Each day we are bombarded with 3700 marketing and sales offers. Each and every day! For the most part, we ignore almost all of them. Why? Because they are boring.

Here’s a TV commercial that is not boring – the Korean Air Global Campaign – The Color of Perfection:

Notice the use of black & white cinematography along with softly painted aquamarine; the soothing music in the background. Everything moves in slow motion almost giving you the feeling of a weightless, romantic spa up in the sky. They don’t use airplanes in flight but flying is implied with images that recall a dreamy experience.

While waiting for my flight at LAX, I noticed to the right of my gate a Korean Air desk and instantly the commercial popped in my head. I start looking for the bright smiles of the Korean Airlines flight attendants and sure enough they appeared floating although walking. At least that’s how I saw them still under the spell of the TV commercial. Precise, distinguished and bright, the female flight attendants walked toward the gate and commenced boarding.

What impressed me the most though, was the effort and the extent of their courtesy while seeking possible air-heads taking a nap in the sea of patiently waiting passengers who could have missed their flight. They moved with purpose and efficiency through the crowd while calling last minute passengers.  Now – that’s really good if not excellent customer service.

In contrast, I remember several years ago when my flight arrived late in Miami from Jamaica and I missed my connection to Detroit. So here I am, wife, small child and 3 pieces of luggage trying to convince the staff of a company that starts with American and ends with Airlines that we really need to get to Detroit and it was not our fault for the 2 hour late landing of Air Jamaica.

Needless to say, nobody gave a “flying sh…” – pun intended, about the 3 stranded Michiganders in the Miami Dade Airport. We were told to sit tight and get on the next plane like everyone else. No apologies, no special accommodations, not even a bag of peanuts. Now – that’s really crappy customer service.

I didn’t expect the royal treatment; not even a bump to First Class. Just some sympathy and  2 minutes of your “precious time” while pretending you are trying to help with my problems.

Ask me if I flew with that airline since. No wonder they were on the brink of bankruptcy; no wonder most American companies are outsourcing their customer service overseas; with an attitude like that who needs the aggravation? If the person on the other end shows some respect and courtesy, I can deal with a bit of an accent and not a perfect command of the English language.

What can be more memorable-a great TV commercial or a really bad experience? Let me know what you think. I promise I’ll listen.

Here’s a short but comprehensive list of things you can do to generate at least $250 per day:

• Place Google AdSense ads on your website/blog: https://www.google.com/adsense
• Head over to Yahoo Publisher Network and add their ads to your site: https://publisher.yahoo.com/portal/login.php
• Do the same thing by accessing Commission Junction: http://www.cj.com/
• …as well as Link Share: http://www.linkshare.com/
• …and also Azzogle Ads: http://www.azoogleads.com/corp/index.php
• But mostly ClickBank for tons of affiliate links and ads: http://www.clickbank.com/index.html
• Don’t forget to check this one out too: http://www.hydranetwork.com/
• You can also sell links directly on your site with http://www.text-link-ads.com/ or Text Link Brokers at http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/
• If you love to write about stuff and want to get paid for it go here: http://www.reviewme.com/

All that is left is promote the heck out of your website/blog to build traffic and thus vital click enablers on your ads. Now, don’t go nuts and include every one of these links or you might run the danger of transforming your site into a 24/7 rotating carousel of ads and links and I’m not sure that’s such a great thing; it wouldn’t be for your readers. Good luck!

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After you create your blog post ask yourself the following 10 questions:

1. Is your copy on point and describes accurately your message?
2. Is it interesting and makes your readers want more?
3. Is your blog post under 250 words?
4. Does each sentence have a “Twitter” like structure (i.e. 140 characters or less)?
5. Can you spot titles easily on your copy?
6. Is your blog post message credible and expert like?
7. Do you have clear “Calls to Action” throughout your copy?
8. Do you have a conclusion?
9. For the “scanners”, can you make your post even smaller than it is?
10. Do you speak your reader’s language (in other words – do you cater to your audience)?

The point of good writing is knowing when to stop – L.M. Montgomery

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Commenting on blogs similar to yours is one quick way to promote your own blog/website. I discovered this a while back but wanted to beef up a bit my own blog before jumping on the “comment on other blogs” wagon.

Although a lot of them are very well designed I found it hard to write about some mistakes I kept on seeing on other blogs. In fact I have learned a lot.

The most important thing to remember is this:

Scan not read

People do not have the time to read a whole lot now-a-days (unless they are really interested in a particular subject) so “Good bye Reading” and “Hello Scanning”. In order to capture attention you have to create breaks in your text such that the human eye can easily scan, stop and read small bits.

This can be accomplished by using colors, bold fonts or a combination of the two.

Here’s an example of bad text on a blog:

Bad Blog Structure

Now here’s something I would scan rapidly and read portions of it (if not the entire post). Notice the titles, bullets and other breaks in the text.

Good Blog Structure

If I made it a goal to comment on several blogs each day, this approach will save me time and rapidly move onto the next one. In the same time I retain some good information because the major points in the blog captured my attention.

Sometimes even a picture comes in very handy by tickling the viewer’s curiosity so use them in your blog. Don’t just copy some image from Bing or Google images. Besides being copyrighted, you won’t get brownie points on originality either.

So, bloggers out there – make your readers’ life easier and incorporate these tricks into the flow of your post:

• Write posts that are 500 words or less (this is just under 360 words)
• Break the post in several chunks of text (each chunk consisting of 3-4 sentences)
• Emphasize titles, important ideas or key elements in your text for easy reading
• Do use bulleted lists (just like here)
• Ask questions and spark interest such that comments are welcomed
• Draw conclusions at the end of the post

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First of all – familiarize yourself with basic SEO jargon like: internal/external links, meta tags, titles, pagerank, etc. 

This way at least you know what the SEO company is talking about when they make the sales pitch.

Personally, I noticed that the shady ones are often hiding behind geek lingo trying to paint you in a corner by throwing these words at you, thus proving that they know what they are talking about.

You can cut that conversation short and find out how credible and professional they are by asking 5 little questions. Here they are:

1. What kind of results should you be able to see and how long will it take to get there?
2. What experience do you have in my industry and how long have you been doing this?
3. Show/send me examples of your previous work and success stories. Can I contact some of these people?
4. Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
5. What other marketing services do you offer besides SEO?

Just keep this list by your phone and take notes while they answer these questions. I’m sure you are a pretty seasoned business individual so you should be able to spot the shady ones right away. You can download a quick and easy PDF document of “Questions to ask a SEO company” right here.

According to Jupiter Research almost 40% of people searching the web actually purchase something. In all cases, they focus on page 1 and sometimes page 2. The percentage of info seekers decreases tremendously starting with page 3 of any search engine.

The dirty little secret you probably don’t know is that 72% of all people who search Google click on the organic search results, ignoring the paid ads section. I do. Don’t you?

Based on these findings, logic will tell you that your website/blog should be listed on the top 1-2 pages of every search engine page. To accomplish this you’ll need a solid and powerful SEO behind your site.

So does SEO matter? Heck Yes!

Here are some things you need to understand before you hire a SEO company or even contemplate on doing yourself SEO for your site:

 1. SEO is an ongoing activity and it stops when your company doesn’t need a web presence anymore.
This is not a “set it” and forget it” task. It’s a long time strategy that needs constant attention and fine tunning as you go.

2. SEO results are not immediate nor permanent.
Whoever is telling you otherwise you should seriously dispute their knwoeldge of the web.

3. If you want to do solid SEO (mainly based on fresh content), think of your site as a weekly or monthly newsletter.
Update it as much as you can and you got yourself a dynamic and fresh site every time.

4. Tag everything (images, links, video, etc.) and link to relevant sites.
Link internally between your pages and ask others to link to your site.

5. Pure SEO is not about TRAFFIC – it’s about QUALIFIED TRAFFIC.
What good does it do that your site list on position 2 on the first page for a “company that sells oranges” when you in fact are “selling space ships”?

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