The 3 Elements of Viral Marketing

You may have already realized that viral marketing is an essential component to the success of your Internet business. But the next question to ask is this: what makes marketing viral? There are three keys.

Key One: It must be Buzz-Worthy

Basically, it just means notable, interesting. There is a story around it. You must have the juicy tidbits that stars like Britney Spears and Madonna are known for. If you cannot get the people to be convinced that it is something new, juicy and revolutionary, you cannot expect to pass the viral marketing standard. If you really want it to sell like pancakes, it must be something substantial and extremely intriguing enough for the user.

Key Two: It must be useful to the person you are sending it to.

Otherwise, it is like some chain letters that you get. It is like, “Why do this person send it to me? Delete. It is gone.” If it is useful to the person that gets it and the person that read it initially forwards it to others who might find it useful too, it continues a self-perpetuating cycle. If you do not establish this, the first man or woman that gets it will treat it as junk and press the delete button. So, it does not go on. But if they think it is useful and they know you personally, chances are you have some similar interests. It might be interesting to you and it gets forwarded around and the message just spreads.

Key Three: It must be easy to pass on.

This is actually the most important key of the three, but it will not work without the first two. You have to have all three, but this is the thing that really makes it viral. A “Tell a Friend” script might be another good example.When you visit a website and you think it is really cool, often, they will have a thing where it says tell a friend, and you can type in the e-mail addresses of two or three of your friends. They get a link to the site saying, “Hey, so and so, with your name, sent your link to the site. Come and check it out.” Those are examples of tools that make your material easy to pass around. There are various viral examples. If you can get that kind of viral movement which is synonymous to having multiple branching out levels as in an old Pert commercial, it does not really take very long to spread your message, but you have to have the three keys that we just talked about. Another example is reports. You see a lot of people in Internet doing this. They will create a report that has great content. Inside the report you can have links to back end products, your affiliate links, and you can brand it like with your brand saying sometimes if it is your report, you brand it however you want. This is already instant viral marketing for you. Tools such as viral pdf.com help you create those reports.

Internet Marketing: How Chords of Feelings Strike For Your Business

Feelings are very important when you are dealing with your prospects. You need to first go beyond the surface and know how they feel. You can only provide satisfaction to your customers if you are able to meet their primary need.You do not really need a psychology degree to read minds. There are also various books and resources on body language, negotiating tips and tactics, among many other things. Remember that what you are dealing with in your business are people and you can never implement things that are devoid of emotion and expect that it will gain loyalty and approval of your leads. If you really want to be able to succeed, you have to be able to reach out somehow on an emotional level. Most people advocate sound reasoning in making purchases. But the reality of the matter is that most buyers act based on feelings or emotional correspondence. If you really want to succeed in your business, you need to really learn how feelings are elicited in your target market and use them effectively.

Life from their Vantage Point or Perspective
The life perspective of your target market in general affects the way they make decisions. You must know what the consensus of your target niche is when it pertains to this topic. Their perspective on life will give you ideas on what products they want to buy. Whether your product is promising, you will not expect people to like it if it is not tailored to suit their inherent tastes or goes with their life principles.

Actual Needs

Their actual needs may be something subconsciously communicated to you. There are things not explicitly stated but are more valuable than those that are obvious to the physical realm. The actual needs of your target market must be different from people who have other priorities. For example, investors are more for getting favorable passive returns while those who are working on a 9-5 day job are more inclined to consider active income as their barometer of success.

Pressures and Stresses

What causes hassles to your target market? Know them, and make ways to help them avoid it, and I swear, your target niche will love you. Some degree of stress is important in any endeavor, but if the stresses are starting to interfere with productivity and many other things that disrupt their daily activities, they will appreciate if someone can identify the problem and help them find a viable solution to diminish, if not completely remove it from their midst.

Fears

What are your target market’s fears? Insurance policies are one of the best examples of companies who are able to harness the feelings of fear properly from people in all walks of life. It may seem morbid, but if you are marketing your services, you must be able to provide a drawback if people do not avail of your products or services. This is part and parcel of creating a need and making buying from you and subscribing to you a top priority for them if you got to convince them.

Dislikes

What to avoid is another aspect you need to consider as an Internet Marketer. If you are unknowingly sabotaging your business with a tactic in which your target market considers dirty and distasteful, then you cannot really expect them to look forward to buying from you.

Advertise For Free - Thats Perfect For Me!

I saw a question on a forum the other day that reminded me of when I first started my home business ten years ago. A guy wanted to advertise his business offline and did’t have much money, he was asking for suggestions.

When I started out I was seriously broke, thought I was going to lose my house. I found biz ops an area that was often called ‘the poor man’s business’ and in an act of desperation started my own home business.

I bought a couple of information products but then realised that I couldn't’t afford to buy enough stamps, envelopes and photocopies to put together a big enough mailshot to earn anything. The act of buying the information products got my details on mailing lists and biz op magazines and ad sheets turned up in my mail.

Being a careful Yorkshire lass I realised that cheap subscriptions to the magazines would get me free monthly ads and that the ad sheets were cheap enough to place my learning ads on. I also saw lots of adverts for free ad placements so used my few stamps and envelopes for whatever freebies I could get.

The free and cheap adverts got me more sales and follow up sales than I would have ever got if I’d spent my money on mailshots. They also taught me how to advertise and it was’t long before others were copying my headlines.

The most important thing was that I figured out very quickly that getting my name
known would increase my sales. It’s a fact that people are more likely to buy from a name that they know, and if you deal honestly your good reputation will be built up as your name gets known.

Within a few months I launched my own quirky little ad sheet. As soon as the idea was finalised I sent copies off to all of the magazine editors. That got me more free advertising in the form of excellent reviews.

I then published my own home business guide and got more wow reviews from the magazine editors and more free advertising. The buyers advertised it for me on commission so their sales cost me nothing to promote.

Six of the editors asked me to write regular articles for them and I decided to write monthly for the best magazine with the widest circulation. Guess what? I chose to get free full page advertising instead of cash for my articles.

I wrote for that magazine for 18 months and then quit to write articles for my own magazine. Yes I published a magazine and got lots of free advertising; all paid for by my advertisers and subscribers.

Somewhere along the way I started a leaflet design service and as at the bottom of every leaflet I was able to place ‘Designed by Patricia Jones and my telephone number’ I got more free advertising. It reached a point where a large percentage of the biz op mailshots and magazines in the UK had something with my name on.

When I think back I paid very little for my advertising for the 5 years that I had a mail order business. My creativity earned me masses of free advertising, but that would’t have happened to such an extent if I had’t sent copies of everything new that I did for the magazine editors to review.

I’ll stress again that getting your name known is important. Even if I was advertising a website I always added my name to the advert and that created more interest. If you can write reasonably well submit articles to magazines, it really is worthwhile. If you have any ideas for new products act upon them, they might just work and they might just get you lots of free advertising.

Now I’m doing it all again on the Internet, betcha it won’t cost me much now that I have found article marketing!
Seriously though, everything that I did offline can be emulated in some form or another online with patience and perseverance. You can get free adverts on lots of sites on the Internet, and build up your link presence. Drop into forums and join in the discussions.

You can publish your own books at little or no cost. Instead of submitting articles to magazines there are article directories. Article Marketing is a great free way to boost your promotions.
I guess that instead of leaflets you could design websites, but to gain from the same power of duplication you would need to have a cracking idea that masses of people would want to promote.

For anyone who has ideas the Internet is a great place to test them out and at little or no cost, just try to make the ideas a little different to help you grab more attention. Whatever you do shout about it from the rooftops – success is standing out from the crowd!

Speak for Success

An important aspect of business success today is the ability to communicate effectively. Not only with the written word but to be able to stand out and deliver a speech or presentation with confidence will set you apart.

As a business educator, I have the opportunity to meet some great speakers from around the world and learn more about how to grow my business. Like others in the audiences I am most impressed by presenters who not only impart relevant information but do it in an interesting and entertaining way. Do you make compelling presentations? If not here's a few tips that may help.

What makes a great presenter? Confidence is usually the initial response and I agree. The number one characteristic that shines through is confidence. Acquiring this quality alone will put many ordinary presenters into the "good" category. What could you do then to go that extra step forward?

1. Awareness of what works for you and what doesn't and the willingness to build on those foundations. Feedback is incredibly important whether you tape or record yourself and analyse your own performance or have someone else critique for you. But here's the catch. Most of us only dwell on what didn't work, try to fix those problems and don't work on their strengths. By recognising what works for you, acknowledging and building on that base will give you the confidence to improve and become a great presenter.

2. Practice makes perfect, so they say. But practice also makes permanent. It's important to try new things, experiment, take risks and most importantly to add variety to your presentation. Variety can be built into your presentation through storytelling, humour, use of props, audiovisuals, group exercises or audience involvement. Variety in your voice – try soft, loud, fast and slow. Try a range of techniques to keep your audience energised and interested.

3. Have a clear outcome in mind of what you want the audience to take away from your presentation. Remember it's about them and how they feel. It could simply be they feel comfortable with you to provide a particular service, or you've convinced them your product is the best on the market. It could be to motivate them to do something or inspire or challenge them to try something new.

4. Organise your speech into "chunks". Rather than try to memorise or read a 30 minute speech (or a 3 hour one!) if you have several chunks that deliver a particular message it is easier for you and your audience to remember. As an example 30 minutes could be broken up into a 5 minute opener with a story, 3 chunks of 7 minutes where you talk about 3 different points using some variety while delivering those messages. Then a closer of 4 minutes perhaps to give out handouts or take a question or two then finish big with a call to action.

5. Use your body wisely. It's okay to jump up and down and be energetic if that is your style. Many of you would have been to an Anthony Robbins or other motivating style of presentation and seen how they use their bodies. At other times a speech delivered with poise and stillness from a lectern is appropriate. What isn't appropriate is distracting movement such as pacing up and down for no reason, gesticulating wildly for no purpose, rocking back and forth or playing with your hair (girls) thrusting hands in your pockets (boys) or scratching or picking at imaginary fluff on your jacket.

These are just a few of my observations and techniques I've learned while practicing to become a great presenter. I hope these tips help you next time you need to make that great client presentation.

Diversity Success Strategies

In today’s fast growing and global economy, businesses risk falling behind as leaders in their key sectors if they continue to be reactive and not proactive in relation to diversity and equality.

By 2010, 50% of the UK workforce in urban areas will come from diverse backgrounds. With the word ‘Global’ following the word ‘Economy’ in almost every business case, diversity a key government initiative companies cannot afford anymore.

The following are constantly a reminder of why diversity is key to the success of every business in the UK today:

1. Age discrimination
2. Bullying and harassment
3. Disability
4. Equal pay
5. Ex-offenders
6. Race discrimination
7. Religious discrimination
8. Sex discrimination
9. Sexual orientation

Here at Diversity Success, we focus on developing and equipping people from diverse backgrounds with the soft skills required to help employers gain a competitive edge in today’s global economy while helping employers understand the following:

1. Diversity and the business background
2. Understanding diversity and its effects on employers
3. The impact of diversity on business performance
4. The consequences of failing to manage workforce diversity
5. Key factors that influence the effects of diversity
6. Diversity and the business case
7. Understanding and implementing diversity measures
8. Successfully measuring the impact of diversity to make progress.
9. And using diversity to gain a competitive edge over competitors.

For example, Halifax Building Society increased profits by £130,000 at six branches trialling an older workforce and Nationwide Building Society saved £7million in staff turnover costs by widening the recruitment age.

I met up with Celia Ole, one of UK’s leading Diversity & Equality consultants for the Job Centre Plus and after hours of sharing ideas and opinions, we came up with a number of critical points to implementing a successful diversity and equality strategy.

It is not ground breaking news that we are in the people business and people buy into people before they buy from them. Global diversity has come of age and in today's constantly changing business environment, a multicultural Britain with different cultural values, beliefs and standards, if you are not recruiting the right people, i.e. people who understand your customers, then you are not ready to succeed in a global and diversified business economy.

In order to increase sales, improve customer loyalty and satisfaction then employers must be proactive in adapting a workforce that spans across time, space, cultures, and geographies.This means that managing global diversity effectively is imperative for businesses that want to be faster, better, and more cost effective in the chaotic and complex global marketplace.
During my informal chat with Celia Ole, I finally came up to the following 7 conclusions for a successful diversity success strategy:

1. Where the head directs, the body follows: Global Business thinkers recognise that implementing a diversity success strategy is a business and social opportunity to increase productivity and growth. As a result, it should be high on the priority list when business leaders are determining the financial success and growth of the business. If the head does not direct the body, the body can do nothing. Business leaders must therefore invest the time and money needed to develop, implement, monitor, and review a diversity strategy that will have a positive impact on business, employees, suppliers, customers, products, and services.

2. Birds of the same feather flock together:In order to win and retain more customers who are constantly from diverse backgrounds, then you need to see, speak, hear and understand their language and way of life. To do this you need a diversified team – A global team that can speak the language and understand the way of life of your customers. Their key role must be to identify, define, design, and launch a successful global diversity initiative for your organisation. Include participants who represent diverse regions, countries, cultures, and languages already existing in your community. Let every implemented initiative be focused on creating a workforce that reflects the economy.

3. Assumption can be the mother of all failures: Knowing your current workforce culture and its effects on previous, current and future customers is key to identifying key diversity issues; globally, regionally, and by country. If your employees cannot engage your customers at all levels, then your competitors could be winning over your customers. Identify the barriers in the environment that prevent people engaging your employees and vice verse. You can do this by working with locals to find out what differences make a difference in their country or region and learning how those differences help or hinder people from performing to peak potential.

4. Communicate don’t tell A well thought out communication plan must involve learning how to listen to the needs and requirements of employees and customers alike. Consider the responses and not the reactions of local communities by understanding local preferences. This ensures the support of a global diversity initiative. Make sure you understand the business objectives of Senior leaders and be ready to present how a diversity led initiative can help meet their business goals.

5. If you are doing it – Front it Creating awareness for your diversity led initiatives among employees and communities will secure the success and growth of not only the initiative but also the business. You can do this by educating the workforce to increase awareness and build the skills needed to lead, manage, and team effectively in a globally diverse organization.

6. Accountability can secure proactively. Where people are held accountable, an answer is always expected for every action. If it can be measured, dated and recorded, it can be analysed, assessed and improved. Evidently companies succeed by making their employees and departments accountable. A diversity led initiative should be no different if you are to sustain a successful campaign.

7. Reflect! Reflect!! Reflect!!!If you have an end date in mind, then you might as well mark that date as a drop in profitability and sales. Globalisation is here today. It’s always been here and it’s not going to go away. To remain in it is to effectively and continually manage your Diversity led initiatives. It is a continual process that is integral to the success and future of the business. An open ended project not a closed one. Always work in terms of outcomes and communicate these outcomes to Senior leaders, departments and the communities involved. Remember, your mission is to sustain the loyalty and satisfaction of your customers. You can only do this by communicating feed backs to all parties involved.

Is Article Marketing a Must?

If you are seeking a way your website to get high ranked in major search engine, it is well known that you need as many back links as possible. Article marketing is one of the most effective forms of free advertising you can do online. Article marketing is not a new practice but, it is still a very popular means of generating website traffics, and also of improving the Page Rank of specific web pages.

Article marketing is the act of writing short articles related to a respective industry or about a topic with the goal of getting the readers to come to your website. Because the technique behind article marketing is back linking, it became a common practice to submit articles to many different article directories to get many one way inbound links in order to optimize a website. Article marketing is also well known as a white hat technique and it is one of the best accepted ways to optimize a website for search engines.

Article marketing is all about good content. Writers or publishers need to put their names out there by sharing their knowledge and information. This means that your article has to be good enough to get published because none of the article directories guarantees to publish your article.

Downside of article marketing is that it takes so much time. Article marketing can be pretty easy if you already spend a lot of time writing for your blog. But, it will be a really time a consuming job to most of people. Some people feel that article marketing is a waste of time, but the bottom line is that if done correctly it can greatly increase traffics.

Article marketing is the most effective way to promote your web business and to generate quality back links. The true key to good article marketing is to remain constant and consistent. It is a long-term strategy but, it is a powerful tool to success online.

Work A Home Computer Jobs Are Plentiful

Work A Home Computer Jobs Are Plentiful

You must be careful when selecting a work at home computer job. There are many companies that seek to rip off their customers and offer high hopes and little else. Be weary of offers that sound too good to be true. They probably are.Before you invest money in a work at home computer job, be wise and contact the Better Business Bureau or the Small Business Administration for advice on selecting a work at home computer job.

There are work at home computer jobs that use every talent imaginable.Here are some work at home computer jobs that you may wish to check into: consumer opinions, data entry, freelance artists, legal assistant, medical transcription, translators, and web surfers.

Even though some work at home computer jobs are scams, most are legitimate. Estimates say that approximately 40 million people work at home in some capacity. With the Internet thriving, many of those home jobs are work at home computer jobs.

Starting a home computer business will enter you in the ever-expanding e-commerce universe. Business to-business sales over the Internet will account for $2.7 trillion for the year 2004. Consumer products purchased over the Web will exceed $119 billion. With such growth, no wonder more and more people are considering starting a work at home computer job.