When you have the intention of making a sale or securing a deal, your duty is first to be a gentleman, and then, if it requires it, to be a gangster. A gentleman conducts himself with confidence, clarity, warmth, and respect.
When you believe fully in the product or service you’re offering, and know that your prospect would truly receive value from having it, here’s how to secure the deal in 3 easy steps…
Step #1: Offer
As a gentleman, confidently approach your prospect and clearly state who you are, what you’re offering, and how you feel it would add value to their business or lifestyle.
Step #2: Listen
As a gentleman, listen intently to their response. Is it that they want to purchase straight away? If so, great, sign on the dotted line please!
If they explicitly say “no, not at all” – then ask yourself again: “Is it truly going to add value to them?” If not, nevermind, walk away with your head up, and onto the next prospect.
If their response if more like “yes, but…” or “kinda…” or “no, but ummm…”, chances are that they really would benefit from having your product or service right now, yet they have a barrier that’s popped up for them in the shape of:
- I don’t know you:
- How do I know you’re qualified?
- How do I know you’re reputable?
- How can I trust you?
- I don’t believe you
- I don’t want it / need it yet
- I can’t afford it
- It won’t work for me
- You don’t understand my problem
- What happens if I don’t like it?
This is where you shift your mindset from that of a gentleman, into the mindset of a gangster…
Step #3: Combat
As a gangster, systematically address each and every one of these barriers, so that you may overcome the prospect’s buying resistance, and through that, persuade them to take action and secure the deal.
If they ask “how do I know you’re qualified?” then respond with details of you / your company’s history and track record. If they say “it won’t work for me” then offer them a handful of solid testimonials from others who are in a similar position to them who have benefited massively by using your product or service. If they say “what happens if I don’t like it?” then offer them a ‘60 day no questions asked money back guarantee’.
IMPORTANT: you’re not in combat with your prospect. You’re in combat with that space that’s between you and the prospect, that’s keeping you from securing the deal. You’re addressing each of the barriers above with verbal combat and solid proof.
So there you have it: How to be a Gentleman and a Gangster to Secure the Deal in 3 Easy Steps.
Friends want to show that they care. They show that they care by forwarding you a funny story, a virus warning, or a photo that they enjoyed. They show that they care by sending a mass email using the “To:” field and so exposing your email address to a bunch of strangers.
The next time your friend displays less-than-acceptable consideration when emailing you, how about sending them the following response…
Hi there:
Please visit http://thanksno.com/
It’s because I like getting personal messages from you, but don’t want any more email like this, please.
With love,
…
One cool, affordable, and effective way of marketing your services is to run a free teleconference for your current or potential clients and customers.
By running a seminar, you put yourself forward as an expert in the field, whilst reaching many many people at once. This certainly raises your profile, and allows you to serve more clients better.
Here’s how a local plumber can do it…
Step #1: Plan Your Teleseminar
What are the top 10 questions your existing clients ask you about their plumbing or central heating? List the questions and write a few paragraphs for each answer.
Locate and register with a free teleconference solution to run your seminar over the telephone such as www.freeconferencecall.com
Set up a webpage with a registration form where those interested in listening in on your teleseminar can register for it. Once they register, they will receive an email with the details of your teleseminar.
Step #2: Announce Your Teleseminar
Determine a date and time to run your seminar which will be convenient for you as well as the majority of your target market.
Prepare an email which announces what your teleseminar will cover, why it’ll be useful to them, when it’ll be run, and the web link for where they can register for free. Give it a decent descriptive subject such as “Free Teleseminar On The Hottest Plumbing And Central Heating Questions For Your Home”, and then send it out to all your current and past clients, offering them opportunity to invite their friends and family to it too.
You’ll soon see registrations trickling in. 24 hours before the seminar, send all those registered a reminder of the details for the call.
Step #3: Run Your Teleseminar
Simply call in to the number you are given when you register with the teleconference service, ensure enough people have arrived on the call, and aim to start on time.
If it’s a one hour call, use the first 5-10 minutes introducing yourself, where you are based and what services you offer. This’ll help to pad out the time in case there are any late comers. Then use the next 40 minutes to deliver your seminar over the phone – as simple as 10 questions, 4 minutes per question. You can ask a friend help you run like a question and answer session, with you as the expert. Use the final 10-15 minutes to address any other questions that arise for your clients, and then round the call up with details of how they can easily contact you to take up your services.
Hey presto, you’ve now helped a large number of homeowners with their most pressing plumbing and central heating questions, as well as letting them know that they can give their plumbing and central heating work to you. All this exposure for your company and services for just 3 to 4 hours of work from your end.
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:
- build your database of customers to directly promote to via email / post / telephone,
- learn more about your target market, and
- give your customers a subtle message about other products and services that are available?
What will be YOUR free breakfast?
Spent the whole xmas and run up to the new year in the bathroom…. renovating!
Real quality 12 days with dad, demolishing the bathroom which hadn’t even seen a lick of paint since we moved in 17 years ago, preparing the walls, plumbing and electrics, and soon to have the new bath, sink, and all the accessories fitted in.
For the past few years, as we had a bathroom downstairs, the upstairs bathroom was used as a ‘temporary’ storage solution for all the pieces of furniture we no longer needed in the other rooms or were thinking we may be able to pass on to relatives.
When we had to eventually clear out the bathroom, there were two big pieces of furniture that ended up in my bedroom – temporarily of course! We could have either smashed them apart and taken them to the dump yard, sold them, or given them away. They were quite old, but not antiques, so unlikely that we could have sold the chest of drawers and TV stand. Smashing them and taking them to the dump yard was not a good eco option.
We Freecycle’d it! Sunday afternoon I put up a message stating “Offered: Chest Of 5 Drawers & TV Bench (HA7 Belmont Circle)” and gave details of what I was giving away. Within an hour, I received an email from a dude named George who wanted to collect these off me, to take for his daughter who had just moved into a council flat and could do with some basic furniture. I dropped George a note back to arrange that he could collect them the next day (today, Monday).
How cool is that!? My first ever Freecycle experience, that saved me the effort of demolishing this ‘no-longer-needed’ furniture, the hassle of taking it to the dump yard, lightening my carbon / karmic footprint as the furniture would have been dumped into a landfill, and giving me an opportunity to pass something on to someone who it would be better used by.
Check out www.freecycle.org. You can find your local group there (wherever you are in the world), sign up with the group for free, and post up a message that states what you want to give away and your location. Then if someone takes an interest in it, they’ll get in touch and can collect it from you (i.e. take it off your hands!)
Now to find someone to take a pair walking sticks off my hands!
The Bake Me A Wish website at www.bakemeawish.com takes online orders for custom made cakes for birthdays and national holidays.
What has given this New York based business massive news coverage recently is that they are even taking orders from families who want to send a baked cake to their relatives who are service members stationed overseas.
What a terrific treat for christmas to show your loved ones that you’re thinking of them, even if they are halfway around the world!
Josh Kaye, owner of the internet cake business said “I received a phone call from a mom who wanted to send her son a birthday cake in Iraq, and I hung up the phone and said, you know, ‘‘What an amazing possibility that would be.’”
When you listen to your customers, and then announce it as a service that you are offering, your marketing effort really becomes a peace of cake!
Having just watched the first film directed and produced by Aamir Khan, the recent bollywood hit Taare Zameen Par left the whole family lost for words.
This story is about a young boy with the challenge of dyslexia, who was mis-understood by his parents and teachers, teased by the fellow school kids, and who gradually lost his self-confidence. Catch the trailer here and check out this movie which although is in Hindi, will most likely be showing with English subtitles…
This movie highlighted the lack of support many children get from their parents. Children are so often afraid of just being themselves. They feel that they have to consistently live up to their parents’ expectations of how they should act, the aspirations they should hold, and who they should be.
It also reminded me of the powerful force I’ve had throughout my life – both my parents have stood by me, no matter what, and have supported my gradual progress in life. I’m sure there have been many moments of anxiety for them when they’d be wondering if I’d ever settle down into a “stable job”. Regardless, both mum and dad have been the secure foundation for me to discover myself, and allow me just to be as I am. In fact, I feel blessed that some of my closest friends have also been such a gentle and caring pillar of strength for me to gently tread along the path that continues to be defined for me.
Mum and dad – thank you…
Much love,
Suraj
Dinesh & Shilpa
Dad and Mum
New Years Eve 2002
The next time you’re out on vacation and you take a suitcase that has a zipper on it, here’s what to do if you lose the key to the padlock. All you need is a pen!
Maybe when they invented zips, they were meant only for doing up the fly on your jeans or to close up your jacket!
What would you suggest is decent vacation baggage as an alternative to carrying a suitcase that has a zipper on it?
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:
- what a good URL is and what a bad URL is using examples from existing sites
- what would be a good URL for your own website
- how to present your URL in your adverts
Check out www.goodurlbadurl.com before purchasing your next domain name for your online marketing campaign.
Fact is, there are some things that just bring grief to a relationship.
There’ll be friction. There’ll be heat. You’re different – she’s different.
Sometimes, you’re just gonna have to tolerate the differences.
Sometimes, you’re just gonna have to tolerate: your girlfriend.
Here’s how to tolerate your girlfriend so that your relationship becomes smoother…
Step 1: Attend to the situation you’re currently exposed to.
Step 2: Observe the element in her that you’re finding hard to deal with.
Step 3: Cherish this element in her, COMPLETELY.
By fully attending to the whole situation that has arisen for you both, hone in on that part of her presence that’s brought up this friction within you – hold it in your hand and observe it from all angles – and then learn to cherish this part of her.
You see, it’s not really about tolerance – it’s about loving what’s there, whatever it is, rather than wishing it wasn’t.
Now that you’ve cherished this one element in her, extend the love you’re starting to feel and cherish all of her, head to toe, inside and out. I assure you, it’s worth it.
What are you learning to cherish in YOUR girlfriend? Share your comments below…
There you go – smoother relationships in three easy steps.
Much love,
Sol
p.s. would you like to learn How To TAME Your Girlfriend In 3 Easy Steps?
If you’re a young company, or a solo-preneur, you naturally want to keep your startup costs as low as possible.
Here is a terrific resource that lists and describes 30 essential pieces of free to use software for Windows.
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2006/12/01/30-essential-pieces-of-free-and-open-software-for-windows/
It includes web browsers, email clients, complete office applications, media players, image editing applications, and even games!
This week I am limiting my computer use to 6 hours. Regardless of whether it is for emails, surfing, blogging, skype chat, social networking, writing articles, or listening to music, I will only use the computer for a maximum of 6 hours this week.
Yes, it is an experiment. It tests to see what happens to the quality of my work, the depth of my relationships, and my level of vitality.
I expect that by limiting my use of the computer, my method of working would be more reliant on spending enough time working things out in my own mind, and then exploring creative ways to record information and communicate it with those I am collaborating on projects with. It would also have an impact on my health (more time healthy eating and getting fresh air rather than being stuck in front of a computer), and most certainly enrich my personal and business relationships.
So hey, lets see what happens in a week and how it really impacts my work, my relationships, and my vitality…
For it to be truly effective and to make the most of limited time on the computer, it requires me to batch tasks such as checking and responding to emails, programming in Living Jain quotes, or raising invoices.
If you happen to get an autoresponder message from me when you email me this week, please be patient for my response – after all, the time I have on my computer is limited so that it can make me unlimited!
Much love,
Sol
photo credit: Arno & LouiseGirlfriends are fun to be around and can also take over your life. It may feel to you that this lioness is trying to change you, control you, and always needs to have the last word.
Here’s how to tame your girlfriend so that you’re never again railroaded by what she does…
Step 1: Welcome the situation that you’re both immersed in.
Step 2: Listen with all your heart to what she is expressing and to your initial inner response.
Step 3: Tame your RESPONSE to what your girlfriend does.
The moment you actually try to tame HER or are a victim of her actions, you’re gonna get knocked out. Keep trying to actually tame HER and you’ll see that it’ll soon be game over.
Instead, listen with all your heart to what she’s saying and tame your RESPONSE to it. Wake up, man! You’re blessed to have this wonderful woman in your life.
Who / what are you taming, and how’s it working out for you?
Much love,
Sol
On Tom Johnson’s blog titled “I’d Rather Be Writing”, he has pulled together a very valuable selection of usability tips for when you are setting up and adding content to your blog.
At Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog — Condensed from Dozens of Bloggers’ Experiences, Tom expands on each of the following tips:
1. Pick a topic for your blog.
2. Encourage comments.
3. Make it easy to subscribe.
4. Include an About page.
5. Present your ideas visually.
6. Keep posts short and to the point.
7. Use subheadings for long posts.
8. Link abundantly.
9. Make headlines descriptive.
10. Archive by topic.
11. Include a list of related posts beneath each post.
12. Allow users to contact you offline.
13. Present your real viewpoint.
14. Write for your future employer.
15. Include a Top Posts section.
16. Provide an index.
17. Get your own URL and match it to your blog’s title.
18. Include a Recent Posts section in your sidebar.
19. Reward commenters for commenting.
20. Post often.
Incredibly useful for new bloggers, and naturally a gentle reminder for the more experienced!
Highly recommend you check out Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog — Condensed from Dozens of Bloggers’ Experiences and then get in touch with us for any technical amendments you want for your blog.
Ecological Hosting is an ethically run, reliable and responsible Internet hosting company. They are a small, friendly, family run UK-based business providing services with a personal touch. All the servers, offices and the data centre they use operate on renewable energy.Their main hosting environment operates from a data centre running on solar power with a solar panel array capable of generating upto sixty kilowatt-hours of electricity each day.
With prices starting at just £23.50 per year, Ecological Hosting say that there really is no reason to ignore your conscience.You can make the switch today and help protect our environment.
Our client and good friend Kavit Haria had a very bemused look on his face earlier this week – the kind of look that you find when someone asks himself “How in the world did I manage to do that!?”
You see, it had only just gone noon on Monday afternoon, and he was sipping away on his honey and lemon hot drink while working away on the laptop. We’ll let Kavit tell you the rest of the story…
Today, at about 12.15, when working and drinking honey and lemon, I spilt it over my laptop by serious mistake. The laptop now doesn’t turn on. I called Dell quite a bit and they have arranged for someone to call me tomorrow to give me a quote for repair and then they’ll pick it up if I agree.
My literature review is the most important file on there – it has taken time to write and I’ve got a deadline to meet in 2 weeks time. However, I remembered that 3 weeks ago I signed up to www.mozy.com as an online backup service and now, luckily, all my files are backed up and the version from last week 6th Nov is saved online. I am now using another computer and have just downloaded my file here. I had only written 4 new paragraphs earlier today so I can rewrite that, rather than 8 pages of scientific stuff!
Anyway, I will wait for the repair quote tomorrow. If it is too high, I’ll just have to pay a bit extra and I’ll get a new laptop as I don’t need any other files as everything of mine is backed up online luckily.
I am now leaving the laptop to dry till later this evening and will try again to see if it works.
This email was just to inform you…
Kavit
P.S. Check out www.mozy.com for home or office!
I’ve just had news from Kavit – his laptop is still kaput, so looks like he’ll most likely be ditching this laptop and getting himself a mac this Christmas. What’s great is that all his files are backed up remotely and now retrievable.
So the message here folks is back up your files frequently. Simply mozy on over to www.mozy.com for all your online backup needs!
As Christmas approaches us this year, I look forward to attending Crisis Over Christmas – an opportunity to serve London’s homeless this festive period. Here is an account written at the tail end of 2003 of my first and only experience of serving at a Crisis homeless shelter on 26th December 2003, alongside the Young Jains team…
photo credit: Clive Power
Wide-awake at 3am, I knew it was to be a deeply heart-warming day. One thing I can say about a morning shift with a 7:45am start on Boxing Day is that it’s an easy drive down the A5 – never seen Edgware Road so traffic-free!
On arrival at the warehouse in South East London, we headed to the registration desk, were given our name badges and directed over to the volunteers’ area. An entertaining briefing session was concluded with the volunteers dispersing into groups. A shout for 8 people to help out in the kitchen led me to my calling for the morning.
What did kitchen duty consist of for me? Topping, tailing and shredding parsnips for soup, peeling and chopping onions, washing and shredding lettuce, and waste disposal. If you’re reading this and you know my mum, don’t blab it – you KNOW I’ll be expected to do more in the kitchen at home. What was great about kitchen duty for me? We got trained by an ex-professional chef, were offered hot or cold drinks throughout, and had awesome conversations with some students, a physiotherapist from Edinburgh, and a London based paediatrician. As for chopping onions, it must be the first time I’ve cried so much in years – and about time too!
Around midday, I decided to explore other areas of the shelter. As I talked with several of the guests, I found that many of them really did want someone to share their thoughts with. There’s this one guy, we’ll call him Mr L, 6′6″, waiting for his turn in the clothes ticket queue, who had trouble finding shoes that would fit him. Empathising is when you put yourself in someone else’s shoes, and I knew right then how he must have been feeling. I myself have size 15 feet! In the few days that Mr L was at the shelter, he told me he’d transformed his appearance, and donned a groovy haircut. Crisis goes well beyond a simple meal – guests get advice, haircuts, spiritual healing, computer skills, art skills, an abundance of cakes, and much more.
Back in the volunteers’ area, a call came out for outdoor duty. At the front gate, my role was to filter through anyone who arrived. Guests line up to get searched for illegal possessions and guest transport vehicles drop off guests just outside the gate. Certain individuals are banned from Crisis for reasons of bad behaviour or drug dealing, and must not be allowed in. Some of the guests that filter through have an amazingly polite attitude about them, and you know their hearts are being touched when they receive food, shelter and love, without necessarily having to reciprocate.
Whilst on Front Gate Duty, a gentleman who we’ll name Mr G approached me. He’s a Big Issue vendor and was volunteering at Crisis. Mr G greeted me with such warmth, and was surprised to see a young Asian working with the homeless. In his years of selling Big Issue on the streets of London, not a single Asian person had bought a copy from him. When talking with others about this, I found that a common perception is that Asians are tight-fisted – plain and simple. To find out more about Big Issue, I checked out www.bigissue.com and learned that the Big Issue, a news and current affairs magazine, provides opportunities for people facing homelessness to help themselves. Some members of the public choose not to buy this magazine from vendors such as Mr G because they are concerned about how vendors spend their money. The Big Issue believes that all people must take responsibility for themselves, and homeless people have as much right to spend their earnings as they wish as anyone else.
As I was warming up with a hot coffee, a call was made for an internal job of sorting jackets. As we were placing the jackets into the various boxes, we realised just how quickly these jackets will disappear. Much of the clothing was of high quality, and gratefully received by the guests.
In between tasks, the idea was to head into the volunteers’ area, where there were opportunities to mingle with other volunteers, have some food and hot drinks, and wait for a request for the massive variety of jobs that were available to take on such as refereeing a football match. A request came for cigarette rollers – experienced or ready to learn. I was in the latter category and my first ever rolling attempt was impressive, if I may say so myself. The rolling team was challenged to fill up 4 cups worth of rolled cigarettes so that a large number of cigarettes could be distributed out to the guests in each of the 4 main zones. Although I had started rolling quite well, the quality of my cigarettes appeared to decrease fast. Others on the Young Jains team who had never done it before seemed to be naturals!
In the final hour of the shift, some volunteers were needed to clean the guest areas, including sweeping the carpeted floors. Guests sleep on the bare floor with just a blanket covering them, and it’s essential the floors are kept clean. It’s also nice to leave the areas in a better state than they were found for the next shift to take it to a greater level.
Wrapping up now… Following the Young Jains team photo shoot, a Crisis green badge (one of the volunteers who ran the shelter) thanked all “The Jains” for supporting Crisis this year and every year. Those who had no other commitments for the evening then made their way over to Yogi Jis for the traditional YJ post-event social.
—
Crisis is a national charity that fights homelessness and empowers people to fulfil their potential and transform their lives.
During Christmas, Crisis provides Centres across London for homeless people, offering hot meals and a wide range of essential services.
Dates: 23rd – 30th December 2007
Times: daytime slot, evening slot, night slot
Location: London – specific location will be disclosed by Crisis nearer the time
Advanced Registration:
http://www.crisis.org.uk/page.builder/crisis_open_christmasnew.html
Group on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5468753268
Event details from the Crisis website…
If you are homeless or living in hostel accommodation, Christmas can be a lonely and depressing time. For the past 35 years, Crisis Open Christmas has helped to alleviate that loneliness, providing Christmas Centres across London from 23 – 30 December that not only offer vital companionship, hot meals and warmth, but a wide range of essential services that homeless people do not normally have access to.
In 2006 over 6500 volunteers gave up their time over the Christmas week to support our work. If you are interested in volunteering at the next COC you can do so in five ways.
General volunteer: This role gives you an opportunity to take part in a variety of tasks which ensure the safe and effective running of the Centre. Tasks such as welcoming guests and serving food, to washing hair and sorting bedding. We need about 85 per cent of volunteers to carry out this role.
Support volunteer: Join the team that makes the COC happen! From logistics and operational roles to driving vehicles, coordinating food deliveries to being a translator, we need key people to help deliver the event.
Services volunteer: Use your specialist skills to help deliver the variety of services we provide our guests – medical professionals, advice practitioners, hairdressers, massage therapists, chefs and many more
Learning & Skills: Help us inspire and entertain our guests. Learning and skills volunteers have a unique opportunity to engage with our guests on a very personal level. Learning and skills covers a wide range of activities.
Set up volunteers: Help get the Centres ready for our guests before the 23 Dec, and put them back to normal after the 30 Dec.
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Diwali’s here. Makes you think of light. Inner light, shining bright.
Needed to buy some lightbulbs recently – special ones that you can’t get in your local supermarket.
Scoured the web – came across yourwelcome.co.uk
Highly recommend these guys for all your lightbulb purchases. Here’s why:
Reason #1: speed of delivery
Reason #2: quality of light bulbs at a great price
Reason #3: their caring courtesy email below:
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Dear Mr Shah,
Thanks for your recent order which you should now have received.
I just wanted to follow up and make sure that your recent order has been received and everything is in order.
We do try and offer a high level of customer service but we are only human and do occasionally make mistakes – if we do then I want to know about it, both to put it right and to try and stop it happening again.
If you do have any comments or feedback then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me – support@yourwelcome.co.uk
To view our whole range visit www.yourwelcome.co.uk
Thanks once again for your business.
Kind regards.
Richard Cockayne
—
How about that for after sales care?
I like these guys – gonna keep going back to them for all my light bulb needs.
Turns out they also do air conditioning systems. Yes, winter’s kicking in now, but when the summer comes, the way climate change is happening, it’s gonna be scorching in London.
Where do you source YOUR inner light from?
What can be leveraged from a simple and informative monthly community newsletter?
Currently, the National Council of Vanik Associations (NCVA) here in the UK produces a monthly newsletter called Vanik Voice which is available as a downloadable PDF file. This month the readership have been informed about it by email, and referred to a link where they can download the newsletter.
The newsletter itself is most certainly informative, awakening, and entertaining. See for yourself by downloading the Diwali 2007 issue at www.ncva.co.uk/newsletter/november2007.pdf
Although increasingly valuable to its readership, this approach to sharing information certainly has it’s limitations:
- Newsletter content is only accessible by those who know how to get to the downloadable PDF.
- Existing readers who remember an article from a previous newsletter would need to trawl through all the previous issues of the newsletter to find what they’re looking for.
- There is currently no easy and direct way for the issues covered in the articles to be explored easily amongst like-minded (and even non-like-minded!) Vaniks around the world.
7 Easy Steps To Overcoming These Limitations By Setting Up A Simple Online Blog (Web Log) And Mailing List Solution:
- Get hold of an easy to remember domain name such as www.ncvanews.org (cost $10 USD / £5 GBP per year)
- Host the website on a web host such as Dreamhost that allows you to set the site up using Wordpress technology (cost $7.95 USD per month)
- Ask your web designer to make the site attractive in it’s appearance, have them install the various Wordpress plugins that encourage visitors to make comments, and set up your very own branded email address such as news@ncvanews.org. (cost £200 GBP)
- Invest in an online mailing list solution such as Professional Cart Solutions that allows readers to automatically register for / unregister from receiving regular news updates. (cost $29 USD per month)
- Start posting up your news and articles to this new Wordpress driven site. (cost: your time)
- Create and an email each month to be sent to your mailing list which highlights the best articles / news items, along with direct links to each of the pages where the articles are posted. (cost: your time)
- Respond to the comments that appear for each article on the site to encourage further community involvement and therefore further awareness of Vaniks around the globe. (PRICELESS)
Here are some major benefits with this new approach:
- News is added on the blog whenever something new arises – now no more waiting to put it into the next issue.
- Blogs are set up with RSS feeds which are great for those who want to be kept posted on news as soon as you post it on the site.
- Those outside the Vanik community can also benefit from the fresh content which helps raise global awareness of the Vaniks.
- The editor now just needs to post articles and news on the blog, and then compile a simple monthly email with links to the most important / popular blog posts.
- Appropriate pictures and relevant videos from sources such as YouTube can be displayed on the site.
- Most importantly, comments on the blog by the readers and random visitors who are interested in the content, certainly help to enhance community involvement, and encourages dialogue with the international Vanik community and beyond.
So would the initial cost of setting this up and maintaining it yearly be worthwhile when it comes to the overall value received by the whole Vanik community and those beyond it?
When you have two or more people who want to attend a meeting and are working out each other’s availability, sending emails across to everyone and getting schedules to align can get pretty taxing.
Not anymore! Doodle’s here – this simple cool free online application helps you plan a meeting time or location that suits everyone best, without the mess of sifting through emails to work out who’s available when.
So the next time you’re planning a meeting – tap into the power of www.doodle.ch.
When we set up your website using Wordpress technology, you’ll soon realise that comments on your site play a very powerful part in encouraging people to continue visiting your site, and when they do arrive, comments are great at getting visitors to stick around. People love to be part of a community, and comments allow visitors to interact with others who are visiting the site.
The longer that site visitors spend on your site, the more time you have to build a stronger relationship with them. Stronger relationships result in greater awareness, and certainly better sales conversions.
Here are a selection of Wordpress plugins that will encourage more comments to be placed on your site.
- The Subscribe To Comments plugin allows a commentator to check a box, which then notifies them by email any time someone else comments on the same post. This encourages them to return to the site and stay immersed in the conversation.
- The Show Top Commentators plugin displays a list of top commentators (their names and number of comments) in the site sidebar, and it encourages discussion by the site readers. This is a terrific simple way to show recognition to those who are contributing to your website community.
- The Comment Relish plugin makes you appear polite! It sends a thank you email to those who comment on your site for the first time, making them feel good about coming back to comment regularly. This is a more private form of recognition, but equally as effective as the Show Top Commentators plugin.
- The Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin places a ‘Reply to this comment’ link to every comment on the page. What happens is that whenever this reply link is used, the new comment is placed directly below the comment being replied to, rather than at the end of the page. This makes it easier for people to reply to comments rather than having to quote or refer to another comment, and prevents readers having to search all the way down the page when looking for answers to their question.
- The Get Recent Comments plugin displays the most recent comments in the sidebar. This plugin can be set up to link the recent commenter’s site as well as an excerpt of their comment – the link to their site obviously encourages them to leave more comments!
- The Live Comment Preview plugin displays a live preview of the visitor’s comments as they type.
Get in touch and have us install any of these six plugins to have you build stronger relationships with your site visitors and truly tap into the magic of comments!
The ideal home office is both functional and a joy to work in. Here’s how to set up your home office so that it meets your specific needs, tastes, work style and physical limitations.
Step 1: Have Your Own Room:
Arrange it so that your family members know when it’s ok to interrupt you and when it’s not. A simple way to do this is by keeping your door closed when you don’t want to be interrupted at all, and keeping the door ajar when you are cool to handle minor domestic issues that pop up.
Step 2: Get The Kit:
- Desk: have your desk positioned where there is enough natural light for reading without having glare created on the screen.
- Desk Chair: a chair where you can adjust it’s height, the tilt of the seat and where there is lumbar support. You’ll want to be able to sit comfortably in it if you’re spending most of your day there.
- Computer: a laptop which connects wirelessly to peripherals up to 30 feet away, with enough hard disk space and RAM to handle your business needs.
- Wireless Router: have the freedom of working wirelessly from any room in your home by having a wireless router set up, giving you the change of scenery you may sometimes want. We recommend ordering one from Misco.
- All-In-One Printer: a laser printer and photocopier that operates at high speed, which has a fax machine and colour scanner built in.
- VoIP Phone / Headset: get hold of a USB headset which combines headphones with a microphone, to make long-distance phone calls for free using powerful Voice over IP applications such as Skype.
- External Hard Drive: back up all your important files regularly with an external hard drive.
- Security Set-up: keep your information secure by investing in internet security software.
- Lighting Control System: at the press of a button, recall a lighting preset to match your desired mood or activity.
Step 3: Start Working:
Once you’ve invested in and installed all your kit, you’re ready to get working! What else would YOU add to your ideal home office?
