Friday, September 28, 2007

YOGA HELP FOR THE DESKTOP JUNKIE

Share
COURTESY DECCAN HERALD: DATED SEPT 8 2007

SOME YOGA BASED EXERCISES CAN BE DONE IN THE OFFICE DURING THE COURSE OF THE DAY. THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF EACH EXERCISE IS TO BECOME AWARE OF YOUR BODY AND BREATHE. LET THE SPEED OF THE MOVEMENT OF YOUR BODY AND BREATHE BE IN HARMONY.

1. FULL BODY STRETCH AND SHOULDER STRETCH: STAND UP FACING THE WALL & REACH UP YOUR FINGERS up, AS FAR AS YOU CAN. WHILE YOU STRETCH UP, YOU STRETCH DOWN ALSO BY PLACING YOUR FEET FIRMLY INTO THE FLOOR. FIRM UP YOUR LEGS, EXTEND THE SIDE OF THE TRUNK AND BRING THE SHOULDER BLADES TOWARDS THE WALL. BREATHE FULLY AS YOU STRETCH, WALKING YOUR FINGERS UP THE WALL.

2. MOVE LITTLE AWAY FROM THE WALL SO THAT YOUR TRUNK IS DIAGONAL TO YOUR HIPS & PRESS BOTH PALMS INTO THE WALL EQUALLY. PRESS INTO THE GROUND WITH YOUR FEET, FIRM UP YOUR LEGS AND RELEASE YOUR TAIL BONE AWAY FROM THE WALL. LIFT UP THE RIBS AND LET YOUR HEAD DROP SLIGHTLY. YOU CAN ALSO DO THIS WITH THE BACK OF YOUR CHAIR. PLACE YOUR HANDS ON THE CHAIR AND WALK BACK UNTIL YOUR TORSO IS EXTENDED PARALLEL TO THE FLOOR. FIRM UP THE LEGS, AND LIFT UP YOUR ABDOMINAL MUSCLES & LIFT THE RIBS WHILE RELEASING THE SPINE, TAIL BONE AWAY FROM THE CHAIR AND TOP OF THE SPINE TOWARDS IT.

3. FOREARM & WRIST: PLACE THE RIGHT PALM AT THE WALL SPREADING YOUR FINGERS EQUALLY. EXTEND YOUR ELBOW AND PRESS THE PALM FULLY INTO THE WALL. WAIT A FEW BREATHS & TURN YOUR HEAD TO THE LEFT, BRINGING THE TIP OF THE RIGHT SHOULDER BLADE IN TOWARDS THE FRONT OF YOUR BODY. HOLD AND BREATHE.

4. EXTEND FULL BODY STRETCH: TAKE YOUR ARMS OUT TO THE SIDES WITH THE PALMS FACING DOWN. EXTEND YOUR FINGERS AND STRETCH THRO THE ELBOWS. ON AN EXHALE ROTATE YOUR SHOULDERS BACK & BRING THE PALMS FACING UP. ON YOUR NEXT EXHALE BRING THE ARMS UP & OVERHEAD WITH THE PALMS FACING EACH OTHER. AGAIN PRESS THE FEET INTO THE FLOOR & FIRM UP YOUR LEGS, STRETCH THE SIDE TORSO. AFTER A FEW BREATHES INTERLOCK YOUR FINGERS AND PRESS THE PALMS UP TO THE CEILING, STRETCHING THE FINGERS & PALM OPEN. REPEAT ON THE OTHER SIDE. THIS CAN ALSO BE DONE SEATED ON YOUR DESK. YOU PRESS THE THIGH BONES DEEPLY INTO THE CHAIR AS YOU STRETCH UP.

5. SITTING POSTURE: PRACTICE SITTING WITH AN UPRIGHT TORSO, THE SIDES OF THE TORSO EXTENDING AND THE HEAD RESTING COMFORTABLY ON THE NECK. BRING THE HANDS DOWN TO THE SEAT OF THE CHAIR. & ROLL THE SHOULDERS BACK, BRINGING THE SHOULDER BLADES INTO THE BACK. SOME OF THE FOLLOWING POSES CAN BE DONE EITHER STANDING OR SITTING. IF SEATED MOVE FORWARD YOUR CHAIR & PLACE THE FEET FIRMLY ON THE GROUND, PRESS YOUR THIGH BONES INTO THE CHAIR & EXTEND YOUR TORSO UPWARD THE SHOULDERS DROPPING DOWN. IF STANDING KEEP THE FEET FIRMLY AND LEGS STRONG ON THE GROUND.

6. RELEASING THE NECK: SHRUG THE SHOULDERS HIGH UP TO THE EARS & THEN RELEASE & DROP. REPEAT 3 TIMES.

7. TWISTING THE TRUNK: WITH FEET FIRM ON THE GROUND & THIGH BONES PRESSING INTO THE CHAIR, EXHALE & LIFT & TURN BELLY TO THE RIGHT. LET YOUR HANDS HELP YOU TURN BY PRESSING INTO THE SEAT OR BACK OF THE CHAIR. GRADUALLY INCREASE THE TWIST & LET YOUR EYE GAZE TURN TO THE RIGHT AROUND YOUR SHOULDER. REPEAT THE OTHER SIDE. REMEMBER TO KEEP BREATHING SLOWLY & DEEPLY AS YOU TWIST.

8. STRETCHING THE FINGERS: PLACE THE INDEX FINGERS ON THE EDGE OF THE DESK, KEEPING YOUR WRIST STRAIGHT. GENTLY PUSH INTO THE DESK & HOLD A FEW BREATHS. REPEAT WITH ALL THE FINGERS EXCEPT THE THUMB.

9. SHAKING OUT TENSION: SHAKE OUT YOUR WRISTS & ARMS, LETTING THEM DANGLE FROM YOUR SHOULDERS.

10. RELAX THE EYES AND BREATHE: TURN YOUR HEAD RIGHT AND LEFT, LOOKING INTO THE FAR DISTANCE WITH YOUR EYE GAZE. CLOSE YOUR EYES AND TAKE SOME DEEP, SLOW BREATHES.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Viral Marketing zero to thousands in a day

Share
look at this great article from element fusion :


Creating a buzz on the internet can be as hard as walking a tightrope 50 feet in the air, but it doesn’t have to be if you follow a few simple rules. For those of you enjoying my series The Internet, Search Engine Optimization and You Part I and The Internet, Search Engine Optimization and You Part II I’m sorry but you are going to have to wait another couple of days for part III.

One of the guys at the office came to me Monday and said we should start a site called Mike Gundy is mad at you. Being that I am a big OU fan and an Internet marketing person I laughed before I saw the video of why he wanted to create the site. Once I saw the site I knew that I could not only have a little fun with the “other state school” (sorry Tulsa) but conduct a viral marketing experiment to show the power of viral marketing.

The idea was simple, guy gets mad, calls out media (bad idea) and we capitalize on the press around the situation. The steps involved in creating an effective campaign:

1. Look for or create a buzz. If you are attempting to market something make sure people will/are looking for it. You don’t want to waste time and money marketing something that only one person will see. The buzz doesn’t have to be on the scale of our experiment as long as it reaches the audience who use your services.

2. Act Fast. You are dealing with something hot and time sensitive so you better act fast. He who gets his/her site out first usually wins. I knew as soon as the idea was brought up that in order to get anyone to the site we needed to act immediately, so we found a program to create E-Cards and a web template and launched the site in about an hour.

3. Spread the word. People won’t come to your site just because you put it online. It takes time and effort to start the buzz but I say why waste my time and effort. I piggy backed my efforts off of those posting about the original story, sent emails and commented on their blog about the site we created. Since what I was trying to sell wasn’t in direct competition with their article/site it worked.

Start by telling your friends and family via myspace, facebook or your favorite social networking site. Visit blogs about your topic and post something intelligent on them with a link back to your site (remember if you don’t post something intelligent then they will probably delete your comment). Also look for additional attention offline I called in to a couple of morning radio stations on my way to work just to spread the word.

Bam, it was that easy. I will admit I was just happy to get the site online and send it to the members of my family who are unfortunate enough to wear orange and black (OSU fans). I was pretty excited the night it went live (Monday September 24 at 9:30pm) following item three in the points above told me that we could expect this to be a good viral marketing experiment because of the amount of media being generated around this topic. I must admit I submitted the site to numerous blogs and it only took me 2 hours of searching/posting (brings the total up to three to four hours) to feel like I had done enough to start a buzz about our site.

My wife (she doesn’t get what I do and calls me a nerd) asked me as we were getting ready for bed “What is the point of the site and what I hoped to accomplish”. That one took me a bit because up to that point I hadn’t really thought about my goals for the site and what would make the site worth my time. After thinking about this for about a minute I said if we send out 100 emails (not including the emails I send) that will make me happy. Well I guess I didn’t set my expectations high enough because when I woke up Tuesday morning we had a total of 400 visits and 40 cards sent from the time I went to bed till the time I woke up.

The buzz had been built from my time hitting the blog sites and I had pretty good expectations for day one. On my way to work I called a local radio station because they were talking about the ordeal. I talked a little about the situation but you can be sure that I plugged the site before I got off the phone.

At the office we were able to share the experiment with the office geeks, who in turn helped us create more of a buzz by sending it to their friends. By lunch we checked the stats and noticed that the attention gained was over 1,000 unique visits for a site that was only 12 hours old, I would say our campaign was already a success. To add even more joy to my day when I got home one of the local television stations plugged us on the 6:00 and 10:00 news. The total count for the day 3,429.

This little experiment has turned out to be quite a success and hopefully with my documentation it is clear to see that online there are many ways to capture your audience. Heck you can even introduce yourself to a completely new audience on a limited budget if you have the tools and resources available. If you don’t have the necessary skills or time to create a viral marketing campaign contact one of our internet consultants to discuss how we can help get your business the traffic you deserve.

http://www.elementfusion.com/viral-marketing-zero-to-thousands-in-a-day





Powered by ScribeFire.

A pre-requisite for BUZZ marketing

Share
In this age of information overload and web 2.0 marketing, creating a buzz seems to have become the holy grail of marketing. Let the users & fans do the marketing for you, create a buzz about what you do and hey presto, you're a success!

But the one thing that people often miss when it comes to buzz marketing s this...

The product or service which you want to cause a buzz must be worthy of buzz.

Which means that it needs to be one or all of the following...

* Different
* New
* Effective - does what it says on the tin
* Easy to understand & therefore talk about

If what you're marketing is none of these things, then buzz marketing is probably not for you.



Powered by ScribeFire.

Making word of mouth marketing work

Share
Here's an amazing article that's a must read..

On December 16th, 2006, Farzana Doctor had a lot to celebrate. For starters, the day marked her thirty-fifth birthday, and twelve of her friends were hosting a bunch to mark the occasion. But the day was also the start of an exciting personal and professional adventure; earlier that week, Inanna Publications offered Farzana a contract to publish her first book - Stealing Nasreen.

As everyone sat around the dinning table, Farzana knew that she faced a challenge. About 20 000 books are published in Canada each year, and over 170 000 in the US. Her non-fiction debut needed to sit front and centre on the busy bookstore shelf, or else risk being lost in crowd and from consumers. On top of this, her established, but small publisher lacked the recourses to launch a fully-fledged marketing campaign.

Farzana needed to spread the word about Stealing Nasreen without a budget. She began by asking each brunching friend to be her "agent." In this role, they would carry her book, cover facing out, everywhere and anywhere they went. Whether on the bus, at their office, or buying groceries, they would showcase her book to all onlookers. Her friends agreed (after all, it was her birthday).

Speaking to Farzana, I realized that a book is no different than any other small business product or service. There is a product, and there are limited marketing funds. In this situation, word-of-mouth marketing is the winning choice for each small business marketing plan. However, you can't just sit back and wait for word-of-mouth to happen. You need to develop and execute a formal program to achieve results.

Click here to read the whole article




Powered by ScribeFire.

Keyword Research - A Tool You Never Thought Of

Share

Look at the trend these days...
google_trend_1.jpg


No matter whether you are online marketing veteran or a raw rookie you’ve done your share of keyword research.

Odds are you think you’ve probably seen everything under the sun by now. Maybe you have, but maybe you haven’t thought of this…

Wednesdays are special days for me. It’s the one day a week where i spend between two to four hours answering business coaching client’s question live on the phone. We usually get a few hundred callers with about 30 to 40 questions.

There’s a lot of great tactics shared in those calls, and it’s an easy way to make sure clients who are confused, challenged or especially motivated are only a phone call away from getting me to focus on their business and their action steps.

On today’s call we got on the topic of offers, and how to tap into what the market was craving. I listed many of the methods I use to determine what’s on the market’s mind, and everyone could see the logic in what I shared, except…

Using Google Trends

What I found fascinating is I took for granted that everyone understood the power of this tool. Apparently not.

It should be no big secret that I’ll be releasing The Attention Age Doctrine Part 2 in a matter of weeks now. One of the areas where I’ll be sharing some incredibly killer tactics is in the social marketing realm. So I decided to share two screenshots that highlight just one of the uses of Google Trends.

Above and below are graphs of the overall search volume (top) and the news reference volume (below) for the three keywords: (1) social bookmarking, (2) social networking, and (3) blogging. NOW...look closer....
google_trend_2.jpg
If you’ve noticed that the trend on the red line (social networking) is really gaining momentum then you did.

This has profound implications if you think about it…


It means if you’re thinking about creating a product in an area that’s hot and growing hotter social networking is your baby.


or…


It means if you are going to an SEO program to sell your web 2.0
course it would be wise to work on social networking and it’s long tail
offspring.



or…


It means a great upsell, bonus, or follow up offer on an internet marketing product would be social networking.


I could go on and on, and if it wasn’t late and I wasn’t tired I
probably would. But then again I’ve recently been accused of being a
little too wordy, so I’ll keep the rest of my examples to myself, and
press on.


If you’ve never used Google Trends you can check it out here


Then tell us what you think.


If you’ve used Google Trends before and got information that helped
you in your business, please share with us how it helped you.





Powered by ScribeFire.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

The Importance Of Market Research In Business Planning

Share
What Is Marketing?

Marketing is a necessary activity that encompasses the entire business and is vitally important to sound business health. It is viewing the entire business from the customer’s viewpoint takes into account every aspect of the marketing mix from the product to price, distribution channels and marketing communications. All these factors affect the customer’s response to a product or service.

Marketing Defined And The Need For Market Research

One definition of marketing states: ‘Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual (customer) and organizational objectives’. The concept of marketing as a business philosophy defines marketing as a process that is intended to find, satisfy and retain customers while business makes a profit. But central to all these definitions is the role of the customer and his relationship to the product (i.e. whether he considers the product or service to meet a need or want).

Therefore, market research is imperative for a company to know what type of products or services would be profitable to introduce in the market. Also with respect to its existing products in the market, good market research enables a company to know if it has been able to satisfy customer needs and whether any changes need to be made in the packaging, delivery or the product itself. This enables a company to formulate a viable marketing plan or measure the success of its existing plan.

Market Research Is An Essential Management Tool

Market research consists of a plan that charts how relevant data is to be collected and analyzed so that the results are useful and relevant for making marketing decisions. Once the research and the related analysis are complete, the results are communicated to management. This provides management with in-depth information regarding crucial factors that have an impact on the target market and existing marketing mix. Market research allows management to make the changes necessary for better results through adopting a proactive approach.

Types Of Market Research

Market research consists of two separate types of research that can be categorized as secondary and primary research. Secondary research consists of collecting already published data to create a ‘company database’ that may serve to perform situation analyses. It helps to identify the company’s competitors, perform a strategy for benchmarking and also determine the segments the company should target in view of factors such as demographics, population, usage rate, life style and behavioral patterns.

Primary research serves to provide information through monitoring sales levels and measuring effectiveness of existing business practices like service quality and tools for communication being used by the company. It carefully follows competitor plans to gather information on market competition. Both primary and secondary researches are essential to fulfill the company’s objectives.

However the fact is that you can’t have a successful company without having the right data about customers, products and the market in general. Market research is an essential management tool for a viable business plan enabling any company to survive and thrive in today’s fiercely competitive market conditions.

15 Tips to increase your productivity with Power Point 2007

Share

15 Tips to increase your productivity with Power Point 2007

Here is an ultimate list which will not only give you some hidden features but also increase your speed and productivity with power point.

1) Create Photo Albums: Power point 2007 has an in built feature which lets you create albums within seconds.

  • Click on Insert tab.
  • Click on Photo Album Icon and choose New
  • There you get button, File/Disk which allows you to select images from your hard disk
  • Add them and then you can arrange the sequence by using up and down keys.
  • After this just click on create and your album is ready. You can add notes to suit your needs.
  • You can also add affects; fit your images and others.

2) Quickly Apply Transition affects:

In previous version of Microsoft office it was not easy to apply transition affects. Right click choose and what not. In Power Point 2007 you get Animation Tab in menu which opens up a list of transition affects which you can apply in just one click. This will allow you to make it quick and accurate.

3) Pin Recent Presentations

It’s a tiring thing when you have to open you most frequently used slides and you need to pick up manually. You get some of them listed on your recent open file list but again they get over written every time you open another one. So if you want to make some of the slide to show up permanently in the recent menu, click on the pin button next to file name.

4) Activate The Developer Tab:

If you are making interactive slide show and use Macros with power point 2007 then you need to activate it. When I installed this feature was hidden. To enable it

  • Click On office Button (Top left).
  • Then on Power Point options.
  • Under the Popular Section select Show Developer Tab in the ribbon. Then Click ok.
  • You will see a Developer Tab created on the Menu.

5) Accurate Placement of objects like image

When you insert an object like image aligning to an exact position can be done by selecting the object and then moving it with direction keys holding the CTRL button. This gives you movement in pixels and hence better placement. Use the gird view enabled to boost this method.

6) Recording Narrations:

Power point lets you record narrations for every slide. This can be helpful if you availability is not possible when the slide show has to be shown. To record narration:

  • Click the Slide show tab.
  • Click Record Narration icon.
  • Here you get options for setting up microphone.
  • If you want to start from current slide just select Current Slide, else it will be from starting.
  • Save at the end and you will be asked if you want to save the timings for each slide.

7) Save presentation to Power Point 97-2003 format:

Its one of the common problem that slide show created in higher version don’t tend to open in another computer which is running previous version of Office 2007. In case you don’t see the option to save in 97-2003 formats, do the following to enable it.

  • Click on office button ( Present at top left)
  • Click on Power Point option.
  • Go to save in left pane
  • Click on drop down menu for Save Files in this format.
  • Choose PowerPoint Presentation 97-2003.

8) Setting up Layouts:

By Default Power Point 2007 gives you a layout which contains footer, a header and some list items in the body area. Now suppose if you want to change it to some custom every time you want to create a slide show,

  • Go to View tab of menu
  • Click on Insert Place Holder drop down icon.
  • Choose the type of media you want to put in.
  • Next Click and drag a box of size you want. That’s it.

9) Page Setup for presentations:

Depending on type of projector or screen, it is a better option to change the presentation accordingly. A standard 4:3 resolution will look bad on wide screen like projectors. To change the page setup simply

  • Go to View Tab and Click on Slide Master.
  • Click on Page Setup icon.
  • Here you can set for custom or available presets.

10) Using Smart Art:

Smart arts are designs and shapes which can be used to improve the presentation looks. The advantage of this is they change color according to your theme unlike normal text which doesn’t.

  • Go to Insert Tab > Smart Art Icon
  • A wide variety is found here which you can use. This also gives a live preview.

11) Custom Animation:

This is one of the coolest parts if you want to give lot of affects to your slideshow, specially when it’s a picture album.

  • Go to Animation Tab
  • In the middle u will see lot of square boxes which are actually affects.
  • Hover over each of them and you will see a live preview.

12) Create custom slide show

13) Disable image compression

14) Deliver presentation on two monitors

15) Change resolution of slide show on fly

How to build a brand online?

Share
Your offering is listed to searchers in response to a keyword or key phrase that was queried to solve a problem, answer a question or find a service/product.Internet is one market place where brand centered buying pattern is quite common. Online users buy products without actually seeing it or feeling it. Ensuring that your website get listed gives you brand equity and greater brand recall.

Top positions in major search engines improve brand awareness and credibility. It also creates identity for an unknown brand. Online brand building activities drive offline sales and offline brand building activities drive online sales.

Every interaction with a service, a product or its provider gives tangible proof of the real value the brand has - its action. All these interactions and impressions add up to the brand.

* Branding helps you differentiate from competition when tangible things are not enough.

* When considering new features and content for your site, alignment with the brand is as important as alignment with user goals.

* Online branding improves the click through rate (CTR) and conversions.

* Communicate Brand Image and deliver Brand Action (value to consumers) to your target audience.

* Create the online experience you brands deserve and craft ‘brand personas’ to measure support for both Brand Image and Brand Action and guide your image-oriented design efforts.

* Analyze the ways users search for your type of product and help you positioning your brand better.

* Take users to appropriate pages when searching for your kind of products.

When the Internet was first used for advertising, the watchword was accountability. As visitors to websites could be traced from first sight of an ad to an online purchase (or lack of purchase), it seemed that marketers had finally found an instantly traceable way to account for the success or failure of advertising.

Click-through rates followed by purchase rates were the most important metrics in those early years. Advertisers began to pay the sites they advertised on only for the visitors who actually clicked through, and in some cases even cut deals based on “cost per acquisition” of new customers -- meaning if customers saw the ad but did not go on to buy, the site got nothing.

The Internet, ran conventional wisdom, was a medium that could deliver a direct correlation between advertising and purchasing behavior, and should be used with that correlation in mind: in other words, ads should be a direct call to action. The idea of using the Internet for branding in the way that radio and television have long been used received little attention.

But the premises behind these conclusions were flawed. More recent research has shown that the Internet can indeed act as a powerful tool for pushing brand messages as well as a direct response mechanism. Though click-through rates have declined dramatically (to less than 1 percent in many cases) since the days when novelty kept us clicking, that doesn't mean people are no longer receptive to Internet ads.

Online advertising seems to work best when combined with conventional media such as print and television: the same research found that combinations of print and television advertising lifted awareness to 9 percent, but combinations of print, television and online raised awareness to 14 percent.

However, the success or failure of brand management relies on more than one or two factors. From product to distribution, pricing to customer service, public relations to advertising, and financial resources to management talent, successful branding is an all encompassing multidimensional process.

IS YOUR COMPANY UNIQUE!!!

Share
Blogging is not just for the tech savvy person, or who is more technical. Today the world of blog has expanded, and even the non-technical person can use it with ease. There are a lots of tools also available to do the job, to an extent that it looks almost like a professional blogger to a non-technical blogger. Blogging is not just about writing, but reading too. Using the power of RSS feeds (RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication) and feed readers, company can search once and subscribe to feeds delivering real-time news and information on your industry and your competition.
If you are already having a website of yours, or are finding any info on a company what do you do? The most expected answer is search through the GOOGLE. On the other hand do we really do the SELF-TEST, of keying words into the google and finding if our company features into all those key words? Many wont be doing this. We can see that our company featuring in the latter half of the page or beyond the 1st page, then you have just made the page, not putting the required effort into it. All those people whose websites are featured in the top slot doesn't remain in the same slot if a regular updation isn't done on it. what we can say is, a web page transforming into a cob-web.
At this stage of fading over the internet, the business owners catch hold of webmaster or design company that created the site. Many a times its not the fault of these people. If regular posts dont go into the web page, what can a designer do?

There are many techniques to raise the ranking of the blog. A simple thing called SEO or the Search Engine Optimization. Along with this, regular posting of Quality contents rises the ranks. Generally 3 to 5 postings makes a good rise in the ranks. As more people find and link to your quality posts, they become more "relevant" to the search engines and the site rises in the rankings. By linking your blog site to your corporate website, you can complete the circle and drive more people through the front door. Of course, simply posting random thoughts about the weather will not attract the masses.
Business blogging is really two-way communication between a business and its clients or potential clients. Blogs provide the platform for your company to become more findable and for the public at large to comment and link to what they're reading. The most common blogging platforms today are: - Blogger(www.blogger.com), WordPress ( www.wordpress.com), and Typepad (www.typepad.com). Although each one have their own strengths and weaknesses, they allow to create and upload at zero or no upfront costs. It might be that we might transform all of our company's (or corporate site) to blog, its the findability or searchability the main concern for which we blog.

Try being different/unique in your approach. like, Share stories that highlight interesting customer service experiences. Share your unique ability to resolve problems and satisfy customer demands. Share what went wrong at what place and how it was fixed by you and what you learnt out of it. Discuss the specialty in the solutions that you provide, or solutions that were special to you/ your company. highlight the special offer that your company is floating. A blog need not be a blog. Some of the photographs that show that not only you care for the customer and provide all the solutions that they need, but also like a cool dude the next door, who can be approached for any help. If your blog is more friendly and sharing informative information, you can be on top. You can also feature all those special thanks that the client gave you, or the talents that your company people have other than expertise in giving the right kind of solutions to the problems at the right time. All these features might really boost the relation of the outsider with the company.

Time Management

Share
Many of us claim our days are never wasted. "I'm very organised" we say "I know where I am going and what I'm going to do". If you truly feel that way then you are in the minority. Most people become frustrated with a day that is unproductive . We would all like to get more done in a day.

The idea of time management has been in existence for more than 100 years. Unfortunately the term "Time management" creates a false impression of what a person is able to do. Time can't be managed, time is uncontrollable we can only manage ourselves and our use of time

Time management is actually self management. Its interesting that the skills we need to manage others are the same skills we need to manage ourselves: the ability to plan, delegate, organise, direct and control

Below, we examine time management issues in more detail:

1. Shifting priorities and crisis management. Management guru Peter Drucker says that "crisis management is actually the form of management preferred by most managers" The irony is that actions taken prior to the crisis could have prevented the fire in the first place.

2. The telephone. Have you ever had one of those days when you thought your true calling was in Telemarketing. The telephone-our greatest communication tool can be our biggest enemy to effectiveness if you don't know how to control its hold over you.

3.Lack of priorities/objectives. This probably the biggest/ most important time waster. It affects all we do both professionally and personally. Those who accomplish the most in a day know exactly what they want to accomplish. Unfortunately too many of us think that goals and objectives are yearly things and not daily considerations. This results in too much time spent on the minor things and not on the things which are important to our work/lives

4. Attempting too much. Many people today feel that they have to accomplish everything yesterday and don't give themselves enough time to do things properly. This leads only to half finished projects and no feeling of achievement.

5.Drop in visitors. The five deadliest words that rob your time are "Have you got a minute". Everyone's the culprit-colleagues., the boss, your peers. Knowing how to deal with interruptions is one of the best skills you can learn .

6.Ineffective delegation. Good delegation is considered a key skill in both managers and leaders. The best managers have an ability to delegate work to staff and ensure it is done correctly. This is probably the best way of building a teams moral and reducing your workload at the same time. The general rule is -this; if one of your staff can do it 80% as well as you can, then delegate it.

7. The cluttered desk. When you have finished reading this article look at your desk. If you can see less than 80% of it then you are probably suffering from 'desk stress'. The most effective people work from clear desks.

8.Procrastination. The biggest thief of time; not decision making but decision avoidance. By reducing the amount of procrastinating you do you can substantially increase the amount of active time available to you.

9. The inability to say "no!". The general rule is; if people can dump their work or problems on to your shoulders they will do it . Some of the most stressed people around lack the skill to 'just say no' for fear of upsetting people.

10. Meetings. Studies have shown that the average manager spends about 17 hours a week in meetings and about 6 hours in the planning time and untold hours in the follow up. It is widely acknowledged that about as much of a third of the time spent in meetings is wasted due to poor meeting management and lack of planning If you remember your goal is to increase your self management, these are the best ways to achieve this;

There are many ways we can manage our time:

1. Always define your objectives as clearly as possible.
Do you find you are not doing what you want because your goals have not been set. One of the factors which mark out successful people is their ability to work out what they want to achieve and have written goals which they can review them constantly. Your long term goals should impact on your daily activities and be included on your "to do" list. Without a goal or objective people tend to just drift personally and professionally

2. Analyse your use of time.
Are you spending enough time on the projects which although may not be urgent now are the things you need to do to develop yourself or your career. If you are constantly asking yourself "What is the most important use of my time, right now?" it will help you to focus on 'important tasks' and stop reacting to tasks which seem urgent (or pleasant to do) but carry no importance towards your goals.

3. Have a plan.
How can you achieve your goals without a plan. Most people know what they want but have no plan to achieve it except by sheer hard work. Your yearly plan should be reviewed daily and reset as your achievements are met. Successful people make lists constantly. It enables them to stay on top of priorities and enable them to remain flexible to changing priorities. This should be done for both personal and business goals.

4. Action plan analysis.
Problems will always occur, the value of a good plan is to identify them early and seek out solutions. Good time management enables you to measure the progress towards your goals because "What you can measure, you can control". Always try to be proactive.

Time management (or self management) is not a hard subject to understand, but unless you are committed to build time management techniques into your daily routine you'll only achieve partial (or no) results and then make comments such as "I tried time management once and it doesn't work for me". The lesson to learn is that the more time we spend planning our time and activities the more time we will have for those activities. By setting goals and eliminating time wasters and doing this everyday you may find you will have extra time in the week to spend on those people and activities most important to you.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Free Links to your Blog: Enhance your Blogging Efforts

Share
Networking is a very significant concept of free marketing. When you visit an auto blue book site, you get all the information about insuring your car, banks, and financial institution who consider you eligible for a loan. Therefore, you have entered a market with a specific purpose and getting other information that could be relevant to serve your requirements.

Links are thus crucial to the success and sustenance of a site or blog. The web traffic rises if people find all that they are searching for, in your blog. This is effort saving for the prospects and they will be happy to find a comprehensive site that acts as a web-blog supermarket. Also WOMM, buzz marketing adds more value to it.

The best way to get traffic to your blog is thus to link up with other sites in a way that these will route traffic from their sites to your site every time. This is best done by the resource hook strategy where other sites link up with your site/blog for its content and quality irrespective of the fact whether your site has their links or not.


To make your business efforts cost effective you need to design your blog/ site carefully to draw in free links from similar bloggers. Exclusive, relevant, specific and exhaustive content, updated regularly and that incorporates relevant humors that supplement the seriousness of the content is the best way to attract them.Your efforts should be skillfully targeted towards convincing your competitors to consider you as useful resource that they have to link up to, to increase their web traffic.

Linking is also a deciding factor to judge the SEO efforts. Search engines rank and rate your site/blog high if other sites have linked you up in their web pages. Your rank tends to high if there are more links pointing towards your blog/site than the number of links that you are using in your blog/site. One-way links are more favored than reciprocal links while indexing your site. Quality of the links is equally important. It is always favorable that the links are coming from similar blogs related and relevant to your blog content.

You need to have your USP and an endearing formula to get free links from similar entrepreneurs striving to establish their presence in field of net marketing. You should be able to provide with adequate resource on the niche that you and many related blogs in the similar business domain are discussing right now. If you are successful in portraying yourself as a value added resource to your competitors then your competitors will link you up immediately to bump up their traffic flow.

You could be a quick comic relief, a blog that nurtures humor subtly, relevant to the current topics and discussions apart from the serious contemporary articles. This is adding extra spice or garnishing your blog with the flavor that many prospects look for in their untiring search for content. Comments and posts on current topics connected to your business is the best way to establish your position as the thinker-leader.

Monday, September 24, 2007

The Future of Connected Marketing

Share

We have heard enough and more about viral, buzz and word of mouth marketing.

The following are some of the interesting predictions made by Todd Tweedy (CEO of Bold Mouth) on the future of ‘Connected Marketing’

• Connected marketing will become more strategic, with the focus shifting from promotion (creating remarkable campaigns) to innovation (creating remarkable products).

• ROI metrics will be mandatory for viral, buzz and word of mouth campaigns. ‘Advocacy rates’ and ‘sales uplift’ will become important parts of ROI metrics, displacing traditional measures such as campaign reach.

• Word of mouth tracking will become a key metric in brand tracking market research.

• Buzz, viral and word of mouth marketing will be merged into the wider marketing mix, with online viral marketing adopted and integrated within advertising, word of mouth within promotions and buzz within PR.

• Managing and avoiding negative word of mouth, online and offline will be an increasingly important area in connected marketing.

• Online branded entertainment (advertainment, advergaming, alternate reality games) will be used more as key brand touch-points for entertainment brands.

• Techniques developed in connected marketing initiatives will be adopted for change management and internal communication.

• Techniques developed in viral, buzz and word of mouth will be increasingly adopted in CRM programs as both retention and acquisition (turning buyers into advocates) tools.

• Cell phones will develop rapidly as an important medium for spreading connected marketing promotions, such as mobile invitations, SMS barcode discounts, etc.

• Marketers will eventually be able to locate influencers by zip/post code, by which point they will be all chasing the same chosen few.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Social Bookmarking

Share

Bookmarking is the practice of saving the address of a web site you wish to visit in the future on your computer. Social book marking is the practice of saving bookmarks to a public website and tagging them with keywords. To create a collection of social bookmarks, you register with a social bookmarking site, which lets you store bookmarks, add tags of your choice, and designate individual bookmarks as public or private. Visitors to social bookmarking sites can search for resources by keyword, person, or popularity and see the public bookmarks, tags, and classification schemes that registered users have created and saved.

Above picture has list of few social bookmarking sites.

How does it work?

Social Bookmarking opens the door to new ways of organizing information and categorizing resources. The creator of a bookmark assigns tags to each resource, resulting in a user-directed, “amateur” method of classifying information. Because social bookmarking services indicate who created each bookmark and provide access to that person’s other bookmarked resources, users can easily make social connections with other individuals interested in just about any topic. Users can also see how many people have used a tag and search for all resources that have been assigned that tag. In this way, the community of users over time will develop a unique structure of keywords to define resources— something that has come to be known as a “folksonomy.”


Significance

Activities like social bookmarking give users the opportunity to express differing perspectives on information and resources through informal organizational structures. Using a folksonomy- based tool for research lets you take advantage of the insights of other users to find information related to the topic you are researching, even in areas that aren’t obviously connected to the primary topic.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

B2B : beat round the bush

Share
Quite often B2B search engine marketing involves more complex strategies and requires
marketers to think of strategies with the end in mind. The B2B selling process is more complex and the potential consumers buying cycle can be long and drawn out. As a result, B2B marketers are presented with unique challenges and need to continually build relationships with their consumers.
Establishing a relationship with the potential consumer is key, but understanding that there are different people with their own requirements is the real ticket to success.
While its true that there may be different people in the buying cycle who search using the same key phrases, the intention of each may be different. Each will have their own set of pre-determined keywords that they will use to search for. As a result the importance of revisiting keyword baskets is crucial. The end result of course is obtaining qualified traffic and thus qualified leads.

Here are some other challenges faced by B2B marketers:
• Longer, more Complex Selling Cycles
• Undetermined KPIs
• Need for "traffic filtering" to ensure qualified traffic is turned into qualified leads
• Understanding the Consumer's Buying Cycle
• Measuring success at various intervals of the selling cycle
• Ignoring secondary conversions and missing out on opportunities to intercept qualified traffic
• Tracking leads through sales
• Developing effective on-site conversions that lead to the bigger off-site conversions (ie. the sale).
B2B marketers need to be proactive in tackling these challenges.

WIDGET MARKETING: CAN WIDGETS BENEFIT B2B SITES?

There has been a lot of “buzz” about widgets and widget marketing recently as creative online marketers have discovered the use of widgets. Widgets are simply pieces of embeddable code that can be found on one site, and embedded in another that can be used to promote your own site or blog. Widgets have become popular with users of online communities as a result the business of marketing via widgets is a great way for site owners (including B2B sites)to promote their content and business.
Widget marketing is starting to catch on in the online marketing world. Today there was a great post by Nick Wilson over at Search Engine Land on link baiting for 2007. According to Nick, a major component of link baiting in 2007 will be “widget baiting”.

How Can Widgets Help B2B Sites?

Simply put, widgets are all about providing your users with the tools to promote your B2B business or any business/online property for that matter. For B2B marketers, widgets offer the potential to be a means of acquiring new customers at a minimal cost, promotion of your site’s presence out to the rest of the Web, and can provide a traffic source to help build your external link inventory.
Widgets are a great way for promoting your site and your content. For B2B sites, which are looking to create streaming media channels (combining audio, video, photos, text, and RSS feeds etc) and broadcast them live across their site’s pages or blog, widgets can help accomplish this. Sites like splashcast specialize in just that.

Top 10 Favorite Widget Sites for B2B Search Marketing
1. My Blog Log
2. Mashable.com
3. Widgetoko
4. Snipperoo
5. Reuters Widget
6. Widgipedia
7. Spring Widgets
8. Word Press Widgets
9. Poll Daddy
10. Business Week Widget

B2B MARKETING IN 2007 – EVANGELIZING YOUR CONSUMERS

Given the understanding that most B2B organizations offer high end products or services, we know that the time that it takes to qualify a lead, nurture the relationship and convert the lead into a sale can take months or even years. The thing is, there is one more step involved in this marketing process for B2B marketers to consider and that is to make your customer an evangelist for your organization.If you have done your job and provided a service/product that your consumer truly appreciates, and the consumer is sincerely pleased about the entire experience, the chance of making this consumer an evangelist for your company is great.
Consumer evangelism is simply the process of taking a customer who is thrilled about your product/service and their experience and getting them to become outspoken "evangelists" or glorified promoters for your company. These “greatly satisfied” consumers can become a powerful tool for marketing and growing your business in addition to other leads that you have.
Its all the customer who makes the market. Its not what we want we produce and customer takes. but its what the customer wants and it is he who chooses the vendor, who has offered the service he wanted. If we the selected ones, we are lucky, and cashing on this in the form of evangelizing may not be wrong. Its the advantage that has come your way. Use it.
The fact that they selected your organization means that they understand how your solution works and that it will work for them.Keep in mind that your solution has to provide an extraordinary experience for this to happen.
Having loyal customers is one thing, converting them into influential and enthusiastic evangelists for your organization is another. Loyal customer are not necessarily promoting you to others, consumer evangelists do. Consumer evangelism should be practiced by any B2B organizations that want to grow their company and make a real difference in their industry. It’s been reported that “organizations that focus on building word of mouth (WOMM) into full-fledged evangelism grow faster, are more profitable and have big-picture ideas that somehow change the world.” If this sounds too good to be true, it’s not.
• Consumer Evangelists purchase and believe in your product or service
• Consumer Evangelists passionately recommend you to friends, family and colleagues
• Consumer Evangelists provide unsolicited feedback or praise
• Consumer Evangelists forgive dips in service and quality
• Consumer Evangelists are not bought they “extol” your virtues freely
• Consumer Evangelists feel part of something bigger than themselves

Some things to keep in mind when writing WEB contents

Share
In the search engine industry, Content is King!If you want to rank well in the search engines you have to create content...

Content should be informative and useful etc etc. Inspite of this known truth there are many websites that are existing that don't do real justice to their websites.
generally a blog has more of a personal touch or an industrial touch, which many have slang also. Whatever be the scenario, the content to be well written and useful and updated regularly.It doesn’t matter what type of site that you have, it doesn’t matter if your site is B2C or B2B, writing effective web content is not something you just do and push out into the online universe. Content development should be well thought out with consideration of who the intended audience is.
Those 37 things are: -

1. Keep it Simple – don’t try to impress with 5 syllable words.
2. Make use of bullets and subtitles. People like listings.
3. Don’t be Wordy – don’t get fancy, or use wordy intros. This can be an indicator that you have no idea of what you're

talking about.
4. White space is cool.
5. Be coherent – keep it tight and together.
6. Copy of about 400-600 words is ideal for SEO and the long tail of search.
7. Title – Subject – Support - your subject and support material should match closely with your title.
8. Titles should be catchy and informative – click able, and clear.
9. Do not use misleading titles – linkbait or not, don’t lie to the audience, or any fraudulence.
10. Lead in sentences (first sentence or paragraph) should get to the point. Tell the reader what the article is about first thing.
11. More stuff less fluff - Information is better than fluff every time.
12. Make your content somewhat unique - establish a unique perception towards the topic that you are creating content on.
13. Sans serif fonts are easier and faster to read on computer screens (try matching those fonts that help the reader than styling and dejecting the reader).
14. Link to related resources.
15. Regularly update your content.
16. Don’t write content for the sake of writing content.
17. Content should be easy to print.
18. Plagiarism is not cool. Its highly hated, if the author sees that his content is copied else where without his permission.
19. Avoid the sales pitch with informative content.
20. Know who your audience is.
21. Write content that your readers will understand not content that is full of industry jargon and avoid ambiguity.
22. Pictures should be specific and informative, not generic or ad-like.
23. Photos should be relevant to content and sized properly.
24. People in pictures should look friendly and down-to-earth.
25. Always check your spelling. Grammar IS important. Unless you don't want your site considered as being professional.
26. Online press releases should be even tighter and more professional than Web copy.
27. Each page of web content should focus on a single topic (don’t try to over optimize).
28. Like a good songwriter, create content that will stand the test of time. A good song is a good song. A good web page of content should remain a good page of content.
29. Don’t place advertising in the middle of your content (unless you want the reader to never return to your site).
30. Be careful with using humor – some people are easily offended.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Blogging is easy, but getting famous is difficult

Share
1. Sitemaps - First things first, Google is the leader of the free internet world. But unfortunately for them to like you, you need to give something back! Well thing is sitemaps are what you have to give them back. Sitemaps are like links in a xml format defined by w3c. They also have a update and a priority level that comes with it. Using this to your advantage is necessary. Make one. If you use wordpress, then there are plenty of ways of getting a sitemap. There are plugins that do that for you. The page template for sitemap is another one. Visitors should be able to browse your website without any issues. Sitemaps in templates help that. The xml sitemap can be submitted here http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ . They also help SEO ( search engine optimization ) quite a lot.

2. Meta tags & description - Meta tags and description is another one of those things which are important for SEO. They basically describe what that post or page is about for that particular story. Meta tags like meta keywords help recognize all the ones that are related words by adding them to the list. Meta description helps search engine help understand well…..description for that page. Sites like http://whois.domaintools.com/digg.com go on that info.

3. Linking - Cant emphasize this enough! Link dammit. People do link! Just because you don’t believe in linking with an inferior blog doesn’t make your blog any worse than what it already is. If anything it might travel that extra little bit and get you better conversion rates because it is true, hits from other bloggers do infact get you better conversion rates. Not to mention if the other blog has a high page rank, it does get transfered to you! This means faster searches and better results all around as far as blogging with search engines go!

4. Analyze - Use google analytics or something. But for your own benefit please track your blog. You never know where your traffic is coming from if you don’t do that! Once you do know the origins, reap its benefits! People don’t do that enough. People leave it to some SEO company and then just relax back and think that flow of traffic is going to grow on its own! Well thats not going to work. You need to build it upto a certain point and then make something of it. Find out your most famous article and who is behind that extra bit of flow. What did you do in that popular article that others haven’t received similar traffic for.

5. Polish - Bloggers are lazy, which is to be admitted. We may never polish our posts. Well for one thing, we should be doing that more often. Remember, its these polished blogs that will fetch you your money maker. That extra bit of editing could be the difference between a B+ article and the outstanding A+ which is your money maker. Revisit your old posts and have a feel of whether there has been a growing polished feeling in your posts and compare.

6. Categories - Categorization is the key to success. It means that if its in an irrelevant category, don’t bother posting. Make sure you have the right categories done. Try not to be general but if you are then try to stick to the topic.

7. Permalinks - Use permalinks to your advantage! Make something of it. No one likes it when you are searching through google and you get posts like blah.com/?=38 . Seriously use permalinks. It looks better when its something like blah.com/archives/omg-i-lik-u/. Its also better for SEO.

8. Social Bookmarking - Don’t just blog and forget about it completely! Please use social bookmarking to your advantage. This is the coolest thing happened to bloggers since …….. wordpress.

9. Advertisement - Do not use pop-ups, we are bloggers, people are there to read and be enlightened. Make it subtle. Not in your face! Try to ease it out and soothe it in to the website. Get a webmaster or a friend to give you an idea of what should go where.

10. Template - Get a unique template. All serious bloggers need to get one of them. The odd casual blogger can get away with inconsistency as well as a generic look. But a serious blogger should get a template. Its easy to get a template especially a unique one. It only costs a couple of hundreds. Its the uniqueness that defines your site and reminds everybody of the blog. Keep working on it. Also customize your template. Don’t just do something as stupid as get a template thats recommended. Add your input into it. The most customized template makes the user feel at home, feel like they should come back for more.

Quality Vs Quantity

Share
This is to explain how the quality matters more than quantity. Let’s say your website has 5,000 pages of content. Let’s say that the total cost for publishing each page is USD100.

Thus, the total cost is USD500,000. Let’s say that you have 100,000 visitors over the
lifetime of these 5,000 pages. Let’s say that the top 20 percent of pages get 80 percent of visitors (just as an approximate example of reality, if it existed).
That means that 1,000 pages are getting 80,000 visitors, and 4,000 pages are getting 20,000 visitors. The ‘cost’ per page for the top 20 percent of pages is USD1.25 per visitor.

The cost per page for the bottom 80 percent of pages is USD20 per visitor. You need to focus on how much each page is costing you and what value each page is delivering. To maximize value, you want to focus on your power-filled content. At a very
basic level, content is judged based on volume of sales. Harry Potter is a huge success because it sells a lot of copies.
If you focus your energies on your killer content and applications, you will be able to show much more value. We come across many websites where people are spending as much time on the low quality, filler content, as they are on the high quality, power-filled content. In fact, we come across quite a few websites where managers are not aware which is the killer and filler content.

Filler content also has hidden costs. A 5,000 page website is more difficult to navigate than a 1,000 page website. It’s harder for the reader to find what they need. Speed and convenience are critical to the success of self-service. The more you clutter your website, the more you slow the reader down.People are more impatient when working on web. If they don't find the information they are searching for, they either press the BACK button, or cut the page, or skip to another topic. This is when your website doesn't fetch what the person wants.

The core objective of content is to drive an action. You need to know that the top 20 percent of your content is really delivering a return. Just because people read a page is not enough. Did they understand it? Did they act the way you wanted them to after reading it?
To get a web page right demands a lot of time and effort. Let’s say you delete 2,000 of those pages I mentioned earlier. Let’s say you invest USD300 per page for the 1,000 killer content, and USD100 per page for the other 2,000 pages. You’re still spending the same budget, but are likely to deliver far more value because you’re focusing on getting the content right that your reader wants.
To maximize value on your website, focus on your killer content and delete your filler content.

Also that a website must speak in a common man's language than in a organization's language. Endless debates about what should and shouldn't be on your website. Remove all the compelling data or any of those things that makes the readers offended.
Remove all the filler content from the website. create a clean website that focuses exactly on what is needed and what the customers need.

SO QUALITY MATTER THAN QUANTITY.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Effective Marketing on LinkedIn

Share

What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a professional niche social networking site. On LinkedIn, you can connect with professional colleagues, meet new people, find recommended services and find new contacts in your current network.

What You Can Do With LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a good tool to reach specific people; it is not so good at mass market broadcasting. If you want to reach ten million people, then this may not be your best avenue.

By using LinkedIn effectively you can:

  • Increase the visibility of your business and brand
  • Pursue direct sales
  • Generate traffic and support your SEO efforts

Building Your Network on LinkedIn

There are people known as “open networkers” on LinkedIn, who tend to link to as many people as possible. By inviting a few of these “power networkers” to your network, you can access to all of their first degree and second degree contacts. These Open networkers can be found by doing simple search on LinkedIn for “LION“.

The other way to find high volume LinkedIn networkers is to visit TopLinked.com.

Marketing Strategies

Increasing Your Brand’s Visibility

There are several ways you can use LinkedIn to increase the visibility of your business.

· Display your expertise in “Answers”

· Announce your services to others in Answers.

· Drive readers to your blog posts

· Get your service recommended in “Services”.

Generating Sales Leads

· Reach potential clients through LinkedIn by conversing with people in “Answers”.

· Respond to service requests, such as when people are looking for a consultant in your field.

· Look for the right person to contact at the organization you are seeking to do business with.

Supporting Your SEO

· In order to make the link viewable to search engines, it is important to add the “show website” feature to each profile that will link to your site. This can be done in each account by clicking on “Edit My Public Profile“, make sure “Full View” is checked, and that also “Websites” are also checked. This will make the website link public.

· You can also respond to service requests and other questions in LinkedIn “Answers”, in which you can post a link to your website as a reference.

LinkedIn is not meant to be a mass market platform, and it is difficult to reach a wide variety of people on the site. However - LinkedIn allows for very highly targeted-marketing. LinkedIn allows you to reach the one influential person who is in need of your services.

Source

Thursday, September 6, 2007

SWEET N SOUR OF IPHONES

Share

Apple has released their new iphone, in 4Gb, 8Gb and 16Gb.
there was a price drop of 200$ on the 8Gb iphone, which has made a considerable increase in
the number of people going for iphone. on the other hand, people made comments who had
already taken iphones earlier. so a 100$ credit was given to the existing customers.
now the price is 499$ for 4Gb, and 349$ for 8Gb.

lets see some of the features of the iphone:-

Steve Jobs the proudly described the iPod as a beautiful piece of hardware that had amazing
software inside it. However, the iPhone doesn’t feel fragile. It’s got enough weight (4.8 ounces) to it to feel substantial when it’s in the palm of your hand. Pictures of the iPhone don’t do it justice:

it’s smaller than it looks. Roughly the width (2.4 inches) and height (4.5 inches) of a
full-size iPod, depth is the dimension that makes the iPhone feel tiny: it’s shockingly
thin, measuring less than half an inch.the iPhone appears to be built to last, with a screen
that proved quite resistant to scratches and drops.The iPhone’s back side is a textured
silver, rather than the polished stainless steel of the full-sized iPod models.The good news
is, the screen’s so bright that in most situations you don’t notice the fingerprints. But
it’s enough of an issue that Apple includes a small black chamois cloth in the iPhone box.

The dominant physical feature of the iPhone is its black glass face, punctuated by a
single physical button on the bottom and a speaker slit near the top for listening to phone
calls. But the Home button isn’t the only physical button to be found anywhere on the
iPhone; on its side are a pair of volume buttons, which (depending on context) will let you
raise or lower the volume of the phone’s ringer, music or video playback, or conference-call
speaker-phone. Placed right above these two buttons is a switch that slides back and forth;
in one position the iPhone will emit sound from its external speaker, while in the other it
will only vibrate to warn you that something’s going on.

There are buttons for volume, wake/sleep button, which when pressed once
iPhone goes to sleep and locks instantaneously.you can still receive incoming calls when the
phone’s in this state.Press that same button and hold for a few seconds, and the iPhone will
shut down completely.Opposite the wake/sleep toggle on the iPhone’s top edge is a recessed
headphone jack. It’s a standard 3.5-millimeter jack—the very same sort used on the iPod—but
because it’s recessed many third-party headphones won’t fit.

The iPhone comes with a set of stereo ear-buds that sound pretty good, exponentially better
than the ear-buds that shipped with the original iPod.These ear-buds also include an inline
microphone that’s also a clicker: click once to pause or play your music, or click twice to
advance to the next track.

On the iPhone’s back face is the tiny lens of its compact, two-mega pixel camera. It doesn’t
zoom and doesn’t work well in low light, but with still subjects in well-lit areas it
produces nice results. The camera also can’t record video, at least not with the current
version of the iPhone’s software. It’s also got three different wireless technologies
inside: a standard GSM cellular connection with support for AT&T’s EDGE network, support for
802.11b/g Wi-Fi networks, and Bluetooth.

The iPhone’s display is excellent. Yes, it’s big and bright, but its most impressive trait
is its high resolution: It’s 160 dpi, more than twice the traditional Mac screen resolution.
Jamming that many pixels together in such a small space means that everything on screen
looks smooth, not pixelated.Digital photos and videos look gorgeous.

The original Macintosh changed the world by providing a physical control to move a cursor
around on a computer interface. But the iPhone does it one better—instead of pushing around
a mouse in order to make a disembodied arrow or hand move up on the computer screen, it’s
your finger doing all the moving. When you touch a photo, Web page, or e-mail message on the
iPhone and slide with your finger, it moves along with your touch, as if you were moving a
real, physical object. There’s no cursor on the iPhone because your finger is your
pointer—which, despite what your mother might have told you, is just what fingers are
designed to do.The iPhone’s designers seem to agree that typing is the best way to enter
data on a small device, but they’ve ditched the physical keyboard and replaced it with more
touchscreen space.a keyboard automatically slides up from the bottom of the screen.

Another remarkable feature is that we can turn the phone to turn the screen from landscape
to portrait position, and vice versa. the screen turns accordingly all the data when
rotated, and we can get a wider look of the screen.

When an incoming call arrives, the iPhone gently interrupts what you’re doing to display
Caller ID information about who’s calling. You can set any of 25 built-in ringtones as your
ring and assign custom ringtones to individual callers. Unfortunately, you can’t use your
own music or sounds as ringtones.Once a call is in progress, the iPhone’s large screen gives
Apple room to make it clear what your options are while on the phone, including placing
people on hold and creating conference calls.The iPhone uses iTunes to sync the contents of
your Mac’s address book (or a set of groups within the address book) with its internal
contacts list. syncing everything is probably the best approach, since your contacts are
also used for e-mail addressing.

When you return to a task you were previously using, things will generally be just as you
left it. For example, if you’re looking at a Mail message and then press the Home button to
check stock quotes, when you tap on Mail again you’ll be back to that same message. There’s
a Favorites list, too, so you can create a short list of your most commonly dialed numbers.
However, creating and accessing favorite people should be easier than it is right now.The
iPhone also lacks a quick-dial feature that you’ll find on many other phones, in which you
hold down a particular button to call your most frequently-called contacts.When you’re on a
call, tapping the screen brings up six commands—Mute, Keypad, Speaker, Hold, Contacts, and
Add call.

One of the iPhone's most unique phone-related features is Visual Voicemail, which displays
messages by showing you the name of the caller and the time of the call; messages that you
have not listened to yet are marked with a blue dot.
If you want to use a Bluetooth wireless headset with the iPhone, you should be able to do so
without much trouble.

Using Mail on the iPhone couldn’t be much easier: tap the New Message icon to create a new
message, and then choose a recipient from your Contacts list (or type in an address
yourself). If you’re reading a message, pressing the reply button will give you the option
of replying to or forwarding the message.Moreover, the iPhone doesn’t filter mail, nor does
it have any built-in spam catcher.That means if you’re relying on a client-side filtering
program such as C-Command Software’s SpamSieve (5 mice), you’ll be stunned at the amount of spam you’ll see on your iPhone. The solution: Use a mail server with server-side spam
filtering, if you can.Another, much more minor, missing feature is the ability to assign
signatures for each of your e-mail accounts.

Web pages load in full, scaled-down to fit on the iPhone’s screen. Tap twice on any part of
the page and Safari automatically zooms in, making text readable and enlarging photos to
fill the screen. The experience is as close an approximation to the Web you experience on
your Mac as you could possibly get on a screen the size of the iPhone’s. The biggest is the
fact that perhaps the most common browser plug-in in existence, Adobe’s Flash, is nowhere to
be found. Over the past few years, the melange of different browser plug-ins for features
such as embedded Web videos have largely been replaced by a single video player format:
Flash. Although the iPhone’s included YouTube player solves the problem for that popular
video-sharing Web site.The iPhone also won’t play back Web audio or video being streamed in
the Real or Windows Media formats, although Mac users can play such media on their Macs.
Due to its large, high-resolution screen, the iPhone excels as a video player. It’s the
largest canvas a video iPod has ever had, at 480-by-320 pixels. (The current video iPod’s
display resolution is 320 by 240.) And the widescreen aspect ratio, while not quite a
Hollywood-standard 16:9, is still better for watching widescreen movies and TV shows than
the 4:3 ratio of the video iPod.

There’s also no support for embedded lyrics in music files, and no voice-recorder support,
either with the iPhone’s internal microphone or with various iPod voice-recorder add-ons.
The bad news is that Text can’t send MMS messages, which are similar to SMS messages but can contain multimedia. Because of this limitation, you can’t send a picture you snap with the
iPhone’s camera to another phone via Text. (You could send that photo via e-mail.) What’s
worse, the iPhone has no support for any Internet-based instant-messaging network. AOL’s SMS gateway works okay in a pinch—and when your buddies are initiating the chats—but it’s no replacement for a full-blown AIM buddy list. And if you’re in a location where you’ve got
Wi-Fi network access but no cellular service, there’s no fallback.

The Calendar and Notes programs help the iPhone fulfill its role as a personal information
manager, but they’re like night and day when it comes to their utility. In contrast, the
Notes program is fairly useless. It’s cute, with its brow header and yellow legal-style
ruled background. But notes don’t sync back to your Mac, so you have to e-mail them from
your phone if you ever want to free them from the iPhone.

Maps is powered by the same data you get when you visit Google Maps with your Web browser, but its interface is so slick—from the ease of finding addresses in your contacts list to
the whizzy turn-by-turn direction animations—that it not only puts the Google Maps
implementations on other cell phones to shame, it makes the Google Maps Web site itself look
dowdy. The only thing missing from the Maps equation is that the iPhone doesn’t know where
it is. Not via built-in GPS (it has none), nor by triangulating signal strengths from nearby
cellular phone towers. It’s too bad, because with some knowledge of where it’s currently
located, the iPhone’s Maps program would be perfect.

The Clock program, on the other hand, is more than just a pretty face. Yes, it lets you see
what time it is in major metropolises such as London, Moscow, and Cupertino. But it also
lets you add multiple alarms, set a stopwatch, or initiate a countdown timer.

The iPhone tech specs claim battery life of up to eight hours of talk time, six hours of
Internet use, seven hours of video playback, 24 hours of audio playback, and 250 hours of
standby time.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

The Dos And Don’ts Of Selling To Clients

Share
DO's

1. Listen to your client --> the single most important thing that a successful sale can make
is a careful listening to your client. understand what he wants and how is he working at
present and what problems is he facing, or what kind of solution or result he is expecting.
understand the processes that he is at present doing, and your potential that could fill the
void that he has brought to you. then simply present the solution in the most simplified
manner that makes him feel that his problems gets a better solution, or that he can continue
doing better, and comes to you in future.

2. Build a relationship and demostrate your expertise --> business owners usually dont want
to become experts, but just want to know an expert they can rely on, and who can provide a
better and good solutions on a long term basis.

3. Present solution to your client's problem --> there are cases that some may seek your
help in solving a problem, or enter into a formal contract to get a better solution.

4. Recognize the point where you have won a good client --> Its very important to keep track
of those questions that make the clients face turn from anxiety to relaxing face. just see
the expression that is building trust in the eyes of the client. If they feel they are
better off somewhere else than here, you have lost just not one client in front of you, but
those clients whom he might influence at a later stage. If he feels the repentance of not
coming to you all these, you have won a big battle.

5. Communicate in the way (email, phone, in person) your client prefers, not the way you
prefer --> Get to know the most convenient way to contact the client. It must be that you
are convenient in something and he is busy in something else, and in the process you either
loose the business, or a communication gap can break the wall. Ask the client as to what's
the best way to contact him (casually and in cases of emergencies), so that you dint take
any hasty decisions which might turn up as a loss to either the customer or you. what ever
may be the case it is you who is blamed for the improper judgment, although it could be the
irresponsibility of the client.

6. Appeal to both emotion and reason --> you have to convince the client not only with solid
reasons to take your help, but also emotionally, that they have come to the right place and
can take a deep breathe and relax of their right choice being there.

DONT'S

1. Don’t try to make a sale without first building trust --> the worst thing is to make a
sale or push someone to decision without building trust. When people feel that they are
using the right produce, they get attached to it.

2. Don’t waste your time with clients who don’t fit you --> Another bad thing to do is to
waste your time on someone who doesn’t fit you well. You may need the business really badly
and so you go after everyone no matter what, but the truth is that taking clients who don’t
fit you will be worse in the long run because they will drain your time and keep you from
finding the ones that fit. they are a waste of time and some time can pull you down when you
get a good and better client, and to whom your precious time doesn't go waste.

3. Don’t waste money (and paper) on marketing materials --> All I need is a net meeting tool
and a demonstration website. Try to stay as paperless as possible. computers have all the
better option of editing in a better way than paper, although the last and final print can
be on paper. Means don't unnecessarily waste money on materials and stationary.

4. Don’t set unrealistic expectations --> Be pragmatic. Your goal is to have happy clients
who pay your invoices. It’s extremely important to set honest expectations up front. You
have to know your strengths and weaknesses and some other unexplainable obstacles and
limitations. This will take more time at the beginning but will save you five times the
effort on the back end trying to defend an invoice or correct a misunderstanding. If you set
a fair target, you can win clients and finish the job, else you tend to finish the client
and your reputation, explain as to what time the job really can be finished at, and don't
take too much time than what it really needs. Approx 125% time is a safe option, and if you
finish early, its a credit, than taking less time and repenting or giving lame excuses to
defend yourself, staking your reputation.

5. Don't nag, but don't give up too early either --> Be more polite. If you are having more
work, and not possible to take more projects, never say NO like banging on their face. say
in the most polite manner, and if necessary quote your helpless situation. Don't create a
position that you have to call them when you have little or no work. this would put you in a
hapless situation. tell them when you can get back to them, or when they can call back,
rather than you running behind them to get their work done, or make them frustrated by your
behavior. DON'T FORGET TO CONTACT EVERYONE THAT YOU WERE TO MEET ON THAT DAY.A phone call, or an e-mail, or a chat could help a lot, than causing any trouble.