Growing up I was always an entrepreneur. I really enjoyed selling things to people that they needed and making a profit from my efforts.

But as I got older and my ambitions grew I found it harder and harder to market things to people because I looked so young and people didn’t take me seriously based on prejudice.

The Internet changed everything for me. Online marketing allowed me to use my brains and without being judged based on how I looked was able to sell a product to thousands of people who did take me seriously based on the merit of my product and marketing in my strategies.

Internet marketing platform took what used to be a weakness and turn it into a strength.

The hardest thing getting started in Internet marketing is knowing what direction to go in, go to believe as far as advice and information, what information is important to your particular goals and strategies, and what information will help you at all.

In my journey to learn online marketing I jumped or lots of groups to figure out what was the basic knowledge and needed and what was his opinion in other people’s ideas of how to apply the same basics.

If I were to give somebody starting out invites I would tell you to try to elicit the things that keep repeating which are generally the basics and at first they ignore the things that seem like someone else’s idea of a strategy.

Once you get the basics down and you understand how the basic online-marketing works then you can elicit your own wisdom would strategies may or may not work for you, or your foundation will be based on some else’s opinion on cold hard foundation of facts.

A single issue - for example, a potentially dangerous,
unattended perception among a key outside audience
- can spread like wildfire nudging ANY business,
non-profit, public entity or association closer to
failure than success. Remember, it’s what people
BELIEVE to be true - rather than the truth itself -
that too often defines the public relations challenge.

Why the top of the head actually hurts just thinking
about a public relations speed bump like that!

It also cries out for a sound public relations strategy
combined with effective communications tactics
leading directly to the bottom line - perception
altered, behaviors modified, employer/client satisfied.

But how do we get there?

By employing public relations activity that creates
first perception, then behavior change within that key
outside audience. And I mean behavior change that
leads directly to achieving managerial objectives.

It’s not easy, but as a manager, you can do it if
you accept the fact that the right PR really CAN
alter individual perception and lead to those changed
behaviors you need. Especially if you follow up by
doing something positive about the behaviors of
those important outside audiences of yours that
MOST affect your operation.

You can take your best shot at it by creating the kind
of external stakeholder behavior change that leads
directly to achieving your managerial objectives. But
only when you persuade those key outside folks to your
way of thinking, and then move them to take actions
that allow your department, group, division or subsidiary
to succeed.

You’ll be glad to know that this approach comes
complete with a blueprint showing you how to manage
this kind of public relations. People act on their own
perception of the facts before them, which leads to
predictable behaviors about which something can be
done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion
by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action
the very people whose behaviors affect the organization
the most, the public relations mission usually is
usually accomplished.

Here’s a reality that will come crashing in on you as you
start work on this project. Obviously, you will need a lot
more than news releases, brochures, broadcast plugs and
fun-filled special events to get a satisfactory return on
your PR investment. Among the results business, non-
profit, public entity and association managers can expect
are renewed interest from your key external audiences,
new proposals for strategic alliances and joint ventures;
rebounds in showroom visits; membership applications
on the rise; new community service and sponsorship
opportunities; and even new thoughtleader and special
event contacts.

With the passage of time, you will notice such customers
making repeat purchases; prospects reappearing; stronger
relationships with the educational, labor, financial and
healthcare communities; improved relations with
government agencies and legislative bodies, and perhaps
even capital givers or specifying sources looking your way.

Be sure that your PR staff is really on board for the whole
effort because you want your key outside audiences to really
perceive your operations, products or services in a positive
light. Reassure yourself that your people accept the basic
truth that perceptions almost always lead to behaviors that
can help or hurt your unit.

Take the time from your busy day to go over the plan, the
blueprint in detail with your staff, especially regarding how
you will gather and monitor perceptions by questioning
members of your most important outside audiences.
Questions like these: how much do you know about our
organization? How much do you know about our services
or products and employees? Have you had prior contact
with us and were you pleased with the how things went? Have
you experienced problems with our people or procedures?

Fortunately, your PR people are also in the perception
and behavior business and can pursue the same objective
as the professional survey firms might were they to
handle the perception monitoring phases of your program:
identify untruths, false assumptions, unfounded rumors,
inaccuracies, misconceptions and any other negative
perception that might translate into hurtful behaviors.

Setting your public relations goal in concrete carries
with it the responsibility to address the problems that
appeared during your key audience perception monitoring.
Probably, your new goal will call for straightening out
that dangerous misconception, or correcting that gross
inaccuracy, or doing something about that awful rumor.

But this raises a knotty question: how do you plan to
reach that goal? You have just three strategic choices
when it comes to dealing with a perception or opinion
challenge: create perception where there may be none,
change the perception, or reinforce it. Unfortunately,
selecting a bad strategy will taste like gooseberry
preserves on your salt cod. So be certain the new
strategy fits well with your new public relations goal.
For example, you don’t want to select “change” when
the facts dictate a “reinforce” strategy.

We’re all painfully aware that how you structure your
corrective message is crucial because persuading an
audience to your way of thinking is awfully hard work.
Particularly so when you’re looking for words that are
compelling, persuasive, believable AND clear and
factual. Hard work, but a must if you are to
correct a perception by shifting opinion towards your
point of view, leading to the desired behaviors. Review
your message with your communications specialists
for its impact and persuasiveness.

You can pick from dozens of available tactics to carry
your words to the attention of your target audience, but
you need to select the precise communications tactics
most likely to reach them. From speeches, facility tours,
emails and brochures to consumer briefings, media
interviews, newsletters, personal meetings and many
others. Be darn certain that the tactics you pick are known
to reach folks just like your audience members.

Another PR fact of life is that the credibility of your message
can depend on how you deliver it. So, try introducing it to
smaller gatherings rather than using higher-profile
communications such as news releases or talk show
appearances. Before long, you’ll need to produce a progress
report, which means it’s probably time for you and your PR
folks to get back out in the field for a second perception
monitoring session with members of your external audience.
You can use the same questions used in the first benchmark
session, but now you must stay alert for signs that your
communications tactics have worked and that the negative
perception is being altered in your direction.

I know that things don’t always move fast enough for me, and
I suspect the same may be true of you. If you’re caught in a
slowdown, matters can always be accelerated with a broader
selection of communications tactics AND increased frequencies.

So that biggest PR speed bump of all - a potentially dangerous,
unattended perception among a key external audience - really
CAN spread like wild fire and nudge any business, non-profit,
public entity or association closer to failure than success.

Only thing standing between you and such a disaster is your
own resolve as a manager to do something positive about the
behaviors of those important outside audiences of yours that
MOST affect your operation.

Create the kind of external stakeholder behavior change that
leads directly to achieving your managerial objectives. And do
so by persuading those key outside folks to your way of thinking,
by moving them to take actions that allow your department,
group, division or subsidiary to succeed.

Please feel free to publish this article in your ezine,
newsletter, offline publication or website. Only
requirement: you must use the Robert A. Kelly byline
and resource box. Robert A. Kelly © 2006.

Bob Kelly counsels and writes for business, non-profit and
association managers about using the fundamental premise of public
relations to achieve their operating objectives. He has authored
245 articles on the subject which are listed at EzineArticles.com, click
Expert Author, click Robert A. Kelly. He has been DPR, Pepsi-Cola
Co.; AGM-PR, Texaco Inc.; VP-PR, Olin Corp.; VP-PR, Newport
News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.; director of communications, U.S.
Department of the Interior, and deputy assistant press secretary, The
White House. He holds a bachelor of science degree from Columbia
University, major in public relations.
mailto:bobkelly@TNI.net Visit:http://www.PRCommentary.com

Many people, in a rush to spike sales through the roof, think too big and end up completely missing out on one of the best free marketing opportunities on the net: discussion forums. Instead of focusing on individual sales, they go immediately for ads that promise thousands of visitors, pay-per-click search engines that could potentially expose them to thousands, and even sloppily-produced and sometimes fraudulent spam submission programs.

Even though it is essential to increase your rating with search engines, to purchase pay-per-clicks, and to participate in link exchanges and banner exchanges, discussion forums can often provide an extra, non-conventional sales medium to your campaign that allows you to quickly pull in customers with personal contact and conversational presentations of your product.

You can find these boards by searching for the specific product you sell and then adding the word “messageboard” or “forum” or “discussion forum” after it in quotations. For instance, I sell marketing tools and online business-builders on one of my websites, so when I look for forums to market my products in, I go to google or overture and type in “business messageboard” or “marketing forum.” Find as many of these highly-trafficked forums as you can and sign-up. Some of them will require you to confirm it through your email address.

Before you begin actually posting on the boards, you need to lay down some general rules of approach. I would suggest the following methods, but you can decide for yourself what you think is appropriate for your business and situation.

These are my rules:

When I market on discussion forums, I always try to provide more for the board than I take away from it in potential sales. Not only is it ethical, but it’s also good business. When people ask questions, I use the expertise I’ve gained from Internet business-building and marketing to legitimately answer their questions. If I signed up for every board I could find, and then slapped a boilerplate marketing pitch on every site, I’d just get ignored or banned.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to legitimately get involved with the forum community. It is definitely a goldmine for highly-targeted customers and it is possibly the fastest marketing medium on the Internet, but it is also very important to respect that it doesn’t primarily serve as an ad host. If you stay low-key and helpful, people will respect your opinion more and will want to see what you have to offer. This is where your signature comes in…

When you create your account for most boards, they will give you the option of creating a signature, which they will attach to the bottom of every post you make. This is the best way to pull customers from messageboards–by alluring them with your signature. Write something catchy or intriguing and then slap a link to your site or email address on it. Remember: the more helpful you are (the more times you post advice/hints), the more times your signature appears… and the more potential hits you’ll get to your site.

Next, you’ll want to decide when it’s appropriate to market outside of your signature. I personally only market in three situations outside of my signature in forum discussions. If a person asks a question about a specific product or service I market, then I’ll respond because I’m qualified to do so and because I truly believe they should use my products to achieve the best possible results. If there’s a discussion thread where everyone is marketing products and it is generally accepted, I will market my product if a) it is related and b) I have already posted several times on the messageboard. Also, I will market my product whenever there is a forum solely dedicated to marketing your products.

Last, you’ll want to decide how much original content you want to post and how much you want to be boilerplate. You’ll want to find a healthy combination of the two to avoid being called a spammer or wasting too much time marketing on forums. I personally have several boilerplate ads that I have saved for signature files, ad-only forums, and personal product marketing discussions. I keep them all saved on a word file and I pull them up to copy-and-paste when I’m spending a night of advertising on messageboards.

Discussion forums can drive buying customers to your site faster than any other marketing medium. Do not abuse them, establish a reputation in your forums, streamline the process. . . and your work will come back to you quickly in profit.

Isaiah Hull publishes Work At Home Right Now, a fresh and informative newsletter about making money on the internet and using proven methods to increase your site’s traffic and profitability. If you’re looking for time-saving and money-saving tools, as well as honest business advice, come by and subscribe at http://www.workathomerightnow.net

Community relations is one of those marketing strategies that isn’t talked about much, even though I venture to say practically everyone ends up doing it at one time or another. Basically, community relations is when you and your business become involved in your community. For instance:

* Your business donates money to nonprofit organizations.

* You or your employees volunteer at a fundraising event.

* You or your employees volunteer for a nonprofit organization.

* You or your employees join a service club.

* You or your employees network and/or volunteer at industry association
meetings or business functions (such as Chamber of Commerce events). Some people might consider this networking and not community relations, but I would argue networking falls under community relations. Regardless, you get the idea.

I’m going to go through the pros and cons of community relations in a moment, but first I want to encourage all of you to think about ways to not only add community relations to your marketing strategy but also to get better at leveraging those opportunities to grow your business. But first, let’s go through the pros and cons.

Pros:
* Builds credibility for you and your business.
* Builds personal relationships with customers.
* Works well with advertising - similar to public relations, community relations is a “soft” sell approach that can make your customers more receptive to your advertising.
* Can be a stepping stone for PR.
* Creates goodwill (and good karma).

Cons:
* Time - community relations can consume a ton of it. All that volunteering can suck up a lot of working and/or leisure hours.
* Long wait to realize results - like public relations, you implement a community relations plan for the long haul. And I do mean the long haul (even longer than PR).

* Difficult to track - I’m talking mainly about the non-business networking activities here. You may never be able to trace sales to community relations. Actually, chances are you probably won’t. You need to trust it’s working on some cosmic level and let it go.
* No payoff at all - this can happen if you find yourself donating time and/or money to charities that are wonderful causes but offer little advertising and/or promotional opportunities. Now, that doesn’t mean I’m advocating only supporting high-visibility causes. On the contrary, there are many good reasons to have a community relations program in place. For one, the good feeling you get knowing you’re supporting a worthy cause (not to mention all the good karma you build).

Basically, you can sum up the cons to this: spend lots of time or money for little/no return.

Not a good marketing strategy.

But, it doesn’t have to be that way. You can and should find ways to increase your ROI (return on investment) for all the community relations activities you take part in. And one good way to do that is to leverage them into marketing strategies.

Creativity Exercise — How to get a return on investment with community relations

Grab some sheets of paper and a pen (I like the fun gel pens myself) and get ready for some brainstorming.

First, list all the activities you’re doing that are considered community relations. Write them all down.

Next, analyze those activities. What ROI are you currently getting from them? Do your customers know you donate time and/or money to those activities? Do you get sales because of your involvement? Are you building your brand and/or awareness of your business because of your donations?

Don’t know? Well, then you probably aren’t getting much return.

Next, I want you to brainstorm ways you can start leveraging those activities. Can you devote a section on your Web site to telling people about your involvement? Can you use your Web site to help raise money and/or volunteers for the causes you support? If there’s an event involved, can you more aggressively market your services during it? (Set out flyers or brochures or have a really good elevator speech if you’re able to introduce yourself.) Can you send out press releases? Can you have your logo added to the organization’s marketing materials? Or have the organization link to your Web site?

Try and brainstorm 20 ways you can increase your ROI. Some will be silly, some will be completely impractical — but that’s okay. All you need are one or two gold nuggets to really jumpstart your marketing and make that investment in time and money really start to pay off.

Michele Pariza Wacek is the author of “Got Ideas? Unleash Your Creativity and Make More Money.” She offers two free e-zines that help subscribers combine their creativity with hard-hitting marketing and copywriting principles to become more successful at attracting new clients, selling products and services and boosting business. She can be reached at http://www.TheArtistSoul.com.

Copyright 2005 Michele Pariza Wacek

Lots of people would like to get their Web site to the top of
Google’s free listings. But that’s precisely the problem: You’re
competing with lots of people. It’s certainly possible to
get to the top - after all, somebody has to be there! - but
it takes a lot of time and effort. Alternatively, you could pay
a search engine marketing company to do this for you.

But by far the better way to get to the top of Google is to pay
for it. Google’s “AdWords” program allows even a small business
to buy advertising for selected key words and phrases. You might
be surprised at how little you have to pay.

Here’s how it works …

Google (at www.google.com) has two types
of listings: Free and paid. Google makes its money from the paid listings.

Google AdWords is the name of Google’s paid advertising system.
It is a pay-per-click advertising system, which means that
you only pay when someone clicks on your advertisement.

AdWords is an auction-based system. You offer to pay a certain price for
each click, and you compete with other bidders for higher placement.

You choose which words or phrases you would like to use
for your ad. When somebody searches
Google using those search terms, your ad will appear. If they then click
on your ad, it takes them to a specific page on your Web site.

The biggest advantage is that it gives you CONTROL.

Another problem with trying to get into the free listings at Google
is that you don’t have much control over how your page will appear.
You’re not sure exactly which search phrases will display it; you’re
not sure what Google will say about it; and you’re not sure which
pages of your site will match Google’s criteria for each search
phrase.

With AdWords, all those problems disappear. You can control the
exact wording of your ads, the exact page they link to, the exact
search phrases they match, and exactly when they appear.

For example, when I went overseas for a month last year, I turned
off all my Google advertising while I was away. (That was in the
days before I had fine-tuned my advertising campaigns. Nowadays, I
would just leave the ads running, knowing that they would make me
money in my absence :-))

You can control where the ads appear in the world. For example,
at the time of the Australian election last October, one of my
clients had an election-related Web site, so we ran some Google ads -
but only for Australian Internet users.

You can get even more specific with geography. For example, I
can run ads for events that I’m conducting in Sydney, and only show
those ads to people in and around Sydney.

You can run two ads side by side and find out which is more
responsive. Then you delete the weaker ad and replace it with a
third ad that you pit against the stronger ad. Keep doing this
until you find the ad that gets the best results.

Google tells you exactly which words and phrases people used when
searching. For example, when we did the advertising for the election
campaign, we found that “Australian election” had 50% more searches
than “federal election”; and “liberal party” had three times as many
searches as “labor party”!

With all these benefits, why would you ever go for free listings?

I hope I’ve convinced you by now that Google AdWords is the best
way to get traffic from search engines.

But what about the free listings?

Actually, I’m NOT suggesting that you give up the idea of
getting a free listing in Google. There are definitely advantages
to these listings.

What I am saying is that you should go for the paid listings
first - to test your market, refine your ad copy and improve
your marketing. Then put your efforts into the free listings
if you choose.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gihan Perera is a co-author of “Get Traffic Fast”, a
fast-track program to get started with Google advertising,
avoiding the common traps and pitfalls.

Sign up to his free mini-course “Google Kick Start” here:

http://GihanPerera.com/get-traffic-fast.html

First, I want to give my comments for ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ by Robert T Kiyosaki. I want to thank him for such a great book and has opened my mind to a whole new angle about financial freedom.

According to Robert T. Kiyosaki’s book “Rich Dad Poor Dad”, he mentions about the Cash Flow Quadrant. The Cash Flow Quadrants are Employee Quadrant, Self-Employee Quadrant, Business Owner Quadrant and Investor Quadrant.

Most parents think that their kids need to go to college after finishing high school to achieve higher education in hoping to get a good job in a real life. This perception is not wrong but it’s just not perfectly guarantee that their kids will be rich or success after getting a good job. As long as you still working for a company, you still can not be richer than the owner of the company.

I also have a bad experience before. I worked for couple years in a start up company until I got laid off because the company was not doing very well. At that time, I thought that working with people can not guarantee me for life. Then, Robert Kiyosaki’s book changed my mind.

The book makes me realize that I had to move on and move to business quadrant or even investor quadrant. I want money works for me not me works for money.
Again, I am not selling Mr. Kiyosaki’s book here. I am just applying what he wrote in his book in my real life and I am starting to get the result now. And I am happy with it.

Now, you might asked me then how to make money works for us not vice versa. Well, one ways is that by creating a passive income. Passive income can be sustained by many ways, like Mr. Kiyosaki, he created passive income by dealing in the real estate business. He even joined Amway and he was focusing in this business for 5 years until know he must earned a lot of money from his passive income.

In conclusion, what I want to say is that again you have to open your mind not working with people for the rest of your life. You might need to work with a company for couple years to get enough investment for you to move to business owner quadrant or event moving to the highest level of the quadrant which is an investor quadrant.

The book is highly recommended.

Yochention Saritoh is an internet marketer and a member of Elite Team International and Financial Freedom Society Incorporation. He holds a degree in Master of Science from California State University at Fullerton, USA. If you want to know more how to achieve financial freedom, you can go to http://www.EzInternetIncome.com or e-mail him at Yochention@yahoo.com

Webmasters across the globe are involved in a race to the top of the search engine listings. Everyone has their own set of racing techniques that they swear by, some work well, some not so. However, one thing is certain; if you want to get to the top of the rankings you need inbound links to your site. But how do you get inbound links? Well, you could buy them. That gets pretty expensive. For many keywords the top ranking sites have hundreds if not thousands of inbound links, so unless you have a MEGA promotion budget then you will have to find another way. Writing articles and submitting them to resource sites (such as those listed at www.info-sales.co.uk) is another way to get many inbound links. However, not everyone is an aspiring modern day Shakespeare and not everyone has the time to research, write and then submit articles. Okay, so you don’t have Bill Gates’ bank balance and therefore cannot buy all the links you need. You lack either the expertise or the time to write articles. What can you do? Don’t panic! The secret lies in two words, music to your ears and the answer to your inbound links dilemma… Directory submission.

“Set yourself daily targets…”

In the race to the top of the search engine rankings directory submission has to be the isotonic sports drink. Submitting your site to directories will boost its performance immensely. There are hundreds of high quality free directories available. This means that your wallet will be untouched by the process. Earlier, we discarded the idea of article submission as too time consuming, doesn’t directory submission take time too? Yes. Not much but it does take time. The most time consuming job would be finding the right directories to submit to, however, conveniently other kindly webmasters have already done this for you. A number of quality free directory lists exist on the internet and my recommendation is info-sales.co.uk, a site lists the directories alphabetically, this means that if you’re too busy to submit to all the directories at once then you can take it a couple of letters at a time. Set yourself daily targets i.e. today I will submit my site to the directories under A, B and C and tomorrow I will do D, E and F. This way you will get your site listed on every directory on the list in no time at all. Alongside each listing is a measure of the popularity of the directory (Google Page Rank), this means that if you are short of time you can select the more highly ranked directories to submit to first.

“…there is clear evidence that directory submission works.”

Directory submission is a well established and often overlooked search engine optimisation strategy. Unlike many new techniques travelling along the webmaster grapevine, there is clear evidence that directory submission works. Before submiting to free directories, http://www.Info-sales.co.uk had a google page rank of exactly zero. Now, after submission, just one page rank update later, the same site is at google page rank 4. This is not a unique case. Right, so you’re convinced of the need to submit your site but want some more tips and tricks to help you along the way. Firstly, many directories require an email address to allow them to verify your listing, I would strongly recommend that you use a free email address rather than a company one. Gaining inbound links is important but there is no need to clutter your inbox in the process. Secondly, when entering your website url, unless the form specifically instructs you not to, remember to include the ‘http://’. This is important because many systems create your listing automatically and without the http:// your link may not work, being treated as a page of the site you have submitted to rather than a link to an external site. My final tip to set you on the right trajectory for your race to the top of the search engine rankings is to enter an accurate, keyword rich but not overtly promotional site description. If you try to use the description as an advert, many free directories will reject your submission. However, if you keep your description accurate and keyword rich it will mean your listing gets accepted and search engines will be able to index your site more accurately.

So how do you get inbound links without spending loads of money and time? Directory submission. Simple as that.

All that is left for me to do is to wish you good luck with your site and all future endeavours.

The author, Lee Munson, is also the owner of http://www.whatsmylinkpop.com, a useful tool for checking your backlinks after you have put all the hard work into your submissions.