Why do some people make it as writers while others find themselves consigned to obscurity? One of the easiest ways to achieve "expert status" is to appear in print - but first you must follow the five golden rules that guarantee to showcase you as a professional...
The first golden rule is to understand that your story must be newsworthy and not merely a "puff piece". Copy that simply tries to promote an individual or organisation seldom makes it further than the dreaded journalist's spike! What constitutes a story? Anything that is unusual, noteworthy or simply interesting from a "human interest" perspective.
While it's likely that your headline won't actually make it into print (sub-editors need to be seen to do something to earn a crust) do bear in mind that it must grab the News Desk's attention and should preferably give an enticing indication of what the story is about. - The same also applies to your opening paragraph. For example , "Local Reiki practitioner Jane Smith made 20 pensioners jump for joy at the first of three special back pain clinics she ran last week... " packs much more of a punch than "Jane Smith, who is a Reiki practitioner, spoke to pensioners last week at a talk she gave on back pain. "
The second golden rule is to use a picture to tell the story, wherever possible. In the example above, 20 pensioners all leaping off the ground while waving their arms in the air would have made a great picture for a local newspaper (remember that for the local media, "faces sell papers") whereas as a boring photograph of people listening to a speaker would probably have been relegated to the bin (unless you're a celebrity).
The third golden rule when writing for the media is to ensure that you answer the key questions of "who, why, what, when, where and how". Your story will always feel more professional if you stick to the facts and leave out the "purple prose". Sprinkling your copy with lots of flowery adjectives guarantees you'll be recognised as an amateur.
The fourth golden rule is - unless you're writing a commissioned feature - is to make the story to the point, punchy and fairly short - say 350 to 500 words. Say what you've got to say and leave it at that. You can get away with doing some articles - but not all - as "tips lists".
The fifth golden rule is to write specifically for your audience. Press stories require that copy is written in the "third person", whereas material written for the web should be friendlier and feel more conversational. For the media, you'd say: "Local acupuncturists are this week lobbying their local MP... " but for the web, you'd write: "As an acupuncturist who works locally, you're invited to make your views known to our local MP".
1 Make sure you have a real story and not just a piece of self-promotion.
2 Wherever possible, provide a picture which sums up the essence of your story.
3 Answer the "who, why, what, when, where and how" questions in your copy.
4 Make the story short (350 - 500 words), punchy and to point, avoiding the use of flowery language.
5 Write in the right tone for your audience - in the "third person" for the media and more conversationally for the web.
There are many different factors that must be considered when developing a successful website and online marketing campaign. A few of the factors that need to be considered are the following- Graphical Layout, Web Design, Relative Content, Logical Layout, Exposure, and Non-Intrusive Lead Generation.
Below is a brief description of each of these factors and what to look for to determine if you have all these factors working for you.
Graphical Layout-
The graphical layout of your site would be the graphical details of your site working together to create the right mood and visual appeal. Photos displayed on your site should be crisp high quality images. Web surfers in general respond better to uncluttered sites with readily available information that they are looking for.
Did you know that the colors of your website have a huge affect on how your website visitors perceive your site and services?
Careful consideration must be taken when selecting the color schemes for your site. The color combinations that you use invoke mood. If you set the proper "mood" for your website you will increase the click through rates, visit durations, and ultimately the amount of inquiries you get from your site.
Web Design-
How your site is "put-together" is another important aspect of your website. The way your site is programmed effects site load times, picture load times, cross-browser compatibility, search engine optimization, and the flexibility that you have to update your website.
Did you know that websites with a load time of 8 seconds or more lose 1/3 of their visitors?
Sites with slow load times can cause you to loose your visitors as quickly as they found you. If you are selecting a website provider, ask for examples of other clients sites, take note of how fast their website and pages load.
Cross-browser compatibility-
Another way you can loose visitors, through poor programming, is due to browser compatibility issues. Having a site that is not cross-compatible means that some of the visitors that come to your site will not be able to view it if they are using some other browser such as Firefox, Netscape, Opera. Not considering details such as this can cost you a lot of lost traffic and revenue.
Search engine optimization-
Many of today's real estate websites lack in this area. Designers are creating elaborate visually appealing sites that will never rank in the search engines because they are just one big image, slapped together in Photoshop and placed on the web. In order to compete in the search engines, your web designer better have some knowledge of how to optimize your site. Your site should use actual text whenever possible, keep the text images to minimum. Images will increase your sites load times and search engines cannot not "read" the text contained within an image. Proper meta-tags should always be used, even though all search engines do not place as high importance on them, as in the past.
Flexibility-
The simple fact is, most people who are interested in developing a website are not web designers, nor do they want to put forth the extreme time and effort necessary to learn. With that being said, it is important that every site owner have flexibility to access and easily make changes or additions to their website. Keeping current information on your website is the best way to keep visitors checking back to your website. Going through overloaded web designers to get the simplest changes made can become cumbersome and aggravating, as well as quite costly. Select a site provider that will give you simple tools to make changes to your website.
Relative Content-
We have discussed the visual and technical aspects of web design. The next big factor in generating leads from your website's traffic, would be "content relevance". One of the quickest ways to loose a visitor is to not have the information they are looking for readily available. The biggest thing you can do to increase the "viewing value" of your website, is to add detailed pages with multiple properly optimized photos. Content relevant to your sites theme will hold your visitors longer, as well as help you in the search engines for a wider range of keywords. If you are unable to easily develop a lot of your own content, RSS feeds are a great way to supplement fresh, new, constantly changing content to your site.
Logical Layout-
You can have tons of relative content, visual appeal, good ranking and still have horrible results because of a poor navigational layout. An overly complex site may make it difficult for your visitors to find the information they are looking for. Remember to K. I. S. S. (Keep it simple stupid). As a general rule it should not take more than 2-3 clicks to get to any bit of information on your website, from the homepage. If your information is hard to find, it is almost as bad as not offering it at all.
Exposure-
Simply put "no exposure=no leads". You can have the most elaborate and beautifully laid out website in the world, but if it cannot be found in the search engines- it's worthless. Always remember "visually appealing does not always = leads". A successful website is a delicate balance of all the factors mentioned in this article. Here are a few different methods of getting exposure for your website, to start generating revenue- natural search engine ranking, driving outside traffic to your website via marketing materials, pay-per-click.
Natural ranking is the most preferable method of exposure (and should be the main goal of every website). This is achieved through a website with proper on-page and off-page optimization.
Another way to expose your site is to drive outside traffic to your site thru marketing materials such as business cards, flyers, newspaper ads, billboards, commercials, and signs. This can be somewhat effective, but is only suggested to supplement the visitors you should be getting from your natural search engine results.
Pay-per-click is a good way to drive immediate traffic to your website, supplement your natural search engine rankings, as well as target smaller keywords and less popular searches that your site may not be optimized for. Always start off slow with your pay-per-click program, so that you can "fine tune" your cost-per-click, as well as make sure your generating enough revenue from your site to justify paying for clicks.
Lead Generation-
You can supply the information, generate traffic, hold the traffics' attention, but that does NOT create a lead for you. The simple fact is, generating leads is more than just supplying a phone number or e-mail address on the home page of your website.
Websites can be the perfect platform for generating information requests, offering free value services, and offering a variety of other information requests where your visitors expect you to contact them. Slapping your visitors in the face with an "insert your e-mail here" form on every page is a poor way to generate leads. Well developed lead generation tools are non-threatening devices, and will not run off your visitors. They are simply another page of your site that allow your visitors to request services or information.
It is important that you make an informed decision when choosing a website company. Choose a company that will get all the factors working for you.
Jeremy Futch VP/Marketing Director RapidListings Real Estate Websites www.rapidlistings.com
Electronic books, or e-books, have been used as an internet marketing tool for several years. Electronic books can be purely informational or they can have a sales message that promotes your product or service. The many benefits of using electronic books for internet marketing include becoming known as an expert in your field, having a product that attracts visitors to your site, and having something you can give away to new subscribers or customers. In addition to providing your customers with solid information, e-books can also be used to create residual income and boost your income over time.
Residual income is income that continues to flow even after you have already provided a product or service. The simplest way to think of residual income is “do the work once, get paid forever. ” Residual income used to be limited to just a few professions such as voiceover artists and musicians. Each time their songs or voice tracks were used in commercials or at events, these professionals were paid a royalty. Now that Internet and in particular marketing on the internet is so popular, you can earn residual income by selling products that can have automated sales.
What is an electronic book?
An electronic book is a short book containing information or a sales message that can be used in a number of ways. You can use these e-books to create awareness of your brand, provide an added incentive for visitors to stay at your site, as a giveaway to provide added value for customer purchases, sell valuable information on a particular topic, and to distribute as a free gift with sign up to your newsletter or members only area. These books are usually done in PDF format, but there are software programs that can create books that have turning pages like a real book.
How can I use electronic books to create residual income?
Writing an electronic book may be time consuming, but once the book is written, you can set it up so that the sales and marketing are automated. This means that the time you spent writing the book and setting up your sales systems will continue to pay off again and again. In order to make the sales process automated, you can hire someone to market your e-book and take care of sales. Or, you can save yourself some money and purchase a software program that will allow you to sell your book even when you’re fast asleep.
These software programs make it possible to accept credit card payments and have each customer download your e-book as soon as the payment transaction is complete. Not only does this allow you to make money while you’re sleeping, it also increases customer satisfaction. People love instant gratification, so being able to pay and immediately receive the book download is an added bonus and a great customer retention tool.
These are known as “shopping carts” and many of the great ones have additional features like, auto-responders and an affiliate management platform. Yet another way to create residual income with an e-book is to embed your e-book with affiliate links. If you don’t have any additional products to sell you can make even more monthly income by adding links to affiliate programs that you belong to in order to sell other products.
So…not only did you just sell your own e-book but you now have other income opportunities embedded in your ebook.
How can I get started with using e-books to make residual income?
If you’re not a writer, you can find a freelance writer to develop an e-book for you before you market it as one of your products. Marketing can be accomplished with your web site, affiliate marketing, and special promotions. Once you have your book and marketing plan ready to go, you can set up an automated sales program so that you can start building residual income that will continue to grow as your sales increase.
Copyright 2006 Rasheed Ali
JACK CANFIELD - Wealth and Success in 4 easy steps
An increasing number of website and business owners are turning toward a new approach to advertising and, best of all, it’s free. Article marketing, as it is technically known among webmasters, is achieved by translating expertise into a written article and effectively promoting it across the web. This can be achieved by the use of blogs, content directories and direct agreements with webmasters to publish your article in exchange for a link back to your website.
Article marketing is somewhat new in its technique, but is very effective if done properly. Free publicity is achieved as the article circulates more and more across the web. If you post your article to content directories, other webmasters may pick up your article and post it to their website with the only requirement being proper credit for the work. At the end of the article, the author’s name is shown, along with their business name and a direct link to their website. As the work circulates onto new sites, more customers will have the opportunity to read the article. If it is interesting and successfully grabs their attention, they will be likely to visit your site in search of more information.
The key to successful article marketing and free publicity for your website is to possess a certain amount of knowledge about your subject. Your expertise will show through in the work that you do and will entice others to want to read more. By sharing what you know with others, customers will respect you and appreciate your willingness to help. For instance, if you operate a home improvement website, perhaps you would write an article detailing some home improvement tips. Try to avoid the commonly known hints and direct your article toward lesser known tips. If you share the rare information that you know, and it works, customers will be so happy with the new tips that they have learned and your business will be given instant credentials in their mind.
The best part of article marketing is the fact that it is free and it generates free publicity for your website. Once you get a new website up and running, you will still have to find a way to spread the word about your new venture. By enlisting the article marketing technique, you will be saving a lot of money on advertising costs. Print publications and other conventional advertising methods can end up costing a bundle of cash and, since many new businesses struggle just to stay afloat in the beginning, it’s a good idea to save as much as you can.
A final thought about article marketing and free publicity for your website is to make sure that your articles are informative, thought provoking and rich in keywords relating to the topic of your website or service. The articles should reflect your website or service in some way and should always be relevant to the product that you are selling.
Article Creator Software that Helps to Write Articles in Minutes!
What is the daily routine of successful people? Do they set their alarms earlier than the average person? Do they eat a special kind of breakfast before going to work? What is it about successful people that makes them achieve amazing feats? Everybody wants to know and I bet you’re no different.
Want to find out the daily routine of successful people? Read on!
1) Early Bird Catches the Worm.
Yes, successful people do wake up early. After all, the earlier they start their day, the more time they have to get things done. They face the day prepared for whatever might happen because they have set plans the night before.
Compared to a person who rolls out of bed five minutes before he needs to be at work and has no real direction, who do you think will be able to handle his responsibilities better?
Of course , it follows that early birds get a good night’s sleep as well. If you want to follow the daily routine of successful people, you might want to start sleeping and waking up early.
2) Exercising Regularly.
I haven’t heard of any special breakfast here, but exercise is certainly part of the daily routine of successful people.
It makes you feel good about yourself, keeps your body healthy, makes your mind alert and teaches you discipline. In fact , a survey report has revealed that 70% of successful business people find a way to exercise everyday.
If you can’t do it in the morning, squeeze it around lunch time or in your schedule. If you're in the ground floor and you're going to the 5th floor, take the stairs instead of the elevator. Don’t overexert yourself though because that might just set you back even more.
3) Having A Balanced Life.
Successful people don’t have work on the agenda all the time. They also set aside time for themselves and for their family. Think of it as a way to recharge your batteries.
If you’re always burying yourself in your work, you’re missing out on your life. Personal time is important because that’s the time when you can assess your life and where it’s headed; that’s the time when you internalize and create new strategies for your journey to success.
The daily routine of successful people isn’t that difficult to master. Anyone can do it although not everyone is in the right mindset to actually go through with it. If you want to turn your luck and be like the successful people you admire, start with these three simple tasks. Start the day early, exercise and learn to balance your time.
If you have an internet business or are planning to put your homebased business on the internet, you should invest in search engine optimization. Research shows that the amount of traffic (and sales! ) you generate depend on how visible you are on the web. Search engine optimization puts you on top of the lists that crawlers generate whenever people look for information related to your site. Without search engine optimization, your website will gather dust.
Look at the facts. The George Institute of Technology said that 85% of website used search engines to find information, while 58% used directories. The Forrester Research replicated the results, with 81% of users using search engines. These two independent surveys affirm that search engine optimization is crucial to hitting the market majority.
Search engine optimization doesn’t just benefit those who make the websites, but those who use them. An NPD survey found that 81% were happy with the results they got when searching the web. In other words, search engine optimization makes sure that your website is read by the people who really want to hear more about the product, service or information you’re providing. This means search engine optimization makes your internet marketing more effective.
Search engine optimization is also important given the reading habits of Internet users. Studies show that people rarely go beyond the top 30 results from a search. The 30 websites with the best search engine optimization get 90% of the total traffic of the website, while those in the top 10 get 80% more traffic than those who rank 11-30. Penn State University found an even stronger result for search engine optimization: most users will only visit the top three!
These studies prove that search engine optimization is an important business investment. There are many search engine marketing companies that offer search engine optimization services. Given the wide range of search engine optimization techniques available, most search engine optimization firms can offer several packages within your budget.
Free Membership, Free Submission, Free eBooks, Free Websites, Free Downloads, Free Classifieds, Free to Join, yes anything Free has an incredible pulling power in both Internet and affiliate marketing.
It is simply amazing how this four letter word FREE can capture the imagination of not only the newbies but also the most seasoned and experienced Internet Marketers and Affiliate Marketers.
The Success of your internet marketing or affiliate marketing Business depends to a great extent on several inputs such as Determination, Dedication and Motivation among others. In spite of possessing these qualities, financial limitations can be a dampening factor in your endeavor to succeed. So an offer of free tools, free eBooks, free classifieds etc . can be just the thing you have been longing for to boost your confidence and help you succeed in your business.
Even if you are not short of funds to operate your Internet or affiliate marketing businesses the offer of free items that could be helpful to develop your Internet business is something no sensible entrepreneur wants to ignore. Why pay for something when you can get it for free!
It is important to note that in spite of the prominent display of the word Free, some items are not always Free and some are quite useless; nevertheless the urge and desire to try them out persists.
Capitalizing on this are many scammers who want to make a quick buck. This is where the newbie has to be watchful and not fall prey to scammers.
Many genuine smart Marketers do take advantage of this inherent weakness of both man and woman and offer free items to promote their businesses.
There are of course several great free webmaster tools that are extremely popular with Internet marketers, Affiliate marketers, Internet home based business entrepreneurs and other online entrepreneurs.
Similarly Free eBooks and Articles written sincerely with the sole purpose of educating the audience are also very popular and sought after by webmasters.
There are websites dealing exclusively with Free items that are very popular in the Internet.
Another Free item extremely popular with low budget business entrepreneurs are Free classifieds.
There are also several very much sought after Free to join affiliate programs that are long standing, safe and secure and global in nature, who provide you with free tools, free web sites and a great support systems.
Thus the Internet abounds with all kinds of free items. Some have hidden charges, Some lead you to scams, Some have both free and paid versions, Some are totally free with no strings attached.
Regular visits to the Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and Altavista and studying these various free items will help you to weed out the Good from the Bad and the Ugly.
Great people do exist out there in the Internet World who are prepared to share their knowledge and expertise with the rest of the Internet fraternity for Free. Webmasters and Online Entrepreneurs should indeed be grateful to these Individuals and Organizations who are constantly making the Internet experience much easier, cheaper, pleasant and enjoyable for millions of Internet users.
The Incredible Power of the word FREE will without doubt continue to captivate the hearts and minds of the internet marketing and affiliate marketing world till a a more powerful substitute is discovered.
How do I Pick a Niche for my Internet Marketing Business? How to Escape the Rat Race Q9
