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Casual Articles - Web Design for Marketing and Communications Professionals: 10 Ways to Improve Your Site
Online Marketing Reviews visit? Are they getting it fast?
I did a search for online marketing reviews and most sites were the same.They all talk about how they reviewed thousands of online business opportuntities and after all the online marketing reviews they did, there was only one that was "numero uno" in their eyes.Further research shows that most of these site resell a marketing course and are funnelling people towards a sales page with all the online marketing reviews they do.I came across another online marketing review site which does things differently. This site features online marketing reviews, but the reviews are done by people with firsthand experience with the products, programs, and gurus being reviews.The online marketing reviews on this site are firsthand reviews by people paid to write about their experiences. They may not b One common roadblock to having a truly effective website is a lack of personnel to actually keep it up. If your company has someone who updates your site regularly, you're in great shape. Do an audit; see if you're appealing to the selfish drive of the people who visit your site and if you're providing them with what they need when they visit. Discuss the pitfalls in your website with coworkers and figure out a remedy. Be creative about what you offer your public to get them to your site and keep them coming back. Prize incentives are effective but can be expensive. Links to relevant articles, a monthly e-newsletter, o Moonlighting - Do You Need To Let Your Clients Know? Marketing and communications professionals are constantly looking for creative ways to promote their businesses and organizations. It's a way of life. Where a normal person sees a refrigerator magnet, a marketing specialist sees a chance at continuous visibility. Where a normal person sees a free postcard, a marketing specialist sees potential publicity for his company's new service. Where a normal person sees a collection of pictures and words online and calls it a website, a marketing specialist often does the same thing, and that's a problem.Moonlighting is one of the most common ways computer consultants start their own businesses. It offers the distinct benefit of having access to a steady income while you are building a business.The problem with moonlighting is the hours. When you work for clients while moonlighting you will only be able to get to their businesses on your off hours. Very often your off hours are their off hours too. So the question is then, "Do you let your clients know you are moonlighting?"Some people feel there is a negative stigma attached to a business when the owner is moonlighting. Perhaps they aren't taking it seriously, it is a secondary source of income, they aren't good enough to do it full time, etc... Moonlighting does not imply any of these things. Do not hesitate being honest with your clients about it.You need to address the fact that you are moonlighting head on. If you don't, their expe The web is our most powerful, yet most neglected tool in marketing. Very few organizations truly take advantage of its power. Many of my clients become my clients because they need to update their branding. They need a new logo, office materials and marketing materials. They most often have a website, but it typically isn't what they want to update first. When I ask employees what they want to get out of new branding, the answer is either "nicer business cards and things to send/give out" or "don't bother me." This is a tremendous insight into that fact that selfishness is a huge motivator. Employees rarely visit their company website unless it's their job to do so. They personally give out their business cards and other collateral and they want those materials to reflect well on them. Or, in the "don't bother me" group, they just want to do their jobs and don't want to be hassled by some annoying designer. At any rate, the website becomes secondary and employee's needs are first. The lesson here is this: if you want to get into the mind of your market, you have to discover what selfish need they have that will get them to visit your website and give you business. The web is powerful because it provides instant answers for people actively searching for information. The web is not just about pajama-clad 20-somethings looking to buy CDs before bedtime. Every demographic imaginable has representatives online actively seeking you out. For example, a company employs a PR specialist to help build business. That PR specialist knows that she needs to align the company with a charity to offset some of the company's prior bad behavior and create a story for a press release. If she stumbles on your organization's website and reads about your history, annual events and contact information, she may move on. But if your website discusses how your services dramatically helped specific people, how you are growing each year, how if she gives over $5,000 her company will be listed in every publication you produce, and how your corporate donor program has positively affected another company like hers, she may pick up the phone to talk to you. Throw in a choice of a free Spa package at the local tr?s-chic spa or 10 free movie passes with her $5,000 donation and she may just send a check. Here's another example: I am redesigning the website of a geography-themed game company based in Redmond, Washington. Their site currently provides detailed information about their games and lists where the games are available for purchase. The images are large-easy to see but tough to load. All of the information about each game is provided at once. In addition to implementing a way for people to buy the games directly online, the main purpose of the redesign is to give visitors some choices. They are able to decide how much information they need by reading a few sentences about each game and then clicking if they want to read more. Or, they can opt just to go buy the game and read nothing. Or, they can take the geography quiz on the home page and see if they are smarter than most of the population. It's always nice to get an answer correct and read "Good for you-you did better than 92% of the people who took this quiz." (People like to be told that they're smart, but they love to be told that idiots populate the world and they're not one of them). The 92% who get it wrong just have another incentive to buy one of the educational games. The point is to make the site about the visitors, not the company. No one visits your website for you. They visit your website for themselves. The things that you think are important about your company or organization really don't matter unless they drive visitors to your site. For example, most websites outline a company philosophy, culture or mission. Go check out your web stats and see how many people return to that page. That information can certainly be on your site, but for your own professional health, take it off the home page. Put it somewhere that people only have to see if they really want to. Besides, a visitor will interpret your culture and philosophy by the design quality of your site before they ever read a word. A powerful website allows your company or organization more options and exposure than any other medium. You can experiment. You can change and update information freely. You can tell your public about special events, new products, case studies, or research that you are doing at virtually no cost. You can connect your customers to other useful companies. Chances are, if you're reading this, you or your employer has a website. Answer these ten questions about your website and see if there is room for improvement.
One common roadblock to having a truly effective website is a lack of personnel to actually keep it up. If your company has someone who updates your site regularly, you're in great shape. Do an audit; see if you're appealing to the selfish drive of the people who visit your site and if you're providing them with what they need when they visit. Discuss the pitfalls in your website with coworkers and figure out a remedy. Be creative about what you offer your public to get them to your site and keep them coming back. Prize incentives are effective but can be expensive. Links to relevant articles, a monthly e-newsletter, or Legal Ways to Make Easy Money em. Or, in the "don't bother me" group, they just want to do their jobs and don't want to be hassled by some annoying designer. At any rate, the website becomes secondary and employee's needs are first.The process of making money may either be legal or illegal. Accepting money in return for selling a product or a service is legal as per the business rules. Therefore making money through legal ways always keeps you on the safest side. All governments support legal ways of making money.According to economists, there are mainly two reliable legal ways of making money in the United States. One is from the employer?s point of view, the maximum utilization of the physical and mental skills of workers where there is no consideration whatsoever of the well-being of the workers. Another method of making money legally is from the employee side where it is through salary. The workers will benefit when a company increases the compensations and at the same time the employer will make a turnover while boosting efficiency. Both these methods are beneficial to the company and partially to company workers.Fo The lesson here is this: if you want to get into the mind of your market, you have to discover what selfish need they have that will get them to visit your website and give you business. The web is powerful because it provides instant answers for people actively searching for information. The web is not just about pajama-clad 20-somethings looking to buy CDs before bedtime. Every demographic imaginable has representatives online actively seeking you out. For example, a company employs a PR specialist to help build business. That PR specialist knows that she needs to align the company with a charity to offset some of the company's prior bad behavior and create a story for a press release. If she stumbles on your organization's website and reads about your history, annual events and contact information, she may move on. But if your website discusses how your services dramatically helped specific people, how you are growing each year, how if she gives over $5,000 her company will be listed in every publication you produce, and how your corporate donor program has positively affected another company like hers, she may pick up the phone to talk to you. Throw in a choice of a free Spa package at the local tr?s-chic spa or 10 free movie passes with her $5,000 donation and she may just send a check. Here's another example: I am redesigning the website of a geography-themed game company based in Redmond, Washington. Their site currently provides detailed information about their games and lists where the games are available for purchase. The images are large-easy to see but tough to load. All of the information about each game is provided at once. In addition to implementing a way for people to buy the games directly online, the main purpose of the redesign is to give visitors some choices. They are able to decide how much information they need by reading a few sentences about each game and then clicking if they want to read more. Or, they can opt just to go buy the game and read nothing. Or, they can take the geography quiz on the home page and see if they are smarter than most of the population. It's always nice to get an answer correct and read "Good for you-you did better than 92% of the people who took this quiz." (People like to be told that they're smart, but they love to be told that idiots populate the world and they're not one of them). The 92% who get it wrong just have another incentive to buy one of the educational games. The point is to make the site about the visitors, not the company. No one visits your website for you. They visit your website for themselves. The things that you think are important about your company or organization really don't matter unless they drive visitors to your site. For example, most websites outline a company philosophy, culture or mission. Go check out your web stats and see how many people return to that page. That information can certainly be on your site, but for your own professional health, take it off the home page. Put it somewhere that people only have to see if they really want to. Besides, a visitor will interpret your culture and philosophy by the design quality of your site before they ever read a word. A powerful website allows your company or organization more options and exposure than any other medium. You can experiment. You can change and update information freely. You can tell your public about special events, new products, case studies, or research that you are doing at virtually no cost. You can connect your customers to other useful companies. Chances are, if you're reading this, you or your employer has a website. Answer these ten questions about your website and see if there is room for improvement.
One common roadblock to having a truly effective website is a lack of personnel to actually keep it up. If your company has someone who updates your site regularly, you're in great shape. Do an audit; see if you're appealing to the selfish drive of the people who visit your site and if you're providing them with what they need when they visit. Discuss the pitfalls in your website with coworkers and figure out a remedy. Be creative about what you offer your public to get them to your site and keep them coming back. Prize incentives are effective but can be expensive. Links to relevant articles, a monthly e-newsletter, o Never Punish Yourself or Others for Failures e phone to talk to you. Throw in a choice of a free Spa package at the local tr?s-chic spa or 10 free movie passes with her $5,000 donation and she may just send a check.If you want to find success in various ramifications, be it in business or personal relationship, don’t punish yourself or others for mistakes, or blunders, or failures, instead encourage yourself.Kim Woo—Choong, founder and chairman of Daewoo, said, “One of my employee went to a casino and lost $10, 000 of the company’s money which would certainly get him fired by a normal manager. I didn’t fire him, but paid the money back to the company myself and gave him a second chance.”“Why didn’t you fire me?” the employee asked.“I’ve just spent $10, 000 educating you. If you have the confidence to beat a casino dealer, then I want you to use it to create business.”Use your failures to create success. You can only advance in life or business if you use your failure. People fail in life and business because they are ashamed of there mistakes, blunders, and failures—they hide it, ignore it, and co Here's another example: I am redesigning the website of a geography-themed game company based in Redmond, Washington. Their site currently provides detailed information about their games and lists where the games are available for purchase. The images are large-easy to see but tough to load. All of the information about each game is provided at once. In addition to implementing a way for people to buy the games directly online, the main purpose of the redesign is to give visitors some choices. They are able to decide how much information they need by reading a few sentences about each game and then clicking if they want to read more. Or, they can opt just to go buy the game and read nothing. Or, they can take the geography quiz on the home page and see if they are smarter than most of the population. It's always nice to get an answer correct and read "Good for you-you did better than 92% of the people who took this quiz." (People like to be told that they're smart, but they love to be told that idiots populate the world and they're not one of them). The 92% who get it wrong just have another incentive to buy one of the educational games. The point is to make the site about the visitors, not the company. No one visits your website for you. They visit your website for themselves. The things that you think are important about your company or organization really don't matter unless they drive visitors to your site. For example, most websites outline a company philosophy, culture or mission. Go check out your web stats and see how many people return to that page. That information can certainly be on your site, but for your own professional health, take it off the home page. Put it somewhere that people only have to see if they really want to. Besides, a visitor will interpret your culture and philosophy by the design quality of your site before they ever read a word. A powerful website allows your company or organization more options and exposure than any other medium. You can experiment. You can change and update information freely. You can tell your public about special events, new products, case studies, or research that you are doing at virtually no cost. You can connect your customers to other useful companies. Chances are, if you're reading this, you or your employer has a website. Answer these ten questions about your website and see if there is room for improvement.
One common roadblock to having a truly effective website is a lack of personnel to actually keep it up. If your company has someone who updates your site regularly, you're in great shape. Do an audit; see if you're appealing to the selfish drive of the people who visit your site and if you're providing them with what they need when they visit. Discuss the pitfalls in your website with coworkers and figure out a remedy. Be creative about what you offer your public to get them to your site and keep them coming back. Prize incentives are effective but can be expensive. Links to relevant articles, a monthly e-newsletter, o 20 Proven Tips to Avoid Hiring Mistakes ke the site about the visitors, not the company.GREAT COMPANIES MUST ATTRACT GREAT PEOPLEI have told everyone who would listen that the best business book BY FAR that I have ever read is Good to Great by Jim Collins. This book is must-reading for any owner or manager who has aspirations to lead his or her company to greatness.RULE #1: To be a great company you must have the RIGHT PEOPLE ON THE BUS and in the RIGHT SEAT ON THE BUS, meaning that you not only must hire the right people, but the right people must be in the right job.RULE #2: If you have a person or people in your company that you have given up on; that is, people who don’t fit or are not achieving acceptable levels of performance…go ahead and terminate them. You’re doing them no favors if you rob them of months or years they could be productive for another organization.BILL LEE’S 20 BEST HIRING RIGHT TIPS1. Look on the applicant’s resume or application for clues a No one visits your website for you. They visit your website for themselves. The things that you think are important about your company or organization really don't matter unless they drive visitors to your site. For example, most websites outline a company philosophy, culture or mission. Go check out your web stats and see how many people return to that page. That information can certainly be on your site, but for your own professional health, take it off the home page. Put it somewhere that people only have to see if they really want to. Besides, a visitor will interpret your culture and philosophy by the design quality of your site before they ever read a word. A powerful website allows your company or organization more options and exposure than any other medium. You can experiment. You can change and update information freely. You can tell your public about special events, new products, case studies, or research that you are doing at virtually no cost. You can connect your customers to other useful companies. Chances are, if you're reading this, you or your employer has a website. Answer these ten questions about your website and see if there is room for improvement.
One common roadblock to having a truly effective website is a lack of personnel to actually keep it up. If your company has someone who updates your site regularly, you're in great shape. Do an audit; see if you're appealing to the selfish drive of the people who visit your site and if you're providing them with what they need when they visit. Discuss the pitfalls in your website with coworkers and figure out a remedy. Be creative about what you offer your public to get them to your site and keep them coming back. Prize incentives are effective but can be expensive. Links to relevant articles, a monthly e-newsletter, o Risk Management Jobs – A Career as a Risk Manager visit? Are they getting it fast?
Jobs in risk management involve investigating the levels of risk associated with the clients, and help consider how those risks might be minimized. The position is quite important, as it provides the policy writers with the information that they need to write an effective policy and determine an accurate premium. They are rewarded for their hard work by the ability to work from home, and often the provision of a company car for their frequent local business travel.The education for the job usually involves a graduate degree, however few companies will accept graduate straight out of university. Instead, many companies prefer to hear that an applicant has previous experience in the industry, and previous experience with the company in question is even better as long as the experience was mutually positive. Communication skills are extremely important, and confidence plays a key role in allowing you to ta One common roadblock to having a truly effective website is a lack of personnel to actually keep it up. If your company has someone who updates your site regularly, you're in great shape. Do an audit; see if you're appealing to the selfish drive of the people who visit your site and if you're providing them with what they need when they visit. Discuss the pitfalls in your website with coworkers and figure out a remedy. Be creative about what you offer your public to get them to your site and keep them coming back. Prize incentives are effective but can be expensive. Links to relevant articles, a monthly e-newsletter, or weekly trivia games also work well. If you don't have a person who regularly updates your site, find one. Either a regular employee or a contract employee willing to give you a certain number of hours per month will work. When you come up with an obscenely effective way to increase your business, you want someone there to update your website immediately. Ultimately, if you think about your website with a sense of relief that it pulls its weight by increasing your bottom line, you're in the right place. If not, take yourself to a spa or a movie, and get ready to embark on your most important marketing project ever.
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