Posts tagged "script writing tips"

How Do I Get Started Marketing With Video?

Creating a sensational online marketing video is all about writing the best script. Naturally,
there must be a pleasing presentation of that script as well, but without words that engage and
drive action, there can be no success. Whether you’re creating an online video tutorial, a product
testimonial or a behind-the-scenes interview of your CEO, the script will be the meat and potatoes
of your overall presentation.

So the question is: How does one write a winning online video marketing script? Here are some video marketing tips:

Knowing your target audience is the first crucial step. If you’re pitching to different audiences, consider making different videos, rather than trying to be everything to everyone in a single clip. Start by asking yourself the following questions…

1. What is my audience’s knowledge level? You don’t want your viewers to feel insulted, as if
you’re treating them like imbeciles by repeating common knowledge. Yet, you don’t want to
lose viewers who are immediately overwhelmed by foreign information either.

2. What is my audience expecting to see? Just like offline marketing, video marketing online
involves these video marketing tips, anticipating expectations and meeting them head-on. If you’re speaking with
an informal crowd of online marketers who work from home in jeans and t-shirts, you
should be dressed accordingly. On the other hand, if you’re pitching a business-to-business
proposal to corporate executives, you’ll want to wear your nicest suit and tie.

3. How much time do my viewers have? Generally speaking, no promotional video should
exceed 3 to 5 minutes. Yet, there could be exceptions to this rule, depending on who
you’re pitching to and what you’re explaining. Are you speaking with a stay-at-home mom
who doesn’t mind being entertained a little longer or a corporate CEO who wants quick
sound bites? Remember that you can also break down a longer video into a series of easily
digestible segments.

4. What action do I want my viewers to take? You never want your marketing online to be a
barrage of hype and sales pitches. You should be careful with your video marketing strategy. In this case, you also never want your marketing with video to lead viewers to a dead-end. Present your information and sell yourself, first and foremost; then, hint at a solution. Do you want viewers to sign up for something, call you for a free quote, or visit your website? Help them take the first step once you reach the end of your online marketing video.

These pieces of advice just scratches the surface of marketing with video. Naturally, a video’s SEO is also important in attracting search engine traffic. Elements like keywords, meta-tags and titles become especially important when it comes to attracting initial exposure. For more information on video marketing tips, contact us at (03) 8060 5131 for a free Melbourne online video marketing SEO quote.

Tips On How To Find A Good Writing Community

You want to put your abilities to good use and this calls for a wise decision when choosing the writing community you want to join. You can help your writing career by participating in a community for writers. The advent of the internet has brought about a new support group. The support group online consists of expert writers, poets and reviewers that are mixed in with beginners. There are many benefits associated with joining one, such as getting your own site that you can use to post your stories as well as participate in forums designed to help improve your outlook as a writer. However, you need to evaluate the site carefully to ensure that you will get the breakthrough that you want in this field. Whether you write poetry, scripts, short stories or you are a reviewer, you need a writing community that you can use to network with other writers and to share ideas. Therefore, find a site that has the same interests that you do. Find what you are looking for.

As mentioned, a writing community brings together experts in the field as well as writers who are just starting out. This will make the forums educative and informative and at the same time, usually professional. The topics revolve around the challenges facing the writers and also evaluation of the different works submitted by writers in the writing community. If you exchange ideas and information, you will find that you get ideas from the members. You also need to get a writing community that has classes or workshops that you can participate in. It is important to refresh your skills once in a while because the field is changing daily just as is the case with other areas of specialization – especially with the advent of technology. You need to find resource centers for your research if you write non-fiction stories.

On the same note, if you are a reviewer, the writing community can teach you about ways of presenting the best review or how to review a new genre. The classes and workshops you can participate in will be online and they will cover different topics and areas, under the guidance of instructors and resource people who have been in the field for years. The mode of study will enable you to ask questions and work on assignments. If there is an area that has been troubling you for a while as a writer, you need to search for the classes on the site. In addition, the writing community should give you a chance to utilize what you have learnt through the classes and the writing contests. Yes, apart from sharing your work on the site, you can participate in contests to try out different ideas and also compete with other writers in the network.

The contests have different instructions relating to the subject, number of words or the prizes. If you opt for the FanStory.com writing community, you can participate in 50 contests every month. However, you must sign up as a writer before enjoying such benefits. Varied fields are covered in the contests ranging from poetry, reviewing, and script writing to short stories. Overall, a writing community is important and you will sharpen your outlook as a writer than you would if you worked alone.

How To Monetize Your Blog

One of the primary motivations for starting a blog is money. There is no shame in admitting that. We”ve all got mouths to feed and bills to pay.

Several of you could have children, some of you might have charities you support, most of you might have a mortgage or debt plus some of you might be on the verge of quitting your job – whatever your situation is, most blogs aren’t started just for the sake of writing.

Money is a big component for starting. With blogging, you have the added bonus of being able to help or educate others while you make money.

Those who start blogging usually wonder how much money they can make. Just how much usually depends on how you want to make your money and what kind of content you produce.

Let’s see the ways you can monetize your blog (I’ll break it down and explain each one of these for beginners):

1) Advertising on Your Blog:
Pay Per Click (PPC) / Cost Per Click (CPC)
Cost Per Impression (CPM or CPI)
Affiliate Marketing
Pick Your Own Ads
Text Link Advertising

2) Selling Digital Products:
Ebooks
E-courses (video/audio format)

3) Selling Physical Products (e-commerce)
Affiliates (Amazon or someone else”s products)
Drop Shipping (someone else”s products)

4) Mentoring Programs & Paid Membership Sites (reoccurring billing)
E-courses / Online Training
Paid Membership Sites / Paid Newsletter Subscription

5) Donations

* * * * * * * * *

Advertising on Your Blog

Some of you may believe that putting ads on your own website will turn readers away but it doesn’t.
I”m not referring to pop-up ads here, because I find those incredibly annoying. But I’m talking about ads that sit neatly on your blog are okay. So long as you provide quality content, people don”t care if there are ads there to compliment your great work. You don”t charge them anything for offering free content, readers shouldn”t mind some ads in return.

Pay Per Click (PPC) / Cost Per Click (CPC)

What is PPC? Pay Per Click is an ad model where advertisers pay (you) the publisher of the website when an advertisement has been clicked. They use it on search engines too, where the advertisers bid on keywords that their customers may type, to show up combined with the results. Advertisers pay only for ads that are clicked. Cost Per Click is what it costs the advertisers for a single click that directs a visitor to their website..

How do you put those ads on your site? After you sign up, they provide you with your own unique code (or script) to paste into your blog, which will populate the chosen area with the ads. Needless to say, they do give you various size ads and colours to choose from. I”ll get into the more technical side of putting ads in your websites in the next post: How To Customize Your Blog.

PPC Ad Companies:
Google Adsense
Yahoo Publisher Network
Chitika
AdBrite
Bidvertiser
Kanoodle
Kontera (minimum 10,000 pageviews a month to join)

Cost Per Impression (CPM or CPI)

Cost Per Impression goes by a few names: Cost Per Mille (CPM) and Revenue Per Thousand Impressions (RPM). They work similarly to PPC except rather than clicking, it”s cost per 1000 impressions, much like how traditional print and TV advertising works. You get paid in line with the number of impressions or page views and the position of the ad (top of page usually gets more.) Each time their ad loads on a new visitor”s screen, that counts as one impression.Not surprisingly they do monitor and discount individuals who refresh their screens.

CPM Ad Companies:
Google Adsense
AdBrite

Affiliate Marketing (CPA or CPL)

I remember the first time I heard the words “affiliate marketing”, it sounded dodgy and salesy.

But when I learned a little more about it, it happens to be the opposite. It”s a profitable and fair way to sell, and when done correctly, may be more profitable than PPC or CPI advertising. Sometimes referred to as Cost Per Action (CPA) or Cost Per Lead (CPL) advertising, you earn a commission on the sales made when someone buys the advertiser”s product or service. Some provide you with an on-going commission for the life of the customer. After signing up, advertisers will give you unique URL (a link) or code where you can paste banners and ads or hyperlinks on your blog, if someone clicks through and buys something, you get paid. Affiliate marketing isn”t just limited to your website, you may also include your unique affiliate links in newsletter emails to your subscribers. Unlike PPC advertising, you can pick which companies you would like to affiliate with. Due to this control, I can choose companies whose products I am already using and feel confident in recommending.

Affiliate Companies:
Commission Junction
Link Share
Click Bank
Epic Direct

Pick Your Own Ads

Most PPC ad companies don”t permit the publisher of the blog (you) to control which kind of ads to show up. However, affiliates ad companies do. There”s another option if you wish to exert more control over types of ads you would like shown. OiO Publisher enables you to choose which kind of ads to show and how to show them (banners, text links.) Without the need for any programming skills, it comes as a ready to use plugin for WordPress blogs – but not for the free WordPress.com hosted blogs ie: www.yourblogname.wordpress.com. Interested advertisers from the OiO marketplace may also contact you to advertise on your blog. For PPC and other affiliate ads, you only get a percentage of the revenue, with OiO Publisher, you can keep 100% of the revenue. The only negative thing is that it”s a paid service — a one time fee of US$47.

Text Link Advertising

This is actually the least intrusive method of advertising where ads only show when someone hovers over a double underlined text link (usually in green.) Even though some ads aren”t tailored for your keywords, the click rates are higher. After signing up, text link advertisers supply you with a unique code (or script) to paste into your website which will automatically populate every page with text link ads. Some advertisers have ad management systems where you can control the quantity of text link ads to show and which page to show them on.

Text Link Ad Companies:
Info Links
Text Link Ads (not a favorite of mine)

By all means the ad companies I”ve listed above are not conclusive. There are many more out there but the above are the big guys online and are well known and trusted. Some can be better than others and a few need you to have a Paypal account in order to receive payments. If you go with less popular companies, do your research to make sure they”re legitimate.
I’ve purposely left out other ad companies like Advertising.com, Burst Media and Casale Media simply because they require your blog to have 10,000 page views or more to participate. Once your blog audience grows big enough, those companies are worth considering.

Selling Digital Products

Ebooks

I really like ebooks, they”re an instant gratification product and are easy to create. Customers don”t have to wait for items to arrive, there”s no shipping involved for the author, ebooks can link to websites online, you get to have colorful images without worrying about printing costs and they cost close to nothing to make. The hardest part is the writing but creating it is a really simple process. With the popularity and growth of ebooks exploding, you”d be crazy not to ever create one if you have a blog! Best of all, creating ebooks is free!

To make an ebook, open your word processor, structure the document well (look at other PDF ebooks for structure/design inspiration), write it, then spell check and ask a friend to read through for errors or suggestions. Then go to www.primopdf.com and download the FREE Primo software that will convert your document effortlessly into a PDF. The most popular ebooks are “how to” and non-fiction ebooks.

If you”re stuck for time or just lazy, you can get somebody else to write an ebook for you — although I don”t really recommend it because of ethical reasons. But I”m not here to judge and what you do with your ebook is your own business. Where to find writers? oDesk and Elance are great places to find writers.

E-courses (video/audio format)

Do you have a camera? Do you have online skills that you want to teach to others and make some money with? If you do and even if you are camera shy, you can still produce e-courses that you can sell. E-courses are just like normal courses except they”re in digital formats which can be downloaded so your readers can instantly begin to learn the new skills. No shipping, no stock to store, no manufacturing required — other than the initial digital product creation.For example, say you want to sell a downloadable jewellery making e-course. If you have a camera, you can get somebody to film you making the items. Then categorize them into earrings, bracelets, necklaces etcetera. Editing can be done in Windows Movie Maker or the Mac iMovie video editing software. If you”re camera shy, have your friend film your hands making the item instead.

Another example is Photoshop. Say you want to sell an e-course concerning how to use Photoshop or how to create cool images, Camtasia is an awesome software that will capture your on-screen shots of you doing the tutorial. Then you edit it and voila: video e-course ready to sell. And it”s not some blurry, fuzzy videos either, it captures in high quality. The downside is, Camtasia is expensive (as of writing, it”s USD$299 a pop). But they do offer a free 30-day trial so if you can create your whole e-course within that time frame, the e-course would”ve cost you nothing to make. On-screen tutorials isn”t just limited to images and Photoshop, there are thousands of tutorials, just pick the ones you know or are passionate about.

Another digital e-course format you can sell are audio files, but they”re not as popular. However it depends on the topic or industry your blog and product is about. If you”re a singing teacher attempting to sell e-courses, an audio format would be best and would be a cinch to create with a microphone and recording software. However you can also produce CDs too. But having to make copies of the CDs, doing the cover and shipping them will increase the time you have to spend on these trivial things, rather than on important things like promoting your blog.

Selling Physical Products

Affiliates (Amazon or someone else”s products)

Affiliate marketing may also apply to physical products and the best example is Amazon. With such a large range of products on Amazon, it”d be tough to not find a compatible product that suits your website or keywords.
So, just how does Amazon Associates (aka affiliates) work? You search their items or find products you already have that you would like to recommend. Amazon will give you the text links, image banners and widgets for that product for you to use on your website. Widgets are blocks of ads you can customize to your liking with a few clicks. In the event you can”t find a product or don”t know what to choose, you can advertise whole categories like toys, cosmetics, clothes, gadgets etcetera. And if you still don”t know what to choose, you can pick books to advertise that are relevant to your keywords and blog. Once these items are being promoted on your website, if a visitor clicks on the ads or links and buys something from Amazon, you earn a commission — even on other stuff that the customer adds to their order.

There are other companies which offer commissions to affiliates. You can find them by Googling.

Drop Shipping (someone else”s products)

Drop shipping is more geared towards traditional e-commerce websites than blogs but it doesn”t mean you can”t use it to monetize yours. Some blogs are a hybrid of a blog and an e-commerce website. If you”re wondering what drop shipping is, it”s the retailer (you) without having to deal with holding stock or shipping stock to customers – the wholesaler or manufacturer does everything – all you do is market and sell the products.

The pros of drop shipping:

- No stock to buy
- No storage fees because you don”t have inventory to store
- No shipping required (thus saving you time)
- Wholesaler / manufacturer provides you with product & product info (images, etc)
- You get paid by the customer before you pay the wholesaler / manufacturerYou purchase at wholesale prices and in low volume

The cons of drop shipping:

- There are dodgy drop shippers out there so do the research
- Products may be sold out when your customer orders so you always have to check their stock availability
- Defective products and returns might reflect badly on you
- Slow shipping by wholesaler or lost packages might reflect badly on you
- Some wholesalers charge a monthly fee to use drop shipping

Here”s a well known US drop shipping company: Doba

There are others out there too, even on eBay so do your research and make sure they”re legitimate.

Mentoring Programs & Paid Membership Sites (reoccurring billing)

E-courses / Online Training

I mentioned above how there are numerous ways to produce digital products to promote. But selling one-off items means you must continually promote to get new customers (or create up-sell products).

E-courses and online training programs that run for a few months have become more popular because people want to be taught and have their hand held to gain new skills. Self learning is one thing but having a teacher live with you (even though it”s online) makes it so much easier and faster to learn. The best thing for publishers of mentoring programs is that sales can be phenomenal if you do the product launch correctly. To top it off, you can charge reoccurring billing so you get consistent income.

On-going web based classes usually last anywhere from six to nine months or even a year for some. Lessons are delivered by email (like a newsletter), webcasts and other downloadable video and audio formats. Some also deliver CDs and physical workbooks, but that may require additional cost and time (and I prefer to be as free as possible so I like digital products better.)

Paid Membership Sites / Paid Newsletter Subscription

Paid membership sites work in a similar way except the reoccurring billing for that can run on for as long as the site and content continues! — and of course as long as your customer stays subscribed to the membership. Think of it like a magazine subscription that”s read online.

Paid membership subscriptions can be something so simple as a newsletter – however, you have to deliver on great content as most people won”t pay to subscribe to a newsletter unless you provide value to them. There are plenty of free newsletters out there so you need to convince customers why they should pay for yours.

While the reoccurring billing sounds awesome, the downside to on-going memberships is that you have to continually come up with great content for your subscribers — whereas one-off products like ebooks are made once at the beginning. And if you have a free newsletter and you also write free content on your blog then that”s 3 sets of content you have to write.

How do you deliver the content for paid memberships? It can be sent exactly like a regular newsletter — you can either use AWeber or a free newsletter widget that you can install into your blog to email your subscribers list. Remember: not being consistent with your newsletters may cost you subscribers.

Donations

Even if your blog is a business and isn”t a charity, it doesn”t mean you can”t have a donate button on it. Paypal offers donate buttons which you can paste onto your website to get donations from generous readers. Why ask for donations? A number of people like to give if you have provided them with valuable information or have entertained them. One of the most successful bloggers online, Steve Pavlina includes a donate button — even though he monetizes his site as well.

If your blog helps people, your readers may choose to support you back. It”s like a monetary “thank you”. You may even help raise funds for your favorite charity by giving the donations away. There”s no shame in monetizing your blog or website with a donate button if your content brings entertainment, provides education or provides helpful information.

Monetizing Your Blog Is Good!

I hope this post will give you a good idea of the ways people monetize their blogs. You don”t have to do them all to earn money so choose what’s comfortable for you.

Monetizing your blog or website shouldn”t feel bad, after all, you”re providing value to people and should be rewarded. If you feel bad about monetizing your blog then just use the donate option instead. Or figure out why being rewarded for your efforts would make you feel so guilty.

All the suggestions I gave about shouldn”t irritate visitors if the ads are placed neatly. That is why I didn”t mention pop-up ads, I find them really irritating. But if anyone does find this blog irritating because I”ve monetized it, sorry but I”ve got a family to support. I know I provide value to my readers and I”m not ashamed of monetizing it.

Next up in this series: How To Customize Your Blog

Zoe

Blogger of MindofZ.com

Top Ten Tips On Passing Business Cards With Cultural Fluency

In the global commercial world you cant survive without a business card. A business card is the thing that consolidates who you are, gives you a proper identity and tells the world that you are open for business. However, people around the world project different meanings on the exchange of cards doing it, therefore, in different ways.

In some cultures, the exchange symbolises the beginning of a relationship. The most ritualistic and sensitive to the practice of business card exchange are the Asian countries (Japan and Korea in particular). Perhaps the least are the British/US/Australians where NO significance whatsoever is attached to the exchange its merely a function of giving someone your details a reminder.

If you want to ensure that you dont offend, read the Top Ten Tips below and the special section on Japan and the other on US/Britain. Instructive and comical videos included:

1.Exchanging business cards should ALWAYS be done with respect and decorum, whatever country you are in. It is so easy to make a cultural gaffe. Asian countries attach a lot of importance to a formal exchange, the Brits/Australians do it very informally like an after thought South Africans have no formal exchange protocol, and those from the Middle East/Latin countries are passing you a part of their honour, their machismo with them. In Middle East only senior business people exchange them.

2.Always pass your card the right way up so the other person can read it immediately. This shows consideration for the other person.

3.In Asia, offering and receiving cards is a very formal ceremony. Meishi koukan in Japan is a very important aspect of business etiquette. Placing the card in front of you on the table is an additional sign of respect. (See special section on Asian etiquette with videos). Show respect when you receive a card by using both hands. Especially in the Far East.

4.Always take the time to read someones card, this shows respect. In my experience, this is special advice for those from Anglo-Saxon cultures, as everywhere else I have travelled honours the passing of your card to them. Look at it, study it, and then put it away carefully.

5.Dont put it into your back pocket! This is disrespectful. Unfortunately, people from Anglo-Saxon cultures have the habit of just taking a card, giving it a cursory glance and (for men) placing it directly into a wallet that goes straight into the back pocket no thought given to that action at all.

6.Dont write on other peoples business cards! This is a great insult in some countries.
7.The Japanese like photographs on cards. These are beginning to become common in the US and UK. It really does serve as a good reminder.

8.Many US/UK companies are dispensing with job titles, as they are considered unnecessary. Titles are very important in most other cultures, so use them when abroad. They signify seniority and status. Germans are especially hot on their titles and academic qualifications and expect to be addressed by them.

9.Think about having a translation on the reverse side of your card. Dont have more than one other language printed on the back its false economy Hebrew and Arabic dont mix; Asians will feel slighted; and the different styles of writing (vertically, right to left, back to front) means that aesthetically your cards will look messy. There are more than fourteen major and three hundred minor languages spoken in India so which would you choose? English and Hindi are the official languages.

10.Present the card with the other persons language face up and the correct way round for them to be able to read. (Handy tip: if printed in a script you cannot read ensure there is a symbol in a corner that signifies to you which is the right way up. This helps if you need to hand over many cards in a meeting you can see it quickly without any effort).

Remember:: Your card is your Ambassador it card represents you, so dont use tatty or out-of-date ones. Your card leaves an impression of who you are. You dont want to appear cheap and nasty people will remember that of you.

Smencils – High Quality Pencils

If you plan for an elementary school fundraiser campaign then scented pencils are perfect for these type of campaign since these products are very popular especially to students and can easily be sold out. Kids really love these products because they are unique, colorful, and very fragrant and it makes writing more fun for them. It is also proven that some varieties such as peppermint scented pencils stimulate the brain intellectually and helps improve student’s concentration and performance in school.

Although scented pencils are very popular to students and considered as an epic in the market, you still have to remember that the fundraiser campaign where you’ll be selling these products must be well organized. In connection to this, I’m going to give you some tips that might actually help during your sales fundraiser campaign. First, collect the necessary data on what your fundraising project needs through setting your financial goals. Check if every member of your fundraising group already knows about your financial goals in order for them to be motivated to do their tasks towards the achievement of your objectives.

Next tip is to choose your chairperson that serves as the leader for your fundraising campaign. The leader that you’re going to choose must have time management, able to work under pressure, and the motivation as a leader to lead your fundraiser towards success. Having this kind of leader will surely help you reach new heights of your campaign. After you have chosen your leader for your campaign, the next thing you’re going to do is to systematize your workload.

Without systematization of your workload, it will lead to excessive fees due to extra costs. So to prevent confusions and doubling-up of orders, you must avoid mix-ups, delays, and errors in particular to handling deals and transactions with your fundraising company since these errors will reduce your profits. Organization is one of the most important factors towards a successful fundraising campaign. A part of it is having enough volunteers working on various tasks. You really need to recruit more volunteers who are really willing to help you out if you want a large scale products sales campaign.

Next will be role playing, but it doesn’t really involve a theater. It’s just basically showing the proper way of how to sell your products effectively to your customers through role play. By doing this, your sales volunteers will have a good idea on how selling should be done and you will not worry if they are doing a good job at selling your products or not. And if you teach them the right way to sell those products, it will help them become more effective in selling so they can generate funds without difficulty.

Last but not the least is making an effective and appealing sales script. This will be used by your sales team in introducing the products that you offer to your customers. Your sales script must have notable details of your fundraiser such as why you want to raise funds and how can they help.

Tips For Writing A Cold Call Script

Writing a cold call script is not always the easiest thing to do. One of the challenges is that you really only have a brief amount of time to execute the cold call and you probably have a good amount of information that you want to share and collect. Below are some tips to help make a cold call script efficient and effective.

Determine the goal: The first thing you want to do before writing a cold calling script is to determine what the goal of the call is. Is the goal to close a sale, establish a relationship, gather information, schedule a meeting, etc. Having the goal identified will clearly set the direction for the script.

Use brevity: It is good to assume that everybody you cold call is busy. With that being the case, the cold calling script needs to be as brief and laser focused as possible. When writing a script, try to use as few words as possible and eliminate any words that do not add value or can be left out.

Use an outline format: One of the qualities of a good cold calling script is one that is easy to be used on a daily basis. If you write the best script but it is very cumbersome to memorize, its use and effectiveness will be diminished. One way to make a cold call script easy to use and embrace is to build it in an outline format.

Name drop: When cold calling, the person on the other end of the phone will have their guard up and trying to determine if you are a friend or a foe. One way to decrease a prospect’s guard is add a place in the cold call script to name drop someone else in the organization.

Confirm availability: With the assumption that everybody that we call is busy, it is very important to have a place in the cold call script for confirming availability. This step may sound like common knowledge and a given step, but we can often overlook this step and this is very important for beginning to establish rapport.

Communicate value: Very early in a cold calling script should be a value statement designed to get the prospect’s attention. The goal of this value statement is share with the prospect how you help people that buy from you. This statement should tell the prospect why they should spend two to five minutes talking with you during this cold call.

Disqualify: A powerful thing to add to a cold call script is a statement to disqualify the prospect. This is basically a statement that tells them that you do not know if they are the right person for you to talk to or that you do not know if what you are calling about is right for them. This will help to decrease the prospect’s guard as they will feel like to you are not going to be too pushy and aggressive.

Qualify: Your time as a sales person is very valuable. In order to maximize sales performance, you want to spend as much of your time with qualified prospects in terms of a fit, need, and ability to purchase standpoint. In order to decrease time wasted, include some qualifying questions in your cold calling script.

Go Viral With Great Internet Marketing Ideas

Did you ever have the chance to view the new Old Spice commercial? It is very fun to watch isn’t? It is catchy and there is a lot of humor put into it, just like the original commercial. This is probably one of the best examples of great internet marketing ideas. Would you know how to do more similar stuff?

Videos are among the hottest that you can do today when it comes to creating an internet marketing campaign. But if you have seen that video that I mentioned earlier, you would see that the production value, while not the same with the big budget production houses, is still quite more than the average person might be able to afford. Do you need to have the same budget to pull off something even a bit similar? Definitely not.

If there is one thing that you would notice that is common among videos like that Old Spice viral video and those other videos that caught on in YouTube and other similar video sharing sites is that they are bursting with creativity. As long as you have a video camera and a mind that is filled with great and creative ideas, then you can surely imitate the success of these videos.

But let us be honest. There will always a certain level of advantage if you have a really good studio set up for your video production. It usually boils down to the quality of the camera, the lighting, the sound recorder, and the video editing software to be used. It is a fact of life that people with the right tools in their hands can truly create wonders.

Let as assume that you have already created your own primary video. But then what? Should you just post it on YouTube and then wait for the flood of viewers to come in? It does not always work that way, not unless you really have a very good and interesting video. If your video product is not as outstanding as many people might think, you can still make it go viral if you do your own promotion for it.

The best way to do it is through link building. And that is why keywords are also very important in video marketing. Your video’s title, when you are going to post it on YouTube, should be keyword optimized including the description and the tags as well. These are basic search engine optimization that you should always cover. Then start building links to it.

Another good way to promote your video is through the social media web sites like Facebook, Twitter, the various forums, and also the social bookmarking sites. It is very easy to spread the word about your new video using these services. It is also a bonus if you already have a good fan base on any of these sites.

So there you have it. If you want to replicate the success of the new Old Spice commercial, then you should follow the tips I have presented in this article about internet marketing ideas. Start writing your script, get your camera ready and start filming your own viral video.

Asp Tutorial Online With Facts, Tips And Scripts For Reference

ASP Tutorial that explains more enable aspirants gain edge over others and the scope to learning is much more, when planning and surfing for e-study materials. What more can you ask for when you get to refer basic elucidation of Active Server Pages (ASPs), the Web pages that contain server-side scripts in addition to the usual mixture of text and HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) tags. ASP tutorial online can help you with special commands you put in Web pages better known as Server-side scripts that are processed before the pages are sent from a Personal Web Server to the Web browser of someone who is visiting your Web site. ASP Tutorial explains what happens when URL is typed and the relevance and importance of the request made to display HTML files on a web browser to display its contents as a combination of text, images, and sounds.

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Knowledge seekers are offered with the most comprehensive index of ASP components, applications, scripts and references. Online ASP tutorial online can lead a long way to enormous pool of knowledge and technical learning with all the Active Server Page Resources you need in one place. It can be the online directory of ASP and ASP.Net learning of applications, scripts, components and articles for the novice to professional developer. Visit onto some of them to feel the difference and a new approach to ASP learning through ASP tutorial worth referring to friends as well.

Essentials Of Good Website Design

1. General Impression

Your web site is like a window display of your business. If the impression that it creates is not good enough visitors will simply leave.

Your site must be:

Neat Organized Attractive Professional

It is better if your site shows less than too much. Over crowded websites, with too many flashy elements, create a negative effect on your visitors.

2. Message

The first question that visitors ask themselves when coming to your site is “What can I gain from here?” Visitors are not impressed that much by promotional offers of free goods and services. They are looking for ways in which your site can be useful to them. If your site should offer one or more of the following:

Entertainment Information Advice Helpful tips

Contact with people who share same interests, links to other interesting sites. Your corporate site should provide information about your business and products and services. A business site should be simple to navigate and offer products and services that located in a simple way and ordered quickly.

3. Fast download

Your site should load as quickly as possible. Market research shows that the average surfer leaves a site that fails to load in 7 seconds. For a dial-up modem that means a maximum of 56 kilobytes. So avoid large graphics and flash animations. The opening page of your site should not overwhelm your visitors with too much information or you risk loosing them. Many Internet sites offer advice on how to increase the download speed of your site. Look for such articles read them and follow the suggested advice.

4. Graphics and Design

The graphical design of a website is crucial for a positive first impression. Every graphic element should help present the main idea of your site. Funny images are not appropriate for a business site, but they can be a good choice for an entertainment one. Graphics load slowly so use them sparingly and efficiently. Try to keep the overall size of your web pages around 30k. Individual pictures should be about 6-8k. Additional 2k adds about one second to download time. Right-click on an image and check its properties to find out its size. The choice of colors is also significant since different colors provoke different feelings. The warm colors like orange and red increase the pulse rate and stimulate the senses. Cold colors like blue and green have the opposite effect. Yellow is considered a happy color because it reminds us of the sun. Select the right colors for the emotion that you want to create. People read a text from top left down to bottom right. Place your images accordingly. Images that have a directional aspect should point to the most important part of your page. If you use the image of a bird its beak should point to inside the page and not outside. This is valid for all images: Faces should be turned to the center of the page. Cars should face the center of the page. Neckties, roads and other prolonged objects should point from left to the right and from top to bottom. You should put your navigation bars down the left side of your page, as well. This will keep them visible for your visitors.

5. Readable texts

Here we do not consider choice of words (we will deal with this later on), but rather the appearance of words on a page. To impress word should be surrounded by sufficient white space. Use dark texts on light backgrounds (preferably white). Dark backgrounds make visitors feel confined and depressed. Bright backgrounds make texts difficult to read and red, orange and purple backgrounds can be dazzling. The text color you choose is equally important, different browsers interpret colors in different ways. A text that looks fine on your browser may be illegible on a different one. Divide your text in columns to make it simpler and faster to read. It is easier to follow a column than a large chunk of text that stretches across the whole page. Choose fonts that are available on all computers and that are easy to read like Arial, Times New Roman, Garamond and Courier. Exotic fonts like Gothic, Script, Westminster, or Cloister look attractive in headings, but not all users have them installed on their computers. In this case, your visitor’s browser will render the missing font with a system one and ruin the effect that you are aiming at.

6. Easy Page Flow

Most people do not handle well large pieces of information. We have already suggested that you divide your page into columns that would separate the text vertically but you should also use headings and sub-headings that separate it horizontally. Write short statements for the key facts on your page and use the statements for headings. Examine each section to check if you can break it into smaller pieces. Write a short statement for each of these pieces and use these statements as sub-headings. Use the same font for all your headings and subheadings. Make them bold and increase the font size for headings. It will make simple to spot the large and bold headings and subheadings that are the same size with the text but bold. If you follow this advice, your visitors will be able to see the key points of your page at a glance. Write your headings carefully, because if you grab your visitors’ attention with them they will stay and read on. If you want to attract your visitors’ attention to other parts of the text you can make some sentences bold or change their color. Use this approach carefully, because some colors are difficult to read even on a white background.

7. Navigation

There are two reasons why you should put your navigation bar on the left side of your page -

People read from left to right and from top to bottom. Web surfers expect to find navigation bars on the left of web pages. It is a good idea to put a button at the bottom of a long text that would allow the visitor to return to the beginning of the text. When you create a page design that you like use it on every page of your web site, it will make your web site predictable and will help your visitors find the information they need. Save a blank page with the layout, columns, logos, standardized graphics, alt tags and navigation bars built in. Use this page as a template for all pages that you create for your web site and just fill in the content that you like.

8. Privacy and Customer Opinions

It is invaluable to get prospective customers to trust you, if you run a corporate site. Tell your visitors how you are protecting their private information. Set a privacy page that explicitly lists how and what information you collect from your visitors, how you keep their e-mail address, how you accept and process their orders, who has access to this information and what precautions you take with information collected from minors. People like to know what your customers think of your products and services. Invite your customers to share their opinion; they would love to know that it is appreciated. Make a dedicated page with the opinions of your customers. Offer links to their web sites in exchange of their opinion. This can be beneficial for both parties involved.

9. Spelling, Grammar and Word Choice

These are of crucial importance. If you are not careful here, all your efforts are in vain. Poor spelling and careless grammar and punctuation are the easiest way to lose visitors. Spelling and grammar mistakes tell that the site owner is lazy, careless, and unprofessional. Your visitors would not like to do business with you. What can you do? Take steps to polish your own writing. Hire somebody to check and edit your writing. Hire somebody to write the text of your pages for you.

Scented Pencils: Tips That You Need To Apply On Your Fundraiser

Scented Pencils: That You Need To Apply On Your Fundraiser

Scented pencils are a perfect choice when it comes to elementary school fundraiser campaigns because they sell out as fast as the wind blows by. Little kids really adore these unique, colorful, and fragrant smelling pencils because they make writing a lot more fun. In fact one of the most famous varieties of these fundraising products are made with a scent that’s intellectually stimulating and has been proven to help improve the performance of students in school.

Even though scented pencils are considered as best sellers, you still have to remember that the fundraiser campaign where you’ll be using these fundraising products needs to be properly organized. I’m going to throw a few fundraising tips to you in this article, which you can use during your product sales fundraiser. First off, you need to identify the needs of your school by setting your financial goals. Make sure that every single member of your fundraising group are well aware of your financial goals so that they will be strongly motivated to work really hard towards the success of your campaign.

Next, you need to choose a good leader or chairperson for your fundraising campaign. Your leader should be one that has lots of time, energy, and tons of drive to make your fundraiser a really successful one. Having this kind of person on board will help you reach great heights. After you choose the captain of your fundraising ship, the next thing you must do is to organize your workload. Lack of organization will surely cost you a lot of money because of extra costs. You have to avoid lapses, mistakes, misunderstandings, and oversights especially when you’re handling transactions with your fundraising company so that you can prevent confusions with orders and duplication of orders because these types of errors will eat up your profits. Organization is one of the key ingredients of a successful fundraising campaign. Part of proper organization is having enough volunteers working on different tasks. If you plan on doing a large scale product sales campaign, then you need to gather or recruit a lot of volunteers who will be eager enough to help you out.

Next, spend some time on role playing. This basically involves showing your sales volunteers a proper demonstration of how selling should be done. By letting your sales volunteers have a look at how things should be done, they will no longer have to waste time wondering if the way they approach their customers is proper or not. In addition, teaching them the right way of selling products will help them in being really effective and compelling so that they can generate lots of sales without too much difficulty.

Lastly, work on a catchy and effective sales script. This basically refers to the lines that your sales volunteers will be saying in front of their customers when they offer your products. Your sales script should the most important details of your fundraiser such as the cause you’re working on why you have to raise money.