A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words – You hear this a lot. Now-a-days this is more true than ever. Pictures this:

What if you sell widgets and you are on the verge of launching a new product, but nobody knows about it, how it looks, dimensions, color, etc?

What if I go to Google and search for this new product so I know how it looks like and see if I want to buy it or not. What if there are thousands upon thousands of potential customers who all want to know exactly the same thing I am after, as described above?

Enter – the power of the image.

What if a big customer of yours already has a budget approved to buy these new widgets and they are putting together a presentation for their upper management? Wouldn’t they need pictures for their presentation so it better appeals to the audience?

Are you a web designer? How about uploading your portfolio on Flickr?

How about an architectural firm? They would have digital representations of their plans as well as pictures of the finished product. Wouldn’t they want to showcase their work? Flickr would be the perfect venue for this too. Why not? The more people see their work the better the chances of getting new customers.

Are you baking pies for a living? I know scratch and sniff monitors are not on the market yet but still several pictures of the delicious pies can still entice the viewers to visit your website and maybe buy some of them. So grab your digital camera and start capturing the savory of your products. Put them on photo sharing websites and watch the dough rise – pun very intended.

Here’s a list of photo sharing websites:

www.flickr.com
www.shutterfly.com
www.kodakgallery.com
www.snapfish.com
www.dropshots.com
www.fotolog.com
www.multiply.com
www.myphotoalbum.com
www.panoramio.com
www.photobucket.com
www.picasa.com
www.slide.com
www.winkflash.com
www.zenfolio.com
www.zoto.com

Try to post your pictures on as many websites as you can. The more places your name and products appear the better your chances to be found on the web.

Here are some tips to post your pictures successfully on these websites:

1. Take lots and lots of pictures
2. Select only those that best describe your message; crisp and clear
3. Upload them on as many websites as you can
4. Always, always use meta tags and descriptions for your pictures. This is the main reason why you’ll be found on the web. Without these elements you might as well forget about the whole thing.
5. Create and join photo groups
6. Be active and commit to these groups and their activity within the group

Conclusion: Remember – photo sharing is one form of social media and social media is a two-way communication street. Use it wisely and your success on line will be a snap.

Besides creating off line promotional materials or online (like Squidoo lenses), wikis are great but not very talked about means to extend your online presence. With this article, I hope to bring to the forefront a superb, and often free tool, you can take advantage of and promote your company, products or services you might have.

So what’s a wiki anyway?

The wiki inventor, Ward Cunningham said:

The Wiki concept has become a study in what’s now called ‘Social Software’. With a Wiki I write the seed of an idea and I come back in a week to see how the idea has grown.” www.wikiwikiweb.com

Wikis are web pages that allow people to collect and edit their knowledge about a particular subject – all in one place. All this material put together resulted in an online encyclopedia database founded on its contributor’s additions.

Resources:

• www.wikipedia.org
• www.mygads.com
• www.commoncraft.com
• www.pbwiki.com
• www.wetpaint.com
• www.wikispaces.com
• www.wikihow.com

Easy Steps to Establish Your Wiki Presence
1. Visit and open accounts on wiki sites listed above
Go to Wikipedia.org and search for things you are passionate about. Write new wikis if you don’t find any in your area of interest; edit the ones you find if you believe they are not accurate.

2. Create a company wiki
Develop an internal company wiki. Go to one of the providers, open an account and start creating a wiki about your company. Who else would know your own company better than yourself?
Encourage your employees to participate and edit existing pages or create new ones. You will be surprised how fast your content and loyalty will grow within your network. Not to mention your search engine page rank.

Conclusion:
 Wikis are great venues to engage the crowd and have them contribute their knowledge to this ever expanding reservoir of information. Besides from being fun and easy to use, wikis can help tyou with research and even self promotion so don’t be a stranger to wikis.

You can gain tons of business recognition along with web traffic if you get in the habit of collecting Case Studies, Testimonials and Press Releases from some of your happier clients. In order to have fresh and news-worthy material, you’ll need to collect pertinent information from your clients (stories, testimonials, impressions, stories, etc,). Use your creativity and talent to transform them into tangible and interesting marketing materials. 

There are several steps when designing and creating materials for creating good Case Studies and Press Releases. Simply follow them closely and you’ll have awesome promotional material for your web site as well as other marketing materials you plan on displaying on your marketing panoply (i.e. brochures, newsletters, etc.).

Gain Online Recognition

Case Studies & Press Releases

These 2 types of materials are not only the most powerful in your marketing panoply but they are also the most time consuming. This is, in part, due to the fact that the customer is involved in the process and believe it or not you’ll have to sync with his schedule. Nevertheless the end result can and will deliver very high returns for your website rank, company prestige and ultimately for your bank account.

Steps in Producing Case Studies & Press Releases

Select a Happy Customer

Go over your list of clients and select the easy going ones; the ones you know you won’t waste your time. Select the client that has a good story, an experience that needs to be shared. Just selecting the first ones that agrees to your interview doesn’t necessarily mean that’s also the best choice.

Once you selected the client ask yourself these 3 simple questions:

1. Will this client sign off on the final draft of your material and be willing to put his name on it?
2. Does the story carry an interesting streak or the reader will be bored to death with yet another off the wall example of corporate robot behavior?
3. Is this the story you need or maybe there is someone else out there you’d rather buy coffee for and write theirs instead?
   If you answered “yes” to all 3 – then you got yourself a winner.

Conducting the Interview

For this section here are the rules of engagement. Follow them closely and you’ll have a good interview and plenty of material to write from.

Establish a time to meet and the amount of time reserved for the interview. This way everybody’s schedule will be free and unobstructed.

Always tape the interview. I don’t care how fast you can take short-hand or that you have the memory even an elephant would be proud of – the reality is that you’ll miss a lot of important details. Let the client know in advance about your intentions. He/she might not like the idea of going “on-record”.

Prepare open-ended questions and do not assume the client has all the answers. Plus you need to be in charge when conducting the interview.

Select a place where both you and the client are comfortable but in the same time away from interruptions, emails, friends or colleagues dropping by, etc. Make sure you check that with your client beforehand.

Produce the Content

Gather all the materials and design the structure of your material. Best route in creating the bulk of the copy is hiring a professional who does this for a living. Assist him/her with all the necessary materials. Communicate clearly what your intent is with the material and what key marketing targets should be hit.

For Case Studies use at least 2500 to 3500 words. Press Releases are less than that – somewhere around 500 words. The Press Release should target media’s interest and it should contain plenty of facts, numbers and other details.

Seek Client’s Approval

When the material is completed, contact the client and present it; ask for their approval. Please use a clean material and not some flimsy piece of paper even it’s only a draft. You still need to show the client you are serious about this and most of all appreciate the time he/she spent with you to produce the material.

Before showing up, contact the client and make sure the interviewee still works there. In this “dynamic” economy, it’s not rare to find out that one might not be there a couple of weeks past the interview. Hopefully he is still there… Now – make sure they agree with the accuracy of the quotes they provided. Same for the statistics, certain details about the business, etc.

Once the client approves you are good for publishing (either print or online). If it’s online (your website or blog) make sure the text has plenty of links to your site or blog, wikis, etc. If you put all the work into this and the whole purpose of a case study is to promote yourself as well as the client, then take advantage and produce a link rich material that can give you plenty of brownie points with Google.

Next step – Testimonials

Now that you wrote about the client and she/he is very content with the outcome, ask for a testimonial from them and emphasize the fact that you’ll publish it on your website, on brochures even. In fact you are advertising for free and that should make them very happy.

A testimonial usually will come in the form of an email (at least that’s what I ask my clients to do so I don’t have to sit there and retype it all over again. Cut & paste is a wonderful thing). Just make sure that your request for a testimonial follows the below rules:

Indicate where and when the testimonials provided by the client will appear (type of publication, what exactly will the copy include, etc.).
Point out other similar testimonials so the client will not think you are starting with them first. For some reason no one is willing to take that place.

Once you publish the Testimonial, send an email to the client thanking him/her again. Provide the link if the published material is online or send a snail mail letter with a copy of the offline material (brochure, newsletter, etc.). Clients love to see their names in print.

Conclusion:

All the elements described above can bring superb value to your company’s website. You are in fact promoting your brand while writing a happy story about one of your client’s experiences with…you. What can be better than that?

In the same time you are giving comfort to new web visitors showing them you are appreciated and looked after by other business owners just like them. The end result – more traffic to your site, more clients for your business and finally more money in your coffers.

1. Business cards
   Have business cards with you at all times. Drop several cards on every bookstore, coffee shop, restaurant or anywhere you can find a cork board that allows businesses to advertise.
2. Promotional Items
   Use caffepress.com or any online store to create t-shirts, mugs, calendars, etc. made with your company’s logo and URL on it. You can also offer these promotional items as prizes in a contest on your blog or company website. They buyers will advertise for you wherever they go.
3. Wear your URL
   This goes hand in hand with the item above; create for yourself and friends custom t-shirts or hats with your company URL on them. People will want to know more and that’s all you want, right?
   

   Wear Your URL

4. Yard or Garage Sale
   Sell items you no longer want and make sure to put up a sign with the words “Sponsored by (URL of your company”
5. Post Flyers
   Create a poster about your website and post in appropriate places; the more exposure to traffic the better your chances to gain more visitors to your site.

6. Public Browser Trick
   Go to your local library, computer store, and internet cafe or computer lab and set your website name as the default browser homepage on all the computers you can easily access. Make sure you are not violating any internal policies.
7. Router Trick
   Name your wireless router after your website or blog. People in your area will see it whenever they connect to their own router. If you live in the vicinity of a coffee shop that offers free wireless internet access – the better because those who are trying to connect will see your router name too.
8. Luggage Label
   Order a custom patch or label and display it proudly on your entire luggage, laptop bag or any other piece of travelling container. You will get a lot of eyes, especially at the airport carousel. Quick tip: let it rotate for a while if you are in no hurry.
9. Laptop Label
   On the same token, put a custom made label with your company or blog URL on your laptop. Forget about being cool while displaying the little fruit your laptop already has etched on its cover. Your company is much more important, plus the laptop manufacturer is not paying you any money for displaying their logo, are they? Imagine the number of eyes in the coffee shop reading your URL while you look busy writing your next great article for your blog.
10. Bumper stickers
    Create a funny bumper sticker and offer it as a prize in some kind of contest or simply ship it to your client list. Give some to your friends and family. They will be more than happy to drive around and promote you and your company. 
    

    Bumper sticker with your company name on it

     

11. Throw a Party or Organize a Picnic
    Tell friends, family and neighbors that your company is sponsoring a party with food, drinks or whatever you want. When everyone shows up, hand them a card with your company name on it. It will create some great buzz offline.
12. Sponsor an Event
    Contact your local newspaper and find out what upcoming events do they plan on writing about. Select one that is dear to your heart (and to the public) and become a sponsor. If you are a designer, offer to design a website for them. I did that for “Run for Autism” and you cannot believe the number of calls I receive after that.
13. Sponsor a Little League Team
    Provide the T-shirts for the team and don’t forget to include your company’s URL on the back. It’s a great way to show your support for sports and advertise your business in the same time.
14. Magnetic Vehicle Signs
    Create custom magnetic signs and put them on your car, your friends, family and whoever else is not embarrassed to help you out.
15. Send eCards
    Keep a list of all birthdays of your clients, friends, family, etc. and send them an e-card to let them know you and your company/blog care about them.
16. Unusual Advertisement
    Take advantage of every holiday or special day and create a fun scene in your front yard. In the winter make a snow man holding an ad with your advertisement on it. For Halloween carve pumpkins with your company or blog URL on them. For 4th of July have hundred of balloons with the name of your company and URL on them. We did this once, by mistake, when working for a home builder and people 3-4 states away called us asking to build a home with us!
17. Sugarcoat your URL
    Take advantage of any holiday and order custom made candies with your IURL on the wrapper or etched on the candy itself, if possible. Now people can actually taste your company!

Marketing Candy

Creative Ways to Use Your Business Card

You know how important is to carry your business cards with you at all times, but are you using them in a creative way? A way that can boost your brand and recognition?

Don’t just hand them out hoping the client will remember you. They won’t – especially if the competition is fierce and the possible client is shopping around. Make them remember you after the meeting is over. Make them take that business card out and explore it. Put a smile on their face, if possible. Then you become memorable.

Here’s how you can do this:

• Give out two cards at a time – one for your prospect or client, and one for her/him to give away
• Give business card holders as a thank you gift and place your business card in as the first one; or a rolodex and make yours stand out with colors or flair
• During the Holidays give away candy canes in a bag or Valentine’s Day cards with your business cards stapled to them
•  Put them in the product’s shipping before delivery; if you use bags, staple your card to the outside of the bag
• Place them in library books as if you used them as bookmarks. Visit bookstores place them in books related to your business
• Make bookmarks as business cards and give them away. You never know when someone might use them in a school, library, on the bus, or at the park
• Write a compliment about the person you are meeting with; he/she will remember you in the nicest way possible.
• Tack them to bulletin boards at coffee shops, supermarkets, restaurants, retail stores, etc.

Use both sides of the business card. Think of the front of the card as a billboard that people are driving by and only put the most important information on the front.

Here are some ideas to put on the back of your card:

• Map/directions to your office
•  Write a reminder about their next appointment
• Your 30 second introduction
• Print a team’s sports schedule on the back; you can bet sports fans will keep them handy and keep your name in front of them
• Print a special discount offer or coupon on the back
• If you do seminars, print key elements of your presentation on the back. Your attendees will refer to them later and think of you
• Handwrite on the back your “unlisted” number. This adds value to your card, making people keep it longer because they don’t want to lose the special number
• An URL where they can get a free report from your website
• A calendar, a receipe, your favorite book related to their business
• Put pictures of your products

Promote Yourself with Squidoo

Sure you are on Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace and Twitter but have you heard of Squidoo? Well – you should because Google loves Squidoo so you should come to love it too.

Squidoo is a very popular publishing platform and community designed for you to create text about your particular niche in the market. The text published on Squidoo are called “lenses”.

Basically, Squidoo lenses are pages that resemble more like advertising flyers which concentrate everything you know about a particular topic of interest. Squidoo snaps it all into focus – thus the name “lens”. Think of it like the “Red Bull” of the internet.

Publishing on Squidoo is very simple to do. It’s also fun but very powerful in the grand scheme of all things Google. This is a new way to share your opinions, interests, create and promote your online identity and mostly – your credibility. What’s even better about Squidoo is that it’s FREE. That’s right –you heard it – Free. You can also (and are even encouraged to) earn a royalty for charity or yourself.

So, Why Should You Build Squidoo Lenses?

A Squidoo lens is a great tool that can help you:

• Market your online business
• Brand yourself and your websites/blogs as authorities in your niche
• Build traffic to your websites, blogs, on line storefronts, and online auctions
• Build your subscriber list
• Sell more of your products
• Build lots of deep links to the inner pages or shopping pages of your websites
• Build resource pages on each topic that’s part of your main niche
• Dominate the search engine results for various keywords in your topic
• Squidoo lenses are indexed and ranked by Google very fast

The important part is to get started. You can always edit and change anything on your lens. Then, when it’s ready, publish it and show it off to your friends and colleagues.
Click to start your first lens!

Social Bookmarking Your Website

The answer – Social Bookmarking. Why is Social Bookmarking so powerful and different from other web promotion tactics? 

Social Bookmarking websites are sites that organize and store “bookmark links” (links which take one to a specific website). Millions of web surfers visit these Social Bookmarking sites to search for information saves and organizes it. Social bookmarking is a powerful tool in promoting a website.

Social bookmarking is a growing phenomenon at the speed of a flying bullet.  Social Bookmarking is no rocket science and can be performed by anyone; you can easily bookmark your page to 25-50 Social Bookmarking sites. 

Here’s a short list of Social Bookmarking sites:

• Digg: http://www.digg.com
• Delicious: http://www.delicious.com
• Sumbleupon: http://www.stumbleupon.com/

There is also a very long list of these sites here: http://www.bookmarkingdir.com but you can stick with the 3 most important ones already listed.

Benefits of Social Bookmarking:

1. Lots of Targeted Traffic
   The bookmarks for your site are categorized into different tags; you will get more targeted traffic from people searching within a particular tag. They will click on your bookmark and visit your site. There is a very good chance your tags will rank well in the search engines due to the authority these sites have.
2. Better PageRank
   Having popular Social Bookmarking sites linked to your site will improve your site’s exposure. With a higher exposure, you can link to your sites and improve their ranking too! You can even monetize on it by advertising links from your site.
3. Lighting Fast Search Engine Crawling
   Most of these Social Bookmarking sites are very popular sites that sit well in Google’s Page Ranks. The search engine spiders visit these sites so often that your links will be crawled almost immediately.
4. Higher Search Engine Ranking
   Getting one-way incoming links is the main factor to higher search engine ranking. With Social Bookmarking, you can get virtually unlimited ‘keyword’ links to your site. Having more keyword links that are relevant to your site will result in higher ranking.

The main idea of bookmarking is to post links back to your web page from these Social Bookmarking websites. You need to specify some keywords (called TAGS) which categorize your bookmark.

This allows others to search and even vote for your bookmark. Social Bookmarking is in a league of its own because of its ability to generate traffic by sharing links.

7 Laws of Self Marketing

Advertise Yourself

You need to follow these laws if you want to promote yourself. They are not only powerful but necessary if your ultimate goal is achieving success in either your business or personal growth.

It’s much about branding but also projecting an image that will attract other people to seek your advice and take advantage of your personal know-how.

In short here they are:

Law #1:  Become an Expert in Your Field

Do attend seminars, read books and publications, blogs and press releases. Educate yourself in areas that you feel passionate about. Do not waste a single day without learning something new in your field. Make a daily list of necessary. It will help when looking back to see what you have accomplished.

Law #2: Be Prepared At All Times

This law goes hand in hand with Law#1 because “To be prepared is half the battle” – Miguel de Cervantes. Once prepared be attentive to everything that goes around you and seize any opportunity (without being annoying) to put to work the knowledge you have accumulated.

Also – be open to change and flexible to situations. Adapt and flow in the moment.

Law#3:  Have the Right Attitude

Everything starts with attitude. Wake up every morning with that in mind and force your mind to project positive thoughts and the universe will listen. “Good things come to those who wait”. Do you really think so? Take action not necessarily by picking up the phone or writing articles, but most of all take action within yourself, within your mind.

Dream big and never stop believing in your strengths and talents. Laws of Attraction work their best with a positive mind.

Law #4: Respect Everyone

No matter how small, insignificant or without a celebrity status someone is treat every one the same because you never know where the next big opportunity will come from. Plus image is everything in self promoting. If you belittle people, how would you feel if the shoe was on the other foot? Exactly!

Professionalism and respect will get you brownie points at all times.

Law #5: Communicate Clearly

Be prepared to have a 30 seconds elevator speech as well as 1 page professional bios. Work on these items and have them handy, in mind and on paper. Business cards are also part of your marketing panoply and make sure you don’t mumble a sorry excuse like “I am having done at this time…”.

At a moment notice be ready to impress anyone who asks “So…what do you so?” with a well constructed short speech that clearly and concisely communicates just that.

Law #6: Somebody is Watching You

Unless you are Aries and see everything and everyone, assume someone is watching you. Slip one time and you just tarnished that special something you worked so hard for – Your Professional Image.

I remember one time, during a party, being fond of the host I really believed our families could establish a strong relationship and continue visiting each other. Until I happened to notice the brutal way he was treating his dog. From that point on, I wanted nothing to do with that individual.

Maybe I was at a loss, but I do not want to associate myself with cruel people. Why would he care about me if he didn’t even care about his dog?

Law #7: Be Patient. Be resilient

Relationships, especially business ones do not happen over night. Just because you handed out some snazzy business cards and handed them to a bunch of people doesn’t mean you are done. Do not make the mistake 95% of the people out there make.

Great things happen to those who keep on going. Notice I didn’t say “wait”. You don’t wait – you take action, but you take it every day. You keep on hammering away and things will start happening. Implement these laws. Work them into your daily routine and soon results will start emerging.

Don’t abandon these laws and especially do not forget about them if several months go by and nothing happens. Edison is remembered for his patience and resilience, otherwise electricity would have someone else’s name on it.