Reasoning Theorems of Success

Thanks all for your wonderful interest in our publicity tips. The series is a set of tried and true publicity tips to use while working with the media. You’ll learn 4 of the top pre-interview tips, on-camera or on-air tips, media etiquette tips & lots more PR pro tips to help position you as the media’s dream guest!

Don’t miss this series. When the media calls, you’ll be ready!

TIP #1 Don’t Try To Change The Segment Or Story Idea

During the pre-interview with the producer or journalist, please do not attempt to influence the producer or journalist to slant or change the original segment idea. This is because the article, story or segment idea is most likely already set in stone by Managing Editors or Executive Producers and your contact has very little flexibility. They are assigned to develop a story or segment idea according to a specific set of directives and appreciate your support in moving the story or segment forward.

Always give the media the info they are looking for first so they can complete their assignment otherwise, they might decide to move on to another expert! If you do a great job for them, that is, you are on target and on message without meandering off topic or discussing topics that fall outside the scope of the placement, they will use you again!

Of course, if they ask you about other ideas you may have, feel free to give them your best stuff!

TIP #2

Never Cancel A Segment Or Appointment With The Media!

Once you represent that are able for the media opportunity, please do not change your mind because the producer or journalist moves immediately to finalize the media placement on their end.

If you pull out you upset the booking process you leave the producer or journalist in a tough spot. This business is built on trust so never do anything to jeopardize the trust the media has in you.

When you make a commitment, stick to it, even if something comes up that you feel is more important. Your word should be worth gold in this industry!

TIP #3

Prepare Talking Points For The Pre-Interview With The Journalist Or Producer

Prepare your talking points in advance of your pre-interview or interview with the media. This way, you will appear to have command over your area of expertise and knowledgeable about the issue under discussion. You will avoid stumbling for thoughts or concepts.

If the media doubts your ability or expertise in the pre-interview, they will not use you for the placement. They simply have no choice. Their job is to book top qualified experts and if you indicate you are not that, they have to move on. As Annie Jennings PR has said for many years, think of any contact you have with the media as an audition. Everything you do is evaluated by the media with the thought in mind - is this person the perfect expert for the story or the segment?

You can make the media contact confident in choosing YOU if you are ready and prepared to discuss the topic. Create at least five discussion points on the topic before you speak to the producer or journalist.

You’ll be happy you did!

TIP #4

Make Sure The Media Has Your FAST Contact Info!

Always provide the media with your contact info including your cell phone and fast contact info. As we mentioned, when the media moves, it moves fast. If you are actively seeking PR or are booked for a media opportunity already, keep yourself available and able to be reached immediately. If you give out your cell phone be sure it is working properly and also check your messages immediately so you don’t miss a thing.

If you are traveling to a location for a TV or radio segment ask for the emergency contact info to the producer and of course, only use it for emergencies. This way, if you have trouble finding the location you know how to reach your media contact immediately.

Copyright 2006 Annie Jennings PR

Annie Jennings PR is a national publicity firm with over 16,000 experts available to the media. Major media calls everyday with their expert requests. Annie Jennings PR offers a variety of publicity programs including the new HOT PUBLICITY Branding Program. Interested in letting us know about you, your expertise, your media objectives or your book/company? Fill out our expert form (and get a complimentary publicity CD) at http://www.anniejenningspr.com/experts.htm
Would you like four more “Be The Media’s Dream Guest Tips?” If so, please click to http://www.anniejenningspr.com/dreamguest.htm

In today’s fast paced world, many small business computer consultants are wrapped up in their daily fire fighting activities at their client’s location and have almost no time to attract new opportunities or build strong strategic alliances.

One great way to keep a new business growing while building relationships at the same time is to join a networking club.

There are many networking organizations throughout the country, they can range from your local Chamber of Commerce to private networking clubs that their sole business is to run networking clubs and allow their members to create long lasting strategic relationships. Networking groups in general have in place, structured programs or agendas to facilitate members to introduce themselves and give their 30 second infomercial.

Your infomercial is where you can score big with new opportunities, and this is where most people that attend networking functions or social events sink. You only have thirty seconds to get their attention and make a lasting impression. You need to introduce yourself, give a quick testimonial and a very brief description of what your company does, and then, ask for referrals. Asking for referrals is the most important part of your infomercial. This is where most crash and burn.

What I often see by many people new to networking is they are too vague when requesting referrals; they have the tendency to ask for any company or anyone that can use their services. This might be what you really want or your product/service can work for any company, however, when I am listening and trying to help someone with sharing my warm contacts, it is hard to find just any company in my rolodex or Blackberry.

What is much more effective is that you ask for a specific company type, location or person, for example, my company IT Matters can work with any small business in Calgary. When I am delivering my requests for companies, I usually pick three industries and then deliver a very specific request. Let’s say I would like an Oil and Gas company, a law office and a dental office this week. My infomercial would be something like this:

“Hello my name is Stuart Crawford, and I am in charge of business development for IT Matters, a Microsoft Small Business Specialist and Certified Partner. Our clients love us because we take IT off their daily worry list. We provide computer and network support to the small business marketplace in Calgary. A good lead for us this week would be, a CEO or President of a small Oil and Gas company, a real estate lawyer and a dental office in Northwest Calgary”

Now what normally happens is that people listening to your infomercial are now saying to themselves, yes, I know the President at XYZ Energy, or my kids go to this awesome dentist in NW Calgary. By being specific in what you want, will increase your chances of walking out with some good leads. What also works well is when the person providing you with the lead makes a warm call to the party expecting your call to open the door for you. This works well in the early stages of a relationship in a networking club. Also, leads and great opportunities do not happen immediately, it will take some time to develop these strong relationships.

To find a networking club in your area, look up your local Chamber of Commerce or Board of Trade. You can also look up local meet up groups on http://www.meetup.com. Most cities have several different styles of networking clubs, check them all out, and do your research prior to paying your membership and find the one that fits the target market that you would like to capitalize on. Remember that some of the best ones do not cost you a cent.

Another tip is to make sure you follow up with everyone you meet at a networking function, exchange business cards with everyone, you never know who they know. The best practice is to have a templated email ready to go and get it out immediately following the event. People obtain lots of new names and companies at networking events and almost all of them never follow up, this will set you above the crowd, and open some new doors for you and your business.

The most important message about networking is - be memorable.

Stuart R. Crawford is the Director of Business Development, at IT Matters Inc. (http://www.itmatters.ca), a Microsoft Small Business Specialist and Microsoft IMPACT Award Finalist 2005 - Network Infrastructure Solution of the Year. Stuart is very active in the Calgary Networking Community, where he is an Associate Partner with the Corporate Group of Allied Associates and volunteers his time to help other small business owners and entrepreneurs. He can be reached at scrawford@itmatters.ca

Hardly a day goes by without a forum posting in which ClickBank is challenged about the reliability and integrity of its affiliate referral tracking mechanism - the hoplink system. It cannot be denied that ClickBank’s technical infrastructures do not always inspire the greatest level of confidence. But this article sets out to demonstrate that a range of factors play a part in the integrity of affiliate tracking and any one of these can be the cause of those much-reviled commission losses.

Given the reliance of affiliate programs on cookie technology, it is important to understand the problems that may arise from this technology and what can be done to alleviate them.

The browser cookie is an essential ingredient in accurately and consistently allocating commission to the correct referring affiliate. If no referral cookie is present on a prospect’s computer when she makes a purchase, no affiliate will collect the commission. With ClickBank’s hoplink system (though not necessarily with other affiliate systems), this requirement holds true even if the prospect purchases immediately upon referral.

There are four reasons for missing cookies:

Deletion: Cookies can be deleted through a variety of computer maintenance operations. Some of these are explicit (e.g. instructing the browser to clear all its temporary files) and some are automatic (e.g. software utilities that perform routine, scheduled computer housekeeping).

Expiration: Each affiliate program implements its own policy determining the time period referral cookies will remain valid. Once a cookie reaches its expiration date, it ceases to have any effect on the allocation of affiliate commission. ClickBank’s affiliate tracking cookies are valid for 60 days.

Overflow: To comply with the recommendations of the Netscape Cookie Specification, a web browser needs to support the storage of at least 300 cookies. Beyond this level, the browser is free to delete cookies in order to reclaim disk space, on a first-in-first-out basis. In theory, this means that referral cookies may be prematurely deleted if a large influx of new cookies causes the limit to be exceeded. In practice, this issue is no cause for concern, as disk space is now abundant and most modern browsers do not implement such limits.

Rejection: If the prospect’s browser is configured to reject cookies, or uses filtering criteria that reject cookies from the affiliate program’s domain, a referral cookie will never be created for that user.

Little can be done by affiliates to directly protect against cookie deletion or expiration. Therefore, affiliates should be aware of the issue when selecting products, giving preference to products most likely to generate a prompt purchase. Any product that requires an extensive period of reflection prior to purchase represents an increased risk of commission losses to the affiliate.

Cookie rejection is also a serious issue for affiliates. The current versions of all major browsers are installed with cookies enabled, so it takes a conscious effort on the part of the user to disable support for cookies. However, inaccurate media coverage of cookies has increased the number of web consumers who do systematically reject them.

Fortunately, following a series of recent change to the ClickBank hoplink system, a referral will now only take place if the client computer accepts the ClickBank tracking cookie. This is great comfort to ClickBank affiliates, who can no longer be deprived of their commission because of cookie rejection. Merchants, in contrast, may not be so happy that willing prospects are being turned away because of an errant configuration in their computer.

ClickBank faces a difficult balancing act in attempting to implement systems that are fair to both the merchant and the affiliate. And whilst the company’s technology may not always be perfect, it is reassuring to note that not every forum scare story is founded on fact.

About The Author

Copyright © Tim Coulter. All rights reserved.

Tim Coulter is a consultant and software developer who helps netpreneurs to harness marketing technologies.

He is also the author of “ClickBank - The Definitive Guide” The Ultimate ClickBank Tutorial & Reference Manual.

http://www.clickbankrevealed.com/

There’s a clear way around press release failure and it’s called the pitch. A lot like it sounds a pitch is a fast throw at busy editors about a possible story. If they want to find out more, then you send the press release.

That leads me to a huge pet peeve: Sending out press releases via e-mail to a list of editors. From my experience it’s never - ever - worked. I no longer try it and suggest you don’t either. It’s a waste of your time and all of the editors. Instead:

1. Focus on a handful of your “dream publications.” For me, I’d like to get into Fortune Small Business, Entrepreneur magazine and the Wall Street Journal. When picking your publications, think of your target audience. What do they read and why do they read it?

2. Pick the section you’d like to appear in. You never know, but chances are you won’t appear on the cover of the publication in your first attempt at placement, instead, focus on sidebars, resource listings and short news sections. Almost all print pubs have them. Look at it as the waiting room for bigger and better stories on the unique products and/or services you offer.

3. Find out who the editor is. Once you have your section, find out who’s in charge of it. You’ll need the person’s name, e-mail address and the most important element of successfully getting placed in the publication . . .

4. Learn what the editor needs. The number one thing you’ll need to know about the editors you’re targeting is the kind of information they want to publish in their sections. There are two ways to do that: You could ask, but then that could open up a can of worms if the editor doesn’t want to get calls - and most don’t. Or, you could compare a few back issues of the publication to find out what they’ve published in the past.

5. Create the pitch. You’ll want to start your pitch by stating your understanding of the editor’s needs. Then list - in clear bullet points - how your news fits his or her requirements. Note: Always leave your phone number in the text of the pitch e-mail to give the editor easy access to you - and your story.

6. Repeat steps 1 through 5 until you get a response. Sound tedious? Maybe. But at least the time you spend on this will reap much better results than sending one release out to thousands of editors - right along with other business people hungry for coverage.

Bottom line: It’s about building relationships with editors. And the only way to build a relationship is to find the need and fill it - consistently and considerately.

Lisa Sparks, author of ‘Power Words: How to Write Ezines that Increase Your Sales,’ has more than 13 years of experience in journalism, copywriting and marketing. Sign up for her ezine, a $197 per year value, at no cost by visiting www.integritywriting.com.

The ultra-slim Motorola SLVR L7 is now available. The SLVR delivers superior functionality and offers the latest must-have features, including iTunes, in a Motorola one-of-a-kind iconic design. The SLVR is thinner than Motorola RAZR V3 and only slightly larger.

Redefining thin at less than half an inch and weighing only 3.5 ounces, SLVR’s design includes sleek metal housing, a vivid color display and precision cut keypad. Although extremely thin, SLVR is fat with multimedia features, including VGA camera, video capture and playback, and 512 megabytes of optional expandable memory.

The SLVR is ideal for experiencing the coolest downloadable content from ring tones, games, graphics and more. Additionally, SLVR delivers iTunes functionality, giving music lovers the ability to carry up to 7 hours of music or 100 of their favorite songs.

The keys are backlit in a bright blue, which is stylish and functional at the same time. All the characters are easy to read in various conditions. The phone has a standard WAP-browser v2.0.

Offering a variety of connectivity options, the Motorola SLVR delivers hands-free conversations via Bluetooth® wireless technology. Cingular customers can also get the quickest access to their favorite online content with Cingular’s new MEdia Net, which dramatically reduces the number of clicks it takes to gain access to news and entertainment headlines, sports scores, financial quotes, local weather, and more - all from the phone.

Motorola SLVR is packaged with everything you need to transfer your favorite iTunes collections from your PC to your wireless phone, including a pre-installed 512 MB MicroSD card, A/C charger, USB cable, stereo headset, 3.5 MM headset adapter, and iTunes in a traditional candy bar form-factor and the same feature set as in Motorola RAZR V3

SUMMARY OF FEATURES:

Both search engines, Google and Yahoo!, differentiate their paid listings from their free, contextual (otherwise known as “organic” results), usually by featuring the “sponsored links” searches on a different part of the page and by highlighting them in colored boxes. This is one of the quickest ways to pull lots of prospective customers to your web site and to get listed prominently in major search engines. If a visitor clicks on the advertisement served by Google AdSense or Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions, the publisher/webmaster serving the ad earns a portion of the revenue that the advertiser is paying Google for the click.

However, both these PPC search engines also experience intermittent, yet explained, “spikes” that demolish your daily or monthly budget in a matter of minutes or hours. It’s a little unnerving knowing that you could dissipate a couple thousand dollars in a matter of minutes with absolutely no recourse. Adequately staffed to handle these anomalies, both engines feature customer service representatives who often reply to such technical idiosyncrasies with hostile ambivalence. Both of these search engines employ software that will detect if the person who is advertising, for example, with adsense, they can determine if you are the one committing click fraud, whether by accident or on purpose and will stop those clicks from counting for you.

Sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s not - Pay per click fraud is widespread, and prevalent. One of the main reasons that pay per click fraud is so rampant is that there are actually legitimate pieces of software that can used to commit pay per click fraud, although that was not the original intent for their creation. For instance, a click fraud artist may claim that he is just stress testing his analytics software program to ensure that it will catch click fraud. I won’t mention which software programs commit click fraud, although a little investigation may turn them up.

Part of the problem with click fraud is that there are not yet any laws on the books dealing with the problem. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claims that they cannot really do anything about the problem because they are tasked with investigating consumer fraud, and cannot fit pay per click fraud into this category. However, the Department of Justice in the United States does have a rapidly growing division that deals with cases of Internet crime, and pay per click fraud will eventually come under their purview. The difficulty is that, even if you suspect you are a victim of click fraud, the onus generally falls on you to prove that it exists and to find those responsible. This is not an easy task.

Keith Londrie II is a well known author. For more information on a Pay Per Click Search engines, please visit PPC Info for a wealth of information. You may also want to visit keith’s own web site at http://keithlondrie.com/

Submitting your website to the main search engines should be handled with care. Do it right, and the rewards can be great.

Webmaster Beware- Submitting your website to the major search engines too often can get your website banned completely from those all important major search engines, like Google, MSN, Yahoo and Alta Vista.

Let’s face it, everyone wants the coveted top position in their respective category on all the major search engines. Getting there requires a lot of tweaking of your meta tags, reciprocal linking to sites with high page ranks, and of course submitting your site to the search engines, either manually or utilizing a service to do it for you.

Submitting your site manually is a long a tedious operation, often requiring more time than you had planned on spending just to submit to 30 or less search engines. Submitting your site manually is not recommended.

Using a free service to submit your site is the next option you have for getting your site to the internet. The only problem with this method is that you get listed on only a few engines and, you sacrifice your email address to spam gods and become a part of the millions of poor souls who can never get any rest from the nasty spam vermin that will prey on you for the rest of your natural born life. In addition, it becomes very hard to track how often you have submitted your site to the search engines in the first place.

Using a qualified submission service is the most obvious choice here. There are a lot of services out there with offers like “Submit your site to 500,000 search engines and directories for only $39.95″, the real problem with this is there are not even remotely close 500,000 qualified search engines out there, so that means that 99% of your submissions are going to what is know as FFA (Free-for-All) directories. These are NOT where you want to be, besides the fact that you are now in the dreaded worldwide spammers database, your site is listed on directories that get little or no respectable traffic and you have been taken for $39.95. These types of submission services are a dime a dozen on the internet and you should steer clear of any such ridiculous offers or claims.

The reputable companies will give you a clear and concise description of their services. They will break it down for you with information like as follows:

• Which engines they specifically submit to.

• A written guarantee not to share your personal information.

• Make no outrageous claims to submission to hundreds of thousands of engines.

• They will disclose all of they’re contact information so that you may contact them by phone or other means.

• They will provide you with a detailed report via email on your submission results, including who your site was submitted to and the disposition of your submission.

If you want a proper submission for your website, you are going to have to pay for it. There are too many quality submission services to list in this article but we have a good list you can review on our website at BullMarketer.com. Look under the “Weblinks” directory, under search engine submission. We have a high Google page rank, quality traffic, and lots of link back to our site and I can promise you it all started with the use of a quality submission service.

Good luck with your life, love, health, and of course, your website submission.

Derek Arnold is the President of BullMarketer.com, a webmaster resource site offering many tools for webmasters, marketers, and designers. Also has over 18 years of experience in the marketing and advertising fields. Homepage: BullMarketer.com

Do what I did. Learn these 10 insiders’ ad writing
website promotion “secrets”, and explode your website
traffics and sales:

1. You can get ad copy ideas by studying similar
product’s advertising material. Collect their sales
letters, classified ads, web ads, e-mail ads, etc.

2. Know exactly what you want your ad copy to
accomplish. It could be to qualify prospects, make
sales, generate leads, attract web traffic, etc.

3. Make a complete list of your product’s benefits
and features. Begin your ad with the most important
benefit either in your headline or first sentence.

4. Make your ad benefits as specific as possible.
Include exact numbers, percentages, times, colors,
smells, sounds, descriptive adjectives, etc.

5. List all the ways your product is different from
your competition’s. Include all the differences in
your ad copy that are better than their product.

6. Use graphics, pictures and drawings of people
actually using your product to solve their problem.
Include a picture that also shows the results.

7. Make a list of your target audience. Write down
what reasons would attract them to purchase your
product. Include those reasons in your ad copy.

8. Include any proven facts in your ad copy. They
could be customer surveys, scientific tests, product
reviews, etc.

9. Tell your audience what kind of support they’ll
get after they buy. It could be free consulting, tech
support, free servicing, etc.

10. Ask people at the end of your copy why they
decided not to buy. This will give you new ideas on
how to produce a more profitable ad copy.

May these website promotion secrets help you to make
a lot of money.

Warmly,

I-key Benney, CEO

I-key, a Millionaire CEO from New York City is the creator of “Mscsrrr: Millionaire Secret Cash System”,(investing online) program, which has helped thousands of ordinary people from all over the world to attain financial security and shining success during the past 2 yrs.

Mscsrrr Millionaire Cash System helps you to generate $1,500+/Week for life, from home or office, part time or full time. No large investment or hassles. Win $1000-$2000 free “cash”.

I’m always talking about the different strategies that publishers can use to get more people to click their ads. And I’m always saying that there’s one bottom line to all of those strategies: blending the ads into the page so that they look like part of the content… and not something served by some outside advertiser that the reader doesn’t give two hoots about.

There are lots of different ways to do that. You can match the colors of the ad to the colors on your site. You can match the fonts used in the ad to the fonts on the site. You can take out the borders so that it’s less clear where the content ends and the ad begins. And you can put the ads where people are going to be looking anyway. That’s just to name a few.

All of those things help. But none of them will help if the users don’t trust the content in the first place.

Everything we do to boost our income can really be summed up as saying to the user: “Click here. You’ll love it. Trust me.” We can’t say that straight out so we have to make sure that when a user sees a link on our websites, they understand automatically that that link comes recommended.

That understanding can only come with trust.

I think there are two sides to building that trust.

The first is to always give the reader exactly the sort of content he’s looking for. When a user enters a keyword in a search engine, spots your site on the results page and clicks, you have to give him content related to the keyword. And not just any old content — good content. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve clicked on a good-looking link on Google only to find a page full of keywords and ads. You can bet I didn’t click the ads to get out of there.

The other side to building trust though is to make sure that the links on the page are good too. Users who come to the site should feel that when you offer a link, it’s going to take them somewhere interesting. A user who clicks a link on your page and regrets it is going to think twice before he does it again — and that includes clicking the links in the ads.

It’s one thing to blend ads into the page but if that page doesn’t have good content and reliable links then what are you blending them into?

Joel Comm is The Internet Revenue Expert. Online for over 20 years, Joel teaches people how to make money in the digital age. The recognized authority on Google AdSense, Joel teaches how to multiply your AdSense income at The AdSense Code. To ask Joel Comm a question about making money online, visit http://www.AskJoelComm.com Joel invites you to download a free copy of The Internet Money Tree at http://www.internetmoneytree.net

Most marketers realize today that content is king and there is no faster vehicle to increase traffic and receive publicity than writing articles.

This is where the article directory comes into play. Writers are able to submit their articles to these online databases where content hungry webmasters, blogsters, and other internet marketers can find free content for their websites, newsletters, and ezines.

Article writers gain credibility as an expert in their field as well as gaining a link back to their website. Link popularity is increased with the added advantage that this can be achieved with a low advertising budget and very little effort.

Hence this marriage was made in heaven. Article directories are not only provided fresh content on a daily basis (thereby scoring high in the search engines), but are also given the opportunity to build considerable revenue from affiliate programs (such as Google, Clickbank, and others), as well as building an extensive opt-in email list of potential customers.

Another by-product of having an article directory is the chance to gain knowledge of subjects other than one’s own interests. Articles on the arts, business, communications, computers, health, fashion, finance, food, home and family, politics, recreation, self-improvement, travel, vehicles, and writing are all available to read at one’s leisure.

Meeting other writers, publishers, editors, and programmers can really expand your horizon. The ability to joint-venture with these parties can prove to be more than a bonus.

It’s a win-win situation for both the article writer as well as the article directory owner that continues to grow exponentially each day.

For more information concerning article directories please see Larry Cockerham or visit his website at http://www.articlemaniac.com