page, act accordingly.

4.Plan For Natural Linking - There's nothing better than having people just naturally link to one of your posts but, of course, you can't control the anchor text they use when they do. Since most people will naturally use your headline as anchor text, you want to be sure to consider that when coming up with the title for your blog posts.

Anchor text is crucial to both your SEO efforts as well as when analyzing the competition for a keyword phrase. Taking the time to use it properly can be the difference between ranking in the top 3 and not ranking at all so it's in your best interest to start putting better anchor text practices to use in your business today!

About the Author:
Anchor text backlinks play a key role in SEO. Get a free copy of Lee's Website Promotion Blueprint Guide for an easy to use blueprint to get more traffic to your website. Also, check out her article on how to use anchor text backlinks to do competition analysis that will help you nail a top spot in Google.

Read more of Lee Dobbins's articles.

Social Media Marketing Tools Putting Your Finger on the Pulse of the Web

2011-09-17T12:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

Time makes a mockery of most predictions. Once derided as the tools and hobbies of hopeless shut-ins and intellectual ivory tower sorts, social media sites such as PayPal, Facebook and LinkedIn have become the home of an entirely new, powerhouse economy. Where hundreds of years of war and diplomacy have failed, social media marketing has succeeded in bringing people around the globe together in the pursuit of common interests and open markets. Social media marketing is the home of successful brand promotion, and finding the right mix of tools to take advantage of it has become the defining issue of the modern brand.

When people refer to SMM tools, they are discussing a host of applications and programs that allow real-time and long-term feedback on the performance of their social networks. This kind of information goes beyond the purely mechanistic approach of SEO and website performance, moving into the realm of genuine social engineering. Social media tools can track the number of times a brand is being mentioned across each network, compare traffic between networks, determine where the buzz is starting and which path it took to get from, say, Digg to Facebook. Knowing the focus of each of these tools and the best way to use them is the key to bringing all this power under control and using it to help promote a brand to its full potential.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is an excellent platform for brands to manage social networks. A simple, efficient, all-in-one approach makes TweetDeck very useful for getting updates out quickly to a number of locations. TweetDeck supports Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, GoogleBuzz, LinkedIn and Foursquare, giving a user easy access to all of the major networks. Users can send out status updates to any or all of these at once, allowing unified messages to be spread in a single step, without the potential to forget one. However, it does have its limitations. Very heavy traffic to multiple accounts can slow down its efficiency, making it more of a startup and middleweight tool than a long-term solution.

HootSuite

Similar to TweetDeck in that it is targeted toward smaller businesses, HootSuite is an alternative tool that allows for several levels of customization. For starters, the basic package is completely free, and will support five networks of the user's choosing. Currently available platforms include Twitter, WordPress, LinkedIn, MySpace, FourSquare, Facebook and PingFm. Upgrading to paid subscriptions allows additional networks to be included.

HootSuite really shines because it offers steady "streams" of information about each of the user's networks, allowing the aforementioned real-time monitoring of web traffic. If a particular network is flagging or performing particularly well, it will be brought to the manager's attention. Further, HootSuite provides user bios and links to various users' social networking profiles, allowing a brand to tailor its content to the needs of the market more efficiently. The information is a bit limited in the default package, but even upgrading to the $5.99 a month subscription brings a great deal more detail to hand.

Engage121

For larger businesses looking to make their mark in the social networking world, Engage121 offers a number of more powerful options. This is a program for professional social networking managers, because it is entirely customizable to the exact needs of a business. One of its touted features, for example, is the ability of a local office to examine, modify and approve messages from the central branch. In this vein, a generic message can be sent out about company directives, while allowing each branch to add or delete content based on the relevance it has to their own particular mission. Thus a large clothing chain won't waste time sending out messages about their new swimwear line to their regional users in Alaska.

However, it has to be stressed once again that Engage 121 is not a tool for beginners. The sheer number of options can be daunting to put in the hands of an inexperienced manager. It's best to offer it to someone with a great deal of skill under his or her hat who can offer a specific plan of attack for using this tool.

General Thoughts

As a more broad consideration, there's no reason to limit oneself to any one of these applications, or indeed any of their competitors. A sound SMM strategy might, in fact, use several programs at once, either to get multiple sources of information or to test out which works best for a given company's needs. Then as the brand grows and needs increase, the manager can move up to more robust software and applications that better service the needs of the company.

Above all, remember the axiom that these tools are based on the need to promote communication between brand and audience. They are not meant to reduce the users of the network to data that can be analyzed and directed these are people with their own minds and agendas, who will respond in kind if they feel slighted or taken advantage of. Instead, they should be used as a way to get information about what people want to talk about and to build a brand's reputation.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more Articles written by Enzo F. Cesario.

List Building - What Is The Most Important Benefit?

2011-09-16T23:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Titus Hoskins

If you're new to list building, you may just be wondering what all the fuss is about? What's so important about list building you may be asking? Why should it be the first task any webmaster and/or marketer should do? More importantly, you may be wondering what is the number one benefit of building your list?

Without a doubt, one of the greatest benefits for building a list of contacts, is developing a lasting mutual relationship with a vast number of people who you probably wouldn't normally be communicating with on a regular basis. It is this relationship which is the most important benefit of building your list. You must make a lasting impression and build a lasting relationship with your contacts or subscribers in order for your list to work.

Many webmasters and marketers fail to realize that a list of contacts, even a very large one, is virtually useless unless you form and nurture a relationship with these subscribers. This relationship must be built on trust and respect, one where both parties benefit from being a part of the list. It truly is a give and take interaction, where everyone gets what they want.

Building such a relationship is not easy, it can take years of experience to get right. First and foremost, a subscriber on your list or newsletter must feel wanted, but also they must get something of value from being one of your subscribers. In most cases this "something" will be valuable information which they can use with their website or online marketing. In some cases, it could be special deals, discounts or even bonuses if they purchase through your links, but usually it consists of information the subscriber needs.

Many people make the mistake that this should be some earth-shaking information, but in reality, anyone who runs a website for several years already has some valuable information to give to someone who is just starting a site. In other words, your knowledge will be valuable to someone if you can construct your lists to get subscribers who need and appreciate your information. It may also be helpful to specialize in a certain topic and concentrate all your learning around this topic. Then before long you will be considered an expert, someone who everyone wants to hear from in one form or another.

If you build this lasting relationship with a large group of contacts, you will always have willing targeted visitors to your sites. These repeat visitors will prove to be a great benefit for any webmaster. You will also have a large group of targeted prospects who will be interested in your offers and/or products. Handle this relationship right and you will also have a large list of potential customers, ready to open their wallets if the price is right.

So the next time someone mentions list building, you should realize building a large list of contacts is only the first step and often the easiest part. In this age of Twitter and Facebook, building a large group of contacts can be done almost overnight. However, these contacts are useless unless you build a mutual relationship and then and only then will you see the true benefit of list building.

About the Author:
If you want to find out more about list building, try this handy eCourse on: list building Or why don't you simply follow us on Twitter to get other useful marketing and list building help: twitter bizwaremagic Copyright Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Read more Articles written by Titus Hoskins.

Press Preferences - Blogging Software Explained

2011-09-16T02:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

One of the biggest advantages that the web offers is the relative ease of developing tools catering to the needs of a particular user set. For every ten people who want to perform a specific task, there will be ten ways for them to do it because each will have ten different needs to address. Blogging software is an excellent example of this phenomenon as there have been numerous blogging programs that have arisen since the advent of Livejournal in the late 1990s.

Understanding a few of the more common blog software programs can help any blogger make an informed choice about their particular needs and get their message out in the most efficient way.

Livejournal

Livejournal is the earliest, albeit not the simplest, of the blog creation programs introduced. It began as an early form of social media networking software; the emphasis was on friends sharing their journals online with one another. As such, it has a multitude of features aimed at creating a mutually-supporting network of watchers and friends.

There are groups that can be joined and monitored for content relating to the blog's interest, which is a key tool in generating involved commentary. Similarly, it is easy to subscribe to specific blogs and monitor them on the "friends" list for the same kind of content. The Livejournal software also is used by a number of blogs, such as Deadjournal and Insanejournal, and was used by Greatestjournal before GJ went under. Thus, a great many people already are familiar with its functionality and there is a large user base to tap into.

On the other hand, it isn't the simplest system to figure out, with some friends functionality buried under several layers of interface. Additionally, it suffers from a certain juvenile reputation, being firmly associated with high school students in many minds. The audience is still big, but it has its limits.

Blogger

Blogger is one of the most commonly used blogging programs out there. It has the advantages of being very simple and more or less omnipresent. It's become so common to use that the .blogspot portion of a url has become inextricably associated with blogs of all types, be they serious or more casual in nature.

The simplicity of Blogger is its strongest advantage. It doesn't bury the user in options, making the process of setting up and getting a blog moving very easy. Blogs can be tagged and disseminated on short notice, and there are a number of templates available to customize a blog's appearance.

On the other hand, the simplicity of the interface is a slightly shallow concept. Blogs can be tagged, but they can't be categorized within the blog itself. This makes organizing a Blogger blog a bit difficult. Going further, templates cannot be edited easily doing so requires CSS and HTML knowledge. Any business hiring a blog writer to use the Blogger software will need to stipulate that CSS and HTML editing knowledge are a must as well.

WordPress

WordPress is growing in popularity as a blog platform because it offers a compromise between simple but limited options like Blogger and the more robust yet incredibly complicated options such as Movable Type. WordPress is essentially a word processor built into a publishing package.

A whole slate of editing options are available for writing the blog itself, such as font and formatting adjustments, and the option to edit in visual style or to go right to the HTML if the blog writer is comfortable with that. There are options to make a quick post with very little adjustment as well as options to make a more complex offering with jumpcuts, embedded video and elaborate pictures. Also, the templates can be adjusted without knowledge of HTML, allowing for much more customization.

Moveable Type

This is an unusual entry into the software. It is very well known and incredibly powerful for people who know what they're doing. However, it is also notoriously difficult to install properly and even harder to use to its full effect. MT offers many options for customization, but then so does being able to program in computer languages such as HTML and C++. This is an option not for the beginner, but for someone already experienced with blogging and computer language in general who wants full control of every aspect of his or her blogging experience.

Self Made

This is a bit of a trick in that it isn't explicitly a blogging software program. Instead, some users do elect to simply make posts directly onto their front page using the basic text software of their site. This has a certain simplicity to it, minimizing the need for complicated installs. However, it also has an unfinished look about it, and severely limits the options of what can be accomplished, and as such is an option more to be avoided than embraced.

As a final note, it is fairly easy to get a hold of these blogging programs. Before committing to any one of them, a user should create a "dummy" account for each and try a few sample posts to see how they like working with the software. This will make the entire process a bit more complicated up front, but will ensure that the company gets the tool it most needs.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more of Enzo F. Cesario's articles.

Double The Number Of Online Leads From Your Website Using 5 Fishing Lessons

2011-09-15T06:45:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Robert Dempsey

If you want to increase the number of leads your website produces by 50%-100% or more there are 5 lessons you can use fromâ¦fishing. Those 5 lessons are:

1. Go where the fish are
2. Use the right bait
3. Have a tackle box full of lures
4. Patience required
5. Keep fishing until you catch them

Let's look at each and how they apply to online lead generation.

Lesson #1: Go Where The Fish Are

If you want to catch a fish you need to go where the fish are, preferably where they are in abundance. There is a growing list of where you customers live online, with the major ones being:

Social networks â" Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, niche networks

Video sharing sites â" YouTube, DailyMotion

Location services â" GoWalla, Foursquare

Private social networks â" industry association sites, private groups

Forums

Search engines â" Google, Bing, Yahoo!

Blogs

All of the sites mentioned above have varying demographics and different numbers of users. Before choosing which sites to spend time on, use Quantcast.com to see if the demographics of the site matches with your ideal customers.

Smaller blogs are an exception here. You can find highly specific niche blogs perfect for fishing, however the demographics will remain unknown until you do a little research. The easiest way is to subscribe to the blog using email or an RSS reader. This will deliver blog post to you as they're published. In a short week or two you'll be able to tell if the content on the site is attracting your next customers or not.

Blog tip: the content might not be a perfect fit for your customers however the owner of the blog might be a great partner for your business.

Lesson #2: Use The Right Bait

What are the problems that keep your ideal customers up at night? What business or personal challenges are they seeking solutions to? To catch a fish you need the right bait, the online translation of which is free opt-in content.

Opt-in content comes in many formats:

E-books

Guides

Whitepapers

Videos â" single or short video courses

Audio recordings

The more formats you can provide opt-in content for, the further you can spread that content. As an example, you could write a short guide and post it on your blog as an opt-in offer. You could then have that guide turned into a video and posted on YouTube, and extract the audio and post it to iTunes. One piece of content then becomes 3 and attracts customers on 3 different networks. It's also in a format they prefer.

But formatting aside, if your content doesn't inform, entertain or help solve a problem it's a complete waste of time.

Lesson #3: Have A Tackle Box Full Of Lures

If having one magnet that attracts customers is good then 10's or 100's of magnets must be better right? Yes!

As you already know, people have different problems at different points in their business. And I'm sure that your products and services solve more than one problem. If not, create another product or service â" your customers are sure to have more than one problem.

The point is to create opt-in offers that each solve a single problem or address a single issue. This way, you can create a mountain of opt-in content and capture more leads. The more lures you have in your tackle box the greater the likelihood you'll catch even more fish. The more rods you have out at one time, the more fish you can catch.

Lesson #4: Patience Required

When talking about online lead generation what we're talking about is inbound marketing â" the process of turning your website and blog into a lead magnet. The simple version of inbound marketing is:

1. Creating a lot of free content, typically on your blog, that attracts the types of customers you want
2. Syndicating that free content as far and wide as possible using social media and other online sharing
3. Converting website visitors into leads through the use of free opt-in content
4. Nurturing leads to becoming customers using additional high-value content with sales messages

It can take some time to turn your first leads into customers. According to the inbound marketing certification program from HubSpot that I passed, it can take between 3 and 6 months. Patience is required to keep going. This brings us to lesson #5â¦

Lesson #5: Keep Fishing Until You Catch Them

During those initial 3-6 months you may want to give up, and many companies do. You can use this to your advantage.

Measure everything. Here's an example.

Let's say you publish a blog post that announces a free whitepaper that you wrote. On the blog post you have a graphic that the reader can click which takes them to a landing page with an opt-in form. To get the whitepaper they have to opt-in. In this situation â" very typical of online lead generation - a few of the most important metrics are:

Number of page views on the blog post

Number of clicks on the opt-in offer

Number of page views on the landing page

Number of opt-ins

Number of people that opted in that actually downloaded the free whitepaper

Using these metrics can tell you how interested your readers are in the content you're publishing. Test different opt-in offers to gauge topic interest, and when you hit on a good one, start releasing more.

Recap

Let's review the 5 lessons:

1. Go where the fish are
2. Use the right bait
3. Have a tackle box full of lures
4. Patience required
5. Keep fishing until you catch them

By using these 5 lessons you can easily increase the number of leads your website generates by 50%-100% or more.

About the Author:
Robert Dempsey is the CEO of Dempsey Marketing which specializes in direct response social media â" social media strategy with measurable results. Visit http://DempseyMarketing.com/ today to get more leads and sales using social media.

Read more Articles written by Robert Dempsey.

Trans-tangental: The Value of Off-topic Blogging Posts

2011-09-14T23:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

Brand-oriented blogs by necessity have to focus on a particular topic. People are coming to the blog because of the brand, and they want content related to the brand in most cases. Readers are creatures of habit, and routine is comfortable to them. A blog should put out on-topic content for the same reason it should update on a consistent schedule. A blog that doesn't maintain a consistent voice or message is probably not going to maintain its target audience's long-term interest, by and large for the same reason that a book that can't decide if it's an adventure story or a romance won't hold a reader's attention.

That said, there are many very good reasons to go into off-topic posting as well. Habit and routine are important, but so is variety. Creativity and a smart change of pace can make a blog more lively and keep the readers guessing. The trick is to balance the needs of on-topic commentary with the occasional bit of off-the-wall entertainment that brings some lively discussion with it.

As an example, consider a blog dedicated to political journalism. The author has a modest audience of several thousand people interested in his posts. The blog focuses on political corruption and promise-breaking, because this is the author's interest and because everyone likes a good scandal story. However, this kind of material can get relentlessly depressing over time. If the only picture being painted is upsetting, people might not check in to the blog quite as often.

So, our mysterious author occasionally breaks from form and posts some material not related to the core message of the blog at all. Every so often, mostly at random, he'll post a recipe from his travels around the world. Or he might share a YouTube link featuring a musical composition he's quite fond of. In these alternate posts, the audience gets a glimpse of the writer's personality, gaining some empathy with him and learning a bit more about the world in general.

This kind of irregular off-topic material is intriguing specifically because it isn't something that can be predicted. The audience can come back every day or every week for the content they've grown to expect, and can also come with the slight hope that maybe a new "unusual" post will come up to catch their attention.

In a similar but variant approach, there's the idea of playing with a particular theme. Say that a blog is focused on architectural disasters. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are devoted to stuff that's simply hideous and ill-advised, such as chartreuse shutters on a house painted orange, while Tuesdays and Thursdays focus on poor construction that's pretty evidently going to fall apart. The main focus of the blog is humorous, rather than serious.

To play with this theme is to write posts that come close to it, and still follow the main theme, but go at it from a different direction. For example, say our architecture blog starts a series called Silly Saturdays, where he posts images and blog entries about people who've deliberately gone a bit nuts in their construction for a funny effect such as a family that builds a treehouse in the middle of a city. Alternately, he could post a Sunday WOW blog in which he shares images and stories of houses that have truly amazing architecture, subverting the original theme. He's still focusing on the interest in architecture, but changing the pace just often enough to provide context and perspective.

In both the case of irregularly-timed, off-topic posts and those that occur regularly but only as a small part of the main content, the key is to maintain a good proportion. In both cases, the bulk of the content is focused on the key topic at hand, be it political journalism or amusing architectural decisions. This means that the "asides" are small and rare enough that they come as pleasant surprises and changes of pace. They allow the variety that keeps the mind quick and engaged, while not overpowering or distracting from the main message people are coming to enjoy.

Choosing the sort of off-topic message to go into can be tricky. Content that plays with or subverts the main message of a blog is usually easier to work into the process. It doesn't feel forced or squeezed in, because it's still touching on the main body of work while allowing for a bit of creative differentiation.

That said, instinct is usually a good thing to follow. Remember that no one can predict what kind of mood the Internet is in at any given time. Websites about cute cats, bizarre cakes even videos of pandas sneezing have gone viral for no apparent reason except a "mood" taking hold of us. If you're writing a blog and an idea that doesn't seem in-theme but still worth posting comes up, give it a try. At worst, people might wonder what the big deal is and ignore the post. Fair enough; in that case, you can return to your regularly-scheduled programming. On the other hand, it might just garner a certain amount of interest and bring in a new audience to pay attention.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more Articles written by Enzo F. Cesario.

Blog Writing - Ghostwriting Dos and Don'ts

2011-09-10T06:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

Much of the content on the web is produced by ghostwriters. This isn't immediately obvious, but it really has become a standard practice across the web as a whole, mainly because it's an efficient and reasonable compromise. Sometimes the creator of a product or website just doesn't have the written communication skills necessary to actively promote their brand via blog. Similarly, a talented writer might lack the name credibility to break into writing about something on his or her own reputation. These two talents join their resources and produce a blog in the name of the creator, but with the talents of the writer, and everyone goes home in a limousine; the writer gains valuable experience and hopefully a good recommendation when they eventually move on to other projects, and the content promotes the brand.

That said, there are still some misconceptions about ghostwriting that pop up from time to time. To that end, it can be helpful to clarify the nature of ghostwriting and how it relates to creating a high-quality blog, particularly through examples of some of the best and worst practices that can pop up when employing a ghostwriter.

Do be involved

Hiring a ghostwriter is not quite the same thing as hiring a more traditional writer. Normally a writer is employed to write something in his own name, from his own ideas and for his own purposes. Even a writer hired to convey a brand message is allowed his own identity to a certain extent. But a ghostwriter is writing on behalf of and to an extent as the name of the brand or creator of the brand.

This means that the "idea man" behind the brand needs to work very closely with the ghostwriter to discuss topics, posts and commentary. Yes, notice that commentary is included: Any good blog includes a very active comments section from which good ideas can be brought to light, and the replies of the ghostwriter to these comments must reflect the same persona he adopts as the author of the blog. This requires bouncing ideas and the nature of replies off the idea man and keeping things in theme, as it were.

Don't Micromanage

This may seem to contradict the prior point, but the two actually compliment each other. Yes, a ghostwriter must work very closely with the "name" they are writing under to make sure that the content produced is in line with the authorial vision of the brand. However, there is a reason that a brand hires a ghostwriter, and that reason is his expertise. The writer knows the way he is comfortable writing and knows how to communicate in that medium. This means that any brand that hires a ghostwriter must be comfortable bowing to his experience in the field he has chosen and listen to his advice.

The reason for this is to create consistency. Part of maintaining a good ghostwriting image is projecting a consistent voice and style of writing from issue to issue. If there is a lot of call behind the scenes to change the tone or content of a blog, the message eventually will become schizophrenic and fail to keep readers' attention because it can't stay on message.

Do consider outing your writer

This is a risky decision, but it can be a vital one. Sometimes a relationship with a ghostwriter can develop so thoroughly that it becomes obvious they need to be taken on full time. Ghostwriting is, by its nature, a tenuous and temporary relationship, but it can also serve as a sort of internship leading to long-term agreements. Perhaps the blog is incredibly successful and the writer justifiably would like a bit more recognition for his work.

This kind of announcement should be handled carefully but honestly, explaining the good work that the ghostwriter has done and the nature of the decision to bring him out in public. It will definitely have consequences; some readers are fickle and might feel upset they weren't reading the "real" thing, but in general most people will stay for the good content they have grown accustomed to.

Don't settle too fast

As mentioned, ghostwriting is a good choice for people who want a more temporary relationship. Some blogs are by nature very short-term projects, such as a blog intended to serve as advertising leading up to a particular product's launch and the immediate period after the launch. Then the blog closes down after serving its purpose, remaining online only as an archive for interested parties, if at all.

In these cases, it's important to understand the nature of ghostwriting and not force a blog past its lifespan. Let the project go as long as it needs, and then move on to another, possibly with another writer. No writer is perfect for every project, and recognizing when new talent is necessary for a project is a vital skill in getting good ghostwriters. However, this requires being up-front and fair with the writer from the beginning, and letting him or her know the temporary nature of a project. Writers often get used to working from project to project, but when they don't know that a project is going to be temporary, it can lead to them scrambling to fill the gap in their schedule.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more of Enzo F. Cesario's articles.

Beyond Expectations - Getting the Most out of Like and Share

2011-09-09T07:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

People long have loved to find new and innovative uses for the most innocuous technologies and advances. In the late 19th century, "moving pictures" were a nickel-arcade novelty. Today films such as Avatar are made on budgets comparable to military-grade hardware investments. Alexander Graham Bell's telephone could barely call from one room to another; now the average iPhone has more uses and computing power than all the computers used in World War II combined.

This trend is repeating itself with the rise of social media network marketing practices. What started as socialization programs only slightly more complex than the average e-mail client has grown into one of the newest and most promising marketing niches in the entire world. Taking advantage of this means familiarizing oneself with a few surprisingly simple concepts that have unusually far-reaching implications. In particular, marketers are finding that the "Like" and "Share" features on Facebook have become the newest and best tool in the online marketing arsenal.

We "Like" It

The "Like" function is a pretty simple one people click "Like" for things that interest them. On the surface, this seems almost irrelevant, but thinking so ignores the way Facebook operates. Taking advantage of the "Like" function is actually the key to getting good marketing opportunities out of Facebook.

When a user clicks "Like," whether on Facebook itself or through a site's Facebook plug-in, Facebook records the data and uses it in a number of ways. First, a notification is put up on the user's wall confirming the "Like." This informs other users who are familiar with the wall about the product, news item or event, giving them an opportunity to examine and potentially "Like" it as well.

Therefore, if a user has even 200 friends, which is not that great a number given the increasing inter-connectedness of online communities, that's 200 people who will see what their friend "Liked," and who will have the chance to "Like" it themselves. This is the very foundation of viral content, or content with the ability to move rapidly along through intermediate connections of hundreds of people.

Additionally, Facebook makes recommendations to users based on things they have "Liked." Thus if friend A has friend B, and friend A puts a "Like" on business C, friend B will not only get an announcement about the "Like," but may have the business recommended to them since they "Like" friend A. This is still another route of communication and an indirect marketing opportunity that requires no more effort than a simple click. Thus it is to any business' advantage to put a plug-in allowing people to "Like" them on Facebook via the businesses' site.

"Share" a Little, Gain a Lot

"Sharing" is another process which allows users to spread information about themselves and the products, news items or events they enjoy across multiple networks. This level of extra-connectedness in essence performs the same function as "Like," but with more data given which people can use to evaluate contacts and make connections.

"Like" simply gets a basic fact out there. "Share" will tell users more about each other, allowing for the kind of networking that drives modern business. It also expands the audience beyond the immediate momentary location of Facebook to other sources such as LinkedIn or Twitter. This further creates the potential for any post to go viral, allowing it to spread quickly among related yet distinct audiences.

Two-way Street

The communicative rather than broadcast model will serve marketers well in the area of "Liking" and "Sharing." Yes, it is good when users "Like" a business it drives referral traffic to the business and allows for more information to get out there. However, equally good is when a business provides "Likes" to others and for their material.

In the first, most mercenary example it will increase the business' own traffic automatically. Consider friends A and B from before. If friend A puts up a post that Business C likes for whatever reason, friend B will see the "Like." This creates another indirect marketing opportunity and referral traffic automatically. So it's clearly to a business' benefit to be active in the community and to consistently "Like" things that are interesting to the business.

Indirectly, it creates goodwill in the community. The model of the Internet is a place where people exchange ideas and information, so people respond well to good comments. If business C "Likes" friend A's post, then friend A may "Like" them in return, for reciprocity if nothing else. This can be amplified by providing well-thought-out, insightful and proper comments on various walls throughout a given Facebook community.

At its roots, Facebook "Likes" and social networking "Shares" create opportunities to be more involved, and they reward increased and thoughtful involvement more than automatic, disinterested participation. Actively read through communities touching on a brand's interests and look for the "Likes" and referrals others are following. Provide commentary for your brand, as well as for the interests of others, and people will respond out of courtesy. The brand that behaves like a human will receive human consideration, while the brand that acts like a robot will be blocked out automatically.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more of Enzo F. Cesario's articles.

Who Else Wants to Know How-To Write an Effective Advertisement?

2011-09-01T13:45:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2006-2011 Bill Platt

Webmasters struggle everyday with the question of how they should advertise their website. There are so many advertising venues; it is hard to know which is the right venue or the right combination of advertising venues.

The answer to this question is actually simple. The right venues are the ones that allow you to earn enough sales from the placement of your advertisement to make a profit. Your advertisement should earn more money for you than it cost for you to buy the advertisement.

Choose Your Words Carefully

"If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind - give it more thought." --- Dennis Roth

With advertising of any type, you must learn to choose your words carefully.

Most online advertising is in the form of a classified ad. With a newspaper, you can choose any size of advertisement to communicate your message to readers. The newspaper charges you based on the number of words in your classified ad.

Online, you don't get the option of buying additional words. Instead, you buy an ad, and the publisher tells you how many words or characters you are allowed to use in your advertisement.

Here is how the different search advertising options break down:

ExactSeek.com through the ISEDN.org network:

Headline Length: 30 characters

Description: 100 characters

Google Adwords through Google.com:

Headline Length: 25 characters

Description first line: 35 characters

Description second line: 35 characters

Overture.com through the Yahoo network:

Headline Length: 40 characters

Description: 190 characters

As you can see from these numbers, you generally do not have that much space to tell your story so you need to select words that best tell your story, using as few words as possible.

Most products or services cannot be sold in just a few words so your goal should be to get people to your website and let your website do the selling.

On your website, you can tell your story in the way it needs to be told. Your website can also answer all of the questions that the reader might have about your products or services.

Choosing The Right Formula For Your Advertising

In your own mind, you might think that people need to know all of your credentials. But, advertising should not be viewed as a "brag fest". People do not care what you have done; they only care about what you can do for them.

So tell them how you can help them and give them a reason to visit your website for more information.

If you understand why your customers buy your products and services, then you can answer their questions and help them solve any problem they might have.

If you can solve their problems, they will buy what you are selling.

Pre-Qualify Your Visitors

If you are engaged in PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising, you definitely need to pre-qualify your visitors in your advertising. Why pay for people to visit your website if they are not likely to buy what you are selling?

If you are engaged in selling wholesale products to retailers, why would you want to pay for visitors people whose sole intention is to buy one of what you are selling at retail prices? You wouldn't, would you?

Provide enough detail in your advertisement to help people make an informed judgement as to whether you can actually help them accomplish what they want to accomplish.

Give your prospect enough information to skip your advertisement, if he or she will not benefit from your offer.

Even if you are using other types of advertising like pay-for-inclusion, you will still want to pre-qualify your visitors, because if you don't, it will skew your website conversion numbers. Too many unqualified visitors to your website might give you the erroneous idea that your sales copy is not performing as well as it should.

Use Power Words In Your Advertising

"Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in a few words." --- Aprocrypha

Copywriters are always talking about "power words" or "power phrases". These are word combinations that influence the reader to take an action.

One example of using power words in your copy is to substitute the word "children" for the word "kids". Parents are more influenced by the reference to children than they are by the reference to kids.

"Guaranteed" is another power word. It gives your reader an added incentive to buy what you are selling. Prospects take comfort in the idea that if they discover later that they have made a bad decision, they can always get their money back.

"Proven" is another power word. It tells your reader that you can back up what you are saying with "proof". Your prospect can see "scientific" or empirical "evidence" that you are telling the "truth". These are more power words for the person who is paying attention.

Power words attract attention, spur reader curiosity and compel readers to take the action that you want them to take.

Pay More Attention To Your Headline

The 25 to 40 characters that are available to you for your headline are the most important part of your advertisement, hands down.

On most websites, the headline is in bold print. The truth is your prospect will not see your description at all, if their attention is not captured first by your headline.

"Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood." --- William Penn

Test and Track Your Results

If you do not take the time or effort to track your advertising, you will never know what is, or is not, working for you.

Set up different landing pages for your ads to determine which ads are producing results and which ads are failing to deliver on their promise.

This one step will save you more money than you can imagine. It will allow you to dump the dogs and build upon your successes.

Shades Of Gray

Ad tracking will enable you to pinpoint the effect of the slightest changes in wording and presentation.

Changing one word in your headline or description could make the difference between selling one unit and selling 500 units, but without a tracking system that might never be apparent.

Let's compare two headlines:

* Read Our Wealth Tips,

* Read Our Wealth Secrets.

Which of these two headlines is more compelling to you?

Do you see how much of a difference one word can make in your copy?

Play around with your copy to find text that is more likely to compel your reader to visit your website.

The words you use in your copy can make all of the difference in the world.

Stand Above Your Competition

The PPC advertising companies are going to hate me for telling you this, but you don't need top placement in their search advertising results, if your ad is written better than the ads of your competitors.

The company with the most compelling headline is going to draw the attention of the reader. It's not uncommon for the advertisement in position five or six to get the click because of a compelling headline and an attention grabbing description.

Fortunately for you, most of your competitors probably do not understand how to write an effective advertisement. This will allow you to quickly jump to the head of the class without spending more money for those higher spots in the PPC bidding process.

Start Small and Take Care With Your Advertising Budget

When you are testing new advertising copy, you should start small. You don't want to spend $1 a click in a pay-per-click advertising venue, using an advertisement that hasn't been tested or proven successful. To do otherwise is a waste of valuable resources.

Google Adwords ( http://adwords.google.com ) and Yahoo's Overture ( http://www.overture.com ) systems both require you to start your bidding at five cents a click.

At http://www.7search.com , you can buy advertising for as little as one cent per click.

At http://www.ExactSeek.com, the founding member of the ISEDN (http://www.ISEDN.org), you can build an ad around a specific keyword phrase for as little as $12 per quarter or $36 per year. Your ad is then displayed through more than 200 ISEDN member websites.

After You Have Mastered The Art Of Advertising...

After you have mastered the art and science of advertising, you will learn the most important lesson of all.

All venues can produce exceptional results, if you have written a compelling and effective advertisement.

When you write effective advertising copy, you will be able to convert anyone's traffic into sales.

About the Author:
If you want to learn how to make article marketing effective and profitable for the promotion of your online business, you will be able to locate several article marketing training guides at http://WritingPuzzle.com/ If you are looking for an article syndication service company to help you promote your online articles, explore http://thephantomwriters.com/ which has been providing article marketing services since 2001. Bill Platt is the owner of both of these web properties.

Follow @contentmanager on Twitter.

Four Types of Blogs and How To Use Them

2011-09-01T02:45:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

Blogging clearly has arrived and is here to stay, according to the buzzword-slinging set. It's the "next big thing" or the "wave of the future" - even a "revolution." Still, most of the people commenting on the blogging trend aren't sure exactly what it is, how it works or even what the different kinds of blogs are. Blogging already has taken a myriad of forms. Born when dial-up was still the standard, it came of age during the rise of broadband and now its text-based roots are giving way to podcasts and video blogging. To that end, here are a handful of blogging types and what sets them apart from the others.

Type 1 - Classic/Personal

This most basic blog type harkens back to the earliest days of Livejournal. These blogs serve as simple, personal accounts of thoughts and experiences. They're records of the user's life, things that interest him or appeal to her. They can record personal journeys both physical and mental, as in the case of blogging an exciting road trip or a reader's attempt to get through the entire canon of a particular author.

Brand It: The real value of personal blogs is twofold. In our increasingly online culture, people have expressed feelings of isolation and disconnect from society. Thus, the thirst for personal information and details is growing. People want to hear personal stories from folks they are interested in, and these blogs give them a window into the humanity of others. Secondly, personal blogs that persist more than a year or two grow over time, maturing with the author. They change focus and grow more refined as time goes on, allowing the readers to have a sense of growing along with the subject of their reading. Thus, personal blogs can serve to help an established or even a growing brand make a personal connection right with its audience.

Type 2 - The Watchblog

It has been mentioned before, but blogging has some of the greatest potential to undermine corruption and totalitarianism ever seen. During the recent elections in Iran, bloggers brought out stories of abuse and corruption. Bloggers and their quick dissemination of information have exposed stories of police brutality, corporate misconduct and government gaffes overnight. There are entire blogs dedicated to exactly this kind of effort, carrying nothing but stories that expose the indefensible actions of those who cannot abide in a lawful society.

Brand It: The real power of this kind of blog in brand building is in the building up of public trust. Trust is fundamental to all business and branding. If there's no trust in a brand, people simply won't buy. Thus, people who expose breaches of this trust gain a certain level of credibility themselves. Similarly, this kind of blog can promote good conduct as well as expose bad conduct, creating a web of trusted providers that becomes mutually validating and prosperous.

Type 3 - Satire and Snark

Laughter is all-powerful. If a man argues with his opponent, he grants that opponent a certain level of respect; obviously the two viewpoints must be equal, or at least commensurate, or there would be no argument. However, if a man can get people to laugh at his opponent, then there need be no argument ridicule does the work for him. Such is the power of a satirical blog. Whether done through biting and clever writing, simple sarcastic commentary or just posting ridiculous videos of politicians who betray their own ignorance, this kind of blog allows people to laugh at the matters presented and bring out a message by implication rather than overt pounding.

Brand It: One of the most powerful tools available in the world of blogging is the ability to laugh at oneself. People who have a sense of humor about their own failings are often conversely taken quite seriously. Point out a foible or two that popped up in recent meetings. Discuss hilarious absurdities in your industry. Take a famous mistake your advertising department made and have a laugh at it. Harness peoples' desire to laugh, and you will genuinely have an audience worth keeping.

Type 4 - Interviewing

This is where blogging best shows its roots in classic journalism. An interview with an authority on some subject lends credibility to an article, and builds trust in the publication. As said above, people want to hear what others are thinking; they want that connection with the world around them. Having a more human element, interviews can provide this connection if handled well.

Brand it: The trick with interview-oriented blogs is to keep the material interesting for your audience. If a blog focusing on fashionable apparel were to interview an engineer on the scientific stresses that go into clothing fibers and manufacturing, most of the audience would probably fall asleep. On the other hand, if that same engineer were to explain in simple terms that the use of one fiber allows for thinner thread and thus smaller seams, and show the difference in two fashion photo spreads, that might interest the target audience more.

A Last Thought - It was touched on only briefly, but always remember that the blog is driven by audience expectations as much as by the focus of the brand itself. The brand exists in the mind of the audience or it doesn't exist, so the blog must reflect that in tone and content. It's also advisable to pick a type or even mix among the types in order to best capture these expectations, rather than choosing a type based solely on the projections of the brand.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more Articles written by Enzo F. Cesario.

Tips for Escaping Writer's Block

2011-08-31T08:00:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

Most writers will experience at least some form of writer's block in the course of their efforts. It takes different forms for various people, as evidenced by the many expressions used to explain it.

"I don't have any ideas."

"Everything I write sounds stupid."

"I just can't get motivated."

At the root of it, most writer's block comes from fear or at least from uncertainty. Writing is like any other art - the writer must create something that will go out before the public for examination. This is a personal process, and carries with it the risk of rejection. Any artist can understand the fear of being mocked for his or her hard work, and it's equally understandable that this would intimidate some people into hesitating when the time comes to write.

Before going much further, it must be said that there is no cure for writer's block â" those who suffer it push through to the other side with sheer willpower. The writer must exercise his or her judgment and forge ahead. Be that as it may, there are a number of techniques that can help rally a writer's determination in order to bring them forward through the wall of fear and into the realm of joyful writing.

Technique #1 - Stand on Giants' Shoulders

One of the most common instances of writer's block comes when writing on a subject that many people have covered before. The fear is that there is nothing new to contribute to the matter, that anything additional would seem superfluous.

One technique, popularized in the movie Finding Forrester, is to search out similar writings on the subject by other authors. When a writer finds a piece they particularly like, they borrow a line or two from the author, and try to write further material from there. Once they hit their stride, they move on and produce an article entirely their own.

Note that last proviso in the technique â" this is not permission to plagiarize. The original author's contribution is simply to provide a starting point to the creative process, not to add anything to the final article. Once the process begins, the author must write his own work and not use anything from the original article unless he is willing to include it as a sourced quotation.

Technique #2 - Write in Bursts

Sometimes the psychological effects of writer's block feel like a weight. Sitting down and writing becomes burdensome and exhausting, and wears the writer out as surely as heavy exercise.

In these cases, it can be counterproductive to try and write everything at once. Instead, the writer should sit down and try to write to a certain goal, say 200 words. If she hits her goal, she should try and keep writing. If she cannot reach it or takes unusually long to do so, she should stop for five minutes and do something else. Listen to music, eat a tasty snack or read something enlightening â" then try again. These repeated small attacks on the subject will help wear it down without it seeming quite so massive.

Technique #3 - Shut Down the Editor

An in-process version of writer's block was explained by Chris Baty, the creator of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Baty argues that many writers sabotage their productivity by constantly self-editing and self-criticizing as they work, spending more time correcting what's already been put down than putting out new copy.

The idea Baty suggests is to turn off this inner editor and write constantly without correction. The article will still be there when the writer finishes, so it can be corrected at the end rather than throughout the process. This allows writers to focus on the primary effort of creating their work rather than getting distracted.

Technique #4 - Write Backward

Another symptom of writer's block is feeling that writing has become routine and less enjoyable than it used to be. The process is always the same, and has become predictable and stagnant. The solution is to change the order of how one approaches things.

Instead of working from the introduction, through the body and to a conclusion, the writer should work on the conclusion first. Write up a spot-on end topic to the piece, then fill in the rest accordingly. A story writer could begin with the ending chapter, and then write the rest out of order in a Tarantino-style kind of time-play. Whatever specific way it's done, the idea is to approach writing from a different direction in order to awaken its enjoyment factor anew.

Technique #5 - Don't Write, Speak

A lot of focus has been made lately on the technique of writing the way one speaks. Instead of dividing the mind between writing and speaking, one simply writes AS one speaks, getting the material down in a more authentic way. This may not always be appropriate, but it's rarely completely out of place.

The idea is to avoid complicated sentences that reference back to parenthetical clauses and other assorted specialized writing hang-ups. The focus changes to short and direct language, with a clear message and point to each line.

This doesn't mean to include every verbatim tic of a writer's speaking style. "Ums" and "ahs" must, of course, be excised, since they don't add anything to the subject.

In short, writer's block doesn't have to be terrifying. There's always a way around it, and with a little force of will any writer can see that it isn't a brick wall so much as a cloth sewn to look like one.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more of Enzo F. Cesario's articles.

Once More, With Feeling: Producing Consistent, Quality Blog Content

2011-08-30T10:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

Quality is a key element in good blogging. If the material isn't interesting, it isn't going to be read. Of course, there are different standards of what is interesting. Some people find the day-to-day tweets of a celebrity interesting, while others can't get worked up about anything other than a discussion over literature that more closely resembles a bare-knuckle brawl than academic discourse.

The celebrity effect can be discounted it isn't necessarily that Lady Gaga or Stephen Fry's tweets are composed in a particular way. It's the careers these stars have had and the interest in what such a career celebrity is saying that draws the people. Since most writers (and in particular most bloggers) are not cult celebrities, the focus on quality content is a safe focus to assume.

But what is it that makes content quality? How does one get those good ideas and, more importantly, convey them week after week with a steady updating schedule?

Worth Arguing Over

A good idea is one people can take sides on. Talk radio is based on this premise, as is the modern media system. Controversy sells brands like nothing else in this world. Rockstar Games doesn't mind that parenting organizations despise its popular Grand Theft Auto series the controversy generated by people arguing over the merits of the game is free advertising, release after release.

So pick ideas that people can have an argument, or at least a spirited discussion, over. This involves including concrete details whenever possible. Don't argue over "Obama's healthcare plan;" rather, pick a specific portion of the plan and state why you are for or against it, with supporting reasoning. Then, encourage the discussion. Respond to those who disagree with you. Promote and highlight arguments over key points. Cater to peoples' innate need to share their views.

Watch Videos, Share Videos

Embedding videos from assorted hosting sites is absolutely no work at all. Most video places include blog-embedding code so people can do this very thing, and there's no reason at all not to do so.

Providing a good video is a mental shortcut that can help foster high quality content. If someone makes an insightful video on a topic, including it can provide good discussion and your actual blog entry can be an overview of the thoughts the video brings up. Alternatively, this is a good way to find someone with faulty ideas and provide a correction to their premises, again point by point. Entire blogs and video blogs have been made on the concept of lampooning or correcting the fallacies in other videos, so by no means should you ignore this potential feeding ground.

Participate in Other Blogs

Your blog should have a list of other blogs you visit, and you should be an active commenter on those blogs under your own name. This is free advertising, particularly if you include a link to your blog in your username. This is a common practice, and isn't spam. However, mentioning your blog and shoehorning it into every little conversation even if the topic under discussion is not on your blog at all IS spam, and will be received poorly.

And other blogs are great places to find ideas, particularly if these blogs are full of great discussion and content. Someone might share a good idea that you can bring over to your blog and write your thoughts about (of course including a link back to the original blog). A writer might say something you particularly agree with or vehemently oppose, but either way, if it gets you thinking, you now have something to blog about.

Resist the Urge to Navel Gaze

Some blogs take a turn for the surreal and super insightful. Sometimes this works, but often it does not. In his posthumously-published autobiography, comedian George Carlin discussed how his career went from performing at high-class clubs with playful character comedy to a bizarre retro-hippy style in which he discussed topics as banal as belly button lint. He described the latter period as one of the worst in his career, where people had essentially designated him as a historical curiosity to be forgotten.

This isn't to say a blog should ignore topics of interest to the blogger. If you aren't interested in your work, it will show and the content will suffer. However, it is an admonition to pay attention to your audience. Think about where the idea came from. If the idea is genuinely your own, then do feel free to test it out. However, don't ignore the reaction if the interest is not there, chalk it up as an experiment and move on. If the audience does latch on, feel free to run with it.

Ideas that come from outside sources often are more interesting to work with. Your own material is important, but connect it to thoughts and concepts others are sharing. In short, build that bridge between your thoughts and theirs, rather than trying to bury them in your own disconnected speculations.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more Articles written by Enzo F. Cesario.

Yes You Can Judge a Book By Its Cover: Blog Design Considerations

2011-08-28T00:00:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

Many of us have an almost childlike desire to have ideas judged on their own merits rather than on their presentation. We imagine it would be nice if every idea could be heard out for the validity of its claims instead of judged by the merits or flaws of the messenger. But in practice, none of us actually believes this. When is the last time you actually appreciated the look of a spinning .gif? Has Comic Sans font actually ever made you stop and look more closely at an article? Can you honestly say that a mingled mash of very bright colors doesn't put you off of a website?

All right, so these are perhaps extreme examples, but they do illustrate the point that appearance is still considered important. And not all examples are so cut and dried; sometimes the text is just too small and poorly-spaced to read properly, the lack of pictures makes a site too text-dense, the color tone is just subtly off in a way that looks unpleasant and drives off potential readers or all the images and videos are on the front page, making it take excessively long to load.

Paying attention to appearance and to some basic web and blog design elements can make the visit to your blog more enjoyable for your audience and help you retain those vital traffic numbers.

First, the Background

The website your blog is on should adhere to some basic web design principles. After all, you don't want people to click away from an unappealing site before they get to your life-changing content, do you?

First, pick a reasonable color scheme. Sharply contrasting tones are a good start. Black text on a white background is highly visible, if a bit dull, and can be seen as a reliable standby. Background colors should be in shades complimentary to the primary tones. Consider the default settings of the WordPress site, for example. The primary fields are white, with other colors in grays and pale blues that compliment the overall look but still subtly convey a sense of where everything is. Important functions such as social media sharing tabs, links and scroll bars are in more vivid blues to easily set them apart.

Keep special touches to a minimum. Simple effects are nice, such as a straightforward and brief fade-in for your text. If, on the other hand, every single word has to fly in letter by letter with a cute sound effect, you may lose some audiences to impatience. If you must include effects, make them simple and integrated rather than attention grabbing. Also, keep sizes reasonably large for ease of sight, but not so big they would require a lot of scrolling on the average notebook computer.

Blog Design, Front and Center

There are many ways to organize the content of a blog, but, as always, using a few best principles will help you get the most out of your content.

First, remember that the goal of the blog is to convey information. It cannot do that buried in back pages, so whether your blog is the whole site or a part of a larger site, pertinent information must be on the front page, prominently displayed. The headlines should be links into the body of the articles, and of a size that makes them easy to pay attention to without overwhelming the page with absurdly large text.

One key is to make liberal use of the "more" function. Also called a jumpcut, this is essentially a trick similar to the way news shows keep peoples' attention throughout the broadcast. The front page of the site should have a number of very small posts, consisting of the blog headline, a few lines or a paragraph of introductory text, and then a tab that says "more," "keep reading" or something of that nature. The rest of the article content is accessed behind this link.

The jumpcut is a good tool because it allows you to show a great deal of content that is easy to browse. Use the newspaper-writing trick of getting a short summary of your article out in front of people so they can quickly decide which articles to follow. Putting the whole article on the front page stretches it out needlessly and makes it harder to scroll through and select articles of quality, particularly for new readers coming to your blog after it's been around a while.

Finally, make sure it's easy to navigate your blog content. Each blog should be tagged by content, and there must be a panel to navigate articles by tags. These tags are a great place to integrate SEO keywords, by the way choose tags that are trending high in adwords if you can. There should be a best-of panel showing favorite or highly popular blog posts as well as a search function.

As ever, engage in good linking practices as well, with links to other blogs that are relevant to the content you provide, prominently-displayed but not particularly large. Keep it to five or six links you feel are particularly relevant, with a short summary on each.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more of Enzo F. Cesario's articles.

Blog Writing Tips - Where to Find Great Guest Posters

2011-08-25T05:00:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

One of the best ways to keep a fresh angle in blogging is the guest blogger. They can provide good content, take some of the work load off the primary blogger and can bring new perspectives and ideas that the parent blogger can follow up on in later posts as he or she sees fit. Guest blogging also promotes inter-community relations, resulting in shared links and audiences, and can bring together previously unrelated audiences who find they share interests. It may not be for everyone, but those who embrace guest posting have a lot going for them.

So where, exactly, does one find these mysterious guest posters?

Guest #1 The Ascended Commenter
An active and successful blog should have an equally active comments section. Comments are a great way to gauge the level of interest a group has in the message of a blog. Sometimes a blog post will spawn a series of comments that end up being as or even more enriching than the blog itself, including links to other sites and videos that further expand on the message.

Some commenters are active, regular members of the community and consistently provide very good and insightful material on a number of topics. Those who participate in all the best discussions and are always there to provide discussion on the topics raised are a prime source for good guest-posting material.

If you have such a gem of a commenter, contact them and ask them if they'd be interested in writing up a guest post. Give them all the guidelines and style rules your publication uses, and of course draft-check their work to make sure it fits the needs of the site, but definitely recruit your commenters into your service. This will have the two-fold effect of creating guest posts and improving the quality of commentary in the blog as a whole. As guests see they can be invited to post, they will be encouraged to become more active if they want to do the same.

Guest # 2 Fellow Bloggers
Many blogs provide cross-links to other blogs who discuss the same or similar issues. Blogs on cooking provide links to other blogs on cooking, or to blogs on cookware and appliances, and so on. Bloggers exercising good blogging judgment also go to their colleagues' blogs and participate in the comments sections as well.

Just like inviting in a member of the commentary team, calling in a fellow blogger is a great idea. As mentioned, it encourages cross-promotion of both blogs. Even though the audiences of the publications may not overlap 100 percent, each will at least see some benefit as visitors from the other blog come by to have a look. At least some will subscribe, and that's a big overall goal.

One of the best ways to arrange this is to propose a swap. Both bloggers trade posts for a day, so that both can get the benefit of the exchange. Additionally, try to focus on bloggers with a similar but slightly different focus. The idea is to get new information out there, after all.

Guest #3 The Celebrity
People like big names; there's really no getting around it and no shame in it. Experts are good at what they do, and good at it for a reason. If our aforementioned cooking blog is able to get an authority figure with a big name in the community to post, they really should take advantage of the opportunity.

Celebrities are often hard to get ahold of, but not impossible. They are people, too, and they often have interests that they like to follow. Sometimes it requires contacting their agent or handler, but it can be rewarding to a blog to have a star pop on and offer some advice on the topic at hand.

On the other hand, such a post should stick firmly to the message at hand. Making it a chance for the celeb to simply promote his new cause or book might distract from the goal of the blog, and nobody wants that.

Guest #4 A Polite Opponent
There is a benefit in bringing aboard someone whose views differ from those of the core audience for the blog. The most important mode of discussion for the web today is dialog. People want to talk, they want to learn and be heard. Unfortunately, the largest mode of dialog is argument and flaming, and very little gets accomplished in this circumstance.

On the other hand, if a blog has taken a principled and reasonable stand on a topic, chances are they have an open-minded yet critical commenter or "rival" whose views differ from their own. This is common in philosophy- and politics-oriented publications.

In these cases, consider contacting a rival and asking for an exchange of views. This may seem a bit odd, but it really can make all the difference. It will show both parties that the other side is willing to talk and reason about things. It will give both audiences a sense of pride in their chosen blogger. It will create a greater dialog and benefit the web as a whole and, if handled properly, it will almost always be a hit and generate a great deal of discussion. Take the risk and see if a civil exchange of conflicting ideas is right for your blog.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

A Hard Look at PPC, Click Fraud and the Alternatives

2011-08-23T08:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2006-2011 Bill Platt

With the creation of the Overture and Google Adwords systems, many webmasters believed they had finally hit the mother lode. It was no longer necessary for small online businesses to invest large amounts of money into Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to gain high search rankings in the natural search results.

Even webmasters committed to SEO campaigns began to realize its fleeting nature. Given frequent search engine algorithm changes, optimizing a website was no guarantee that in 6 months or less it wouldn't be back to square one and page twenty of the search results.

PAY-PER-CLICK SEARCH ENGINE (PPCSE) PLACEMENT

With the advent of the PPCSE model created by Overture, and followed by Google Adwords, webmasters felt like they had finally found the level playing field that everyone talks about. Hiring a SEO company was no longer necessary to crack the top search engine results. A Page One placement could be purchased and often for far less than the cost of a SEO company's services.

Webmasters discovered that they could get traffic to their website for as little as one cent per click.

Pay-per-click, however, has evolved over the last 5 years and not to the benefit of most webmasters. Although five cents is currently the average starting bid price at most major search engines, many sought after keyword terms can cost as much as $30 - $50 per click. Given the increasingly competitive nature of PPC advertising and spiraling costs, many small- to medium- sized businesses today might be better served hiring a good SEO company to search optimize their websites.

WHO IS CLICKING YOUR PAY-PER-CLICK LINKS?

There are four types of people who click on pay-per-click ads. Knowing who these people are helps explain why experts keep telling us that 20% to 25% of all clicks on PPC listings are "fraudulent clicks".

Personality Type #1: True-Blue Prospects

These are the people for whom you have placed your pay-per-click ads. They see your advertisement; they like what they see; and they click your link to see if you can actually serve their needs.

Personality Type #2: Accidental Clickers

Every once in a while, even my finger misfires, and I click an advertisement that I did not intend on clicking. My first thought is usually, "Oh no...", and my first action is to find the back button.

I didn't mean to cost that person money by clicking his advertisement... but I did. It was an accident. Now, the advertiser has to pay for my mistake. That bites.

Personality Type #3: Jealous Competitors

I would like to think that all of my, and your, competitors are fine, upstanding people. And most of them are. But, there are some who are not, and they click on pay-per-click links just to be spiteful or just to cost their business rivals a few dollars.

Believe it or not, a good percentage of "fraudulent clicks" are believed to be clicks perpetrated by people against their competitors.

Personality Type #4: True-Blue Fraudsters

Not that long ago pay-per-click providers realized that there was tremendous opportunity in offering small website owners a method for cashing in on their limited traffic.

Today, a webmaster can go to any number of pay-per-click services, add a small piece of code to a webpage and start serving paid advertising the same day. Webmasters thus become revenue share partners with the PPC provider, splitting revenues with the PPC provider for each click.

Ethical webmasters, of course, put the needs of their advertisers first and focus on putting eyeballs on their website so that visitors can click on the advertising links.

But, the word "ethical" doesn't exist in the vocabulary of some webmasters. These are the "true-blue fraudsters" who believe in making "revenue at any cost... no matter who might be hurt by their actions." They devise schemes to have their own ads clicked in order to drive up their revenue share.

These webmasters, although a minority, are responsible for the vast majority of fraudulent clicks. And, they are the same people that should be taken out behind the barn, for a good old-fashioned flogging --- one lashing for each stolen dollar would be fine with me.

THE UNSEEN COSTS OF THE PAY-PER-CLICK SEARCH GAME

If the experts are correct in estimating that 25% of all clicks are fraudulent, then you are paying out 33% more than you should have to pay to get your business.

If you are converting PPCSE clicks-to-sales at a rate of $20 per transaction, then you should be aware that your actual conversion rate for non-PPCSE advertising would cost you an average of $15 per transaction. By escaping the pay-per-click search engine model, you could in effect make an additional $5 per transaction by cutting the fraud out of your marketing budget.

Personally, I would rather not pay the pay-per-click mafia the $5 a transaction that they are exacting against pay-per-click advertisers.

WHERE MY ADVERTISING MONEY WORKS BEST

I have always gained the best bang for my buck with pay-for-placement advertising. In a nutshell, I pay a monthly, quarterly or yearly fee to have my advertising seen on various websites. Banner advertising is always an option, but text links provide better click-through rates (CTR's).

At any one time, you can find links to my websites on dozens of other websites.

Here are a few examples of pay-for-placement, often referred to as "paid inclusion", advertising networks:

ISEDN.org Network:
( http://www.ISEDN.org )

The Independent Search Engine and Directory Network (powered by ExactSeek.com) is comprised of more than 200 specialty search engines, search directories and article directories. Through their system, you can buy quarterly or yearly top ten exposure (http://www.exactseek.com/featured_listings.html) for specific keyword phrases which are then shown through the ISEDN's 200 plus member websites. Their network claims to show paid inclusion ads 150 million times per month.

Pricing starts at $4 per month per keyword phrase and goes down according to the number of keyword phrases purchased. Quarterly and yearly rates for one keyword phrase are $12 and $36, respectively.

AdBrite Advertising provides access to a large network of independent publishers who are willing to let you advertise on their websites: http://www.adbrite.com/

BraveNet Media Network is the number one provider of free web tools in the world ( http://www.bravenetmedianetwork.com/ ), their network serves over 500 million page views per month.

WHO LEFT THE BARN DOOR OPEN?

We put locks and deadbolts on our doors. In some localities, we put bars on our windows. We keep our valuables in safes. We keep our cars locked when we are not in them. We are a nation obsessed with protecting our valuables.

And yet, when we advertise our online businesses, we seem to be willing to let PPCSE providers steal 25% of our advertising budget? It boggles the mind.

Personally, I am done with PPCSE companies until they can assure me that my advertising dollars are protected from click fraud.

I have always relied on my own search engine optimization skills to strengthen my natural search results. And frankly, I am pretty good at it.

And, to supplement my own SEO efforts and organic search result placement successes, or lack thereof, paid inclusion currently offers me the best value for my money.

About the Author:
If you want to learn how to make article marketing effective and profitable for the promotion of your online business, you will be able to locate several article marketing training guides at http://WritingPuzzle.com/ If you are looking for an article syndication service company to help you promote your online articles, explore http://thephantomwriters.com/ which has been providing article marketing services since 2001. Bill Platt is the owner of both of these web properties.

Follow Bill Platt on Twitter.

Making Corporate Blogging Credible

2011-08-23T04:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

Most blogs are personal. Blogging's beginnings are closely associated with personal sites such as livejournal. Thus, blogs have tended to center around a single personality, and that person's emphases and interests. But as more and more people come to understand the power of a blog for leveraging client interest, that trend is changing. Corporations in particular now are taking part in the blogging scene, given that in many cases companies with blogs tend to attract half again as much traffic as sites without them.

Still, there is a sense of cynicism about corporations in the world. The greedy advertisers, the soulless profiteers these images tend to stick with people even when they aren't necessarily appropriate. Corporate blogs need to stop catering to this mindset, as well. Blogging is about communication. It is a dynamic medium. (That's why blogging software comes with a comments function.) Yet so many corporations just use it as another type of newsletter or circular, not really taking advantage of the chance to break out and take advantage of the blogging ethos the way it was intended. So what are some ways a corporation can make its blog more credible?

First, Do No Advertising
Specifically, a blog should avoid the trap of trying to directly market things. Announcements must be limited to the main site, and advertisements are for the marketing department. The blog is about communication with the readers readers who are tired of constantly being marketed to. Keep the direct marketing out of the blog.

This isn't to say you must be silent about big projects. If your company gets a hot new app or is able to offer a really big new consumer service, it would make no sense to go utterly quiet about it. However, a blog is a tool for commentary as much as it is a presentation. Provide analysis, not advertisements. Explain a specific thing you find worthwhile about the new tool rather than regurgitating promotional materials. Share a story about last year's corporate retreat and the effect it had. As a rule of thumb, give your readers something to discuss rather than something that reads like an announcement.

Stay on Message
Personal blogs can sometimes get away with scattered topics, but a corporate blog needs to establish some editorial guidelines. People come to a corporate blog for messages and discussion about the products and services the corporation is providing. A computer programming blog shouldn't diverge too far afield, and a blog focusing on luxury lifestyles should always have content about high-class homes and parties.

Be Personal
This might seem like it clashes with the previous point, but in reality the two work together quite well. Once you have a message to stay on topic about, then you can focus on developing a distinct personality within that message. This is a large part of developing the conversation with your readers, for a number of reasons.

Let's take our luxury lifestyles blog. We'll assume it has two regular contributors and one monthly correspondent. The content is very clearly defined; contributors Allan and Becca must consistently talk about fine living from the perspective of luxury homes, and the correspondent covers social events. Within these guidelines, however, is room aplenty for specialization. Allan might have a passion for kitchen design and the ways it can make fine living so enjoyable, while Becca could have an abiding interest in architectural layout and the way it affects people's quality of life. The social events writer probably has a passion as well, like a desire to focus on parties more than fundraisers. These areas of specialty allow them to let their own personalities shine through while still adhering to the editorial mandate of the blog.

Prepare to Talk
As mentioned repeatedly, blogging is about eliciting commentary, and this will include comments of every stripe. You'll receive enthusiastic praise, well-reasoned criticism, insightful asides and more than your fair share of trolls, spam bots and the like.

This is why it is important to make an actual policy for comments that will be published on your blog. Having a policy in place ahead of time is a good way to avoid the criticisms and missteps that often plague bloggers unused to the, shall we say, frank commentary that the web can provide.

The best default is toward free speech. Allow people to comment mostly freely, within some clearly defined guidelines. Patent "trolling," such as posts that say genuinely hateful or bigoted things or are intended simply to start an argument can be safely moderated away. However, allow people to post disagreements and disputes, and make it a point to respond directly to these. In fact, give disputes higher priority for comment, since responding to your detractors politely and clearly can give you a measure of credibility that simply sharing information with your admirers will not. That said, do not neglect your fan base either show them you care about their interests by responding to their thoughts, as well.

Some Final Thoughts
Blogging is not a science it is much more of an art. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not, and all too often it goes off into strange places we weren't prepared for. Give some thought to this, and accept that a little oddness is the price of working on the web. Be willing to relax and let your personality shine through, and you should be fine.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Blog Writing Tips: Keeping Content Fresh

2011-08-22T08:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

Content may be king, but to torture a metaphor somewhat, even the most brilliant crown can grow tarnished. Generating good content isn't always an easy thing, and it requires a great deal of effort to avoid getting into rote postings and halfhearted content that isn't of the quality a blog and its audience deserve.

A lot already has been written about the common mistakes bloggers can make. Text walls, keyword cipher content, bland posts on stuff that's been covered before these things are not good. But simply pointing out what not to do isn't very helpful. After all, anyone can "not do" certain things. But as any fiction writer worth the name will say, listing and focusing on all the things one isn't going to do results in one not doing anything at all. There has to be a positive focus and some manner of a goal. To that end, what are some of the things bloggers can do to keep their content fresh and interesting?

Step 1 Alternate Angles

Keeping content interesting doesn't necessarily always involve doing something completely and utterly unrelated. It can, instead, involve taking a new approach to the tried-and-true material at hand, and coming at it from a new direction that brings together previous posts in a different way.

For example, consider a blog focused on consumer advocacy and customers' rights. The main focus of the blog could be on specific instances of consumer abuse, such as dangerous products or other examples of corporate irresponsibility. This is an example of a highly-specialized blog with a narrow intent.

However, posting all the time about corporate abuses might get disheartening both to the writer and the reader so the blogger should try introducing a post series on corporate hijinks that are more hilarious than harmful. A practical example of this is the Cake Wrecks blog; while the main content is specifically focused on truly terrible cake designs, the blog also features a "Sunday Sweets" post series focusing on cakes done particularly well.

Step 2 Fresh Faces

There is a lot of debate in the blogging community about the value of guest posters. Without going into all the assorted arguments, the fact is that if a blogger trusts someone enough to let them submit a post for publication, it can be a valuable tool for a number of reasons.

Guest posters offer several opportunities for the experienced blogger. They can establish networking options between the audiences of the respective writers, particularly if drawn between blogs. If drawn from the comments section, they can give the blog audience something to aspire to and more reason to become active with the blog. In the special event that a blogger can get a big name in the field to write a post, the credibility and prestige of the blog generally benefits as well.

Step 3 Cause Crusades

Many of the more successful blogs touch on some manner of major social issues. Consumer advocacy, personal rights, political freedoms each of these topics is the subject of major discourse in the world at large. Many people in a blogger's audience probably want to do something to help out with a cause, but they aren't sure how. They might not know how to check out a nonprofit's credentials the way a savvy fundraising blogger might, or might not know specific organizations related to their personal cause of choice.

Blogs are a great force in the field of micro-transaction fundraising. If a blog has even 5,000 followers and can convince them to donate 50 cents apiece on average, that translates to $2,500 in real dollars raised. That money can pay for quite a few things, be it advertising space, medical procedures or even a research grant for a small lab doing vital inquiry. As an example, consider the success of Penny Arcade, which leveraged its extensive comic and blog audience's goodwill to create a charity dedicated to giving sick children as many games and reading materials as they could. It's one of the fastest growing charities in history, and started as "just an idea."

Step 4 Evading Ennui

Sometimes there isn't any way to get around the fact that a specific topic is played out. Be it the activities of a certain politician, a specific corporate scandal or even a general topic such as free speech, people eventually get tired of writing and reading the same material. Sometimes no new news stories come up, or there isn't any fresh information to cover.

In such cases, it's perfectly acceptable to switch topics. Perhaps the topic change need not be exceptionally drastic. Consider the earlier example of a consumer advocacy blog. Perhaps there simply are no new or funny stories to cover that won't seem boring or rehashed. This might be the time to discuss the theory of the blog, the "why" angle behind the matter. Our blogger could write a post explaining his or her personal experiences with corporate indifference, or discuss the good that consumer advocacy has done for people in the past.

Other times, the change could be as drastic as can be. Maybe a blogger just enjoys a particular band or bit of music, and writes an entirely personal post sharing the music and how they came to love it. The readers get a personal connection, and the blogger can let his mind work on the big problems again.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more of Enzo F. Cesario's articles.

Blog Management - Go Blog Wild

2011-08-13T00:00:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

Maintaining a blog is about much more than simply presenting the latest news in the life of a person or a brand. A good blog is about conveying the writer's personality and interests to his audience. To that end, the comments section should be one of the liveliest parts of a blog. In addition, there should be an array of links available to promote similar or interesting sites for the readers, and the content should be on-topic and creative.

One of the most interesting things about the web is the ease with which people can organize events. Flash mobs are a great example of this: A quick handful of tweets or SMS messages, and kids show up at a public school to perform an elaborate dance routine in protest against bullying. Blogging can take advantage of this same phenomenon, using the web to advocate causes or interests that appeal to their readers, increasing readership by making waves in the online pool.

Blog-a-Thon

The original signature blogging event, and likely the one that did the most work in bringing blogging to the mainstream that it now enjoys, Blog-a-Thon is an annual, 24-hour event. Bloggers sign up, then write posts continuously for 24 hours in order to raise money for charity. Rules vary, such as writing a post per hour, or having to write a guest post on another blog every third hour. Donation schemes also vary, with some readers contributing set amounts and others paying per post.

Above all, this is a charity event. But at the heart of it, Blog-a-Thon is also a significant publicity tool. People used to coming by a blog just a few times a week can check in constantly with their favorite blogger. It's a creative challenge for the writer, as well, both physically and mentally. It can do wonderful things for a blogger's career, allowing them to exercise their mind in unique ways and open up a kind of pressure valve that overwhelms writer's block in a wave of pure content.

Blog-a-Thon took a hiatus in 2010, but is slated to return this summer.

Blogging Circles

A blogging circle is very similar to a writing circle. A handful of bloggers, typically at least 5 but potentially many more, get together and agree to write on a particular topic. One begins the chain, putting together the initial post on the topic, and "tags" the next blogger at the end of the post. They pick up the chain and run with it, and it goes on and on as the thought evolves.

This is a great way to develop some cross-audience interest between blogs, encouraging the readers of various blogs to look into new places and grow the audiences of each. That's one of the interesting things about blog audiences they aren't like political party members, only able to help one entity. If the same 500 people read 4 blogs, each of those blogs has an audience of 500. So share those readers, and try out a blogging circle.

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month is an interesting event. For 30 days in November, participants are expected to write continuously, about 1,700 words a day, until 50,000 words are reached. Depending on the focus of your blog, taking advantage of NaNo can be an interesting change of pace for your audience. It is particularly popular among creatively minded blogs, though brands focusing on activism of some stripe may also find it enlightening to participate as the blogger crafts a story about the topic the readers are interested in.

The idea here is to post either excerpts from or the entire contents of the day's writing output. This brings the audience along in the formation of the story, very similar to the serial format of novels Charles Dickens was so famous for.

Again, this isn't for everyone. Nuts and bolts blogs about home repair or market analysis will probably find little overlap with NaNo's mission.

Inside the Box, Outside the Box Whatever You Do, Think!

The idea isn't that all or any of these events is necessarily appropriate to any given blog. Each one has its merits, but our aforementioned market analysis blog may not find any of them particularly useful. However, most blogs will, and even those that don't can find some manner of event to participate in that can gather the attention and promote new interest from its readers.

The key is to be willing to innovate and try new things. Blogging isn't a hard-and-fast science; as said above, it's largely personality-driven. Talk to other bloggers and gain their insights about such events. Consider organizing a miniature blog-off of your own, or try out the writing circle idea every Friday for a month. If someone suggests a different type of event you haven't heard of, give it a try.

The audiences on the web have a reputation for being unforgiving, but that's only half the picture. People like routine and will stick around for their favorite sources of information even if they try a few experiments that don't quite work out. The key is to be honest about things, and to always try to engage your audience with any particular experiment.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more of Enzo F. Cesario's articles.

Social Media Management: Quality Social Experiences

2011-08-12T16:00:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

You've heard it before, here and probably elsewhere: Social media is about much more than exposure or coverage. Simply putting a friend request out and amassing a ton of retweets is not enough to achieve genuine social impact.

Now there's some additional evidence that bears this argument out:

http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp#p/a/u/2/ofhwPC-5Ub4

In short, Google officials have said that while the search engine giant does use Facebook and Twitter as part of the input in determining a site's SEO ranking, it is a very small, low-key part. It's more of a modifier of other data than it is an actual contributor in and of itself.

But before you go slashing the budget to your social media marketing department, hear out these few issues that explain why this means more attention, not less, should be paid to social media efforts.

It's Social, not Digital

Despite being in the online realm (insert all the stereotypes about the cold, impersonal Internet here), social media is all about the first word. Social interactions are about relationships, conversations and, above all, respect and trust. Violate a trust or fail to provide respect, and you gain nothing at all. You could even find yourself blackballed as your reputation flies out of control online.

There is no magic formula to social media success, just as there is no magic formula to being socially acceptable and friendly. It involves politeness, attentiveness to the interests and needs of others (not just your own) and participation in the social scene as a whole. That's it hard work, performed with an attitude of courtesy. It isn't complicated, just slow and requiring attention.

But Why Bother?

After all, it doesn't correspond to SEO, so why sink more effort into social media?

Because social media is the key motivating factor in whether a video, advertisement or even random picture goes viral. The average user on Facebook has dozens of friends, and not all of those friends are the same. Say you have three people who are friends, each having 10 other friends. Only six of these friends are mutual friends among the three, which means there are 24 more people to reach. If each of them has the same ratio of friends... you get the picture.

So yes, adapting to social media does mean changing your perceptions of how marketing works. People can ignore it... they can block you online like they can't block most commercials on television. You have to engage with them directly, converse in intelligent fashion and have the respect not to bombard them with your product nonstop. You have to know when to provide helpful input about your material, and when simply to listen. But the value of it, the potential return of genuine word of mouth rather than abstracted "website performance" metrics, is something worth fighting for and investing the additional time and money in.

Why Does It Work?

People like to be talked to. We are social animals, by and large, and having the ability to discuss topics with others is of vital importance to us instinctively, even if not consciously.

Additionally, people can see through fakes. Everyone has a customer service story where they're told, "We appreciate your input," and realize they're just being read a line while their input is filed in the circular file. People respond far better to an honest comment, like, "We understand what you are saying, but for the following reasons we're going to do what we feel works," rather than being given the runaround. A genuine response reminds them there is another human being with their own restrictions and worries on the other side of the screen, and honesty gets a branding campaign point. Responsiveness and actual replies to commentary rather than rote recitations is also important, showing them you are listening and engaged, not just copypasting.

Indirect SEO

Believe it or not, engaging in good practices on social media sites while representing your brand will result in improved SEO for the brand whether Google directly ranks your Facebook performance in searches or not.

Word of mouth is still the strongest motivating factor in advertising. It's the coveted Holy Grail. As you engage with others in social media, you are harnessing this power for your purposes. People who think highly of you will be more inclined to check out your website, and tell others to do so as well. Someone to whom you provide an answer to a particular issue that your brand covers might respond favorably to a request to link to you on his site. Traffic will build in the background, enhancing your standing. A conversation might lead to an interview with an online publication, or an advertising spot with a site whose owner you've had chats with.

They key is to understand the value of delayed benefits that result from being a nice, reasonable person. Gain a reputation as someone who is worthwhile to talk to, and people will want to talk to AND about you. The effort is extensive and the value is delayed; however, it will result in long-term support to your reputation that will allow your short-term advertising campaigns to go further, with more weight and endurance than if they were performed alone.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Me-Too Branding and the Dearth of Creativity

2011-08-11T21:45:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

Nothing new under the sun, good writers simply steal well, homage, pastiche, parody, satire... the assorted excuses that come up for shamelessly ripping off other advertising ideas may as well be named Legion, for they are certainly many.

Emblematic of this phenomenon is the Mac/PC ad format. The initial idea was clever enough personalizing the PC vs. Mac experience with actual actors standing in for the machines ties into storytelling techniques that have gone back to the Greeks and the Babylonians, if not further. We as a people have personified lightning, war and other concepts into gods and heroes for time immemorial, so there's no reason the trend should stop now.

Inevitably, of course, the copycats came up. For example, consider Sprint's recent G4 smartphone commercials. There is an element of delicious reversal in these; after all, Sprint is making fun of Apple's iPhone the same way that Macs were trashing on PCs not too long ago. Still, the entire thing has an air of "we've seen this already." The format is identical, with the white background, the two personalities bickering in passive aggressive wordplay... what's new here?

Granted, this isn't the first time the web and society have seen branding styles copied. Every new automobile model that comes out has scenes of it being driven over rough fields, empty roads, or racetracks depending on what the design is trying to accomplish. Medicine commercials all seem to have caring moms or smart people in lab coats; even telling action movie posters apart is an exercise in higher art criticism given the homogenizing trends that are making themselves known in that industry.

A Case for Branding Independence

Before we go down the road of originality for originality's sake, let's bring things back a little bit. Simply backlashing against the trend and coming up with something different for no other reason than trying to be different doesn't work, either.

Thinking about it is enough to make anyone schizophrenic, so what is there to be done?

Well, consider how some of the branding success stories of the web have gone about making themselves known. The Nostalgia Critic, Penny Arcade, Google, Memebase/Cheezburger they all have one thing in common that they did with their brand: They made it work.

Each of these examples put together an organization to accomplish a task the creators loved. Penny Arcade talks about gaming and various social issues touching on it, and appealed so strongly to its target audience with its simple adherence to this core concept that it was able to kick off a charity for sick children. Google started out as a web browser with a weird name, and now is basically the first course in SEO 101 classes, with every other browser out there filed under "other."

These companies didn't start out with the idea of making a powerful brand; they began with the idea of marketing a product, a service, an activity that they were good at, and stuck to it.

Take Google in particular not only did Google make searching the web simple, they strove to make it ethical. They adopted their unofficial slogan of "don't be evil" and leaked it into the world. This appeals highly to the dedicated web user the Internet and the web gained the power they have because people were adamant about the freedom to share information and the technology to do so, and having the most powerful web browser in the world on their side appealed to them and brought them into the brand.

Now, there have been rough spots. Google's wishy-washy policies with China, the potential privacy invasion of Street View and other projects... these all have Google's fan base talking animatedly to Google about what's seen as a problem.

But notice what they're doing: They are talking. Notice what they aren't doing: They're not leaving. Google has established its brand as a company that listens to its consumers and tries to do the right thing. Whether that perception is true remains to be seen, but the brand has convinced people it IS true, because Google has MADE it true in the past, so the client/customer is willing to stay and talk things out.

What does this mean for your brand? Simple do what you love, and do it well.

It is, of course, naive to say that Google doesn't think about marketing at all, or that the guys behind Penny Arcade are some kind of gamer saints who never "sell out" for advertising considerations. But their branding efforts clearly come as an extension of their core, unfailing missions.

So if you want to build a solid brand, you have to build a strong foundation to support it. Don't try to cash in on the latest style of advertisements, whether for popularity, edginess or "irony." Instead, make sure your brand conveys that you do whatever it is you do the best way it has ever been done. Let your branding be an extension of your core business model, an effort to bring your passion to the world so customers will want what you have to offer, and your brand will thrive long after Sprint is still living down the shame of copying Apple.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more of Enzo F. Cesario's articles.

Blog Management - Know When to Let Go

2011-08-11T07:45:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

Sometimes a topic just isn't working - you can tell when you're writing it, and you can tell when you're reading it. Maybe the humor is forced, tired, or rote. Maybe the blogger didn't go into the same level of interesting side detail that he usually does, or perhaps her topic looks like she fell back on a safe and reliable piece, rather than going somewhere new like her last eight. Whatever the reason, not every topic is created equal, and sometimes a post just isn't up to anything like your usual standards.

There are a lot of reasons, most of them hard to pin down, for why a post might not be making the cut. Perhaps the details are just too sparse to get ahold of, or the interview that the post is based on just went poorly and the subject has almost no personality to do a piece on, or maybe it's just mind-numbingly dull to the writer and he can't work up any enthusiasm for it. These things happen, not necessarily to every writer, but they are likely to happen to most.

So the question becomes, how do you deal with a bad topic?

The professional answer might be to "chin up and bear through it, deliver what you were hired to write and just try harder next time." For some of us, this is acceptable and even good practice. After all, not every assignment can be gravy; sometimes you just have to bite the bullet.

However, this article aims to argue that this is not always or even often the case, and writers need to learn when to let a topic go and move on to something else more frequently.

How Does This Work?

After all, professional bloggers in particular are hired to write about specific subjects how can they get away with writing about something else or just dropping a topic?

It has to be said, the option to leave a post behind isn't always there. Sometimes an assignment is too specific, and one has to go through with it. However, this is actually very rarely the case. An engaging blog is about the writer's personality, not necessarily the content (although the content is how this persona is put forward). Thus if a particular topic or, more importantly, a particular approach to a topic is not working for a writer, then a change is needed in either small or great degree to allow the writer to work their particular magic.

Side Doors

The first step in letting go of an article is to let go of your initial approach to it. It may be that the subject itself actually isn't all that bad, just that the initial or usual way of approaching it isn't working out so well. Take that interview example: Say our mysterious blogger is an interviewing genius, and has had some exceptional success with interview-driven blog posts so far. However, the latest interviewee, an artist in this case, is just dreadful. Their work is exciting, their reputation amazing, but in person or in print they're as dull as a brick! The blogger can't get their normal approach to work.

Alright, another approach is warranted. So instead of using the actual interview, our blogger makes one up. This isn't to say they make up the actual interview with the artist, which would be illegal and wrong. Instead, they interview the person's art itself. They raise questions they have, and look at what answers the art itself provides.

This is a bit of an esoteric example, but it illustrates the key point if you're having trouble doing something, try approaching it from a different angle. Languages are flexible, with shades of meaning and cultural variations that can surprise you. Experiment a bit and see if a new method opens new successes.

Genuinely Drop It

Some topics, however, just don't work. It happens, be it writer's block or just a lack of information.

The solution here is be honest. If you are your own boss, just accept that you tried and it's time to write something else. Writers of fiction do it all the time; bloggers should be no different.

If you're writing for an organization that expects you to cover certain topics, be up front as early as possible and go to your bosses with an explanation in detail why the topic isn't working, and why you think posting it would be detrimental rather than helpful. To make the process easier, go with alternative ideas already written out or at least drafted in proposal form so they can see you know what you're talking about and have the content ready.

Why Letting Go is Good

Burnout is a very real phenomenon among bloggers. People can sense when a writer hasn't put their heart and soul into a piece, and they can tell when something was forced out of their keyboard at gunpoint. Consistently forcing oneself to write articles that wear on them will wear a writer down and diminish their blogging talents. So for the sake of your creativity and excellence, make sure that you know when an article needs either a different approach, or a graceful decline.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more of Enzo F. Cesario's articles.

Some Thoughts on Specialty Blogging

2011-08-09T21:45:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

Blogging is held up in many circles as the epitome of the personal project. Blogs are praised for their focus on the personality of the blogger, the flexibility of the medium (text only, vlog, podcast) and the relatively limitless topics that can be blogged on.

Given that the division of labor allows for the formation of specialized approaches, it shouldn't be a surprise that niche and specialty blogs have become part of this great journalistic movement. There are blogs covering all manner of specialties, from arts and craft-focused publications to hard-hitting diatribes on the political situation in foreign hotspots. The powers of SEO and keyword writing allow these blogs to stand out to their intended audiences during searches, so clearly all that remains is for the next blogging genius to unleash his specialized knowledge upon the world, yes?

Well, as ever, the situation is perhaps slightly more complex than that, and for good reason. Let's have a look at some of the pros and cons alike of dedicating a blog to a particular topic.

The Sublime

There is something very satisfying in reading a well-crafted blog on a particular subject when it's put out by a skilled and well-versed master of that topic. A specialized blog is more than single mindedness when done properly it is a treasure house of many varied gems.

A genuine expert writing a specialty blog is what really makes the medium come alive, in fact. It's one thing to simply have anyone writing about something they care about and focusing on that topic. Having someone who knows it, who "groks" it as Heinlein would say, means that the blog can cover the various shades in between the obvious postings.

As an example, consider a blog focusing on the latest in board games (and if you think gaming of all sorts isn't a topic worth considering, you haven't seen Steve Jackson Games' 2010 shareholder report, in which they posted $3.5 million in gross earnings). Our gaming blog, written by an interested observer rather than an expert, could cover the major releases for the year. Big gaming companies like Wizards of the Coast, Steve Jackson Games, Battlefront and so forth could be profiled, the occasional interview with a game designer could be featured, trade shows could be reported on. It would be nice and informative, and safe for all those reasons.

A genuine expert in game publication and game theory, on the other hand, could get into the subtleties of game mechanics. They could explain how a certain game is literally impossible to play properly because of bad designs in the rules, or illustrate how a new game just released takes all the problems inherent in a timeless classic and makes a much better game of it. Rising stars in the independent development industry could be pointed out and brought to greater prominence.

Basically, the blog would look very similar, but would have many varying shades of interest and subtlety between the more common flavor of post, allowing for so much more interaction and engagement with the material.

The Unfortunate

Specialization is, by necessity, also exclusive. Choosing to specialize in a particular topic to any degree automatically alienates a set of readers not interested in that specialization. So while a specialty blog can allow an expert to really illustrate the varying shades and joys inherent in their favorite topic, each level of focus it dives into cuts away that much more of an audience and readers are certainly not an infinite resource.

Again, take our gaming blog: Gaming as a whole topic is fairly broad, encompassing video games, board games, roleplaying games, casual games, serious-hardcore games and so forth. And yes, there is a certain amount of overlap; many people enjoy playing games of all sorts, so a blog about any one of them isn't going to outright sever all connection with the others.

However, there are people who are interested in some things, but not others. Focusing a blog on RPGs and not video games eliminates a major portion of the gaming crowd (RPGs haven't been the largest contender in the gaming market in more than a decade now). There is a lot to talk about in roleplaying game development, of course but it will never approach the scale of video game development as a market, and thus any blog about it is never going to attract the same degree of attention.

So, what to about it.

There is fortunately a very clear answer: Do what you can do best. If you know your niche, and are confident you can make it work, try it. Start right now, put up that first post, and begin shopping around for good keywords, listing your blog in directories and promoting gently on social media networks. You will never have success if you don't try. If, on the other hand, you feel more comfortable taking a generalist approach, understand that this isn't bad. There are many readers out there, and a general approach to blogging can bring them in. And if you start wide, there's nothing to say you cannot drill down to a more specific angle later.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more Articles written by Enzo F. Cesario.

Brand Management - Press Release Fundamentals

2011-08-05T15:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

Certain concepts just carry over well from print journalism. The press release, the tried and true method of updating the public on an organization's affairs, is an example of just how well such a concept can survive. While there have been a few adjustments to the specifics, such as the use of keywords and SEO-oriented writing, the core structure of the press release remains the same.

Of course, as with all well-established writing conventions, the press release has seen its share of abuses. Press releases are such a routine part of any organization's operations that they often see quality sacrificed in the name of quantity. They're viewed as a source of easy SEO rankings if they're given any thought at all, and naturally the quality of these publications suffers in line with the degree of neglect.

Of course, no one has to follow this trend. There are a number of things one can do to create a solid press release. Here are a few of the simpler but oft-overlooked steps that can redeem this marketing tool into a primary force.

Hook with the Lede

The lede is that first sentence in a journalism story, a press release included. The lede must contain everything the story is going to talk about. If nothing else, it must boil the story down to its most relevant points, because very often people read the first few lines of a news story, then move on.

The key then lies in finding the most interesting part of the story and making the lede into a verbal "hook" that people can get ahold of. Don't hide your big announcement; sure, it works for Steve Jobs because attendees at the Apple conferences aren't going to leave mid-speech. But people reading a press release can always click away, so make sure you get the "what's that now?" out in front of them immediately.

Keep the Headline on Topic, Not on Company

The headline is not the place to brand your company. There are many wonderful venues for promoting your brand or company name; trying to sandwich it into the headline is simply asking for trouble, because all it does is give the press release away as a marketing effort. The story may well be solid journalistic gold, but it will still be ignored because people were turned off by the marketing.

Instead, treat the headline as a summary companion to the lede, with catchy writing and an on-topic message that draws readers' eyes down to the lede in order to see what the headline is talking about.

Simplify

Remember Strunk and White's eternal maxim: omit needless words. Remember once more that people tend to read a few lines into any news story, then move on. The longer a story can keep the reader's attention, the better it is doing. Words that hinder this process are introducing friction into what should ideally be a smooth process. This includes words that are obscure, very long words and, worst of all, jargon.

There is a place in the world for jargon. That place is between experts in a field who want to communicate more precisely and effectively. It is not in the lines of a press release. Most people are not experts in any given field, so using highly specific terms such as jargon is not going to help. It does not make a publication sound more intelligent it makes it sound like it's geared toward someone else at best, or pretentious at worst. Discard the jargon and go for simple explanations instead.

Dress it Up

Simplicity is ideal for the core message of a press release, but there are ways to amplify the effectiveness of each part of the release given the power of online media.

Given the widespread access to broadband, embedding photos and videos is no longer a faux pas. If you're doing a press release on a trade show, include some pictures of the booths from the last year's show, perhaps a video of a short interview talking about the highlights of this year's events. Again, keep the material on-topic; the goal is to amplify what you're talking about in the release, not to distract from it.

Additionally, linking content is easy and efficient. Perhaps your release cites a major study your organization just completed and is releasing. Include a link to the study in the headline or lede so that people can click over to it immediately. This technique works for all manner of content, incidentally. If you're mentioning some manner of content that your organization is providing, be it product or service, put a link to it in the lede or near to the lede, so people can go right over and take a look.

The Basics

It shouldn't have to be said anymore, but there is always a need to remember the basic principles of good writing. Pay attention to grammar and punctuation. Use brief and active-voice statements. Don't editorialize. Keep the press release straightforward and cite the facts you want conveyed.

These are not options, they're important fundamentals. If you break the rules of the basics, your credibility will suffer. Remembering to mind them will help reduce the polish that has to go into a release later on.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more of Enzo F. Cesario's articles.

Good Press: Promoting Your Blog

2011-08-03T06:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

There are numerous ways to get a blog noticed and mentioned online. Some are good and others are atrocious. We're all aware of "that guy" who simply joins conversations online and says, "Wow, that's interesting. Hey, have you read my blog about..." Sometimes the blog covers the topic being discussed but usually it doesn't. Sometimes our "friend" doesn't even go to the trouble of actually even trying to comment on the conversation and simply spams his blog's links everywhere he can, hoping someone somewhere will accidentally click the link instead of the block button.

So how do we avoid becoming "that guy?" The blog needs promoting; blogs that people don't know about don't get read it's as simple as that. But there are polite ways to promote your blog in an active sense without becoming a blog-spamming troll.

Directories
There are a number of website and blog-specific directories out there. Most of us are familiar with these, so a short summary is all I'll include here. In essence, these are websites that will host and promote various other sites for a subscription of sorts. Some are ad-supported, others require payment or contracts of a certain period of time. What these do is allow another angle of search engine optimization so that people looking for topics relating to your blog will have more of a chance of finding your hard-written content.

SEO
By now, good SEO practices should be seen as mandatory. Keywords, meta-tags and other good SEO practices will promote your blog for you without ever requiring you to contact anyone. Do it.

However, there is the related, yet not identical, field of topic tagging. Many blogs have an option to tag an article with topics. These don't necessarily directly relate to SEO results, though in some cases they do get listed. What they do is allow people using the same blogging software to browse based on topics. So if you're discussing a particular issue or news story, tag it in the categories or topics section, and fellow WordPress or Blogger users might just come across your work.

Social Media
The previous techniques are useful because they don't require direct interaction with others. They're based on letting searches promote your work for you. However, nothing in the world beats the personal touch, and there's nothing more personal than social media. As mentioned above, the personal approach is risky, because people have fickle moods. Not everyone is in the mood to hear about a blog when they're having a discussion. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be as crass as the above example of our blog-desperate friend.

First, there are online forums. These are a great place to ease into the social media experience. Find a forum or two related to the topic of your blog, and begin participating. When it comes time to create your profile, make sure good content is provided. Provide a short but informative bio about what you do, put keyword relevant tags to your blog in the activities section and make sure your blog is linked in either the website or signature portions of your forum, or both.

These practices, you'll note, can be repeated on any social media site. Facebook in particular is good for this, as it has a very robust background and biography section to work from.

Once in the forum or social media discussion group, participate actively. Introduce yourself if there is an appropriate place to do so. Mention your blog and what it is about briefly, and then drop it for a while. Drop in on discussions that you feel you have something relevant to contribute to, always being sure to be polite and provide insightful commentary. If you can't think of something to say, don't force it.

One good "bridging" method in these cases is using your fellow conversationalists' comments as inspiration for a blog post. Suppose someone brings up a commonly held misconception, or mentions something you genuinely hadn't thought of before. Write a post about it, and link to that post in the message. Use this technique sparingly you want to be known for your own unique content, not as a topic-miner. However, when done politely and genuinely, this can get people interested in speaking with you and reading what you have to write.

Habits and Practices
Those paying attention will see that this is a process, not a "step." Blog promotion is an activity that takes time to properly cultivate and is very easy to get wrong. The steady and measured approach is the best way to avoid taxing peoples' patience pushing too hard will get you flagged for spam or banned, which results in a bad reputation.

Getting readers to come to a blog is like developing any good relationship. Businesses tend to thrive on repeat customers rather than one-time visitors, and a blog is the same way. You want a loyal readership? Show them you're trustworthy and friendly before they ever show up. You aren't going to be able to force interest either it is there or it isn't. Do your blog a favor and remove the roadblocks of over eagerness by accepting the long-term view of solid promotion.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more Articles written by Enzo F. Cesario.

Blog Management - How to Work Interviews Into Your Blog

2011-08-02T03:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

Being a subset of journalism, it is no surprise that blogging shares many traits with its parent. In particular, blogging strongly resembles the feature or editorials pages of many newspapers. Not beholden to quite the same rules of timeliness or AP style guidelines as the news sections, these sections focus on matters of personal interest to the writer, or on a specific topic of particular relevance or human interest.

So, given that blogging tends to be derived from these sections, it is reasonable to look into the tactics that bring traditional journalists such success in their writing and to borrow the best ideas from them. In particular, many bloggers have discovered the value of including interviews in their publications.

An interview is fairly straightforward: a conversation between the blogger and another party, generally about a topic of mutual interest to the blogger, the subject and the readers. Some interviews are scripted, some are more extemporaneous, but at their heart they all have the mission of illuminating the thoughts of the interviewee to the audience of the publication in order to shed some extra light on the subject being discussed.

In the world of blogging, there are generally three approaches to integrating an interview into a blog.

The Writeup

This is the general, news-story style form of an interview. The blogger contacts the subject, does their interview, then writes a story around the interview using the subject's quotations as a framework. It tends to look something like:

Recently I spoke to branding icon John Doe, asking his thoughts on the importance of personal identity. "You really need a strong name, something people can get ahold of and never forget, that's the first thing." When I asked him for details, John commented, "Well, if you don't have a name that people remember, they'll just refer to you as 'that one guy' or any old thing."

The structure is easy to follow, and very much suited to blogging as a style of writing. It doesn't have to be in first person; it is easily adapted to any blogging style. It has the value of letting the blogger do most of the writing. This way, their style remains intact and the interview is presented on their terms to the readers, maintaining a unique voice.

The weakness of this style is that it tends to raise questions. Did the blogger use the whole interview? Are they editorializing in their choice of quotes? and so on. For example, in the choice above, When I asked him for details could actually have played out as "Well, that's obvious. Could you be more specific?" and our imaginary blogger simply rephrased to make himself look less confrontational.

The Reprint

The alternative is simply to reprint the entire interview, without editing other than to remove little asides such as "um" and other verbal tics. This tends to look as follows:

BenjaminBrandBlog - Hello, John.

John Doe - Hello. Thanks for interviewing me.

BBB - Glad to talk with you. So, what would you say is the first thing that comes to your mind when talking about branding?

JD - You really need a strong name, something people can get ahold of and never forget, that's the first thing.

The reprint is rather an unusual choice, very rarely seen in blogging or in print journalism. This is because it has some obvious weaknesses. For example, not every question in an interview ends up being relevant. Not all interviews follow a particular script; some go down tangents, interesting or dull asides, and so on. It is the job of the journalist to edit the content so that the material that stayed on subject gets to the readers.

However, there are some cases in which reprinting an interview is an interesting alternative. If a conversation was purely illuminating, if it covered some amazing grounds that people didn't expect, and the writer wishes to share it, then by all means share the interview itself.

The Podcast or Video

Similar to the reprint, this is the process of using recording equipment to make an audio podcast or videoblog of the interview in question. This has a number of advantages over the simple reprint, because it allows the personality of the two subjects to shine through in a way that text doesn't always quite capture. Sarcasm and wit come through a bit more readily when tone of voice or body language are added into the subject matter, making the whole process more dynamic and interesting.

The difficulty of these formats is in their complexity. The logistics of getting recording software to work, of cleaning up audio and video for proper use on the net if they aren't your blog's primary medium, etc. can all make this a bit out of reach for the average blogger. They require the dedication of actual time and effort to produce, share and refine as a series. Further, not everyone is as suited for speaking as they are for writing; some just aren't as comfortable in a spoken medium, and a skilled writer isn't always a stunning speaker.

That said, there is strong value in this type of process, as it can add variety and interest to the usual presentation of a good blog.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more Articles written by Enzo F. Cesario.

Response and Rebuttal: Having a Good Argument on a Blog

2011-08-01T03:45:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Enzo F. Cesario

According to one theory of knowledge, there are no original facts. All knowing is gained through more knowing, each fact tied to every other fact like a spider web none supported completely on its own, but all working beautifully in concert. Whether this is ultimately true philosophically, it illustrates a key point of online knowledge: Everything worthwhile refers back to something else.

This is particularly true of the many arguments on the web. The strongest arguments are those that can relate their case to other fields of knowledge and understanding. While there are always those who will buy into constantly debunked arguments, by and large the web is a place where the meritocracy of truth can hold court.

So, how exactly does one harness this for his or her own blog?

First, understand that an argument always produces hard feelings. This is the inherent risk of it; people do not like to be proven wrong. Whether it is cultural or evolutionary in nature, there is an almost gut-level need to be right in an argument. If you have a discussion of this sort, you will run the risk of alienating some audience members.

However, the same effect can gain you a strong readership if handled properly. People admire those who can demonstrate a strong case against consistent criticism. Take the video bloggers Thunderf00t and AronRa on YouTube. Both of these men advocate very specific positions about science, free speech and religion, and the role of these entities in the modern world. Both have come under extensive attack, including outright legal action in some cases, for advocating their views and maintaining the argument about these issues. Yet both have very popular YouTube channels, and both writers have been booked for speaking engagements as a result of their work. Their channels are consistently growing, largely because they are willing to have arguments and back them up with strong evidence.

The first step is to make sure the argument is worth having. Is it genuinely an issue worth arguing over, with significant relevance to the average user? Consider your audience carefully for this one. Arguments about freedom of speech may well touch on everyone's lives in some degree, but if your blog is dedicated to the subtleties of audiophile technologies, it might not be the argument to have.

Once you have made the decision that a point needs to be argued, it is important to match the intensity of your tone to the relevance of the point. If you have a relatively academic disagreement with one portion of another blogger's work, then it would likely not be appropriate to ream the entire piece based on one disagreement, or to focus on the disagreement instead of the areas of concordance.

This should be common sense, but the web seems to create a tendency in people to narrow their focus onto odd elements.

Begin with a post stating the basics of the other party's case, honestly and omitting nothing relevant. Then provide your commentary and rebuttal in specific terms, providing due credit and citations and making sure to link to your opposite number's blog if the argument is occurring between the blogs, or in the comments section if the discussion is to be had there.

Remember also to be gracious in victory and polite in defeat. It may well be that you utterly end their argument. If so, then well done. If they concede the point, accept the concession and move on. People have had their show, things have been learned, and hopefully both of you have benefited. Similarly, if you are clearly shown to be in the wrong, you gain much more credibility by revising your stance and acknowledging the opposing party's points. This is not formal debate, where the idea is to win points it's to maintain good discussion and draw in the kind of people who take your work seriously.

Tying in with this effect is the user effect. People feel more invested in a blog when they feel their contributions are honored and considered worthwhile. So if a commenter to your blog provides a particular insight on an ongoing discussion or argument you are having with another blogger, bring them in. Highlight insightful commentary from your readers with a post, or incorporate it into one if appropriate to do so. This will encourage more people to bring commentary in, both for and against your point of view. This is a great way to attract the viewers of your opposite number's blog, as they feel their input will not be ignored.

So, in the end, should you go looking for arguments to start? Probably not; enough of them will present themselves to you. This is evident from reading just about any blog on the web. Read enough of them, and you will find something you disagree with. If you feel you can have a reasonable dialog with the writer of another blog, or if you feel their views are so drastically wrong as to require your rebuttal, then by all means do so. Simply do not forget to make it an argument worth having, and one that will educate and entertain your readers.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Read more of Enzo F. Cesario's articles.

How To Have An Endless Stream Of Highly Qualified Free Leads (Part 2)

2011-07-31T20:45:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Willie Crawford

In part-1 of this article, I shared with you how it's now easier than ever to become a recognized expert by publishing valuable information in your niche.

I also shared that you can now publish your books, pamphlets or reports, right on the Amazon Kindle Platform, and that you can even do it for 100% free.

This video even shows you step-by-step how to register an account, set everything up, upload your ebook, and start making sales in as little as a day or two.

In part-1 of the article, I also told you that if you don't like writing, or are not very comfortable with it, you can talk out your ebook and then have it transcribed.

Another option is to have someone ghost-write it for you. You would be surprised at how inexpensively you can have a book or ebook ghost-written for you.

In fact, my good friend, Mike Lewis, has a business where he can create and publish a book for you for as little as $1000.

Incredible isn't it?

Let me know if you'd like more info on Mike's crazy service.

Another alternative is to simply take "private label rights" and turn them into your own books or ebooks.

If you are not familiar with private label rights, it's where a writer or researcher has already done all of the work in creating the rough draft, and they sell it to you...with permission to do almost anything that you want with it.

You COULD take a private label rights ebook, that you buy for as little as $10, and publish it, as-is, just putting your name on it (depending upon the license stipulations).

That wouldn't be very smart because people who sell private label rights often sell the exact same rights to hundreds of different people.

We DO live in a big world, and the chances of your readers noticing another person publishing the SAME book over their name is actually fairly slim... in most niches.

But why be lazy?

Why not create an ebook that you'd be happy to have your name on, and representing YOU, by treating that PLR as if it were just a rough draft.

If I were to personally use a PLR ebook and publish it as my own, I would:

1) Give it a new name. 2) Have a new cover designed for it. 3) Rename every chapter. 4) Go through every chapter rewording as desired, and making sure that it was 100% accurate. 5) Add an about the author section, that is sort of your "glorified business card." 6) Add a "bounce-back offer"... an offer in the book for an additional report or bonus if they will go to your website, fill out a form, and claim it.

If you're thinking that sounds like a lot of trouble, you're missing the point!

This ebook is going to become the tool that generates a steady stream of highly-qualified leads for you. That's why you want the bounce-back offer. When they visit your website to claim that bonus, THAT'S where you get them into your leads system.

This ebook is going to sell them on the fact that YOU are the person who really understands their problems, and are the right one to help them. So, you DON'T want to cut corners.

You want that ebook to present the best image of you possible.

You want that ebook to convey that you are a real expert!

I did mention in part-1, that you want an entire "body of work." So, yes, I was implying that you want several books on your topic.

You want several... maybe even a dozen books "out there" working for you as lead generators.

When you watched the video at: http://WillieCrawford.com/Kindle/ you saw that this really isn't difficult.

You did watch the video didn't you?

If not, go watch it now. It's too important for you to miss... and we need to get you in the habit of following through and actually getting things done!

Writing a book really isn't hard. I wrote my first one in about three months (a cookbook). It also took me about three months to write my second book (an autobiography).

Both books have been selling steadily for nearly a decade, AND both books are now offered on the Amazon Kindle Platform as ebooks.

I rolled them out as physical books, BUT since people are reading twice as many ebooks as physical books, I offer my readers what they want.

"Mama didn't raise no fool."

Here's the thing... my cookbook, my autobiography, and all of the "numerous" other books that I've written all let my readers get to know me AND recognize me as an expert.

The last few ebooks that I wrote only took me one to two DAYS each.

Yes, I can write a quality ebook in a day... from scratch :-)

These ebooks... these lead generators WORK!

Readers come to me ready to take advantage of my expertise when I offer it.

That's what you want too, isn't it?

Well, all that's left now... is for you to just go do it :-)

About the Author:
Willie Crawford is one of the worlds leading internet marketing and joint venture experts. For more of his teachings, subscribe to his free email newsletter at: http://WillieCrawford.com/ You'll be glad that you did!

Follow Willie Crawford on Twitter.

How To Have An Endless Stream Of Highly Qualified Free Leads

2011-07-26T06:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Willie Crawford

Getting hot, fresh leads, people truly interested in whatever it is that you're selling, is the life's blood of most businesses.

Online or offline, most business owners dream of having customer lined up, waiting at their door to get in and buy from them repeatedly.

The really big dreamers, dream of having so many customers that they can be very selective, and can choose only the ideal customers to work with.

They dream of having the luxury of not having to work with people that they find it unpleasant to work with.

Doesn't that sound heavenly?

Well, it's not a dream... for me and many friends who have also discovered "the secret!"

Let me tell you HOW to accomplish that.

You become the authority, the highly-respected expert, the go-to-guy, the celebrity in your niche.

If you can do that, you'll never have a problem making sales. People will naturally be attracted to you rather than you having to seek them out.

People seek out winners and want to associate with them!

But how to do become this winner... this authority in your niche?

One way is to become a well-known, widely-circulated author.

People have always put authors on a pedestal, and even treated books as if they were semi-sacred.

So, if you can create this "body of work" that showcases your expertise in a niche, people will naturally be attracted to you.

If you have a series of books, articles, audios, and perhaps videos where you demonstrate that you truly understand your audiences biggest, most painful problems, AND that you have the solution...

they WILL trip over themselves to get to you and partake of that solution. After all, you offer them relief from their problems. You offer them happiness, and whatever else they seek.

Here's the thing... becoming a published author is easier today than it has been at any time in human history.

To become an author today, all you need to do is sit down and commit your thoughts to paper, massage that manuscript into a book, booklet or pamphlet, and publish it.

It really IS that simple.

But what if you hate writing?

Talk it out, recording an audio, have that transcribed, and then massage that into a manuscript. That's exactly what I have many of my high-end coaching clients do :-)

But what if you can't afford to have your book printed?

You can have as few as ONE copies printed, using print on demand, and your costs will be minimal. Then you order additional copies as you need them.

Better yet, publish your manuscript as an ebook on the popular Amazon Kindle platform.

But, you want a "real book"... don't you?

Listen, Amazon sells almost TWICE as many ebooks as they do print books. People looking to buy books, who visit the biggest and best-known online bookstore buy mostly...ebooks.

Did you know that?

Publishing an ebook on Amazon Kindle is FREE and relatively easy. I've set up a recorded video for you that actually steps you through the ENTIRE process.

That videos is at: http://WillieCrawford.com/Kindle/

You can now write an ebook, list it at the biggest bookstore in the world 100% free, have them sell it for you, and have them send you a check for 70% of what they collect each month from selling your ebooks.

Haven't things changed a lot?

Traditional publishers make you jump through hoops, pay you a tiny, tiny royalty, and do a horrible job of promoting your book.

Amazon Kindle, puts you in front of millions of your ideal customers, sells you books, pays you, and when done right ... they send you an endless stream of highly-qualified leads. These will be people who are pre-sold on you, your pertise, and your products.

Easy isn't it?

Don't worry, I'll go into a little more detail in Part-2 of this article.

Be on the lookout for it.

In the meantime, go watch the video. You don't need to give your name or register... or anything, it's just posted right on the page listed above.

About the Author:
Willie Crawford is one of the worlds leading internet marketing and joint venture experts. For more of his teachings, subscribe to his free email newsletter at: http://WillieCrawford.com/ You'll be glad that you did!

Follow Willie Crawford on Twitter.

If You Want To Get There Faster, You're Going To Have To Pay

2011-07-24T15:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Robert Dempsey

If you want to get further faster, you're going to have to open your wallet and use some paid options. There is something for everyone, and each method can suit practically every budget. But how do you know which will work best for you? Let's explore the options.

First though, a word of warning.

With a plethora of free marketing opportunities available including blogging and social media, it can be easy to get sucked into the "always free" mode of operating. And while free is great, it takes longer to see results, and sometimes you get what you pay for. So as you read this article keep in mind that you want to have free mixed in, but not be beholden to any single source of customers. And if you want to reach your goals faster, you've got to pay.

Having said that, let's take a look at the most popular options available today.

The Immaturity Of The Internet
Television is a mature media. There are channels that can reach every demographic everywhere in the world. It's highly segmented. Online marketing and advertising hasn't quite reached that point, but with the reach of the web and the large number of websites popping up on a daily basis, we're just about there.

Let's take a look at some of the most popular paid options available today.

Pay-Per-Click (And It's Relatives)
Google made a mint with those highly targeted text ads; it still does. If you've done your keyword research and have the language of your market, you can use pay-per-click (PPC) to validate niche markets and get highly targeted visitors to your website. But Google isn't the only game in town.

Yahoo!/Bing has a great PPC network which can also bring highly relevant visitors and might cost less than what you'd pay on Google. Advice here is to launch campaigns on both and see where you get the most bang for your buck, measured using the combination of a high click through rate (CTR) and low cost per click (CPC).

Pay per click has a lot of relatives too with varying rules and return on investment. A few are:

Cost Per Action (CPA)

Cost Per View (CPV)

Cost Per Lead (CPL)

Paid Ad Placements
Paid ad placements come in a few forms. You can purchase banner advertisements on websites relevant to your products and services, as well as place graphic ads in email newsletters. A huge benefit of these placements is the demographic targeting. If you want to reach marketers you can do that; if you want to reach software developers you can do that; if you want to reach working mothers that have young children with acute health problems, you can do that too.

There are literally websites for every audience today, and many of those sites have email newsletters. Paid advertisements are one of the top ways website owners make money, so as a purchaser you can have your pick based on your budget.

Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs aren't "open your wallet" kind of things, however you are paying someone else to bring you customers. Affiliate marketing is a huge business, as evidenced by the laws enacted in many states to tax online purchases. Regardless, every business can take advantage of having an affiliate program, and many do.

Have you ever paid someone a "finder's fee" for referring you a customer? That's an informal affiliate program of sorts. Resellers are affiliates too - they sell a product someone else makes, and take care of a bulk of the marketing and sales.

So you might already have one of these programs in place, albeit an informal one.

Reasons To Go Paid
As mentioned in the beginning of this article, a major reason to open your wallet is to get to your goals faster. Free methods are free in terms of money, but not in time - they can take a long time to return a result, if they ever do.

As much as it sounds like an oxymoron, using methods like PPC can actually save you money and time. There are few better market validation strategies than setting up a survey and sending targeted, highly relevant visitors to it. You can find out if a market is worth your time or not, very quickly.

Long story short, don't discard paid strategies even if you think you can't afford them - it simply isn't true. Start your efforts small and go from there. In combination with the free methods, you'll be on your way to more leads and more customers.

About the Author:
Robert Dempsey is the Itinerant Entrepreneur. He combines technology, psychology, and marketing to help his clients build their empires using strategic marketing. Visit his website to start getting more traffic, leads, and sales: http://www.ItinerantEntrepreneur.com/.

Online Marketing: Free and Low Cost Strategies That Make More Sales

2011-07-24T00:45:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Robert Dempsey

The good news is that regardless of the continued massive growth of the Internet, the rules of business haven't changed - fundamental business strategy still applies. You start with your ideal customer, you find out what their biggest problems are, you then find or create solutions for those problems, and finally you put the solution in front of the customer and the sale is made.

The even better news is that what has changed is our ability to reach more of our next customers at less cost - is it much greater today and is expanding. That comes with its own set of challenges.

When it comes down to it, there are two types of online strategies we can use, 1: free and low-cost, and 2: paid. Free and low-cost go together because even though some of these strategies might be free in terms of cost, they are definitely not free in terms of time. For now, let's look at the former.

Free and Low-Cost
As mentioned before, free and low-cost strategies are those that are extremely inexpensive dollar-wise, and more expensive time wise. The most popular and effective in use today are:

Blogging

Social media

Email marketing

Search engine optimization

Blogging
Every business should have a blog and post at a minimum one article per week. Blogging can help to build or strengthen expert status in your industry; it can show customers that you know what you're talking about and can really help them. These articles can then be syndicated to a larger audience in social media - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others.

Many blogging platforms are free. A great way to start out is using WordPress. Out of the box WordPress has a lot of features - everything you need for a blog. In addition, there are thousands of free plugins you can use to add features to your blog that can enhance the search engine optimization, create contact forms, automatically send blog posts to social media, and many more. If you can't find what you need for free, there are many paid plugins for less than $100 that also come with support.

Social Media
As business becomes increasingly personal once again, participation in social media is a must. This doesn't mean you have to sit on Twitter all day and watch the tweets roll in - that would be a complete waste of time. Rather, you can set up custom searches for the main keywords of your business, and engage with the people that use them. You never know when you'll be talking to your next customer or raving fan.

There is a new breed of customer relationship applications maturing in the category of social CRM. The purpose of these applications, typically web-based, are to help you cut through all the "useless" chatter on social media so you can focus in on potential customers. One such application currently in beta is Commun.it.

Email Marketing
A cliche in Internet Marketing is, "the money is in the list." What is meant by this is that if you have a relationship with a large group of people via email, you can make buying recommendations that they will act on, due to the relationship. For the most part that's true.

A great use of email marketing is for lead nurturing. Not everyone that visits a website is ready to buy. Some people are looking for information and some are comparing competitive offerings. If you're lucky some will come with credit card in hand; but most aren't. That's where lead nurturing comes into play.

With most email marketing solutions you can set up an automatic sequence of emails to go out to your email list on a schedule - this is an autoresponder. You can mix in broadcast emails that provide timely information to your subscribers. To get people to join your list you offer then an ethical bribe such as a video, ebook, or other piece of information that offers value. Regardless, the point is to deliver a steady flow of value that builds the relationship to the point where the prospect follows your call to action and makes a purchase.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is the stuff of myths and legends, and really seems to be a dash of science with a heaping tablespoon of alchemy. Without going overboard though it comes down to a basic principle: Google is in the business of providing its customers (searchers) with the most relevant results so they keep coming back, seeing and clicking on ads, and Google makes billions. So what does relevant mean? It means that the information and experience you provide around a set of keywords or phrases is better than anyone else.

Is that a bit of an over simplification? Yes, but we could talk about SEO for months and not go anywhere. So for now, keep in mind that relevant content and user experience is what Google cares about; provide that to people and you'll rise in the rankings.

Which Way To Go?
With all these options it's difficult to see which way to go. And the answer isn't "it depends" but rather in what order to do everything you've read about. And here's the answer to that:

Start with content. Create a blog if you haven't already and start writing content that will help your ideal customer.

Create a free report or a video and create an email list. Give people the free report in exchange for their email. Be sure that you limit the amount of sales pitch in this free report - if you want to keep people as subscribers they need to get value.

Sign up for a free Twitter account. Don't jump in head first but rather do some searches around the keywords and phrases that best define your business. Take note of how people use those words, and also note who uses them. After a few weeks you'll know how best to approach people and strike up some conversations.

Search engine optimization - with all of your content do one thing: write for your ideal customer. Whoever that person is, write to solve their problems. Once you're doing that, you can dig into more advanced strategies.

The Final Step
With this primer in hand, there's only one thing left to do - go make it happen! Start a blog, join Twitter, create a free report and set up an email list, and start writing content for your ideal customer. Do those four things and you'll be well on your way to making many more sales.

About the Author:
Robert Dempsey is the Itinerant Entrepreneur. He combines technology, psychology, and marketing to help his clients build their empires using strategic marketing. Visit his website to start getting more traffic, leads, and sales: http://www.ItinerantEntrepreneur.com/.

Read more of Robert Dempsey's articles.

Should You Make Money Online With One Website Or Several?

2011-07-22T19:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Alan Cheng

There's a common problem faced by new and experienced internet marketers. After reading a ton of information on internet marketing, the majority are confused as to what they should do for their online business.

Many will believe that creating 5 websites to make money is better than relying on 1 website. This seems like common sense but in fact, it is very wrong. Who said earning a lot of money requires common sense? If so, the majority of people would be rich and not the other way round.

If you want to succeed online you need to focus on 1 website. At least until it becomes very successful. There are several reasons for this.

1. Focus
Never mind having several websites. Even if you create 2 websites, it's very hard to make both of them excellent and start making a good number of sales. It's much easier to focus on 1 website.

More and more people are saying that multi-tasking actually decreases the quality of results. This is exactly what you're doing when you're working on several websites at the same time.

2. Not enough time
If you have many websites, you will need to upload several pieces of content to each of them. When something goes wrong with one of the websites, it is unlikely that you'll know instantly because you have so many sites to deal with.

Basically you don't have enough time to work on several projects unless you hire a team.

3. Results
Imagine what would happen if you focused all your efforts on a 1 website instead of 3? You would achieve your goals at least 3 times as fast.

As soon as your website launches, you can put all your effort into making it an authority site. This is how successful entrepreneurs run businesses.

Unless you have an experienced team that you can rely on, you won't be able to produce more than one good website while dealing with many different things at the same time.

A lot of work is required when creating a website. If you make a list of tasks that you need to build a website to sell a product, you'll know that you need a lot more time than you initially thought.

Here are the tasks required for a typical site selling an eBook:

Creating the front-end product

Getting graphics developed

Writing the sales letter

Creating an offer for the exit pop-up page

Configuring your autoresponder for subscribers and buyers list andwriting follow up messages

Creating a product for the up-sell

Creating a sales letter for the up-sell

Creating an affiliate page with marketing tools

Marketing your product by writing articles, pay per click, banner advertisement, contacting affiliate partners etc.

Look at each of these tasks. They are all essential if you want your online business to succeed. Each of these tasks requires a lot of dedicated work. Creating a website to sell an eBook or service will take you 2 months if you're not familiar with the work.

Bear in mind that I've left out relatively simple tasks from the list which can take up several more hours of your time such as setting up the exit pop-up script, creating the download page and putting up your privacy policy and disclaimer page.

This is one of the reasons why a lot of internet marketers fail to make money online. They don't see the big picture of what is required to create an online business.

They get distracted by following product launches, buying new information products and browsing in forums. These distractions will delay their progress in launching their site and soon they would lose interest with the project and want to focus on other things.

This happens every day. Marketers will have an idea that they are passionate about but after several months they will want to do something else. This is why making money online is so hard.

The entrepreneur has several options they can take to fix this:

1. Block out all distractions
This is common sense. If you stop reading forums, stop reading emails on the latest promotions and turn off your Skype etcâ¦you can get your project done a lot quicker.

However, this is easier said than done. It takes a lot of self discipline.

2. Leave out some tasks
You can still launch your new product or service by having only a few follow up messages to your subscribers and customers, eliminating the exit pop-up offer, removing the up-sell and not having an affiliate system in place with promotion tools.

This will give you the bare minimum for a product site but you'll be leaving a lot of money on the table. It is proven that the bulk of the money made with an online business is in the up-sell and by having a good relationship with your list.

Leaving out these important tasks is the same as not picking up money from the floor when you see it.

3. Outsource
This is the most common route entrepreneurs take when they launch a new product site. They will outsource a lot of the process to a company or individual so that they can free up their time to do tasks that they enjoy such as promoting the business.

This is an ideal alternative to doing the work yourself but it is costly. Unless you are very confident that your product will sell and you will make a lot of money in the back-end, outsourcing can be a bad investment.

A mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make is hiring the cheapest ghostwriter or freelancer that they can find. They would look for a 40 page eBook to be written for $300 or a sales letter for $200. The fact is, you won't get good quality work for this kind of price.

Companies and individuals, who know they can deliver quality, will spend time in doing the work for you and charge what they are worth. Outsourcing your online business to a company will cost you over a thousand dollars easily. But you will receive a quality product that you can sell.

The quickest way to succeed online is to create a product or service to and your business as a market leader. You'll need to make the website complete with an affiliate program and up-sells. Doing this with 2 or more websites at the same time is out of the question.

If you can afford the money, consider outsourcing your online business including the product creation. This will free up your time, ensure you have a quality sales funnel and allow you to focus on marketing your business.

About the Author:
For more tips on how to promote your online business and increase sales, visit information product creation. To hire professionals to create your own best selling information products, visit http://www.eliteghostwriters.com/infoproducts.html - Alan Cheng, Elite Ghostwriters.

Read more of Alan Cheng's articles.

Wealthy Salon/Spa Owners View Problems As an Opportunity To Grow, Struggling Salon/Spa Owners Don't!

2011-07-08T17:45:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Dan Lok

Wealthy salon/spa owners view challenges and problems like bodybuilders see weight; an opportunity for some resistance to build a life with and grow. Body builders call it resistance training and they choose to do it. They actually like to work out even though it is hard work.

On the other hand, struggling salon/spa owners avoid problems and challenges. They try to bury them, avoid them at all costs. They create distractions like all kinds of busy work, drama and excuses just so they can avoid the problem for another day or week.

What is ironic is that it takes the same or more energy to avoid a challenge or problem as it does to solve the challenge. It takes ongoing mental energy to keep pushing problems out of the mind. It is real work to constantly distract oneself from the problem and challenge at hand to keep distracting yourself.

We have a choice to make ourselves either miserable or to make ourselves strong. The sad tragedy is that is takes the same amount of work and energy.

It is like a struggling salon/spa owner thinks their job is to avoid problems and challenges. And by avoiding them they are creating even more misery than they avoid.

It's not the problems or challenges themselves that make them miserable as they think. Struggling salon/spa owners own deliberate act of avoidance is what lowers their energy, esteem and self respect.

Too often the struggling salon/spa owners think they must avoid embarrassment. "What is my staff going to think?" is one of the questions that pops into their minds before considering any action. "What if they see that I don't know exactly what I am doing?"

This habit about worrying about other people's judgments and avoiding embarrassment starts typically begins in junior high and too often it never leaves us. We start to form our permanent identities in junior high.

Did we do this by design? Of course not! Who knowingly choose a life designed by a teenager? But that's exactly what we've done. Struggling salon/spa owners try to live their lives designed by teenagers. No wonder they are struggling.

The first step on the path to becoming a wealthy salon/spa owner is to see how you got here. Struggling salon/spa owners feel stuck inside their personality not realizing that they have a strong will and spirit deeper inside of them. They have been brainwashed by "who they are" instead of focusing on who they can be.

Wealthy salon/spa owners know that they so much more then sum total of their problems and challenges. They are willing to rise above their personalities of who they think they are. They are willing to take the risk of being embarrassed. They are focusing their energies on overcoming the challenge not worrying about what others say or think.

Question: How often are you willing to face your challenges a problems head on?

About the Author:
Dan Lok was a college dropout working as a grocery bagger in a local supermarket for minimum wage when he set out to make something of himself. A true immigrant success story - Dan came to North America as a teenager with little knowledge of English and no contacts. He became a self-made millionaire by the age of twenty-seven. Dan wrote about his experience of opening a successful salon in his book Lies Salon Owners Believe And The Truth That Sets Them Free. Visit Dan at: http://www.salonbusinessexpert.com/

Read more of Dan Lok's articles.

Salon and Spa Owners: Which Monk Are You?

2011-07-08T05:00:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Dan Lok

Someone told me this story. It made a lot of sense to me, hope it does for you.

Two devoted monks find themselves bound together as companions, traveling by foot for a great distance.

At one point, they'd been traveling without a break for many hours and they come upon a woman sitting on the edge of a river bank crying. The woman turns to them and explains with passion and feeling how she must get back across the river to her children, but because she is too tired and weary... she doesn't think she can safely cross the river again due to the strong and steady currents.

She asks the monks would they please help her across the river, letting them know how grateful she would be.

The two monks pause and look at one another, and immediately, the older monk picks up the woman and safely carries her across the river.

The older monk returns and they continue their journey. Sometime later, the younger monk is staring at him, horrified.

See, one of the many oaths these monks had taken, was to never EVER touch a woman.

And the younger monk simply doesn't understand how the older monk could, in good conscience, violate this most important oath.

However, too intimated to ask the older monk, the younger monk says nothing, and the two of them carry on for the remainder of their journey.

One hour passes... then two ... and then a third hour.

And all during this time, the tension is building inside the younger monk. He simply can NOT understand how the older monk had the audacity to pick up that woman and carry her across the river.

Finally, after four hours, the young monk can no longer contain himself, and he gushes forth, "Sir, how could you have picked up that woman back there on the river bed?"

To which the old monk replies, "Oh, are you still carrying her around? I put her down four hours ago."

Too many salon and spa owners are carrying around a lot hurts, regrets, guilt, past failures and fears about the future. They carry them around like a sack of rocks on their backs. The sad thing is they carry these things around voluntarily. No one is forcing you to carry these emotional rocks.

Your mind could care less whether or not you are burdened with these issues, or... whether you put them down on the side of the river bed. However, how your life turns out, the amount of success, love and happiness you experience... is directly related to how big that sack is on your back, and how long you want to carry it around for.

I don't know about you, but to me... it makes a lot of sense to put that sack down. Is it time you put your sack down?

About the Author:
Dan Lok was a college dropout working as a grocery bagger in a local supermarket for minimum wage when he set out to make something of himself. A true immigrant success story - Dan came to North America as a teenager with little knowledge of English and no contacts. He became a self-made millionaire by the age of twenty-seven. Dan wrote about his experience of opening a successful salon in his book Lies Salon Owners Believe And The Truth That Sets Them Free. Visit Dan at: http://www.salonbusinessexpert.com/

Read more of Dan Lok's articles.

Wealthy Salon/Spa Owners Understand the Power of Their Words!

2011-07-07T04:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Dan Lok

I work with a lot of different salon and spa owners. I have come to the realization that wealthy salon/spa owners speak a different language then struggling salon/spa owners even though they are in the same business.

What do I mean? Language is more powerful then we give it credit. Language actually has the power to have a stronger impact then drugs. Medical tests with placebos have proven this for years. The doctor says a certain placebo pill will lower your cholesterol, lessen your anxiety or some other effect. In test after test for certain patients what the doctor says about the placebo pill actually influences what the pill seems to do. Now that is power of language.

There is a pattern to the language wealthy salon/spa owner's use. They used words like can. They have goals, projects and challenges. Struggling salon/spa owners use the words I can't, instead of having goals, projects and challenges they have problems, hassles and night mares.

A struggling salon/spa owner will say I am swamped; I am just trying to make a living. The wealthy salon/spa owner will acknowledge they are busy designing and creating the life they want.

When it comes to making changes in the salon or spa wealthy owners are excited about making changes struggling owners are worried and upset that they have to make changes. The wealthy owner would look to see what they can learn from the experience of changing while the struggling owner just tries to get through the change. The wealthy owner plans things and the struggling owner wishes for things.

It is interesting to notice the link between language and performance however what excites me is when a struggling salon/spa owner's start practicing and using the language of wealthy salon/spa owners. When you start using new language you begin to experience a freedom that goes beyond your current circumstance and you have the freedom to reinvent your own reality.

We don't have permanent language or thoughts, we have shifting patterns of thoughts and language. And these patterns can be interrupted and replaced with other patterns.

People switch patterns in other areas of their lives. Take the case of some baseball players who can as easily hit a baseball from the right side of the plate as the left side of the plate. This isn't natural. They weren't born that way. They put new patterns in place and became switch hitters. Now they effortlessly and gracefully hit balls from either side of the plate.

To become a switch hitter they use a technique known as pattern replacement. You can replace any thought (pattern) with another. All it takes is relentless practice. You are not stuck. I am not stuck.

Wealthy salon/spa owners use language to create the life they want and struggling salon/spa owners use language to describe the life they have. What language are you using?

About the Author:
Dan Lok was a college dropout working as a grocery bagger in a local supermarket for minimum wage when he set out to make something of himself. A true immigrant success story - Dan came to North America as a teenager with little knowledge of English and no contacts. He became a self-made millionaire by the age of twenty-seven. Dan wrote about his experience of opening a successful salon in his book Lies Salon Owners Believe And The Truth That Sets Them Free. Visit Dan at: http://www.salonbusinessexpert.com/

Read more of Dan Lok's articles.

Corporate Business Gifts - Why Business Laptops Are The Perfect Corporate Gifts

2011-07-03T13:00:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Titus Hoskins

When buying a corporate business gift it is sometimes very easy to take the practical route and buy something that a boss or employee will find useful in the carrying out of their daily chores. That's why many gift-givers in a workplace setting often choose business laptops as their gifts of choice. Going with a practical laptop can be a very smart choice for numerous reasons.

So, regardless of whether you're a manager, employee or boss; here are some reasons why a business laptop can be the perfect corporate gift:

1. Practical - A business laptop is very useful and practical to the receiver. They can use it in their daily work routine and even take it home at night. In our modern computerized workplaces, a computer laptop will be very useful for handling files, keeping records, making presentations and reports. They can also easily handle spreadsheets, sales data and client information. All this information can be encrypted if security is an issue.

2. Portable - Business laptops are usually light and thin so they are very portable. You can take all your business files and data with you on your sales trips and meetings. Battery life has been steadily increasing and it is now common to get 6 or more hours of battery life out of the latest business laptops. Besides, you can always take an extra battery along, if battery life is an issue.

3. Communication - Most business laptops come with the latest network/wi-fi cards so you can easily connect to the web and the world. This can be a great convenience, especially if your sales force does a lot of traveling. These laptops are especially designed with the business traveler in mind. Also remember, with services like online fax, workers can easily communicate with the office or clients no matter where they are located.

4. Powerful - With the introduction of the new Intel i3, i5 and i7 processors, business laptops have become a lot more powerful and offer top performance. And with multi-threading, you can run numerous applications at once without any problems. Plus, because of the Turbo-Boost features, you can get extra power if your system needs it.

5. Stylish - Of course, no matter how useful or powerful, any gift simply has to look good. That's why these sleek, stylish business laptops can still definitely produce the "WOW" factor. These modern examples of the latest technology will turn a few heads and please the receiver. And since just about anything these days can be personalized with laser engraving, your laptop gift can even come with a special message for the receiver.

Furthermore, laptop prices are steadily decreasing so good quality business laptops do not have to be that expensive. Besides, you're giving a very practical gift which can have many benefits and returns for your business or company. And a gift that the receiver will love and appreciate for years to come. That's why business laptops can be some of the best corporate gifts you will ever give.

About the Author:

For the latest corporate gift ideas and a handy Amazon gift-organizer try here: corporate business gifts
For some of the best business laptops...click here: best business laptops
Copyright Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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Attention Salon and Spa Owners: Do You Wake Up Thinking Life Sucks and Then You Die?

2011-07-03T05:00:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Dan Lok

The other day I saw a bumper sticker that said "Life Sucks and Then You Die". That saying got me thinking. I could use that saying as a powerful teaching tool.

The bumper sticker quickly reveals the key weakness in a struggling salon/spa owner's thinking. This statement reveals a victim mindset.

Why do I say that? The slogan "Life Sucks and Then You Die" is a clear snapshot of the core belief system of a struggling salon/spa owner. What the owner (victim) doesn't realize is that this kind of thinking leads to lower self esteem, low energy and, low performance.

This type of thinking is self defeating and struggling salon/spa owners don't see that their own thinking and mindset is defeating them.

For the sake of discussion and for the fun of it, let's agree that the first half of the saying is somewhat true. We can all agree that life can suck at times or life is difficult, life can burn you out, life is a struggle and let's not forget that life is not fair.

If that is the truth, then why is it so bad that "then you die"? If life is tough, a struggle, so difficult what's so negative about dying?

That is a big contradiction. It is like saying "I hate being in my salon or spa and what's worse is I might have to leave. Amazing how salon and spa owners think exactly like that. They also have the same mindset about their life, about their relationships, about everything. You have heard the old song, "I'm tired of livin' and scared of dyin'."

Our mind doesn't let us have it both ways. Your brain is awesome. When you send it something clearly inspiring it will send you energy. That is the good news. The bad news is when you send it something that is self contradictory your mind and body get confused and sucks energy from you.

It is illogical that life would suck be bad and death would suck be bad. If life truly sucked the bumper stick should say ""Life Sucks but Then You Die"

Struggling salon/spa owners need to realize and become aware that their contradictory thoughts are defeating them. Question: How often are you sending your mind contradictory thoughts instead of clear inspiring thoughts?

About the Author:
Dan Lok was a college dropout working as a grocery bagger in a local supermarket for minimum wage when he set out to make something of himself. A true immigrant success story - Dan came to North America as a teenager with little knowledge of English and no contacts. He became a self-made millionaire by the age of twenty-seven. Dan wrote about his experience of opening a successful salon in his book Lies Salon Owners Believe And The Truth That Sets Them Free. Visit Dan at: http://www.salonbusinessexpert.com/

Read more of Dan Lok's articles.

The Single Most Profitable Day You Spend on Your Spa or Salon!

2011-07-02T04:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Dan Lok

This concept is instrumental to the success of your spa or salon. This strategy will seem obvious though only 1 per cent or so of salon or spa owners will actually take the time to do it. Even though it is very simple, don't underestimate its value and power.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Too many salon and spa owners have no plan and make advertising decisions based on a whim, out of desperation or too many times based on whichever advertising rep catches him that day. You need to plan your marketing. You actually need to combine your marketing plan with marketing systems. What am I talking about?

A Marketing Calendar

A marketing calendar plans out all your strategies for a year. You need a plan and a budget. Take Â½ a day, a full day would even be better. Sit down with yourself and maybe one key staff person like your manager and start putting together a 12 month marketing plan.

First review and discuss what you have done in the past. What worked and what didn't work. Please make sure something that did work was truly successful. Read through the ideas and promotions in previous lessons and come up with some specific promotions you would like to do. The key to a good marketing calendar is to strive to always have a promotion going on. This gives your clients especially new clients a reason to keep coming to your spa or salon. It also helps to keep you staff excited.

Public Holidays can work well for spas and salons. Consider planning your marketing calendar around holidays. This will give your promotions a theme and reason why you are having the special promotion.

Everyone enjoys celebrating holiday. You can run your public holiday promotion for a week. You can have President Day week at your salon or spa. You can have different specials or offers on each day of the week.

Don't make the mistake of just focusing on the major public holidays like: Martin Luther King Jr Day, President Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Columbus Day, Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving Day.

You can all kinds of fun, special promotions with the following days: Chinese New Years, Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, St Patrick's Day, First Day of Spring (March 20th), Mother's Day, Father's Day, Back to School, Grandparent's Day (September 13th), First Day of Autumn (September 22nd), Halloween, the list goes on and on.

Maybe your town also has special regional holidays or special parades or events that you can turn into a profitable promotion.

This is a powerful and simple concept. The reason most spa and salon owners never use it is they never take the time to create a marketing calendar. Do yourself a favor and be part of the 1% club.

About the Author:
Dan Lok was a college dropout working as a grocery bagger in a local supermarket for minimum wage when he set out to make something of himself. A true immigrant success story - Dan came to North America as a teenager with little knowledge of English and no contacts. He became a self-made millionaire by the age of twenty-seven. Dan wrote about his experience of opening a successful salon in his book Lies Salon Owners Believe And The Truth That Sets Them Free. Visit Dan at: http://www.salonbusinessexpert.com/

Read more of Dan Lok's articles.

Why Have Online Fax Services Become So Popular?

2011-07-01T12:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Titus Hoskins

When any technology quickly becomes mainstream and a regular part of our daily lives, usually there are some underlying root causes or reasons. The same can be said about the popularity of online fax services in the modern workplace. There are some basic reasons why Internet or online fax has become so popular.

First, perhaps one of the main underlying reasons has to do with the technology itself. Online fax services combines two of the most important tech advances in the modern era: computers and the Internet. This new way of faxing uses your computers and your web connection to send and receive all your faxes. This popular combination is very powerful once you consider what "computers" and the "Internet" have done for the workplace and for the world in general. Online faxing takes advantage of both of these technological advancements to give you or your company a much more convenient and a much more robust faxing system.

Second, mobility or our need to be mobile, is one of the most over-riding features of our modern lives. People simply want to be connected to their families, friends and their businesses no matter where they are. We have seen this need fulfilled by the introduction of cell phones, smart phones, netbooks, laptops, ipads... all keeping us completely wired and tuned in to all that matters to us. Internet fax services fits in neatly and is completely compatible with all these portable devices and our mobile lifestyles.

Third, another underlying reason why these web based fax services have become so popular, comes down to pure economics. In these unsettled and trying economic times, everyone is looking for ways to cut corners and save money, especially on business expenses which have to be paid each month. Online faxing is simply much more cheaper than conventional faxing. You don't need to install or pay for an extra dedicated fax phone line since everything is done through your computers and your email system. This is also paperless faxing so you don't need to buy any papers, inks and toners. You don't even need to buy a traditional fax machine. All this makes online fax very cost-effective and less expensive to run than a conventional fax machine.

Fourth, another issue concerns competition and availability, using an online fax system means your business is open around the clock, 365 days of the year. You can receive your faxes at any time and from any location, as long as you're connected to the web. If your company or business depends upon faxing to offer promotions, stay in contact with clients or to bring in sales... one can easily see why using an Internet fax service will make your company more competitive. In these uncertain times, having any advantage, no matter how small - does make a difference to your company's bottom line.

Fifth, other reasons have to do with security and privacy. When using an Internet fax program you have much more security since your faxes can be encrypted when you send them. You also have secure online storage where only you can access them in your online account with your username and password. Your faxes can also be filled and stored on your own computer for easy private access. Only you can read your messages, unlike in the office setting, where anyone walking by can read a sensitive fax.

Lastly, when it is all said and done, perhaps one of the main reasons why online fax has become so popular simply has to do with convenience and ease-of-use. Internet fax is extremely easy to do, as simple as sending an email. It is also extremely convenient to use, you can send and receive your faxes from anywhere and at any time. This great convenience makes online fax an invaluable communication tool for the modern workplace and the modern workforce. For those employees working from home, it is ideal, for those working in the field such as construction workers, engineers, real estate agents and salespeople, it is ideal. For those operating any kind of business, big or small, online fax is ideal.

So are you or your company using an online fax service?

About the Author:

For more information on Internet Fax Services use this handy online Fax Comparison Guide to get your own: online fax services
Or if you want more detailed information on Internet Faxing try here: internet fax providers.
Titus Hoskins Copyright. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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To IPhone Or To IPad, That Is The Question

2011-06-30T17:45:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Dawn Carey

Not that long ago, mobile phones were introduced into our lifestyle. The hand helds were quite large, and were often referred to as bricks. I remember owning one, and feeling quite safe walking alone at night, knowing I had this lethal weapon in my hand. The manufacturers were constantly making the phones smaller and smaller, till they were so tiny, that a flap had to be attached just so the microphone would reach our mouth.

But as the digital age set in and our requirements became more complex, the role of the mobile phone grew. Smart phones hit the market. Now we could carry with us our schedules, address book, calculator, note pads, send and receive faxes, which developed to emails, and play games. The trend reversed. Now importance was placed on the size of the screen. It needed to be bigger and better, so as to serve these new roles. The initial smart phones were not very efficient, but we had to settle for what was available.

When Apple first released the iPhone, it was a revolution. At last there was a product that could surf the web well. The screen was responsive and intuitive. There was an almost endless choice of apps. The first iPhone lacked many of the latest features, but it overcame the problems that haunted the smart phones of the day.

Alongside the growth of the smart phone, there was also the growth of the laptop computer. Sure, it was great to be able to surf the net on your phone, but its companion was the laptop, where we would store our photos and do the real web surfing, and where we could read and write our emails with ease. This combination seemed to accommodate most people.

But then Apple came out with the iPad. At first, some people were amused. Jokes were made. It was even labeled an iPhone on steroids. Was there a market for this? Did the niche exist? Will Apple have to introduce the iPants? (http://images.pcworld.com/news/graphics/187962-ipants_original.jpg - courtesy of PC World)

There are many ways we have been using our phones and laptops, and some of these methods can now be more comfortable. As with many new products, sometimes it takes a while for us to realize the benefits. To clarify, the iPad was never created to be better than the laptop. It was created to be cheaper. But it has also created a niche that sits somewhere between the laptop and the smart phone.

Lounging on the sofa may not have been the ideal place to surf the net. When in the passenger seat of a car, your lap may not have been the most comfortable place to plonk your laptop. Those things can get hot. However, with the iPad, these are a breeze. You would not use your iPad to do your office administrative work, but to view your photos, watch movies and surf the net, it is ideal. The ability to zoom in web pages can make surfing more enjoyable than on a laptop. And the built in e reader, as well as the huge range of ebooks that can be purchased, can provide countless hours of reading pleasure on the big, clear screen. Also, the games created for the iPad look just amazing.

The iPad could never replace the smart phone, for obvious reasons. If you were to attach a strap to its back for holding on to, and you walked around holding the iPad to your head while talking into it, well that would be just plain silly.

The iPhone has many uses, and it performs them well. The laptop has most capabilities of a full desktop computer, and you can take it with you. But when a laptop is too cumbersome, and the iPhone is just a little too small, that's where the iPad shines. It has created its own niche, and has made that niche very desirable. Now Steve, about those iPants

About the Author:
If you would like to know how to get your hands on a Free iPad 2, you can visit this website: http://freegizmos.info/

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Clients Want to Visit Spas and Salons Where People Know Their Name!

2011-06-27T06:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 DJ Richoux

I may be aging myself by telling you this story. In the 1980s there was a 30 minute TV comedy called Cheers that was about a bar with a colorful cast of regulars. The main characters were Sam Malone, the owner of the bar and a retired baseball player; Dr. Frasier - the "resident psychiatrist" who frequents the bar and could often use a little analysis himself; Norm - a semi-professional beer drinker and Cliff - a thirty something mailman who still lives with his mother. To get away from their "hum-drum" lives, they all come to the bar where "Everybody Knows Your Name".

The theme song written by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo is a great marketing lesson. Here are the lyrics:

Makin' your way in the world today takes everything you've got.
Takin' a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.
Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go, where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same,
You wanna be where everybody knows your name.

You wanna go where people know, people are all the same,
You wanna go where everybody knows your name.

Everybody wants to hear and read their name. Personalization is a powerful tactic when used properly in direct mail or postcards that can significantly increase your sales by attracting more clients to come to your spa or salon.

I don't usually quote studies. I felt this was important enough to give you an overview on a study done by Frank Romano (http://print.rit.edu/people/profile.php?page=24) of the Rochester Institute of Technology. The study comprised of separate mailings to both business and consumer audiences - each testing the value added by colour, basic personalization and use of database information. All materials were professionally designed and produced using digital printing, and the static and personalized pieces were as similar as possible. There were two methods of response: a toll-free number, or postage-paid reply card, with a total of 36 mailings each of 4000 pieces.

The Results were AMAZING!

Using just black and white text and photos, the response rate was a little less than a half of one percent (.5%). The next mailing, using black and white and the recipients name raised the response rate by 44% over the first mailing. The third mailing was a static document in full colour, which came in slightly ahead of the second mailing at 45% increase in response rates. When the two options were combined, however, full colour and recipient information, the response rate jumped up to 135% over static black and white. In the final mailing, the piece was produced in full color using database information to customize the offer. Response rates topped 500% of the first offer. That translates into a 15-20% response on the total mailing.

Here is the bottom line: Personalization Works!

Using the Recipients name (personalization) in the actual copy of the mailing 45% more people responded to the mailing.

Adding Full color and using the recipient's name (personalization) 135% more people responded to the mailing.

With the above plus a customized offer using database information up to 500% more people have responded to some mailings.

If and when you are doing a mailing to your clients don't forget the power of personalization. It is well worth the extra investment in personalizing each mail piece. You will enjoy an extra windfall in profits as your cash register keeps ringing!

About the Author:
DJ Richoux is an entrepreneur and marketing coach who has over 19 years of practical hands on "street-smart" marketing and customer service experience. For the last decade he has specialized in developing step-by-step systems that enable business owners to realize more profit, more freedom and more satisfaction from their businesses. Now as a salon marketing expert, DJ is revolutionizing the way salon owners do business delivering them more freedom, more profit and more fun. Visit DJ at: http://www.salonbusinessexpert.com/

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5 TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS

2011-06-26T14:00:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Paul Barton

Want more effective communication skills? Here are five effective communication skills tips to remember:

(1) Apply ALL the tools of communication -- not just the words. Your image and the way you are seen by others, your attitude, posture and tone of voice all combine to communicate for you. Some studies show these factors convey more real meaning than the actual words you use. Effective communication skills require using these tools.

(2) Understand the critical role that "human needs" play in the effectiveness of your communication. Your success will depend, in large part, on the degree to which your communication agrees with or threatens those needs -- things like the "basics" of food, shelter and clothing, as well as safety, belonging, ego-status and self-actualization -- all terms many of us learned in Psychology 101, but might have long forgotten. Failing to take them into account can severely hamper effective communication skills.

(3) Plan your communication. It doesn't matter whether you're talking to 1 person or 100. If your communication is important, then it is worth thinking it through and doing it right. Consider both what you want to accomplish and the needs and interests of the others.

LEVERAGE YOUR COMMUNICATION RESOURCES/REPEAT/LIMIT

(4) Send your message in a way that leverages your verbal and non-verbal resources -- such as clear enunciation, message-punctuating hand gestures and facial expressions. Again, these additional communication tools can add real meaning to and understanding of what you are saying. One of the most effective tools for effective communication is repetition. The "three tells" approach is a powerful way to accomplish this: (1) Tell them what you're going to tell them. (2) Tell them. (3) Tell them what you told them. Don't try to make one communication do too much. One major "take away" message and two or three support points is a good rule of thumb.

(5) Explain and encourage in order to persuade. If you are seeking action or an attitude change on the part of the other person, be sure to explain and back up what you are saying. Think of ways to make it easy for the other person to agree to do what you want.

About the Author:
Paul Barton, former Director of Corporate Advertising Programs at IBM and author of several books and articles about communication, is a consultant and coach of effective communication skills. http://www.effectivecommunicationsskills.com

How Wealthy Salon/Spa Owners Develop The Wealth Mindset

2011-06-22T10:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 DJ Richoux

Unfortunately for many of you like me we have come to believe some unhealthy ideas and concepts about money. We started gathering these ideas as kids and they have stuck to us like glue throughout our lives.

What you don't realize is that many of these ideas may be holding you back from being a wealthy salon/spa owner.

When I was young money was scarce. My parents emigrated from a small town in Belgium to Vancouver, Canada in April, 1966 with four young mouths (my brother and two sisters) to feed. With two wooden chests of their worldly possessions and just under a $100 in their pocket we embarked on our new life.

My father had what you would call an "immigrant work ethic". He basically did whatever it took to feed his family. Like most immigrants the way to get ahead was to save as much money as possible so one day you could create a better life. As my father earned money we as a family saved money.

From a very young age the "value of money" was instilled in me. Money was important. You didn't take risks, you saved your money and you worked hard for every dollar.

When I was young teen I had a paper route delivering our daily newspaper called The Vancouver Sun. On an average day I delivered 58 papers through rain sleet and snow. On a good day it took me about a 1 hour and 20 minutes to do my paper route. On a bad day like a snow day it could take 2 hours or more. Lucky for me it rained a lot more then it snowed. It was my responsibility to deliver those papers so 6 days a week I went out alone and delivered those papers.

The money story I learnt from walking in the rain for an hour and 20 minutes trying to keep newspapers dry was that earning money was hard physical work. You had to be willing to get cold and wet and face hardship to earn a dollar. Every dollar was precious so you better save it.

When you're young and impressionable like I was experiences like these have a profound effect on you. There are a whole set of money stories that you absorbed as a child around the dinner table, when we visited our uncles and aunts, or at school or at friend's place. These stories grow with you through your youth.

We all have and heard money stories growing up.

Here are some examples of common money stories:

Money doesn't grow on trees.

Money is the root of all evil

Do you think we are made of money?

Rich people got that way because they are dishonest

We may not be rich but we're happy.

Making money too easily is wrong.

Money causes good people to go bad

Having too much money will alienate you from family and friends.

Rich people are unhappy, so having a lot of money will make you unhappy.

Which of these money stories do you hear growing up?

When you hear the same story often enough it starts to grow and take a life of its own. Eventually what started as a story becomes a myth and in this case a money myth.

After while these myths become unconscious for you and begin to shape the way you view money and the world. They way you think about money communicate about money and make decisions about money.

The reality is that these "money myths" become your money beliefs and your beliefs are always with you. Beliefs are not things you consciously think about. Your beliefs determine your reality and your beliefs run all the time at an unconscious level. It is like having bad programming that you are unaware of.

Do you see how some of the money beliefs are holding you back from being a wealthy salon/spa owner?

Let me give you a couple of examples.

If you heard the story that "Money causes good people to go bad" enough times growing up, that eventually it becomes your money belief. When you consider becoming a rich and wealthy salon/spa owner part of you will automatically have an unconscious thought: "money will cause me to go bad".

If you grew up in a home where there was a lot of fighting, stress and conflict about money, then money would become linked at an unconscious level to conflict. Your money belief would become "money equals fighting." And every time you think about money at some level you'd feel anxiety - the same feeling you had when your parents fought about money.

To be a wealthy salon/spa owner you need to be comfortable about money and making a healthy profit. If money was scarce like it was for me when I was kids then you need to overcome what is known as a scarcity mentality and move towards an abundance mentality. Abundance is one of the most powerful money beliefs.

Wealthy salon/spa owners have an abundance money belief. They know they are no true shortages that there is plenty to go around. They know their success as a wealthy salon/spa owner doesn't block a struggling salon/spa owner from becoming wealthy.

Wealthy salon/spa owners understand that there is a whole lot of money moving around in the economy in good times and bad times. They understand there a lot of affluent people spending a lot of money in salons and spas so why shouldn't they spend that money in their salon.

These same wealthy salon/spa owners understand there are also a lot of non-affluent people that want to treat and pamper themselves in a nice salon and spa. They know the secret that people find a way to buy what they decide they want..

One of the common traits struggling salon/spa owners have is a lot of guilt both conscious and unconscious about money and wealth. Guilt repels money and wealth.

To become a wealthy salon/spa owner you are going to have free yourself from the guilt of making money and a healthy profit.

You are always going to be a struggling salon/spa owner with no freedom if you carry around all this guilt, fear and scarcity about money.

Start thinking and acting like wealthy salon/spa owner who is comfortable and relaxed around money.

Live in Freedom!

About the Author:
DJ Richoux is an entrepreneur and marketing coach who has over 19 years of practical hands on "street-smart" marketing and customer service experience. For the last decade he has specialized in developing step-by-step systems that enable business owners to realize more profit, more freedom and more satisfaction from their businesses. Now as a salon marketing expert, DJ is revolutionizing the way salon owners do business delivering them more freedom, more profit and more fun. Visit DJ at: http://www.salonbusinessexpert.com/

Read more of DJ Richoux's articles.

Wealthy Salon/Spa Owners Focus on What They Want!

2011-06-20T07:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Dan Lok

I have talked to a lot of successful salon/spa owners or well as other successful business owners. There is a common thread in all their stories. Success leaves clues.

I heard this story of a successful salon owner in Houston, Texas. As the story goes a water heater in a closet had overheated. When one of the staff opened the closet door flames erupted into the salon. (I am sure that doesn't happen in the salon. We have had a flood though that is a story for another day). Luck or fate had it that there was a fireman in the salon at the time and he grabbed a fire extinguisher and put out the fire. The fire was out but what a mess. There was a white powdery substance all over the salon. The damage was done.

The salon was in a mall. Bill the mall manager called the owner of salon telling him about the fire. The owner came to the mall to access the damage. The mall manager met the owner David at his salon in the later afternoon to discuss the situation. Bill had already viewed the damage and figured it would take David two weeks to a month to do the repairs and reopen. There was a lot of damage the carpet might be ruined, the walls were scorched, wiring need to be repaired there was smoke damage and there also might be some hidden damage. This fire would be the talk of the mall for a while. Everyone is thankful that no one got hurt.

When David heard Bill say it would take him a month to reopen his salon he said "Not a chance, I'll be open for business at 10 am tomorrow. You might want to stop by for a haircut."

See David focused on what he wanted. He immediately called his brother-in-law who was a tradesman. He told him grab everyone you can, painters, electrician, carpenters etc and get them to over to salon tonight. The sooner the better! Tell them I will bonus each one of them $200 but they've got to work all night.

An army of workers showed up, rolled up their sleeves and got to work. They replaced the damage material, repaired the wiring and plumbing, plastered and painted and cleaned every inch of the salon removing the layer of white powdery substance from every nook and cranny in the salon. An exhausted though happy crew left the salon at 8 am the next morning.

Sure enough, at 10 am that morning Bill the mall manager was there to see him open his doors for business.

David the wealthy salon owner could have felt sorry for himself, talked about the bad luck, blame others and wallow in his pain and struggle. He could have easily been miserable for a day or two, who would blame him.

David knew that if he focused on the pain of the situation and thought about nothing but the pain he wouldn't get anywhere. He understood that he had to accept the pain for what it was and then focus completely on what he wanted. The more you focus on what you want, the less the pain matters.

Wealthy salon/spa owners know they need to take over a challenging situation, reinvent the situation by focusing on what do they want to create form this situation. Struggling salon/spa owners get stuck focusing on the struggle and don't take the first step towards creating what they want. They focus on their fear instead of what they want.

The next time you face a challenge in your salon or spa focus on what you want.

About the Author:
Dan Lok was a college dropout working as a grocery bagger in a local supermarket for minimum wage when he set out to make something of himself. A true immigrant success story - Dan came to North America as a teenager with little knowledge of English and no contacts. He became a self-made millionaire by the age of twenty-seven. Dan wrote about his experience of opening a successful salon in his book Lies Salon Owners Believe And The Truth That Sets Them Free. Visit Dan at: http://www.salonbusinessexpert.com/

Read more of Dan Lok's articles.

Wealthy Salon/Spa Owners Build Their Yes Muscle!

2011-06-20T04:00:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Dan Lok

Struggling salon/spa owners are like a garden hose. They seem to be in chaos all the time with a hundred things going on all at once. They have no direction therefore no discipline. They spray their thoughts everywhere like a garden hose with the nozzle turned to mist. Their thoughts and actions have no focus or power as they vaporize into thin air.

I was like this at one time, thinking a hundred different things. My emotions controlled me. Every time a feeling came up that is where I went. I was spread so thin, so distracted you could see right through me.

I was ruining my life thinking about hundreds of different things a day. I had no discipline. It was like taking a thousand dollars and depositing a single dollar into a thousand different banks. Living this way is a form of being undisciplined; anything can pull your attention away. You have no power to say no to anything.

When I talk and coach struggling salon/spa owners I hear about their scattered lives. It is as if they are dying from a hundred little distractions, bleeding from a hundred little cuts. They tell me about being constantly drained by their staff, vendor's, relatives, friends and client requests. They have never learned to say no.

Creating the life you want depends on developing what one of my mentors called your "No Muscle". You have to build this muscle over time. If you don't build your "No Muscle" and you are in a tough situation your "No Muscle" will be too weak to say no.

The secret to developing your "No Muscle" is to first develop your "Yes Muscle". You first have to start saying yes to what is important to you then saying no to what is not important to you will get easier for you.

When you make appointments with yourself and more importantly keep the appointment this is a form of saying yes. For example, if you say you are going to go to an aerobics class at 6 pm and you do go to the class. In other words your list of goals and priorities is a form of saying yes.

When you build the habit of setting specific time aside to do specific tasks or activities it is easier to say no to distractions and people that may cut into your time.

I suggest you start building this habit first with activities that you love so you can build your yes muscle slowly. I love ballroom dancing. Once I book a time to go to a ballroom dance class I am there. When I book a class a week in advance it is easy for me to say no someone who wants to have a meeting at the time of the class. I just say I have a commitment or already have an appointment at that time and people understand.

I wouldn't miss that class so it is easy to say no to other people, activities or distractions that they may try to get in the way. As one of my dance teachers says, "Life is a dance. Don't skip the dance."

The challenge starts when you have no plans, commitments or goals allowing people you may not even care about are taking all your time. You can't say no to others because you haven't said yes to anything.

The greatest value of planning is that it gives you your own life to live. It puts you in charge of your own plan. It allows you to focus on what's important to you.

Start asking yourself some of these questions: What do I really want to accomplish? How much time I am willing to commit to accomplish this? Which people are most important to me? How much time do I want to give them?

We start to become what we focus our thoughts on. Change starts with a plan. The planning itself is your most important priority. Block out 15 to 20 minutes a day for just thinking and planning. It may feel weird at first, maybe like you are not doing anything.

Just remember you are doing something planning and creating your life. Soon you will start reaping benefits that will amaze you. You can't imagine ahead of time what you will discover from open creative planning time.

One reason many people don't do it is the fear of the unknown. You will discover that the unknown is on your side and will work for you. You and I know if you don't change something you will keep getting the same. Take a small risk, a chance think about the new freedom and fun you can create in your life.

Wealthy salon/spa owners use their "no muscle by first building their "yes muscle". They also block out time to plan and create their week including their priorities. Isn't it time you blocked out some time to build your "yes muscle" and to take the time to plan out your priorities and goals for the week?

About the Author:
Dan Lok was a college dropout working as a grocery bagger in a local supermarket for minimum wage when he set out to make something of himself. A true immigrant success story - Dan came to North America as a teenager with little knowledge of English and no contacts. He became a self-made millionaire by the age of twenty-seven. Dan wrote about his experience of opening a successful salon in his book Lies Salon Owners Believe And The Truth That Sets Them Free. Visit Dan at: http://www.salonbusinessexpert.com/

What Can Salon/Spa Owners Learn From an Italian Deli?

2011-06-16T21:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Dan Lok

Recently a friend told me about an Italian Deli called Spolumbos and all the right things they do to attract customers.

You are wondering what can I learn from an Italian deli on how to run my salon or spa?

You can learn a lot from these three guys. See wealthy salon owners understand the same secret these three deli owners understand. That secret being they are not in deli business they are actually in the relationship business.

Struggling salon/spa owners think they are in the beauty business.

"You are in the relationship business, not the beauty business." ~ Dan Lok

Once you know you are in the relationship business you operate your business differently.

You ask how? Here are some of the ways Tom, Tony and Mike promote their deli business building relationship with clients and their community.

1) They use whatever they got. In their case they use their personality and celebrity status (all three partners played in the CFL - the Canadian version of the NFL). They have memorabilia-old photos, helmets jerseys and stuff all on display in the deli for all to see.

Use whatever you got. Use your personality, find a spokesperson, and create a story about your salon or spa.

2) They educate their clients on how they their Italian sausage and other products. They show everyone their passion for good food, good friends and family. They make you part of their family.

Do you treat your customers like family so they feel welcomed and want to do business with you? Do you educate your clients?

3) They love giving to charities - and the media loves covering them. You will see these Tom, Tony and Mike at all the big sporting events - cooking up a storm. They are always helping charities giving food, toys or a helping hand.

Of course the media LOVES them. You see them everywhere - in the papers, on the radio, on television... they are everywhere.

How can you help a local charity? It can be a win for everyone. You help out those that need help! Make sure your local media knows what you are doing. Phone them, write them, take photos for them.

Keep reminding yourself and your team that you are in the relationship business. Put a signs up in your staff area that say...

"We are in the relationship business, not the beauty business."

Have a team meeting to discuss and brainstorm how you can make your customers feel more welcome, be part of your business family. Discuss ideas and strategies on how you can educate your customers better on your services and products.

Wealthy salon/spa owners understand they are in the relationship business. Struggling salon/spa owners think they are in the beauty or glamour business. What business are you in?

About the Author:
Dan Lok was a college dropout working as a grocery bagger in a local supermarket for minimum wage when he set out to make something of himself. A true immigrant success story - Dan came to North America as a teenager with little knowledge of English and no contacts. He became a self-made millionaire by the age of twenty-seven. Dan wrote about his experience of opening a successful salon in his book Lies Salon Owners Believe And The Truth That Sets Them Free. Visit Dan at: http://www.salonbusinessexpert.com/

Read more of Dan Lok's articles.

The Death and Resurrection of Quality Content

2011-03-16T09:00:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Bill Platt

No matter where you go online, you are bound to find someone complaining about the quality of content available online. When we want to find information that answers our questions for us, the last thing we want to do is to land on a MFA (Made For Adsense) website with questionable content. And yet, many of the people who complain about this state of affairs also contribute to the problem.

Believe it or not, you have the ability to become part of the solution, rather than to continue being part of the problem. Keep reading to learn how...

As the people who create the content that the world consumes, through the World Wide Web, we are in a very unique position. We have the power to change the future of the Internet... We have the power to change the world for the better...

We have the power to turn the Internet into something our children and grandchildren could value...

People who do not market goods and services online wonder why the Internet has become a cesspool or irrelevant and badly written content... They wonder why the information they find online is littered with so much junk and garbage... They wonder why marketers are willing to ruin the Internet in a quest to make a few extra dollars...

Google, more than any other website, understands the battle that they must win... They must devise systems that will conquer and destroy the wealth of junk content online... It is a battle that that Google must win, in order to ensure the longevity of its value in the marketplace...

Over the last year, Bing has been eating into Google's market share, in its effort to capture more eyeballs and more advertising dollars...

The wizards behind the curtain at Google understand that Google needs to change to survive. They know that Bing is winning market share, because Google's search results are littered with a vast empire of junk content, masquerading as quality content. Information consumers have begun to take notice the heaps of junk in Google's search results... And they are starting to notice in large numbers...

Google must adapt or die...

As a result, Google is becoming somewhat more aggressive to weed out the kinds of content that people are afraid that they cannot trust...

There are still vast opportunities for marketers to take advantage of Google, in order to convince Google's search algorithms that a filthy, stinking piece of dog poo is good quality content... So if this has been your business model until now, you will still have opportunities to play that game into the future...

But the reality is that the dog poo method of creating content for the Internet is one that can only promise short-term gains... Up until Google figures out how to recognize the dog poo on the Internet...

As online marketers, we are in a unique position of power... If we are willing to make a commitment to raise the bar on the quality of content we provide to the global community, we can start cleaning up our own corner of the Internet, one day at a time...

And if we are willing to make a commitment to better quality information, we can ensure a more long-term viability for our online businesses, because our content will be at a level where Google does not feel a need to whack our brand of Internet Marketing...

When the Google Spam Team looks out on the vastness of the Internet and sees our content as an example of the kind of Internet they want to endorse, we will find Google technicians making a commitment not to cleanse our websites from its search results.

As web content creators, we have the power to raise the bar... We have the power to create the kind of content that our children and grandchildren will be happy to share with their grandchildren...

We have the power through the words that we choose to improve the quality of the Internet, and to make it a community more people are happy to participate...

We have the power, and our power begins with a simple idea:

If we make a commitment to using less automation and investing more personal time into our topics, with more regard for building an audience and less focus on trying to snatch another link, then we could position ourselves to ride the wave of great content to personal financial success...

Yes, it really is that easy...

We only need to make a decision to do the right thing, lead by example, and take action to bring the dream to life...

About the Author:
This simple article writing guide will teach you how to create good-quality, profit-producing articles reliably and in 20 minutes or less. Sign up to receive our FREE twice-weekly marketing tips via email. If you are available on Friday or Saturday night, join Bill Platt and other online marketers at: http://LiveMarketingChat.com/

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21 Tips for Defeating Writer's Block

2011-03-14T17:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Trey Pennewell

One of the most difficult aspects of article writing and marketing, once you have been doing it for a longer period of time, is how to come up with fresh topics to write about. It is even more difficult to put your finger on ideas that are hot and related to your topic.

Here are some suggestions to help you get those creative juices flowing again.

Visit forums related to your niche. Spend 30 minutes a day in forums related to your niche. Write down common questions or inquiries and use those to craft articles.

Visit the Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers. If one person has asked the question, chances are there are many more who have it but are afraid to ask. Answer the most common questions you see with a new article.

Check the news. Being on top of the industry news will help you be able to write related articles as the news events take place. This can also be a great way to grab expanded exposure. By piggy backing off the hot topic you can grab way more readers then you would with a normal topic. And not just the big news stations either. Some of the smaller more local stations may have topics not covered by the larger ones and can be a potential goldmine for ideas.

Set up a Google alert for your topic. This way you'll be emailed how ever frequently you choose, with up to date blogs and posts and new stories related to your topic that you can get and gain ideas from.

Spend 30 minutes brainstorming. Do not allow yourself to focus on anything but your topic. This will get easier the more times you do it. It can be difficult the first few times to get your mind to actually produce something, but once you've done it a few times your mind will know you mean business and will help you populate ideas quite quickly.

Use Google's wonder wheel for ideas. Instead of using it to get keywords, use it to help you get some ideas as to what to write about.

Create a mind map about your topic. And then each and every sub-topic that you come up with, until you have multiple mini mind maps and plenty of ideas to source article topics from.

If you're really stuck, check out the competition. Seeing what they are writing about may give you ideas of what to write about.

Re-purpose old articles. But, not by rewriting them. Instead approach the same topic from another angle. If your topic was say 5 tips to succeed in article writing, a new approach would be 5 things to avoid in article writing, or 5 tips to improve, or a better way to do it. Just using the same general idea, and giving it life in a new way can be the perfect method to get unstuck.

Check out the bookstore or the library. The ones that have real books. Look at some of the ones related to your niche and see if you can't gain some writing ideas from them.

Go to e-book sites as well. Do the same thing as you did with Amazon and the library. Look for titles in your niche, and use those to help you get new creative ideas to write about.

Use seasonal events to your advantage. Instead of just writing about autism, write about how to help autistic children cope with Christmas, or other such seasonal event related topics.

Carry a notebook with you. Ever feel like you've got the perfect idea but are not at home and able to write the article right away. Carry around a notebook so that when the idea strikes you can jot it down before you forget it again.

Get away from the computer for a bit. Real life and real life situations may give you ideas you never would have come up with by simply sitting in front of your monitor. Use real life experiences and events to create ideas and creativity for your articles.

Talk to industry leaders. Just a quick Q and A with someone in the industry may prompt ideas you would have never thought of otherwise.

Read. By reading what others have wrote on the topic you may be able to come up with ideas of your own, or a new twist on an old idea. The best writers and the most avid of readers.

Along the same lines as reading, read articles in some of your favorite authority blogs and websites. One of my favorite blogs is Mashable.com. They may bring to mind a thought or idea you may not have thought of otherwise.

Join a mastermind group. Being able to float ideas around with others and discuss your topic can help breathe new life into a topic you found going stale. And, it is a great way to set up potential cross promotions with others in your niche for the future.

Use your imagination. Put yourself into the mind of your target audience, and figure out questions and topics that may be important to them and write about them. Just a little bit of imagination and role playing can lead to many new ideas.

Watch movies or television shows related to your niche. They may cover topics or ideas you may not have previously covered or thought about.

Think about your own personal experiences. There may be things within them that you can revisit and create topics about, with a good solid base of reality to make for a more interesting and informative article.

Hopefully these ideas will help you come up with and create your own ideas and topics to write about. Ideas are limitless, you just need to develop the skills to mine the topics and ideas out of the things around you. The more you write and the more you strive to generate ideas, the more ideas you'll eventually come up with.

About the Author:
To make your article marketing more profitable, get your copy of, "Article Marketing Secrets: Turning Words Into Dollars". Or improve your writing speed with, "How To Write Articles Fast In 20 Minutes or Less Without Sacrificing Quality". Subscribe to our twice-weekly general marketing tips here: http://thephantomwriters.com/karmaonline Author: Trey Pennewell

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14 Tips to Improve Your Article Writing and Article Marketing

2011-03-11T02:15:00.001-08:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Trey Pennewell

Everything online requires content, and articles are just one form of content. Learning how to write articles and create content should be a focal point for anyone looking to start a business or even a hobby online, after all like the saying goes, content is king.

Here are some tips to help you write better articles:

1. Write with an end goal in mind. Different types of articles work for different reasons. If you are looking for syndication and publication on authority websites, you're not going to want short, full of fluff 300 word articles. Instead, you'll want to go with long informative 800-1000 word articles that actually deliver quality information on your topic, in a format that works well for ezine and authority publishers.

2. Do your research beforehand. The better you know the topic, the easier it will be to write for it. Simply by knowing your topic, you can drastically cut down on the time it takes to create informative articles your readers will enjoy. Attempt to comprehend your topic, before you sit down to write.

3. Just write. The more you write, the better you will get at it. And not just on your topic. Challenge yourself. Write on anything and everything, and your overall writing skills will improve, not to mention your typing speed. Both things will help you reduce writing time in the long end.

4. Write with the reader in mind. Instead of writing for your own purpose, think about it from the readers perspective. What is the reason they are reading your article? Are you addressing their needs and concerns? If you can get into the mind of your reader and what they are seeking from you and your writing, you'll be better equipped to write an article they will appreciate.

5. If you are writing for back links, keywords matter. If you are writing for readers, forget about them. Keywords only help you get found in the search engines. If you are preparing high quality articles for syndication, you'll get the readers from the sites you are published to. That's not to say you want to go completely off topic, simply that keywords aren't vital, and if you are writing on topic anyways, the search engines will figure out where you belong in their search results. As Google recommends, create your content for your reader, to improve your chances of ranking well in Google. In my articles, I have found that to be true.

6. Learn to craft captivating titles. Titles are one of the most important parts of the article marketing and writing battle. It doesn't matter how informative or well written your article is, if the title doesn't make readers open the article. Spend some time on your title. Actually focus on making it reader friendly and interesting. Your bottom line will thank you for this.

7. Write with passion. If you are bored to tears by your topic, chances are your writing is going to reflect your boredom, be dry and present less than glamorous prose. If you are in love with your topic, it will shine through your words and come across to the reader. This is one reason many suggest when you are just getting started to go with a passion. It is much simpler to write about something that you get emotional about, than to write about something you have no emotional investment in.

8. Don't proof read and spell check as your write. Stopping and changing your mind frame from creation to editing can interrupt your flow of thought. Instead focus on getting the thoughts and ideas down, and then go back and do the spelling and grammar checks. You'll find your mind thinks and writes that much quicker by using this method.

9. Focus on quality. There will forever be the debate over quality and quantity. Few take into consideration that quality will naturally breed quantity, through syndication and other methods. If you are consistently providing high quality articles, publishers will love utilizing your content and do so on a regular basis. And the more publishers that take notice of your work, the more targeted traffic you will be getting. Much more targeted traffic then that coming from article directories and other such places.

10. Turn off your word count tool. Stop checking the word count and simply write until the idea has been fully explained to the reader. If that takes 300 words so be it. If it takes 1000, then let it. Stopping the flow of ideas simply to stay in line with a word count is a sure fire way to leave your articles lacking that finished feel.

11. Read. Yes, read. The more you read and the more you expand your horizons, the better your writing will be. Simply taking in the written word, exploring and understanding other writing methods and formations will help you in your own writing. It can also help you increase your vocabulary and find styles that really reach out and grab readers by the eyeballs.

12. Check out what the competition is doing, and do it better. If your competition is providing lackluster articles, that barely wet your taste for the subject, go above and beyond, and your readers will notice. By knowing what kind of content you are trying to compete with, you can improve your own skills and marketing mindset.

13. Use the language of your target audience. If you are writing for highly educated people, your writing should reflect that. If you are writing for mass appeal, stick to relatively lower level writing, think grade 8 levels. If a grade 8 student could read and interpret what you are saying, you have succeeded. If they cannot, you may want to revise your writing style and language.

14. Understand that writing is a skill. And as such, needs to be constantly worked upon. Malcolm Gladwell stated in "Outliers" it takes 10,000 hours to master something. Master writing by continually working on it and the improvement of your skills. And by the time you reach 10,000 hours of work, you'll have mastered the skill and no longer need others tips and technique to make your writing vibrant and a success.

Hopefully these tips will help you master article writing and marketing. In the end, all that matters is that you actually do it. No amount of tips or tricks are going to help you if you don't just get started and get that writing underway. Begin writing and over time your skills and abilities will improve, and your writing will reflect your growing knowledge and skills. Writing starts the same way for everyone, with a blank page waiting to be filled. Get started filling yours today.

About the Author:
To make your article marketing more profitable, get your copy of, "Article Marketing Secrets: Turning Words Into Dollars". Or improve your writing speed with, "How To Write Articles Fast In 20 Minutes or Less Without Sacrificing Quality". Subscribe to our twice-weekly general marketing tips here: http://thephantomwriters.com/karmaonline Author: Trey Pennewell

Read more of Trey Pennewell's articles.

Cutting Through The Information Overload: Grab Your Readers' Attention With a Great Title

2011-03-04T01:15:00.001-08:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2011 Bill Platt

As avid readers, we have trained our brains to scan the headlines looking for something that might suit our desires... This article will give you a solid understanding of how to grab your readers by the eyeballs and get them to open and read your articles...

You Have Only a Split-Second To Make A Good First Impression

Think about how you browse the Internet, and you will know this to be true. We scan the titles / headlines, looking for something to pop off the page...

When something reaches up and grabs us by the eyeballs, we take a closer look...

We look at the title with a greater attention to detail, and if a description is available, we will look at the description to see if it agrees with the title enough to merit our continued interest.

The decision to look at a title with more attention is usually made within a split-second. The decision to open the article is usually made in ten seconds or less.

Keywords in a Title Help

There are certain keywords that when seen in a title will be the trigger someone to look closer at the article title.

Contrary to what you may have heard elsewhere, it is not always necessary for your target keywords to be in the front part of the title.

Your keywords only need to be "in the title" somewhere, in order to attract the readers' eyeballs to your title.

The title should be constructed to build curiosity in the article and to lead the reader to make a decision to open and read the article.

Let me reiterate this point, because it is that important. The purpose of the title is to get the article opened, and the inclusion of keywords in the title is to attract eyeballs to the title.

Let The Article Description Build On The Progress Made With The Title

In some cases, your article title will be accompanied by an article description, but not always.

Your article description should be constructed to create even more interest in the article by giving some additional details about what can be expected to be found within the article itself.

Often times, the first paragraph of the article is used as the article description.

If both are the same, that is fine. But if both the article description and the first paragraph of the article are different, then both should be constructed with the same goal in mind. Both should be constructed to build more interest in the article, to ensure that the reader makes a decision to keep reading.

The Goal Is To Get Someone To Your Resource Box To Take An Action

As article writers, our goal is always to get the reader to our articles' Resource Box to get them to take the actions we want them to take.

But there are many hurdles that we must overcome, before the reader can take the action we want them to take.

We must get our articles into a location where people are likely to find them.

An article that never gets opened, never gets read.

An article that does not hold the readers' attention until the end of the article will fail to deliver on its intended goal of getting the reader to the resource box.

A closing paragraph or resource box that tells the reader that they have come to the end of the article, before the reader has been presented with a call-to-action is also an article that fails to achieve its real potential.

And a resource box that does not get read is a resource box that missed the mark.

After all that could have gone wrong in the process of the article, the writer faces one more challenge that is often more difficult than all other challenges to overcome...

Writers Must Be Able To Overcome Writers' Block and Get The Article Written

I'd be lying if I said that I never experienced writers' block, even after having written thousands of articles in the last decade.

2009 was a turning point for me as a writer.

That was when I discovered an awesome method of increasing my writing speed reliably and consistently.

To be honest, when I had my revelation, I was able to cut my average writing time from around two hours to just under 20 minutes.

My new article writing strategy begins with good research. If you get my 20-Minute Article report, I will teach you how to do your research and organize that research in such a way that you will be able to write most of your articles in less than 20 minutes as well, without having to sacrifice the good quality content that you need to attract readers and keep them on your article until they have seen your call-to-action.

About the Author:
Get your copy of my 20-Minute Article Writing Strategy Guide here: http://thephantomwriters.com/article-writing-guide/ And sign up to receive my twice-weekly email that delivers Free Marketing Tips. My name is Bill Platt, and I thank you for reading. If you are available on Friday or Saturday night, join Bill and other online marketers at: http://LiveMarketingChat.com/

Read more of Bill Platt's articles.

Introverted Business Owners: Don't Believe These Three Myths About Introverts' Marketing Abilities

2010-12-29T05:30:00.001-08:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Marcia Yudkin

An introvert is someone who needs to recharge their energy alone rather than with other people. An extrovert is someone who gains energy being with other people and loses energy being alone. These definitions come from Carl Jung, whose work formed the basis for the Myers-Briggs personality test. If you're not sure whether or not you're an introvert, I encourage you to take that test.

If you do know you're an introvert, you may believe you're at a huge disadvantage when it comes to marketing. Many experts define the "shoulds" of marketing in such a way that introverts seem to need a personality transplant in order to do the outreach needed to get their business known. At the same time, much of the stigma attached to being an introvert in business for oneself comes from misconceptions about introverts, and that's what I'll be tackling in this article.

Watch out for these three myths that are harmful to a lot of introverts when it comes to marketing.

Myth #1: Introverts are shy and don't like to be around other people. True, introverts can also be shy, but not all shy people are introverts. These are two different phenomena. Shy people wish they were better at being around other people and want to be around other people. Introverts who understand themselves are content to be by themselves. Shy people are the ones who wish they were invited to the party, wish desperately to be invited to dance or talk but hold back. Introverts are often not interested in going to the party to begin with.

The harmfulness of this myth comes about when you think that because you enjoy being by yourself, you're shy and therefore socially incompetent, and then you convince yourself that you shouldn't pursue any form of marketing that involves social contact. Keep reading to learn more about why that's wrong.

Myth #2 is related to #1: Introverts have poor social skills and poor relationships. In fact, introverts can be very good at getting along with people. They may just have a different style of getting along with people. Instead of using small talk as all-purpose social grease, they may be better at having quiet, meaningful conversations. Introverts tend to relate better one person at a time than to a group of people. They can be very good salespeople because they tend to listen well and be interested in getting at what matters instead of more superficial things. They may have a smaller circle of friends and clients but have more intense, loyal relationships with people who matter to them.

In business, this myth is damaging to introverts because it may get them to discount the less obvious social skills they have. They may therefore put someone in charge of sales and marketing who seems to have the right personality but doesn't have the ability to get down to brass tacks and nail the sale. That's exactly what happened to me in an ill-fated business partnership early in my career. It took me nearly two years to figure out that I, the back-room person, was actually much better at marketing than my front-room partner who could talk up a storm but not much else.

Myth #3 is that introverts lack leadership ability. They're not rah-rah kinds of leaders, but they can certainly inspire the troops and keep followers committed to the right path. Again, their leadership style may be different. Introverted CEOs include Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Andrea Jung of Avon, Vic Conant of Nightingale Conant and many others, by one estimate about 40 percent of CEOs.

Yet in an informal survey on the job site TheLadders.com, 65 percent said introversion is an impediment to climbing the corporate ladder. That's a matter of perception, not reality. Introverted leaders may not be the life of the company party, but they may have vision that gets broad buy-in, integrity that earns respect, smarts that run rings around the competition, discipline that gets things done and marketing savvy that attracts no end of customers.

Socrates said it best: Know yourself. Use that knowledge to pursue success regardless of whether or not other people think you have the right stuff!

About the Author:
A bookworm as a child, Marcia Yudkin grew up to discover she had a surprising talent for creative marketing. She's the author of more than a dozen books, including 6 Steps to Free Publicity, now in its third edition, and Persuading People to Buy. She also mentors introverts so they discover their uniquely powerful branding and most comfortable marketing strategies. To learn more about the strengths and preferences of introverts, download her free Marketing for Introverts audio manifesto: http://www.yudkin.com/introverts.htm

Follow Marcia Yudkin on Twitter.

The Top Four Introvert Marketing Strengths, As Rated by Introverts Themselves and the Public

2010-12-28T05:15:00.001-08:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Marcia Yudkin

To many people, the concepts "introvert" and "marketing" seem as incompatible a combination as oil and water. After all, marketing has to do with getting your name and your business reputation out there, and introverts are by definition inward-looking people, right?

Not really. Introverts are simply folks who need to recharge their energy alone rather than in a group, in contrast to extroverts, who lose energy by themselves and gain it with other people. It's true that introverts will never grab center stage at a party, and they are not masterful at small talk. However, introverts have many other abilities that take them far in business, and it can make a huge difference to potential clients when those qualities are spotlighted in their marketing.

In a survey I recently did of people who identified themselves as introverts, the introvert characteristic mentioned by far more people than any other as being helpful to them in business was creativity. Creative people have flexible thinking and good problem solving skills. They're good at creating opportunities and moving things forward without a lot of resources. Creative people can also find humor where others don't. Does all this matter to clients? Yes! IBM's Institute for Business Value found in a 2010 study that chief executives from every corner of the world value creativity higher than any other business-related competency.

The second most often mentioned introvert strength in my survey was listening. People who listen get better results than those who don't, and clients recognize this, too. In a 2009 study by Rain Today, the most widely cited complaint, named by 38 percent of those buying professional services, was: "Service provider did not listen to me." Additionally, 55 percent of those surveyed said they would be "much more likely" to consider hiring a provider if they listened better.

The third most common introvert strength mentioned in my survey was trustworthiness. Because introverts are careful in what they say, they tend to be more likely than extroverts to deliver what they promise when they have promised it, as well as to claim only what they can back up. Trustworthiness matters greatly to clients, too. In 2010, the annual Edelman Trust Barometer survey found that 83 percent of college-educated, savvy and well-to-do individuals in the U.S. ranked "transparent and honest practices" as important.

Fourth in my survey was critical thinking. Introverts don't care as much as extroverts about what everyone else thinks of them, so they're more able to think independently and voice contrary views. An introvert is the person who doesn't hesitate to say the supposedly sour soup is actually salty or that the color the client has chosen for the restaurant's decor won't go over well with patrons. Discerning leaders value someone who can be trusted to say what's what rather than what the client would prefer to hear.

According to Dr. Marti Olsen Laney, author of The Introvert Advantage, introverts are disproportionately represented among high earners. Perhaps the above four qualities explain why. If you're an introvert, forget about the silver tongue and social finesse you may not have, and highlight your less obvious personality strengths that matter and have value in the marketplace.

About the Author:
A bookworm as a child, Marcia Yudkin grew up to discover she had a surprising talent for creative marketing. She's the author of more than a dozen books, including 6 Steps to Free Publicity, now in its third edition, and Persuading People to Buy. She also mentors introverts so they discover their uniquely powerful branding and most comfortable marketing strategies. To learn more about the strengths and preferences of introverts, download her free Marketing for Introverts audio manifesto: http://www.yudkin.com/introverts.htm

Follow Marcia Yudkin on Twitter.

Developing A Facility Response Plan To Comply With the EPA

2010-12-28T02:00:00.001-08:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Rathi Niyogi

The EPA has been very proactive in requiring businesses, both large and small, to adhere to standards that prevent pollution activities through oil and chemical spills. Since August 1990, in response to public outrage over the Exxon Valdez incident, the Oil Pollution Act has been a law that puts the responsibility of prevention on industry. This law includes the requirement for businesses to file a Facility Response Plan (FRP) with the EPA.

The FRP requirement is specifically designed for businesses that meet certain conditions:

1.The facility has a total oil storage capacity greater than or equal to 42,000 gallons and transfers oil over water to/from vessels; or

2.The facility has a total oil storage capacity greater than or equal to one million gallons AND meets ONE of the following conditions:

Does not have sufficient secondary containment for each aboveground storage area

Is located at a distance such that a discharge from the facility could cause "injury" to fish, wildlife, and sensitive environments

Is located at a distance such that a discharge from the facility would shut down a public drinking water intake

Has had, within the past five years, a reportable discharge greater than or equal to 10,000 gallons

The EPA also considers whether a facility could cause substantial harm to the surrounding environment in the event of a spill or discharge or oil or chemicals into navigable waters, shorelines, or other groundwater. There are several test factors to assist in determining "substantial harm," including storage of tanks, age of tanks and drums, drum management, oil and chemical transfer methods, as well as location.

The most efficient way of providing a sound FRP is to demonstrate ownership and use of proper spill containment equipment. This equipment can include overpack drums, spill pallets, oil drum racks and trucks, and spill containment berms.

Your FRP should include your current oil and chemical management plan to demonstrate worker training on spill prevention, with emphasis on their understanding of the correct use of the spill protection equipment within your facility. These things include storage of drums on drum pallets or spill pallets, use of drum racks for dispensing oil into safety cans, as well as working with oil storage tanks within the confines of a spill containment berm and the use of overpack drums for older drums and potentially-leaking drums.

Depending on your facility layout and workplan and your state's FRP requirements, your FRP may not be exactly the same as another business. You can contact your EPA Regional Administrator to for more information to assist in the development of your FRP.

About the Author:
Rathi Niyogi is the CEO of CriticalTool, a national distributor of industrial equipment. If you thought this article was helpful, additional information on spill containment products can be found at http://www.IndustrialSafetyCabinets.com/

Read more of Rathi Niyogi's articles.

Types of Spill Containment Equipment

2010-12-25T03:15:00.001-08:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Rathi Niyogi

When evaluating your spill containment equipment needs, you will find there are a wide variety of spill containment tools that are available for various applications. Let's start by looking at some typical spill containment applications.

Leaking Vehicles

Drum Storage

Tap Drips

Leaking Tanks

Overflow Tanks

Battery Storage

While there are probably many more specific spill protection needs, these represent very typical uses of standard spill protection equipment. Below is a list of spill containment equipment and where they would be used:

Drum Spill Pallets - For use on floors so that drums are not resting directly on the floor. The drums sit on a polyethylene platform that allows chemicals to leak into a 6-inch-deep tray rather than on the floor. This is best for drums that do not frequently dispense liquids.

IBC Spill Pallets - Intermediate Bulk Containers (IBC) present a larger challenge due to their immense size and weight. IBC Spill Pallets are typically 28-inch-deep and can support weights of up to 8500 pounds, and contain a 36-gallon sump to contain an IBC that may be leaking.

Spill Trays - These 3-inch-deep spill pallets are ideal for storage of batteries and other small containers that may leak fluid. Depending on length and width these trays have a 14-gallon capacity. These trays rest on the floor.

Drum Racks - When a facility has drums that are used frequently for dispensing liquids, the ideal solution is the Drum Rack. These racks contain up to fours stalls for 55-gallon drums within polyethylene holding channels. Usually they contain a Dispensing Shelf option, which should be utilized to hold a container steady as it is being filled from the drum. It typically also contains a 66-gallon sump capacity as well as the ability to hold 3,000 pounds of weight.

Drum Containment Systems - Some facilities must keep drums stored outdoors, whether for waste disposal or hazardous fumes, but this presents a challenge to keep them out of the elements. The ideal solution for this need is the Drum Containment System, which allows drums to be stored on a spill pallet while a hard cover is mounted to cover the drums entirely. The polyethylene cover resists chemicals and the elements to keep the drums from breaking down.

Spill Containment Berms - Many facilities contain larger areas where tanks and drums are stored together and within close proximity to each other. Pallets and racks would not be wise use of the space, so instead a spill containment berm would meet this challenge. Usually built with collapsible walls, these berms allow easy access to the area and provide sufficient protection against small leaks that are typical with tanks and drums. Spill containment berms can be small enough for a single tank or large enough to park a tractor-trailer within.

The investment in these equipment options is far cheaper than the cost of clean-up and remediation for a spill. Consider this when reviewing solutions that will fit your facilities needs.

About the Author:
Rathi Niyogi is the CEO of CriticalTool, a national distributor of Spill Pallets and Spill Containment Berms and other safety products. If you thought this article was helpful, additional information on safety storage can be found at http://www.IndustrialSafetyCabinets.com/

Read more of Rathi Niyogi's articles.

Article Marketing Tips: How Consumers Read Your Articles

2010-12-22T18:15:00.001-08:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Bill Platt

If you are an article marketer, or you have entertained the possibility of writing articles, then keep reading...

In this article, I define the Six Essential Elements of writing articles that generates traffic and produces sales for your website...

It will all begin to make sense to you when you step into the shoes of your readers... Because once you understand how your readers read your articles, it becomes rather obvious what your articles need to include in order for you to generate interest in your article, and successfully deliver visitors to your website...

Once you understand the "how and why" of writing great articles, you will have the knowledge necessary to help you join the ranks of the article marketing superstars... But if you miss the point of this article, you are instead likely to join the ranks of the people who whine about how Article Marketing a scam...

There Are Six Essential Elements of Successful Article Marketing:

1. Title - Many people suggest that you should put your top keywords at the front of your article title, but I don't subscribe to that methodology. I do include my target keywords in the title, when I can, but an article that is well-optimized for the search engines is worthless if it does not get published... The #1 goal of your articles' title is to get the article opened!! You must present a title that is going to get the attention of publishers and readers; you must present a title that is going to compel a person to at least open your article to see if they will want to read it...

2. Opening Paragraph - The title got your article opened, but now you need your reader to read the article... Tell your reader why they should keep reading your article and read it to its conclusion... Any reader who does not reach your website from your article is a "missed opportunity" to sell your stuff... Show people why it will be in their best interest to finish reading your article...

3. The Article Body - The article body must meet the promise of the Article Title and the opening paragraph... The article body must retain the interest of the reader to the last word... The article body should tell a story people want to read, and leave them wanting more... The article body must successfully carry the reader to the articles' closing paragraph and to your Author's Resource Box...

4. Your Closing Paragraph - Ideally, when your reader reaches the last paragraph of an article, the reader should be happy to have read the article to its conclusion. This is the first point about your closing paragraph. The second is that the closing paragraph should successfully bridge the reader from the article to the Authors' Resource Box. After all, the Authors' Resource Box is where the writer will get paid for having invested the effort into writing the article. When the reader reads the resource box and takes the action the author asked him or her to take, then the process of writing has the opportunity to offer the writer great rewards.

5. The Authors' Resource Box - The Authors' Resource Box needs to transition the reader from your article to your website, by offering a compelling call-to-action to get the reader to go to your website... Tell who you are, but don't go overboard... People do not care who you are or what you have done - they only care about what else you can do for them... Jeff Herring wrote a great article that elaborates a bit further on how to construct an effective Resource Box here ( http://ezinearticles.com/?id=3624961 )...

6. Your Landing Page - You should never try to sell your products or services in your Authors' Resource Box. Instead, you should try to get the reader to your website, where you have an unlimited number of words, videos, pictures and testimonials to tell the real story of your products or services. Few vendors have the ability to sell a product or service in 500 characters, so you should use your Authors' Resource Box to get the reader to your website, where you will do the real selling...

Tell A Story People Want To Read

Often, the difference between someone who will try to write an article for $5 and the professional writer who understands the value of his or her work can be defined simply...

The person writing an article for $5 will "beat around the bush" for five hundred words, without ever actually saying anything of any real value to anyone... The person who works for $5 an article is just putting words on a page so that he or she can be paid...

The person who demands $40 to $500 to write an article is a master of story-telling... He or she will tell a story that people will want to read, and therefore a story that publishers will want to publish...

The authors who tell a story that "people are happy to have read" will find their articles on more high-quality websites, and they will find more people visiting their websites, as a result of having read the article...

Words on a page only please search engines, but a story on a page will ALSO attract readers, visitors and paying customers to your website...

Interestingly, most online marketing gurus who advise hiring people to write $5 articles fail to tell the whole truth -- they fail to point out that articles that pass real link popularity to a website must have link popularity to pass on to your website...

People don't link to articles that are nothing more than "words on a page", but people will link to a story that needs telling... Just like with Jeff Herring's article linked above; his story is worth sharing with you, and as a result, it has gained its own links from people who do not know Jeff personally... (I have never met Jeff Herring or talked to him by phone or email. It was an honest recommendation for a great article written by him.)

Jeff's article has gained its own link popularity, by merit of it being a good story... As a result, Jeff's article will pass real link popularity back to his website, because it has real value for readers and real link popularity to share...

Article Marketing Will Not Work For Everyone...

There are a great number of us who have made a lot of money with article marketing... Then there are thousands of others who have never made any money at all with article marketing...

When you want to find success with an online business, you should mirror those people who have been successful...

Article Marketing is no different... If you have ever visited a website or purchased a product, as a result of having read an article that mentioned the website or product, take another look at the article that drove you to action... Try to understand the "how" and "why" that article worked, and then try to figure out how you can duplicate the formula for yourself...

Chances are good that you will see my "Six Essential Elements of Successful Article Marketing" in those articles that you are reviewing...

Fortunately, you don't have to take my word for what I am telling you in this article... Whenever you find an article that moves you to visit the website shown in the Authors' Resource Box, take another look at the article to see how closely it matches with the "Six Essential Elements" I shared with you in this article... You may be surprised by what you learn...

About the Author:
Reviewers are widely praising Bill Platt's "Multiple Traffic Streams: The Magic of Attracting Buyers" traffic guide for its quality and attention to detail. One reviewer called it, "Comprehensive!!" Another said, "You could always spend $1500 or more for one of the 'guru' courses and still get less info." Get your copy here: http://thephantomwriters.com/multiple-traffic-streams/ If you are available on Friday or Saturday night, join Bill and other online marketers at: http://LiveMarketingChat.com/

Read more of Bill Platt's articles.

Create A Chemical Spill Response Plan

2010-12-20T16:00:00.001-08:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Rathi Niyogi

While following all appropriate precautions significantly reduces the chance of a chemical spill, it is mandatory that any facility that uses chemicals or chemical agents in the course of production has a Chemical Spill Response Plan in place. This plan enables all employees to be properly trained in the ability to respond to a chemical spill, and as a result they can minimize the harmful effects a spill would produce.

The first part of implementing a plan is to create a chemical management protocol, which defines who is responsible for care and storage of chemicals, and where they should be stored in relation to where they are used. Making sure that chemicals are stored in the appropriate safety cabinets, as well making sure that large distances do not have to be traveled while carrying chemicals to the work area is crucial to minimizing spill hazards. In addition, when chemicals do have to be stored, carried and dispensed, the correct safety can should be utilized. Refer to the MSDS sheet of the chemical to determine the correct type of safety can for the chemical. As part of this protocol, use of spill protection equipment is necessary as well, such as use of spill pallets ,drum racks for drums, spill containment berms for tanks, and floor spill mats for taps and other potential drip spots.

The next part of the plan is to create a first aid procedure for each chemical in the facility. This is extremely important because treating all chemical burns the same way can make a bad situation much worse. All workers using the chemicals should be well-versed in the first aid procedures of each type, so providing in-depth training is a must. First Aid Response Kits should be located in close proximity to where chemicals will be used and be clearly marked and accessible. For extremely caustic and dangerous chemicals, workers should work in teams so that a worker can assist in the application of first aid to an injured worker.

Next, the plan should have a list of items required for chemical spill management at your facility. Those items include:

Personal Protective Equipment

Chemical Splash Goggles

Chemical Resistant Gloves

Chemical Resistant Shoe-Covers

Tyvek Suits

Chemical Vapor Respirators

Hazardous Spill Signs

Clean-Up Materials

Spill Pillows

Spill Socks

Neutralizers for Acids, Caustics, and Solvents

Polypropylene Brush

Polypropylene Scoop

pH test papers

Waste signs, stickers

Seal tape

Polypropylene waste bags

Spill Containment

Drain Covers and Seals

Spill Trays for smaller containers

Overpack Drums

The plan should provide training and instruction on communication of the spill, as well as crowd management. It should clearly define how to provide defense against the chemical spreading into other areas first, then focus on applying the appropriate materials to clean up the chemical.

The final part of the plan is to have it approved and endorsed by management and give your employees the authority to implement it. Set up a training program to review the program with employees at least once a year, and run a drill to make sure that they can put the plan into practice as conceived.

About the Author:
Rathi Niyogi is the CEO of CriticalTool, a national distributor of industrial equipment. If you thought this article was helpful, additional information on spill containment products can be found at http://www.IndustrialSafetyCabinets.com/

Read more of Rathi Niyogi's articles.

3-30-3 Rule of Online User Behaviour

2010-12-20T13:45:00.001-08:00

More than 1 Trillion unique URLS online

3-30-3 Rule of User Online Behaviour

3 Seconds before pressing the "Back" button

30 Seconds to evaluate your landing page

3 Minutes to decide to make a particular action

With over 1 trillion unique URLs and 122 million domain names online, the internet has become a very crowded place.

An effective sales funnel design is instrumental to maximising conversion. According to Joel, an Internet Strategy Consultant from Conversion Hub (a Singapore based usability and conversion optimization consultancy), an average web visitor would give you a mere 3 seconds before deciding to press the "Back" button of his browser. If you succeed in capturing his attention, you gain an additional 30 seconds where he will evaluate your value proposition. Finally, you will have an additional 3 minutes to persuade him to perform a particular action.

This is also known as the 3-30-3 rule.

What Is A Sales Funnel?

You should have a specific goal that acts as a funnel to drive all incoming traffic into your goal. The sales funnel begins by capturing the attention of prospects. Some prospects are convinced to become buyers of the product or adopters of the action your website is persuading. The sales funnel continues to nurture the best customers, filtering out mismatches and refining the specific target customer, offering them more specialised products and services, often at higher prices. By the end of the process the funnel has identified the highly-responsive customers who have heeded your message.

Give your visitors exactly what they came to find and you will be edging them along the sales funnel. This includes an eye-catching design to draw your target audience's directly to the sales funnel, a clear marketing message communicating a strong and clear value proposition, and one or more clear, concise actions to take.

Measurement And Analysis

An integral step of developing a sales funnel design is measurement and analysis. Such action will tell you many things that will help you develop an effective sales funnel, such as which marketing activities are bringing in the right visitors, where visitors are losing interest and leaving your site, which chains of presentations and related visitor actions are producing your sales and so forth. Conducting measurement and analysis allows you to drop ineffective marketing activities and messages, determine which marketing activities are bringing the right people to your site, where they are dropping out of your sales pathway and in what percentages. All these means you can squeeze out more results of your marketing investments. An effective sales funnel is supposed to be designed to filter out the misses at each layer, so in that sense, attrition at a certain percentage rate along the way is both expected and good. This means that your funnel is focusing on the target audience you are expecting action from - the customers that have found a reason to stay on your site for that extra 3 minutes.

Developing your sales funnel or improving on it could be as simple as the creation of a new top banner or homepage restructuring to give your visitors a sense of purpose and the development of a conversion driven goal page.

If your strategies and messages are all over the place, find out how you can coordinate and synchronise your efforts with an effective sales funnel design. With 87% of visitors giving you a very unforgiving 3 seconds to make that first impression, and only 30 further seconds to evaluate what you have to offer, a successful sales funnel design could essentially be what makes or breaks your website.

About the Author:
Jamie Lee is a Consultant in Singapore's leading Search Marketing Firm - Conversion Hub. She also actively contributes to forums on topics related to PPC Advertising and social media marketing. http://www.conversion-hub.com/

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Help Desk Software: Exploring Deployment Options

2010-12-19T11:15:00.001-08:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Clark Tanner

IT professionals of today tend to have high expectations with regard to the software tools they use to track and manage their customer issues. Almost everyone who is researching Help Desk software is looking for the application that has the most powerful feature set at the best price. Obviously it is easier to work with prospects who have a very good idea of their core requirements for the particular project they are focused on. This allows the sales agent to help them determine whether his or her particular product offering is a match. And since these calls are usually coming from IT Managers (or IT staff members who help manage hardware and infrastructure), it is almost always "understood" that they are looking for a solution that can be installed on their own server(s) inside their own IT environment.

Some providers of Help Desk software are now offering various deployment models for their solutions. This means that there are additional options that need to be talked about during the buyer's product research phase. There can be some confusion around these deployment options, so it is important to be clear about what is actually available and the various names for these models. The three main deployment models are In-House (Perpetual), Hosted (SaaS), and Annual Subscription.

Most everyone has heard of a "Perpetual License" model. This means that the license has no expiration date associated with it, so once purchased, it can be used indefinitely by the customer. We call this an In-House option, since it is installed on a server inside the customer's environment. While this model typically requires the greatest initial investment, it is often still the most popular of the three. The main reason for this is the current mindset that continues to prevail in the IT world that says "we want to manage the application internally in our own environment so we will have ultimate control of the software, the backend database, the configuration, etc." However, current trends show that some firms are becoming more open to other deployment models.

Another well-known deployment model is the "Hosted" model. This is also often referred to as SaaS (Software as a Service) or "Cloud Computing" and is becoming more and more popular these days. This particular model is not installed at the customer site, but instead is hosted by the provider (so the software actually runs on a server in the provider's data center). The greatest benefit of the Hosted model is that there is no requirement to set up servers or build out infrastructure, which is typically required for most In-House installations. Cost-wise, this model is typically the most affordable as it requires the smallest initial out-of-pocket investment to get started.

Still another deployment type is known as the "Annual Subscription" model. Some companies who use this term are referring to a pre-paid 12-month contract on what we previously referred to as the Hosted model. Other companies offer a 12-month license that works almost exactly like the In-House model, except that the license must renewed before the end of the 12 months, or it will shut down. At Novo Solutions, our Annual Subscription model seems to be growing in popularity - mainly because it offers the best of both worlds. The software can still be installed internally in the customer's own environment, and is also less expensive than the In-House/Perpetual model. This option is also drawing more attention because of the current economic climate and the need to cut back on spending.

This means that everyone can evaluate the various solutions that are on the market and can determine which software truly is the best fit for their needs and their IT infrastructure, as well as their budget. It helps to have an idea of which deployment model you are focused on at the beginning of a new software research project. And since some vendors only offer one of the models described above, this should save time by helping you to narrow your list before investing lots of time and digging in deep with product demonstrations and trials.

Researchers who have "done their homework" and have a clear understanding of what their IT Director is looking for will save their company time and money by narrowing the playing field and knowing which vendors to invest quality time with. By understanding the various deployment models and asking questions the right questions in advance, a solid "research plan" can be drafted prior to beginning the project. This can also be a great way to gain favor with Senior Executives as they will begin to see who is better at researching and managing software projects.

About the Author:
Written by: Clark Tanner, Account Manager for Novo Solutions, Inc. Novo Solutions, Inc., is an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) in Virginia Beach, Virginia specializing in Customer Support Software. Free trial versions of the Novo Help Desk Software, and a suite of web-based Customer Support Solutions are available. Contact us for more information. http://www.novosolutions.com/

Read more Articles written by Clark Tanner.

Use Online Fax To Lower Your Faxing Costs

2010-12-19T06:00:00.001-08:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Titus Hoskins

Regardless of which business you're operating, cutting down on operating costs is always a major concern. The same goes for all your faxing expenses - any program or system which lowers your monthly costs should be considered. That's where Internet or online fax enters the equation.

Online fax is the modern way to fax. It uses the Internet and your email system to send and receive all your faxes. Your faxes are sent as email attachments and can be easily stored on your computer and/or in your online account for easy access and filing. It is paperless faxing which requires no inks and toners, or even a conventional fax machine for that matter. But most of all it is a cheaper way to fax.

First, because it is web based your start-up costs are very low since you don't need an extra fax phone line. And since everything is out-sourced to a third party online fax provider you can set-up a local or toll-free number within minutes. Most of these providers have no set-up fees and most will give you a 30 Day Trial period where you can test out their services. All this will save you money, especially when you consider the cost of setting up a traditional fax line and system in your office or company.

Next, monthly costs of running your new online fax account are very low, on average these charges run around $7 - $10 a month. Some services are priced lower and some higher, so it does pay to shop around to find the service which perfectly matches your faxing needs, especially when you consider each provider has slightly different faxing plans (number of faxes your can send/receive each month) and slightly different rates for overage faxes.

Then you have to realize, online faxing is completely portable and available anytime and anywhere you have web access. This means that your company is virtually open for business around the clock. This can save you money on commuting expenses especially if you have workers who work out of their homes, a trend that is becoming very popular these days. Online fax fits neatly into this new workplace or workforce, cutting down your operating expenses.

Online faxing is also completely scalable for any company or business, you can quickly add or subtract fax lines since there is no hardware to install. For a growing business this can be a great money-saver which shouldn't be ignored, especially if your company depends upon faxing to bring in new sales and clients.

Lastly, online fax is very secure, easy to use, and brings your whole faxing system into the modern world of the computer and the net. Your faxes are accessible around the clock, regardless of where you are in the world. It completely liberates any business or company from just a physical location and totally modernizes your faxing, while cutting your operating costs - what more can you ask for?

About the Author:
For more information on Internet Fax Services use this handy online Comparison Guide to: online fax Or if you want more detailed information on Internet Faxing try here: internet fax services.
Copyright (c) 2010 Titus Hoskins. http://www.bizwaremagic.com This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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How to Work Well With Introverted Clients: Four Guidelines

2010-12-18T12:00:00.001-08:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Marcia Yudkin

Skittish. Cocooned. Loyal. Disciplined. Introverts are those who enjoy their own company and need time alone to recharge. They may or may not be shy, but they don't talk for the sake of talking and aren't at their best in a loud, crowded situation.

You're more likely to describe introverts as interesting people than as exciting folks to be around. (To an introvert, that's a compliment, rather than a put-down.) According to researchers, the percentage of introverts gets higher as you go up the income scale, so if you work with the affluent or with those in professions that attract quiet workers, you're more likely to run into them. As clients, they may require special interpersonal measures - particularly if you yourself have backslapping, chatty, everyone's-a-friend tendencies.

1. Respect the Introvert's Reserve

Introverts understand the need for a handshake as a social greeting, but don't go beyond that. They dislike social hugs, and even a casual hand on the shoulder may feel out of line to them if they regard you as a business associate. Personal comments, like compliments on what they're wearing or guesses about the ethnic origin of their name, which might establish rapport with someone else, can feel intrusive to introverts. A jokey style that prods them to respond in kind starts off with them on the wrong foot.

They appreciate it when you get down to business with a minimum of preliminaries. Allow them to talk without finishing their sentences for them or interrupting.

2. Respect the Introvert's Privacy

Introverts do not relish the idea of others knowing personal information about them, unless it's absolutely necessary. They're the ones who come up "private" on caller ID, who have unlisted telephone numbers, who bring up the issue of confidentiality at the outset of a relationship. They may balk at writing a testimonial even when they're extremely pleased with how you've helped them, because it exposes something about themselves.

Don't expect them to carry on business in a packed restaurant, where the waiter and people at neighboring tables can overhear. Without their permission, don't disclose even innocuous facts about an introvert, such as the fact that you saw them last Wednesday or that they went to Cornell, to others. Reassure them that everything that goes on in your meetings stays within your four walls. If you set up a working lunch, choose a quiet place and reserve a table in a corner - or order in for your conference room.

3. Deal With an Introvert One on One

Introverts come out of their shells most easily with just one other person at a time. In a group, they fear looking stupid or feeling vulnerable. They appreciate having your full attention when face to face. Don't allow telephone or walk-in interruptions, and don't "unobtrusively" check your BlackBerry or your computer monitor. They notice.

If you're advising a pair of clients where one doesn't say much, don't presume silence means the quiet person has no questions or agrees with the talkative one. Draw out the introvert by asking for their input and waiting for them to gather their thoughts.

4. Don't Pressure an Introvert

Introverts process information better on their own and may need time and space to make decisions. Expecting them to respond on the spot may get you nowhere. Impatience with their "what ifs" will backfire, big time.

In a setting that suits them, introverts can be funny, creative, warm, congenial, productive and loyal. Create that setting for them, and you can enjoy doing business with them for years and years and years.

About the Author:
A bookworm as a child, Marcia Yudkin grew up to discover she had a surprising talent for creative marketing. She's the author of more than a dozen books, including 6 Steps to Free Publicity, now in its third edition, and Persuading People to Buy. She also mentors introverts so they discover their uniquely powerful branding and most comfortable marketing strategies. To learn more about the strengths and preferences of introverts, download her free Marketing for Introverts audio manifesto: http://www.yudkin.com/introverts.htm

Follow Marcia Yudkin on Twitter.

Selling to Introverts: 10 Ways to Appeal to Introverts' Marketing Preferences

2010-12-17T11:30:00.001-08:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Marcia Yudkin

Whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, you probably have an unthinking tendency to market to people the way you yourself prefer to be communicated with and treated. If your target audience resembles you, that approach succeeds. But if your target audience differs greatly from you, you're shooting yourself in the foot when you do that. Worse, unless you've investigated or learned about the preferences of those with a different personality, you may not realize the extent of this disconnect.

For best results, you must market to people the way they prefer to be marketed to, not the way you prefer to market or be marketed to.

When you are selling to people who are reserved, quiet, comfortable with themselves, independent thinkers and not the life of the party - in other words, introverts - here are 10 important guidelines to keep in mind.

10 Ways to Sell Successfully to Introverts

1. Third-party credibility boosters. Introverts tend to be less gullible than extroverts, because they're less swayed by enthusiasm or the desire to follow the crowd. You want to win their respect, and they respect media coverage, awards, certifications, credentials and endorsements from industry leaders who are known as the most competent in their field. Any relatively objective indicator of excellence influences introverts to become more interested in what you offer.

2. Confidentiality. Introverts treasure privacy, and they retreat when they see that you might not keep their patronage of you private. Coaches and consultants who illustrate their points with examples from clients raise this suspicion, even if the clients are identified only by a first name. Likewise, offering feedback as part of a package but only in public can make introverts hang back. Explicit reassurances about confidentiality can be crucial to earn the trust of introverts.

3. Opportunity to ask questions before the sale. Because introverts are less likely to get swept along by the breathless enthusiasm of a sales pitch, they value the chance to contact the seller to clarify something that's important to their decision-making process. Saying there will be an opportunity to get questions answered after the sale helps, also. If the question-asking occurs in private rather than in a group setting, all the better.

4. No gratuitous videos. Don't force a prospective buyer to sit through a video in order to access introductory information about your product. Introverts enjoy watching videos for entertainment or for demonstrating how to do something, but when you deliver information on video that that could easily have been conveyed in text, they'll resent you for wasting their time. Forget about "talking head" videos for this group.

5. No fluff or filler. Introverts hate hype. They also dislike it when people don't get to the point. High-content communications with some promotion woven into it or appended at the end therefore go over best with introverts.

6. Samples. Because introverts prefer substance to fluff, they're more eager to buy when they've seen a sample that impresses them. So if you are selling a book, provide a free sample chapter; if you are selling a coaching program, make a sample session available, with the participant's permission noted.

7. No name dropping. Some marketers like to refer to colleagues as "my good friend (or buddy) so and so," but if you do that too many times, introverts may lose respect for you. They'd rather have fewer, closer friends, and they'll think you're blowing hot air when you claim to have close relationships with a lot of people. In addition, the mere fact that you know someone important doesn't raise your status even a millimeter with an introvert.

8. Personal attention. Introverts prefer to interact one-on-one or in small groups. They don't like crowds. So if you offer seminars, coaching, tours or workout facilities, do so on an intimate scale. You won't catch introverts yearning to cruise on a thousand-passenger ship, enjoying stadium-sized lectures or belonging to a crowded, cavernous gym if they have another choice.

9. Minimal pressure. If you sell overly aggressively and don't give an introvert time and space to think through their decision, they'll duck out and go elsewhere to buy. Deadlines are fine, but not ten minutes down the line.

10. Practice what you preach. Introverts value consistency. They're put off by a proofreading service that has a typo in its marketing copy, a purportedly "green" company that wastes paper or someone who says he's not selling something yet proceeds to do exactly that. Make sure you embody the principles you espouse in the way you promote your offerings and the way you treat customers.

Above all, communicating in a calm, respectful, content-rich manner wins over introverts. Be prepared, be succinct, be substantive with them and you'll be successful.

About the Author:
A bookworm as a child, Marcia Yudkin grew up to discover she had a surprising talent for creative marketing. She's the author of more than a dozen books, including 6 Steps to Free Publicity, now in its third edition, and Persuading People to Buy. She also mentors introverts so they discover their uniquely powerful branding and most comfortable marketing strategies. To learn more about the strengths and preferences of introverts, download her free Marketing for Introverts audio manifesto: http://www.yudkin.com/introverts.htm

Follow Marcia Yudkin on Twitter.

Public Speaking Skills: First Principle of Great Communication

2010-12-17T11:00:00.001-08:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Dr Jeannette Kavanagh

We all need public speaking skills, even if it's only the skill of asking a question at a local meeting of the Parents and Teachers' Association. Over the years I have seen even very experienced public speakers forget the most basic principle of oral (spoken) communication.

Before sharing with you some general advice about principles of oral or spoken communication, I am assuming that you know that great presentations take hours, sometimes days, of dedicated preparation. I do realize that if you make presentations to clients on a regular basis and it's only the actual content that changes, you won't have to spend a great deal of time preparing after the first couple of times.

However, I base all my seminars on the principle that to present at your best, you must be prepared to prepare. Both your material and your self.

First Principle: Aural and Visual Communication Are Very Different

The saying that 'a picture is worth a thousand words' can be true. Keep that saying in mind when using visual aids. Use a picture, diagram, flow chart or other image to convey visually what you'd need a thousand words (or so) to say. Your use of visuals in a presentation should illuminate the meaning of your spoken words.

Great presenters support their visual images by speaking in detail about what is being conveyed visually. That tactic is very useful and extremely powerful. It focuses the minds of the listeners simultaneously on the message which they're receiving both visually and aurally (by listening).

When you show a slide of a rose but you talk about lemons - not that you'd dream of something as silly as that - but when there is a conflict between the visual image and what you're talking about, I need hardly spell out for you the sort of confusion that follows. Human beings find it difficult to combine aural and visual media of communication. That is, we find it difficult to listen to your words (aural communication), while simultaneously being asked to take in even slightly different information which you're conveying using on visual aids.

Yet, time and again that is precisely what even the most experienced public speakers do.

They spend their preparation time really well by distilling some complex information into a great diagram. By 'great diagram' I mean one that is clear and easy to understand. They prepare by creating that great visual and then go on and on and on -about something else.

Once again, I've often been astounded to pay a huge entry fee to hear great public speakers present their information to a targeted audience of people keen to hear them. I'm just relaxing into the presentation when up on the screen comes a diagram that looks like a circuit for a computer. Boxes all over the place, a few arrows going both ways or in circles and a colour scheme that confuses the listeners even more.

Given my background I'm sorry to have to say this, but University lecturers have been the worst offenders to date. The others are the people whose information is extremely up-to-date and very valuable but they haven't ever invested even a second of their lives learning how to present their gems.

To quote Dorothy Sarnoff, one of my favourite writers on the subject of public presentations:

"Speechmaking confidence comes from knowing that you have something worth saying, and that you can say it in a way that's worth listening to". (Sarnoff 1981: 42)

My approach to public presentations is inspired by something Albert Einstein is alleged to have said:

"If you really understand something, you can make it understandable to a ten year old."

So, be like Einstein: keep it simple. Your words and your visuals.

There's a related rule I use in my own presentations. You don't have to follow it, it's just my advice. That rule is:

If your visual aids don't stand alone, or make sense by themselves, dump them. If you don't discard them, please at least have a very good second look at them. If your visual material is going to require lots and lots of verbal explanation, sorry sweetness, but they're too complex for a public presentation. You can of course include them in your conference paper. That's a different medium of communication altogether.

So to sum up that fundamental principle of good oral communication: never confuse your eager listeners by presenting difficult-to-follow visuals which in turn, are out of synch with what you're actually talking about.

Public Speaking Fear Can Mar Your Presentation

A big reason for under par presentations is one with which we all feel some empathy. The person speaking is a world expert on the topic but....s/he is has such high levels of fear of public speaking that it becomes easier to hide in visuals. Worse still, some very nervous speakers resort to standing there and reading their presentation. I know from having worked with even the most nervous people imaginable that everyone can conquer their public speaking fear. If fear of public speaking is more of an issue for you than preparing your talks and presenting them using clear and simple visual and verbal language, I urge you to get the help that will conquer that fear.

About the Author:
Dr Kavanagh works in Melbourne, Australia to help people overcome their public speaking fears. Jeannette has helped thousands of people overcome their fear of public speaking. For more information, visit her website http://www.conquerpublicspeakingfears.com/ Sign up for a FREE Public Speaking Success program.

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