Inspiring entrepreneur, talented DJ and friend, Raj Kotecha, is a creative content consultant. Raj is the man responsible for Heena and I meeting for the first time at that party in June 2007. Story for another day.

In this video @RajLoveSoul presents a guest lecture to media students at the University of East London. In it, he shares his own career history as well as some superb tips for thriving in the media business. Worth watching.

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Visually engaging slideshow about the book Brain Rules by Dr. John Medina.

Contains useful tips for presenters on preparing for presentations.

It’s also an excellent method of promoting a book and worth learning from.

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Simon Cohen, Managing Director of ‘global tolerance’ shares how faith communities / faith-based organisations can get better exposure in the media, and continue to serve more people.

global tolerance is a positively different London-based communications agency who use their principled approach to PR and communications to spark inspirational media coverage for Gandhis grandson, HH Dalai Lama, The Green Party, Wallace & Gromits Childrens Foundation, TED and other socially-driven organisations of all shapes and sizes.

More on global tolerance at www.globaltolerance.com

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When you know that something hot is happening right now and you want to support it, here’s how you can get a good looking, self funding, great work promoting website up and running within a day.

In the example, we’ll use www.oneandonlymadonna.com, which is the site we have set up for our friend Evelyne Brink, who is currently on her way to winning the BBC1 prime time show hosted by Graham Norton: “The One and Only”. When she wins, she’ll have the opportunity to take her Madonna tribute show to Las Vegas for three months!

Here’s a 10 step plan on how you can create your very own site just like it…

Step #1: Get A Domain Name

Think up a domain name that you know people will be searching for. In our case, we chose www.oneandonlymadonna.com because our intention was to promote Evelyne Brink and help her get to Vegas, and the phrase “one and only madonna” was certainly catching on – Evelyne is most certainly the “one and only Madonna” on that show! See our article on Descriptive Domain Names for guidance.

Then go to GoDaddy.com and purchase the domain name that you think is ideal for your promotional campaign. You can pick one up for about £5. Sometimes you can even get a discount of 10% by searching Google for “godaddy promo code“and entering that code when you make your purchase. Hey, every penny counts!

While you’re getting this domain, you’ll need to point it to an external web host such as Dreamhost, by entering the relevant name servers – in this instance, you’ll need ns1.dreamhost.com. ns2.dreamhost.com, and ns3.dreamhost.com

Step #2: Get A Hosting Account

Next you need a place to actually host your website. We recommended Dreamhost for their hosting package, and you can get a terrific deal of approximately £60 for a year’s worth of hosting an unlimited number of domains.

Step #3: Add Your Domain To Your Hosting Account

Once you have opened your hosting account, you can add your new domain to be hosted at your new Dreamhost account. At this time, also create a new FTP account to upload files where necessary, and an email address to receive email correspondence specific to this campaign.

Step #4: Load Up Your Content Management System

The next step is to install the application on your host that lets you design and add content to your website quickly – for this you’ll be installing Wordpress, which is commonly used for blogs.

When logged into Wordpress, along the left hand menu, select Goodies –> One-Click Installs, and proceed with the instructions for setting up your new Wordpress site on your domain.

Once installed, you’ll want to log in to your new Wordpress website and set up the permalinks to show URLs with the full date and post name, as well as set the title and description for the site.

Step # 5: Install A Decent Looking Revenue Generating Theme

Now that you have the core website set up, you want it to look good and set up in a way that it generates revenue for you through contextual adverts such as AdSense and Amazon Associates – you’ll need to sign up with these services and enter the codes it generates into your theme.

The quickest way to find a decent theme that achieves this is by searching “adsense optimized wordpress theme” in Google, downloading a theme you like, and following the instructions given to you on how you can install the theme on your site.

Another way to make further revenue is to sell affiliated products – i.e. products that other people have either created or are distributing, and you are simply referring people to them and making an affiliate commission on each sale.   You can set up your very own affiliate store by signing up as a My Affiliate Store member.

Step #6: Add A Mailing List

Set up a mailing list on the site that can capture your visitors’ name and email addresses so that you may keep in touch with them and send them regular updates by email about the artist, to keep them engaged on the site. We recommend you use Professional Cart Solutions.

Step #7: Add Quality Content

When the look and feel of the site is set up, you’ll want to start adding relevant content. In our case, we located videos from YouTube, pictures of Evelyne as Madonna from Flickr, and Diva Eve’s music from the Last.fm playlist.

Evelyne has many fans around the world, so we have also been in touch with some of her most dedicated fans who are more than happy to write about Evelyne and how she progresses in BBC1’s The One and Only show with Graham Norton to be selected to perform as Madonna in Las Vegas for three months.

If you’re asking other writers for content, you may even want to create an account for them on your site so that they can contribute content as and when they are inspired to write.

Step #8: Help Visitors And Search Engines Find Your Site

To let search engines know that your site exists and ask them to list you, simply send them a request to add your site to their database. With Google, just go to their Add URL page.

You’ll also want to further optimise your site so that your description and keywords meta tags have something useful in them for search engines to pick up when visitors are searching for your content. The plugin we recommend that you download, install and configure is the Add Meta Tags Wordpress Plugin.

Step #9: Get Fans To Rave About The Site

Finally you want fans raving about this promotional fansite by telling all their friends about it on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Help them do this by installing the I Love Social Bookmarking Plugin.

When fans are on your site, you can build stronger relationships with them by leveraging comments. Read our article on 6 Wordpress Comment Plugins To Build Stronger Relationships With Site Visitors.

Step #10: Sit Back And Enjoy

So there you have it – get your very own buzzing money making promotional website like www.OneAndOnlyMadonna.com up and running within a day. Now sit back, watch your favourite performer being helped along the way by their fans, and see some money coming in to make up for the time you spent building the site.

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Chick-fil-A® have done it again by using a descriptive domain name to increase traffic to their promotion by capturing the attention of those who are looking for a free breakfast.

This is yet another promotion being run in the US by Chick-fil-A®, a fast food restaurant, where the visitor can register to be sent a coupon for a free Chick-fil-A® Chicken Biscuit in the mail.

When the site visitor goes to www.freebreakfastnow.com, they arrive at a landing page which asks them to click on an image to enter and register. When they click the ‘enter button’, the visitor gets taken to a form that asks them for their key details such as first and last name, email address, telephone number, full address, date of birth, and gender – and to top if off, they are ALL mandatory questions.

What the company gets from this is vital information about their target market – i.e. where they live, how old they are, what gender – as well as specific contact information so that further promotional material can be sent to them by post, by email, and over the phone.

Beneath these mandatory questions, there are the optional survey questions. Now HERE’s where they get really clever. They start by asking a couple of simple basic questions such as “Have you ever eaten at a Chick-fil-A® restaurant?” and “Have you ever eaten breakfast at Chick-fil-A®?”, which are most likely there to conceal the more sneakier items that follow…

Here come the subtle yet powerful marketing messages disguised as questions: “Please check which Chick-fil-A® Breakfast items you have tried:”. The page then allows the visitor to place a check mark next to any of the 5 items on the list that they may have tried for breakfast. Also, there’s the “Did you know Chick-fil-A® offers reloadable gift cards?” What this does is that even though these survey questions are optional, the visitor will still scan through them (even if they don’t answer) and even if they haven’t tried it, they will probably want to make a special trip into that fast food restaurant to have a taste of one of the other breakfast items, or even purchase a gift card.

Don’t you know, there’s no such thing as a free breakfast!?

In your business or community organisation, how can you model the promotional campaign that Chick-fil-A® have used to:

1. build your database of customers to directly promote to via email / post / telephone,
2. learn more about your target market, and
3. give your customers a subtle message about other products and services that are available?

What will be YOUR free breakfast?

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In line with Mik’s September 2007 post on Using Descriptive Domain Names To Drive Relevant Traffic To Your Web Site, here is a terrific resource called Good URL Bad URL that helps you understand:

1. what a good URL is and what a bad URL is using examples from existing sites
2. what would be a good URL for your own website
3. how to present your URL in your adverts

Check out www.goodurlbadurl.com before purchasing your next domain name for your online marketing campaign.

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There are two major mobile network players in Kenya: Celtel and Safaricom.

Whilst I’m out here in Kenya, I’m using a Celtel SIM, and it turns out that Celtel Kenya’s parent firm, MTC Group has recently changed its name to Zain.

This was a name selected from a list of over 400 after extensive research was conducted across many countries and cultures, which validated its broad global appeal.  In Arabic, Zain means “beautiful, good and wonderful.”

When you’re naming your next company or finding a suitable name for your business, who are you reaching out to, who are you serving, and when the company grows, are you sure that the name will make sense to those in other countries and cultures?

Also, when you’re selecting a suitable domain name for your business, consider this while you read our article on Descriptive Domain Names.

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When you visit a website, do you notice the small icon that sits to the left within your address bar? Take a look up where it says http://www.cynergise.com, and you’ll see an icon that identifies us. This small icon is known as the favicon. It also is the icon that is displayed when the site is bookmarked, and is what shows up in the tab if you use tabbed browsing.

This is another powerful way of branding your site, that confirms to your site visitor that they are indeed on the correct website.

There is a cool tool at http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/ that lets you create favicons from a picture for free, which you can then use on your very own website.

Ask your web designer to use this free tool to help you improve your site branding!

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