I have been using Skype for over a year now and though it took a while to change the habit I am now using SkypeOut regularly to call to land line and mobile phones and what a saving. I have even set up a London number 0208 1235672 for people to call me - which is proving very useful - switches to a free Skype Voicemail account of I am out.
If you are not using Skype it really is something to check out - I spent half an our chatting to a friend in South Africa the other week - no cost - because that was Skype to Skype but I think a lot of people think Skype is all about PC to PC communications - most of my Skype calls now are PC to land line and if you sign up and buy £10 of Skype credit at the moment they are giving away six months free calls to UK landlines - for me an offer too good to miss
If you are not using Skype Check it out - my Skype ID is rikkiarundel but if you look in the sidebar you will also see a button that lets you know if I am on-line - click on that and you can connect me.
Skype - The whole world can talk for free.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Rikki Arundel - PEPPTalk Speaker Showreel
I have started looking at how to use video more effectively both on my web sites and on my blogs. There are so many resources around now to help it is amazing and the great thing is that these resources are free.
There are four main sites where you can upload video and share it with the world.
YouTube
Google
MySpace
Yahoo
Most sites limit the size of the video to 100 Mb - which is about 10 minutes - though if you sign up for a director account on YouTube - you can upload longer video. At this stage I am still exploring, however the good thing I have discovered is that as a speaker I can now embed my showreel video in my blog here as you can see below, on my Professional Speaking Page and on my Speaking and Marketing Tips site. Other sites like The Ecademy and Squidoo have a YouTube embed link. Embeding a video means that it appears directly in the page and plays there - the visitor does not need to click on a link to the hosting site to view it.
In addition I can add the link to all the social bookmark sites like del.icio.us and ma.gnolia which also help to improve search engine rankings. Video is really taking off on the web and I am about to explore a number of other options available for video email and video and audio auto play on web pages. But one thing is clear - pretty soon most sites are going to be showing video and as a speaker not using it is going to be a real challenge.
My PeppTalk Showreel
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
There are four main sites where you can upload video and share it with the world.
YouTube
MySpace
Yahoo
Most sites limit the size of the video to 100 Mb - which is about 10 minutes - though if you sign up for a director account on YouTube - you can upload longer video. At this stage I am still exploring, however the good thing I have discovered is that as a speaker I can now embed my showreel video in my blog here as you can see below, on my Professional Speaking Page and on my Speaking and Marketing Tips site. Other sites like The Ecademy and Squidoo have a YouTube embed link. Embeding a video means that it appears directly in the page and plays there - the visitor does not need to click on a link to the hosting site to view it.
In addition I can add the link to all the social bookmark sites like del.icio.us and ma.gnolia which also help to improve search engine rankings. Video is really taking off on the web and I am about to explore a number of other options available for video email and video and audio auto play on web pages. But one thing is clear - pretty soon most sites are going to be showing video and as a speaker not using it is going to be a real challenge.
My PeppTalk Showreel
| 7 minute edited version of Rikki Arundel's PEPPTalk Motivational Speech on how to write and deliver and outstanding speech. Great resource for anyone needing to become a better public speaker, especially relevant to women in business. | |
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Struggling to Use Social Bookmarking as a Marketing Stratregy
I have been using Del.icio.us for quite a while now, initially as an online repository for links I wanted to access when working on other computers and also to share links with friends who have similar interests. Of course I could also see the potential in social bookmarking in increasing popularity by creating back links to my site and recently when I began using Squidoo, a group of us on the Ecademy agreed to bookmark each others lenses to see whether this would have much impact on our ranking. Unfortunately the idea didn't really take off beyond the initial flurry of interest.
One reason was that it is a little time consuming. We each tried to help by posting our lens URLs with the titles, notes and tags on the forum, but posting three or four lenses for each member was going to take too much time and we had no idea what impact it would have. I could also see that, for this to really work it would be necessary to submit to more than one social bookmarking site. I have bookmarklets in my browser toolbars for both Del.icio.us and Yahoo My Web - these bookmarklets automatically add the URL and title of the page - but leave you to manually add notes and tags so it still takes a lot of time and when I started looking at Furl and Blink and .... I had no idea how many there were and there simply is not enough room on my browser for all those bookmarklets.
My Speaking and Marketing Tips site is a Site Build It site - and one advantage of that is the remarkable forum of members who are very knowledgable and post practical solutions to a lot of challenges. One solution that emerged was some code deveeloped for Site Build It owners that would enable us to display "Add to" bookmarklets for nine social bookmarking sites. If you have not used these links they work the same way as bookmarklets in the browser and encourage visitors to save the page. The problem is that even this was not keeping up with the huge growth in sites. And some of them like Technorati and Google are not really social bookmarking sites anyway.
Then I launched my own Article Directory, and got some help from Jodi, a web developer in the USA who I noticed was using a couple of submission sites - Socializer and OnlyWire. There are links to both of these in the side panel - Social Bookmark This Page takes you to Socializer and OnlyWire is just below it.
Socializer works like my "add to links" bookmarklets except that it takes you to a page full of them (nearly 50 and I know there are more). However from there you still have to link to each separately - Great for your visitors who are using one or two sites although to be honest most visitors like me should have browser based bookmarkets for their favourite sites.
OnlyWire on the other hand is a bulk submission site (at present the only one) which will summit the page to 15 social bookmark sites - including all the the leading ones. However it is not without its bugs - two of the links don't work properly and two of the links do weird things with the tags. You can see my reviews of them all here. I am hopefull that OnlyWire will fix the problems and add some missing links like Yahoo My Web soon because this really is a time saving tool. Even with only 11 really working it is as quick to submit to them all as it is to submit to a single site. And don't worry about submitting a link twoce - the site picks that up and updates your information.
One big advantage of posting to social bookmark sites is that the top sites do have huge amounts of traffic and high page ranks - I have noticed that my links on sites are already turning up in good positions in seach results.
As I wrote this post I became increasingly aware that this might be all goggledygook to many of my friends who still struggle with technology, so I have produced a few pages on the topic on my web site - very much an in evelopment section because the whole topic is developing and I will be producing a Squidoo lens on the subject in few weeks.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
One reason was that it is a little time consuming. We each tried to help by posting our lens URLs with the titles, notes and tags on the forum, but posting three or four lenses for each member was going to take too much time and we had no idea what impact it would have. I could also see that, for this to really work it would be necessary to submit to more than one social bookmarking site. I have bookmarklets in my browser toolbars for both Del.icio.us and Yahoo My Web - these bookmarklets automatically add the URL and title of the page - but leave you to manually add notes and tags so it still takes a lot of time and when I started looking at Furl and Blink and .... I had no idea how many there were and there simply is not enough room on my browser for all those bookmarklets.
My Speaking and Marketing Tips site is a Site Build It site - and one advantage of that is the remarkable forum of members who are very knowledgable and post practical solutions to a lot of challenges. One solution that emerged was some code deveeloped for Site Build It owners that would enable us to display "Add to" bookmarklets for nine social bookmarking sites. If you have not used these links they work the same way as bookmarklets in the browser and encourage visitors to save the page. The problem is that even this was not keeping up with the huge growth in sites. And some of them like Technorati and Google are not really social bookmarking sites anyway.
Then I launched my own Article Directory, and got some help from Jodi, a web developer in the USA who I noticed was using a couple of submission sites - Socializer and OnlyWire. There are links to both of these in the side panel - Social Bookmark This Page takes you to Socializer and OnlyWire is just below it.
01/01/2007 update
Since writing this article I have discovered AdThis which I prefer to Socializer - You will see the AsThis buttons at the foot of this post and in the sidebar for both social bookmarking and feed subscriptions - works the same way but enables me to put a link at the foot of each post.
Socializer works like my "add to links" bookmarklets except that it takes you to a page full of them (nearly 50 and I know there are more). However from there you still have to link to each separately - Great for your visitors who are using one or two sites although to be honest most visitors like me should have browser based bookmarkets for their favourite sites.
OnlyWire on the other hand is a bulk submission site (at present the only one) which will summit the page to 15 social bookmark sites - including all the the leading ones. However it is not without its bugs - two of the links don't work properly and two of the links do weird things with the tags. You can see my reviews of them all here. I am hopefull that OnlyWire will fix the problems and add some missing links like Yahoo My Web soon because this really is a time saving tool. Even with only 11 really working it is as quick to submit to them all as it is to submit to a single site. And don't worry about submitting a link twoce - the site picks that up and updates your information.
One big advantage of posting to social bookmark sites is that the top sites do have huge amounts of traffic and high page ranks - I have noticed that my links on sites are already turning up in good positions in seach results.
As I wrote this post I became increasingly aware that this might be all goggledygook to many of my friends who still struggle with technology, so I have produced a few pages on the topic on my web site - very much an in evelopment section because the whole topic is developing and I will be producing a Squidoo lens on the subject in few weeks.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Performancing - Makes Blogging Easier to Manage
Performancing.com | Helping Bloggers Succeed
I am still exploring what this site can do - but there are two features that have already become indispensible to me
The first is the firefox extention. (If you are still using internet explorer - you should have got the message by not - all the really cool developments on the web are now happening with Firefox) This makes it really easy to publish blogs and comes with a neet and much better WYSIWYG editor than blogger. (not seen the new service yet)
The second tool is the tracking service - do you know how many people, or as I have discovered how few people are actually reading your blog - well just add a line to your template and you can have up to date metrics on all the activities - including how may people are clicking on your adsense links and which of your blog posts are getting the most attention.
Finally the bit I have yet to get to, you get to join blogging community - and either lurk (read all the posts without actually getting involved - thats what I am doing first) or you can post your own blog posts and comments and find out how to make your blog more successful. This site has a Google Page Rank of 7 so posting blogs here is going to do your own site popularity a few favours anyway.
If you are using Firefox - I strongly recommend this site. If you are not using Firefox - trust me - It is free to download and will transform your browsing experience. You may already understand what Web 2.0 is - if not it's all about the evolution of the web from it's information providing phase to a new interactive and collaberative phase. Internet Explorer is a web 1.0 tool - Firefox is web 2.0.
Performancing.com | Helping Bloggers Succeed
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
I am still exploring what this site can do - but there are two features that have already become indispensible to me
The first is the firefox extention. (If you are still using internet explorer - you should have got the message by not - all the really cool developments on the web are now happening with Firefox) This makes it really easy to publish blogs and comes with a neet and much better WYSIWYG editor than blogger. (not seen the new service yet)
The second tool is the tracking service - do you know how many people, or as I have discovered how few people are actually reading your blog - well just add a line to your template and you can have up to date metrics on all the activities - including how may people are clicking on your adsense links and which of your blog posts are getting the most attention.
Finally the bit I have yet to get to, you get to join blogging community - and either lurk (read all the posts without actually getting involved - thats what I am doing first) or you can post your own blog posts and comments and find out how to make your blog more successful. This site has a Google Page Rank of 7 so posting blogs here is going to do your own site popularity a few favours anyway.
If you are using Firefox - I strongly recommend this site. If you are not using Firefox - trust me - It is free to download and will transform your browsing experience. You may already understand what Web 2.0 is - if not it's all about the evolution of the web from it's information providing phase to a new interactive and collaberative phase. Internet Explorer is a web 1.0 tool - Firefox is web 2.0.
Performancing.com | Helping Bloggers Succeed
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
The Importance of Long Tail Marketing
I have increasingly been hearing about Long Tail Marketing recently and made a point today to check it out. If this is a term that is unfamiliar to you stay with me. If you know what Long Tail Marketing, is but would like to know more I have added some links and resources to my Small Business Marketing Lens, including an interview with and presentaton by Chis Anderson the editor in Chief whose Article in October 2004 started it all, and a link to his lens.
So what is Long Tail Marketing and why is it so important for Small Businesses.
First there is nothing new about the Long tail. It is a statistical term derived from a distribution scattergram. If we plot numbers of people up the left axis of the graph and number of products along the bottom, the Long Tail is the section with lots of products being purchased by small number of people and is represented by the yellow section of the graph.
Imagine you go into a book store to buy a Harry Potter book - the chances are you will find a copy in most stores. It is in the red section of the graph - "The Head." It is produced in huge quantities and stocked by all leading stores. But what if you wanted a copy of a Spell Book for Wizards and Witches. The chances are you are going to have to find a small specialist shop or search online. Now you are in the Long Tail where products appeal to a small number of specialist buyers.
Large companies have generally not been interested in the long tail because they cannot afford to stock everything and the cost or reaching small numbers of people is uneconomic in tradition business models. But they are waking up because Amazon now achieves more sales in the long tail than it does with the blockbusters. Why? Because it does not have to hold the stock. Either a specialist supplier advertises in the markeplace or Amazon orders the book for you when you buy it.
But more than this - the internet now has over 1 billion users worldwide and search engines make it easier to find a niche product supplier in the long tail than in the head. Type "Marketing" into Google and you are going to get 1.5 billion responses. Search for "marketing for voluntary organisations" and there are about 700 responses. If you are targeting that market the chances of being found are quite high because there is little competition - whereas getting seen at all in the mass market is increasingly difficult for new small businesses.
Large companies simply do not have the resources to deliver to many niche markets so they don't bother, but increasinlgy we as consumers are deciding that we are not prepared to put up with the general mass market products - we want unique, customised, focused products that exactly meet our needs.
Understanding the long tail is critical for all small businesses, yet when I am networking I constantly find that people with small businesses are trying to reach everyone. When I ask who are your customers I hear, "everyone." If you try to appeal to everyone - you will lose the niche markets. Small businesses cannot serve everyone - there is a limit to how much business you can manage, so why not become THE supplier to your niche and work the long tail, instead of trying to compete with major corporations in the head.
Do visit my Small Business Marketing Lens on Squidoo for links and information on this important strategy.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
So what is Long Tail Marketing and why is it so important for Small Businesses.
First there is nothing new about the Long tail. It is a statistical term derived from a distribution scattergram. If we plot numbers of people up the left axis of the graph and number of products along the bottom, the Long Tail is the section with lots of products being purchased by small number of people and is represented by the yellow section of the graph.Imagine you go into a book store to buy a Harry Potter book - the chances are you will find a copy in most stores. It is in the red section of the graph - "The Head." It is produced in huge quantities and stocked by all leading stores. But what if you wanted a copy of a Spell Book for Wizards and Witches. The chances are you are going to have to find a small specialist shop or search online. Now you are in the Long Tail where products appeal to a small number of specialist buyers.
Large companies have generally not been interested in the long tail because they cannot afford to stock everything and the cost or reaching small numbers of people is uneconomic in tradition business models. But they are waking up because Amazon now achieves more sales in the long tail than it does with the blockbusters. Why? Because it does not have to hold the stock. Either a specialist supplier advertises in the markeplace or Amazon orders the book for you when you buy it.
But more than this - the internet now has over 1 billion users worldwide and search engines make it easier to find a niche product supplier in the long tail than in the head. Type "Marketing" into Google and you are going to get 1.5 billion responses. Search for "marketing for voluntary organisations" and there are about 700 responses. If you are targeting that market the chances of being found are quite high because there is little competition - whereas getting seen at all in the mass market is increasingly difficult for new small businesses.
Large companies simply do not have the resources to deliver to many niche markets so they don't bother, but increasinlgy we as consumers are deciding that we are not prepared to put up with the general mass market products - we want unique, customised, focused products that exactly meet our needs.
Understanding the long tail is critical for all small businesses, yet when I am networking I constantly find that people with small businesses are trying to reach everyone. When I ask who are your customers I hear, "everyone." If you try to appeal to everyone - you will lose the niche markets. Small businesses cannot serve everyone - there is a limit to how much business you can manage, so why not become THE supplier to your niche and work the long tail, instead of trying to compete with major corporations in the head.
Do visit my Small Business Marketing Lens on Squidoo for links and information on this important strategy.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Speaking about Transgender History
Well I had some fun yesterday. I have spoken at just about every sort of venue, but yesterday was a new experience - I was speaking at a Shopping Centre, right in the centre of the Princess Quays shopping centre in Hull on a busy Friday morning.
It was not without its challenges I have to say.
First the technology did not work - I don't often use PowerPoint these days mostly because I am trying to teach people how to create great speaches and it takes a considerable skill do that and use PowerPoint. The topic of transgender history lends itself to powerpoint because it is a very visual history, but with the technical problems I had to go on without slides and still managed to hold a very transient audience for 30 minutes.
The event was a Hate Crime awareness event - with lots of dignatories around, so it did not do my reputaiton and personal brand any harm. The other challenge was the awful acoustics in a cavernous indoor shopping centre - I have faced the challenges of Speakers Corner in London and a number of outside events, but this was very different.
I believe that most hate crime and discrimination is caused by ignorance and so I try to tackle this as far as trans people are concerned by raising awareness with an entertaining look at the history of trans people. Reclaiming and publicising our long history is a great way to help people see us in a different light.
I can't give you the speech here but I can give you something the Hull Citizens missed - the visual tour - Please visit this Squidoo lens for a fascinating journey through a very colourful Transgender History
TransHistory - A Colourful Past and Present on Squidoo
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
It was not without its challenges I have to say.
First the technology did not work - I don't often use PowerPoint these days mostly because I am trying to teach people how to create great speaches and it takes a considerable skill do that and use PowerPoint. The topic of transgender history lends itself to powerpoint because it is a very visual history, but with the technical problems I had to go on without slides and still managed to hold a very transient audience for 30 minutes.
The event was a Hate Crime awareness event - with lots of dignatories around, so it did not do my reputaiton and personal brand any harm. The other challenge was the awful acoustics in a cavernous indoor shopping centre - I have faced the challenges of Speakers Corner in London and a number of outside events, but this was very different.
I believe that most hate crime and discrimination is caused by ignorance and so I try to tackle this as far as trans people are concerned by raising awareness with an entertaining look at the history of trans people. Reclaiming and publicising our long history is a great way to help people see us in a different light.
I can't give you the speech here but I can give you something the Hull Citizens missed - the visual tour - Please visit this Squidoo lens for a fascinating journey through a very colourful Transgender History
TransHistory - A Colourful Past and Present on Squidoo
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Friday, August 18, 2006
Jobs for the Girls: Surviving in a Man's World - Monster.co.uk
I spend a great deal of my time working with women in business and it is surprising how many still have problems day to day in dealing with men in the office. All too often I see women observing successful men in busines and then making the mistake of trying to replicate their behaviour.
Men and women do business differently - and right now the qualities most needed in business those natural strengths most associated with women. I recieved this article this morning from Monster.com which offers some particulary useful advice for women on how to survive in a male environment and stay true to who you are.
Jobs for the Girls: Surviving in a Man's World - Monster.co.uk
Rikki
Free business articles for your Blog or Web site
Men and women do business differently - and right now the qualities most needed in business those natural strengths most associated with women. I recieved this article this morning from Monster.com which offers some particulary useful advice for women on how to survive in a male environment and stay true to who you are.
Jobs for the Girls: Surviving in a Man's World - Monster.co.uk
Rikki
Free business articles for your Blog or Web site
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Squidoo : My Lensmaster Page
What, you might be thinking, is Squidoo?
Squidoo is a free service (in fact you can even earn money with Squidoo) that enables you to create "Lenses" - Views on subjects you are expert in or simply topics you wish to promote. You can use a lens to promote your area of expertise and help establish you as the person to come to. You can be really commercial and use one to promote your business. Or perhaps you have a passion - well you can create a lens to bring together resources and people who share your passion.
Squidoo is not a blog - though you can write items - and you can link your blog and your web site to any or all of your lenses. And yes - you can create as many lenses as you wish. One thing I have discovered is that the more focused the topic on each lens the better. Take a look at the first two lenses I have created - and remember they are still works in progress so do pop back from time to time:
Selling and Marketing to Women
Write and Deliver and Outstanding Speech
But hey - I have only just started exploring this medium so if you want to see what you can do check out this lens from author and founder of Squidoo, Seth Godin (he has lots - see the link to his other lenses) It gave me some great ideas on how to use this new medium and there are lots of other helpful tips once you find your way around.
What you need (okay, want) to know about Seth Godin
Rikki
Squidoo is a free service (in fact you can even earn money with Squidoo) that enables you to create "Lenses" - Views on subjects you are expert in or simply topics you wish to promote. You can use a lens to promote your area of expertise and help establish you as the person to come to. You can be really commercial and use one to promote your business. Or perhaps you have a passion - well you can create a lens to bring together resources and people who share your passion.
Squidoo is not a blog - though you can write items - and you can link your blog and your web site to any or all of your lenses. And yes - you can create as many lenses as you wish. One thing I have discovered is that the more focused the topic on each lens the better. Take a look at the first two lenses I have created - and remember they are still works in progress so do pop back from time to time:
Selling and Marketing to Women
Write and Deliver and Outstanding Speech
But hey - I have only just started exploring this medium so if you want to see what you can do check out this lens from author and founder of Squidoo, Seth Godin (he has lots - see the link to his other lenses) It gave me some great ideas on how to use this new medium and there are lots of other helpful tips once you find your way around.
What you need (okay, want) to know about Seth Godin
Rikki
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Articles That Sell
If you write articles to help promote your web site or blog - here is a great blog I have just found that provides lots of useful tips, advice and links - well worth putting in your RSS links.
Articles That Sell
Articles That Sell
Friday, January 13, 2006
Publish your Blog on your Web Site
Well I am back after a long break to complete a Masters dissertation and am now emersing myself deeply into continuing to develop my web site. Like many people interested in internet marketing I spent a lot of time over December downloading thousands of dollars worth of free ebooks and software and of course trying to understand a lot of new information.
When it come to internet marketing I tend to look for easy to understand solutions. One thing is clear from my December downloads, RSS is becoming more and more important and easier to understand and use - though I think the real explosion will happen when Internet Explorer arrives with a built in RSS reader. Of course for those of us sensible enough to switch to Firefox that has been a reality for a while now.
RSS if you are new to the term apparently means Really Simple Syndication - which means an easy way to publish news feeds and blogs on other sites. You will have seen that many portals like Yahoo, MSN and Google publish news feeds from a variety of sources - RSS is the protocol that enables them to take that news feed or blog and publish it on their web site - and now you can do exactly the same without having to lean any complex programming languages.
If this is beginning to lose you - can I suggest that you go to my web site where I am building pages now to explain and demonstrate the importance of RSS and Blogging and how all businesses should be taking advantage of this new technology. If you already are ahead - you will know that the real shortcoming of a Blog like this is getting people to read it. Well I discovered that there are some free services around that make it a five minute task to publish your Blog on your web site.
Some of the services are simpler that others but these are the three I recommend you have a look at.
RapidFeeds - This is a real all round site which provides a wide range of RSS solutions all free. You can set up your own feeds - So for example you could create a feed notifying readers when ever you change a page on your your web site.
You can creade the code to publish any RSS or Atom feed on your web site. This site offers a choice of different codes - PHP, ASP, Javascript of iFrames. Personally I found the Javascript from here a bit unweildly compared to other sites, but I really like the iFrames. Click here to see this blog published in iFrames on my site which you can see allws me to diaplay items in a small scrollable box.
RSS-to-Javascript.com provides a simple script building service. Just complete a couple of fields and copy the script to your web page in the body of the html - no need to put anything into the header. I had a a few problems getting the beta services that provide scrolling and boxes - but I am sure the bugs will be gone pretty soon. Again Click here to see this blog displayed using this java script - you will need to scroll down the page a bit.
Feed2JS.com is an academic site which provides a similar service - though I found it a little less user friendly - then thats the nature of academic sites - and it seemd to have a problem with my feed however a number of site owners I know are using it with no problems.
Incidentally if you look over on the side panel of this blog - assuming you are reading it in Blogger - you will see that I have also published my web site RSS feed there - so every time I update this blog, it creates new content on my site and every time I update any page on my web site - new content is posted to this blog. Great news.
Rikki
Professional Speaker
Looking for Small Business Marketing Strategies?
Claim your free eBook - How to Get Customers Queuing up to Buy
To publish any articles I have written please click on the Star for details.
When it come to internet marketing I tend to look for easy to understand solutions. One thing is clear from my December downloads, RSS is becoming more and more important and easier to understand and use - though I think the real explosion will happen when Internet Explorer arrives with a built in RSS reader. Of course for those of us sensible enough to switch to Firefox that has been a reality for a while now.
RSS if you are new to the term apparently means Really Simple Syndication - which means an easy way to publish news feeds and blogs on other sites. You will have seen that many portals like Yahoo, MSN and Google publish news feeds from a variety of sources - RSS is the protocol that enables them to take that news feed or blog and publish it on their web site - and now you can do exactly the same without having to lean any complex programming languages.
If this is beginning to lose you - can I suggest that you go to my web site where I am building pages now to explain and demonstrate the importance of RSS and Blogging and how all businesses should be taking advantage of this new technology. If you already are ahead - you will know that the real shortcoming of a Blog like this is getting people to read it. Well I discovered that there are some free services around that make it a five minute task to publish your Blog on your web site.
Some of the services are simpler that others but these are the three I recommend you have a look at.
RapidFeeds - This is a real all round site which provides a wide range of RSS solutions all free. You can set up your own feeds - So for example you could create a feed notifying readers when ever you change a page on your your web site.
You can creade the code to publish any RSS or Atom feed on your web site. This site offers a choice of different codes - PHP, ASP, Javascript of iFrames. Personally I found the Javascript from here a bit unweildly compared to other sites, but I really like the iFrames. Click here to see this blog published in iFrames on my site which you can see allws me to diaplay items in a small scrollable box.
RSS-to-Javascript.com provides a simple script building service. Just complete a couple of fields and copy the script to your web page in the body of the html - no need to put anything into the header. I had a a few problems getting the beta services that provide scrolling and boxes - but I am sure the bugs will be gone pretty soon. Again Click here to see this blog displayed using this java script - you will need to scroll down the page a bit.
Feed2JS.com is an academic site which provides a similar service - though I found it a little less user friendly - then thats the nature of academic sites - and it seemd to have a problem with my feed however a number of site owners I know are using it with no problems.
Incidentally if you look over on the side panel of this blog - assuming you are reading it in Blogger - you will see that I have also published my web site RSS feed there - so every time I update this blog, it creates new content on my site and every time I update any page on my web site - new content is posted to this blog. Great news.
Rikki
Professional Speaker
Looking for Small Business Marketing Strategies?
Claim your free eBook - How to Get Customers Queuing up to Buy
To publish any articles I have written please click on the Star for details. Friday, October 07, 2005
Speak about real Experiences - become a Storyteller
A couple or weeks ago I wrote about the importance, when speaking to network meetings, of answering the question "What do you do?" in a way that tells people how you can help them. I said then that I spend quite a lot of time on my Presentation and Communication Skills for Networkers Workshop on this topic. Still my frustration has always been that despite the fact that I get people early in the day speaking with passion, the moment I tell them to talk about their job they revert to boring corporate speak.
Last week running another workshop by accident I seem to have stumbled on the answer. One delegate, Liz was struggling with how to use stories in a speech about her work as a recruitment coach. "How specifically do you help people?" I asked. As she started to answer generally I asked her to be very specific. She started to tell a story about one client she had helped to be more effective in job seeking but still wanted to keep it anonymous and rather general. "What is her name? What was her problem? How did you help her overcome that problem? I asked.
As Liz became specific about the case, as she started to tell the story her passion and animation returned and I realised what was happening. People take a story and then generalise it instead of retaining the individual story. I immediately started to ask other delegates to tell me their stories - and all were doing the same thing.
Having identified the problem, with a bit more guidance and group diasussion I managed to get most of them to switch to telling specific stories about how they had helped a named client(they could change the name if the felt more comfortable). For the first time I saw these business networking presentations start to come alive.
So if you are explaining what you do at a networking meeting - either one to one or to the group let me suggest a simple approach.
First answer the question, "Who do you specialise in helping and how do you help them? Be very specific - No one person is able to sell to everyone. We all have a niche or preferred market and the more you focus the more successful you will become.
When you have the answer to that clear in your mind, pick a client who typifies the kind of work you do and then answer these questions. "What is their name? What was their problem? How did you help them overcome that problem? You are not trying to sell yourself to an entire audience at a networking meeting - what you are trying to do is make sure that everyone understands clearly what you do - and a real story is the best way to do that.
OK it's possible that only one or two people in the audience will identify personally with the story and approach you, but when you are presenting at a networking meeting the audience is not your target, especially if they are women. You want is for them to recommend you to their network. You want them to be thinking, "That's exactly the problem my friend Jane has - I must tell her about this."
Telling a real life story is the most powerful way to convey what you do and how you help people in a way that is memorable and likely to result in people referring you on to their friends.
Rikki
Professional Speaker
Looking for Small Business Marketing Strategies?
Claim your free eBook - How to Get Customers Queuing up to Buy
To publish any articles I have written please click on the Star for details.
Last week running another workshop by accident I seem to have stumbled on the answer. One delegate, Liz was struggling with how to use stories in a speech about her work as a recruitment coach. "How specifically do you help people?" I asked. As she started to answer generally I asked her to be very specific. She started to tell a story about one client she had helped to be more effective in job seeking but still wanted to keep it anonymous and rather general. "What is her name? What was her problem? How did you help her overcome that problem? I asked.
As Liz became specific about the case, as she started to tell the story her passion and animation returned and I realised what was happening. People take a story and then generalise it instead of retaining the individual story. I immediately started to ask other delegates to tell me their stories - and all were doing the same thing.
Having identified the problem, with a bit more guidance and group diasussion I managed to get most of them to switch to telling specific stories about how they had helped a named client(they could change the name if the felt more comfortable). For the first time I saw these business networking presentations start to come alive.
So if you are explaining what you do at a networking meeting - either one to one or to the group let me suggest a simple approach.
First answer the question, "Who do you specialise in helping and how do you help them? Be very specific - No one person is able to sell to everyone. We all have a niche or preferred market and the more you focus the more successful you will become.
When you have the answer to that clear in your mind, pick a client who typifies the kind of work you do and then answer these questions. "What is their name? What was their problem? How did you help them overcome that problem? You are not trying to sell yourself to an entire audience at a networking meeting - what you are trying to do is make sure that everyone understands clearly what you do - and a real story is the best way to do that.
OK it's possible that only one or two people in the audience will identify personally with the story and approach you, but when you are presenting at a networking meeting the audience is not your target, especially if they are women. You want is for them to recommend you to their network. You want them to be thinking, "That's exactly the problem my friend Jane has - I must tell her about this."
Telling a real life story is the most powerful way to convey what you do and how you help people in a way that is memorable and likely to result in people referring you on to their friends.
Rikki
Professional Speaker
Looking for Small Business Marketing Strategies?
Claim your free eBook - How to Get Customers Queuing up to Buy
To publish any articles I have written please click on the Star for details. Thursday, October 06, 2005
Focus on Positive Outcomes not Problems
I ran a public speaking workshop last week for about 30 life coaches, two of whom were there only because they had been persuaded to be there by the organiser. I can only describe their feelings about speaking in public as near phobic - extreme discomfort.
Because the group was so mixed in abilities I was unable to do any specific phobia cure work and decided to press on with the course as planned, which it transpired was exactly the right action. Had I focused on them specifically I would have brought about the one thing they feared most - being made centre of attention. It's not speaking in public that is the problem for most people it's being the focus of everyone's attention.
As the day progressed they were able to follow the short and simple speaking exercies in groups of six getting loads of really positve feedback from the group and by the end of the day both admitted to me that they were actually excited about having their turn to speak next - what a total transformation.
The whole experience has made me sit back and think hard about how we as speaking coaches work with people who fear speaking in public. That day they were totally focussed on having fun, being positive, speaking from personal experiences, telling life stories and exploring their passions. In fact what we did was to counter balance all the bad experiences of their past and create a set of really good experiences.
It all makes sense now that I look at it - but all too often we focus on the problem. I remember when my children were young watching one of them come into the room with a very full glass of milk. "Don't spill it," I said and or course they immediately did. Why? Because I focused their attention on the idea of spilling it.
Focus on the outcome you want and on having fun achieving that outcome.
Rikki
Professional Speaker
Looking for Small Business Marketing Strategies?
Claim your free eBook - How to Get Customers Queuing up to Buy
To publish any articles I have written please click on the Star for details.
Because the group was so mixed in abilities I was unable to do any specific phobia cure work and decided to press on with the course as planned, which it transpired was exactly the right action. Had I focused on them specifically I would have brought about the one thing they feared most - being made centre of attention. It's not speaking in public that is the problem for most people it's being the focus of everyone's attention.
As the day progressed they were able to follow the short and simple speaking exercies in groups of six getting loads of really positve feedback from the group and by the end of the day both admitted to me that they were actually excited about having their turn to speak next - what a total transformation.
The whole experience has made me sit back and think hard about how we as speaking coaches work with people who fear speaking in public. That day they were totally focussed on having fun, being positive, speaking from personal experiences, telling life stories and exploring their passions. In fact what we did was to counter balance all the bad experiences of their past and create a set of really good experiences.
It all makes sense now that I look at it - but all too often we focus on the problem. I remember when my children were young watching one of them come into the room with a very full glass of milk. "Don't spill it," I said and or course they immediately did. Why? Because I focused their attention on the idea of spilling it.
Focus on the outcome you want and on having fun achieving that outcome.
Rikki
Professional Speaker
Looking for Small Business Marketing Strategies?
Claim your free eBook - How to Get Customers Queuing up to Buy
To publish any articles I have written please click on the Star for details. Tuesday, September 20, 2005
GenderShift - The Greatest Social Change in History
I have just read an article about why the world needs more women leaders - a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with but I couldn't help noticing that the article was written by a man and that there were huge assumptions about the commercial world that were entirely male in concept.
Let me explain. I changed gender four years ago - that is I present a female gender my id documents all say I am female and for the most part I am treated by people as a woman. What a shock that was. Interestingly last week I met someone on a course who told me a story about a friend who had changed gender and then decided to revert to male - the reason. He could not handle the loss of status and recognition that came with being a woman.
Its actually more than that. Now I am going to generalise a lot here and I know what I say is not all men - but in my experience it does apply to the majority. The public world has been created by men for men. Men from child hood are essentially competitive, and position against each other in determining where they rank. Power is determined according to the circumstances - sometimes its money, sometimes its physical strength, sometimes its daring, sometimes it's who can pull the best women. Men don't need a reason to compete just a set of criteria for measuring who won.
So they organise business along the same lines as they used to organise armies. Command and control structures that institutionalise competition and positioning. In business today they call the leaders Captains of Industry, the staff the troups and they all go out to do battle with their competitors. It really does not take a genius to see why women are going to struggle to succeed in this enviromment.
Women are collaborators, they work together not in competition. I am not saying no women compete, but many compete because the system makes it so that they must and they get reputations as "bitches" - Margaret Thatcher revelled in the title the "Iron Lady" - she is I believe in a minority.
When I first experienced networking as a woman I was quite taken aback at how different the experience was. Women made a point of finding out what support I needed and went out of their way to connect me with the right women who could provide it . One women(and I have lost the reference) said "I don't want to be at the top of my organisation, I want to be at the centre of it." This is a totally different structure of organisation based on networks not heirarchies.
Women can and will be great leaders but first they will have to dismantle the male dominated heiracharcial structures which is why so many are bailing out of the corporations to start their own businesses. Why competition - surely if we all collaberate we can overcome the huge disparities of wealth and create a more equitable planet. Why when a corporation is worth $100 billion is it still so focused on economic growth - why not human growth. Because wealth is power and for men the ultimate goal of business is power - it's not the amount that is important, it's having more than the competitors.
We are experiencing GenderShift, the most signifcant social change in recorded history where the influence of women will ultimately transform the world - it's going to be a very different world and one men are going to have some challenges in coming to terms with, but change it will - because one thing the human species is good at is survival and if we continue with the male dominated culture of greed and competition we will not survive.
The GenderShift will take place because the survival of the human race requires it to happen.
Let me explain. I changed gender four years ago - that is I present a female gender my id documents all say I am female and for the most part I am treated by people as a woman. What a shock that was. Interestingly last week I met someone on a course who told me a story about a friend who had changed gender and then decided to revert to male - the reason. He could not handle the loss of status and recognition that came with being a woman.
Its actually more than that. Now I am going to generalise a lot here and I know what I say is not all men - but in my experience it does apply to the majority. The public world has been created by men for men. Men from child hood are essentially competitive, and position against each other in determining where they rank. Power is determined according to the circumstances - sometimes its money, sometimes its physical strength, sometimes its daring, sometimes it's who can pull the best women. Men don't need a reason to compete just a set of criteria for measuring who won.
So they organise business along the same lines as they used to organise armies. Command and control structures that institutionalise competition and positioning. In business today they call the leaders Captains of Industry, the staff the troups and they all go out to do battle with their competitors. It really does not take a genius to see why women are going to struggle to succeed in this enviromment.
Women are collaborators, they work together not in competition. I am not saying no women compete, but many compete because the system makes it so that they must and they get reputations as "bitches" - Margaret Thatcher revelled in the title the "Iron Lady" - she is I believe in a minority.
When I first experienced networking as a woman I was quite taken aback at how different the experience was. Women made a point of finding out what support I needed and went out of their way to connect me with the right women who could provide it . One women(and I have lost the reference) said "I don't want to be at the top of my organisation, I want to be at the centre of it." This is a totally different structure of organisation based on networks not heirarchies.
Women can and will be great leaders but first they will have to dismantle the male dominated heiracharcial structures which is why so many are bailing out of the corporations to start their own businesses. Why competition - surely if we all collaberate we can overcome the huge disparities of wealth and create a more equitable planet. Why when a corporation is worth $100 billion is it still so focused on economic growth - why not human growth. Because wealth is power and for men the ultimate goal of business is power - it's not the amount that is important, it's having more than the competitors.
We are experiencing GenderShift, the most signifcant social change in recorded history where the influence of women will ultimately transform the world - it's going to be a very different world and one men are going to have some challenges in coming to terms with, but change it will - because one thing the human species is good at is survival and if we continue with the male dominated culture of greed and competition we will not survive.
The GenderShift will take place because the survival of the human race requires it to happen.
Monday, September 19, 2005
Focus on Positive Memories to Grow
I have been very busy the past weekend trying to complete my ecourse on how to Overcome your Fear of Public Speaking. I got to day five of the 7 day course and then found myself questioning it and ended up rewriting the first four sections. Throughout the time I have been researching and writing this course one issue keeps coming up - focus on the positive. It's all too easy to focus on the negative.
Last week the USA remembered September 11th and all though the summer in the UK we have been remembering the war, yesterday it was remembering the Battle or Britain and it horrifies me that the media keep reminding us of July whatever date it was (I refuse to remember the date of a bomb attack). It's not that I feel any disrespect for those who lost their lives, far from it, but millions of people lose their lives every day, some in horrible ways. I just don't want my life filled with memories of death and distruction. It happened, I pay my respects to those who died, and move on to fill my life with a celebration of life and renewal and transformation.
It's the same with overcoming fear of speaking - the reason people have that fear is that we anchor powerful negative emotions connected to traumatic events of embarrassment and ridule and then connect them to the act of getting up to speak. To remove those powerful negative anchors we have to erase the memory of the negative experience turning it into something comical. Thats the essence of the NLP Phobia cure.
But here was my dilema - I enjoy speaking because I have attached to the act of speaking in public powerful positive emotional anchors. I do an exercise when I speak about speaking getting people to look at what they like about themselves - very difficult for a lot of people. Another exercise is cataloging all our Moments of Triumph - all those successes in life - We forget so many which is why I like to get out my certificate folder from time to time and look through to remind me of my achievements.
So that was why I had to do a big rewrite. I needed to make sure that the focus on overcoming fear of speaking is to focus on the positive, rebuild or even build self confidence and encourage people instead of focusing on the reasons for the fear, to recall and relive the rich resources and successes of their past.
I am nearly complete - and if you have a problem with fear of Speaking in Public - I really need your help - I am pretty sure that what I am creating will be one fo the most powerful courses ever in helping people to put that fear behind them and actually enjoy speaking in public. The course is available free if you register now - provided you agree to provide some feedback.
Take the Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking in 7 days course for free in September - this really is a once only offer.
Last week the USA remembered September 11th and all though the summer in the UK we have been remembering the war, yesterday it was remembering the Battle or Britain and it horrifies me that the media keep reminding us of July whatever date it was (I refuse to remember the date of a bomb attack). It's not that I feel any disrespect for those who lost their lives, far from it, but millions of people lose their lives every day, some in horrible ways. I just don't want my life filled with memories of death and distruction. It happened, I pay my respects to those who died, and move on to fill my life with a celebration of life and renewal and transformation.
It's the same with overcoming fear of speaking - the reason people have that fear is that we anchor powerful negative emotions connected to traumatic events of embarrassment and ridule and then connect them to the act of getting up to speak. To remove those powerful negative anchors we have to erase the memory of the negative experience turning it into something comical. Thats the essence of the NLP Phobia cure.
But here was my dilema - I enjoy speaking because I have attached to the act of speaking in public powerful positive emotional anchors. I do an exercise when I speak about speaking getting people to look at what they like about themselves - very difficult for a lot of people. Another exercise is cataloging all our Moments of Triumph - all those successes in life - We forget so many which is why I like to get out my certificate folder from time to time and look through to remind me of my achievements.
So that was why I had to do a big rewrite. I needed to make sure that the focus on overcoming fear of speaking is to focus on the positive, rebuild or even build self confidence and encourage people instead of focusing on the reasons for the fear, to recall and relive the rich resources and successes of their past.
I am nearly complete - and if you have a problem with fear of Speaking in Public - I really need your help - I am pretty sure that what I am creating will be one fo the most powerful courses ever in helping people to put that fear behind them and actually enjoy speaking in public. The course is available free if you register now - provided you agree to provide some feedback.
Take the Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking in 7 days course for free in September - this really is a once only offer.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Finding a sense of purpose and an inspired vison
Its been a busy couple of days. Having risen at 4:30 am yesterday to travel over 3 hours to London and deliver an intensive presentations skills workshop before returning home, I was back up again this morning at the same time to travel across country to Blackburn where I was the closing speaker for a fabulous Women in Business conference organised by East Lancs Chamber of Commerce.
One thing that is so wonderful about being a professional speaker is that I get to hear and meet some of the worlds greatest inpirational speakers and today was such a day. Opening the conference was Richard Olivier, son of the the late great Laurence Olivier. Richard's own story is an inspiration in itself. Coming from a family of actors his early life was predictably in acting, and he spent 5 years directing productions at the Globe Theatre in London, but then realised that this was not where his passion lie.
The speech today looked at Shakespeare's Henry V, but not in a literary way, Richard delved into the leadership lessons the play teaches us. I have always been a great Shakespear fan, but today has renewed and further inspired me and 200 other women. Coming from a literary background the presentation was packed with wonderful quotes, not just those of the bard, but others inspirational thinkers on leadership.
My lesson from all this was the inportance of creating an inspired vision and I can best convey some of the message with a few of the quotes that inspired me.
There were so many more but from it all emerged a strategy to reflect back on those moments in my life when I have felt myself to be truly connected with what I was doing, when I couldn't wait to get up in the morning to start work, and from that to analyse what truly inspires me to find my purpose. Then having found a sense of purpose connect to that a vision, a felt reality that others can join and share.
I will keep coming back to this as my project progresses.
One thing that is so wonderful about being a professional speaker is that I get to hear and meet some of the worlds greatest inpirational speakers and today was such a day. Opening the conference was Richard Olivier, son of the the late great Laurence Olivier. Richard's own story is an inspiration in itself. Coming from a family of actors his early life was predictably in acting, and he spent 5 years directing productions at the Globe Theatre in London, but then realised that this was not where his passion lie.
The speech today looked at Shakespeare's Henry V, but not in a literary way, Richard delved into the leadership lessons the play teaches us. I have always been a great Shakespear fan, but today has renewed and further inspired me and 200 other women. Coming from a literary background the presentation was packed with wonderful quotes, not just those of the bard, but others inspirational thinkers on leadership.
My lesson from all this was the inportance of creating an inspired vision and I can best convey some of the message with a few of the quotes that inspired me.
"If you do not know what truly inspires you, it will be impossible to inspire others" Richard Olivier
"This is the true joy in life - being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one" George Bernard Shaw
“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve". Albert Schweitzer
"To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - that is to have succeeded" Ralph Waldo Emerson
There were so many more but from it all emerged a strategy to reflect back on those moments in my life when I have felt myself to be truly connected with what I was doing, when I couldn't wait to get up in the morning to start work, and from that to analyse what truly inspires me to find my purpose. Then having found a sense of purpose connect to that a vision, a felt reality that others can join and share.
I will keep coming back to this as my project progresses.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Answering the question "What do you do?"
I have just delivered a one day workshop on public speaking for a group of Women in Business on behalf of Everywomen.co.uk and I am exhausted, but exhilerated. The group were very positive and eager to learn and we had a very productive day. The focus of this course is not just on public speaking but on how to use speaking to promote your business, especially at networking meetings.
One of the tasks on the course that always seems to be the most challenging for everyone is where I get them to really focus on what they do and who they do it for, in simple terms how to answer the question "What do you do?" Most people in the UK tend to answer that question with a job description and when I asked it at a conference in Singapore in April I was surprised to get similar answers there. Sometimes I get an elevator pitch - a sixty second tightly structured promotional speech.
Both answers don't work. The job description vitually ends the conversation unless it's an interesting sounding job description, the elevator pitch stops people asking any more questions and start looking for an exit. 60 seconds is too much. The 30 second elevator pitch has its place but later in a conversation.
I believe that you have only 5 seconds to answer this question but you need to answer it in such a way that the person asking is prompted to ask, "Really, how do you do that" or "tell me more." I have a few prepared answers. "I help women in business to make outstanding business presentations" or "I help women in busines to make more sales and have fun while they are doing it" or "I help women to be more successful in Business and teach men how to understand us."
The key to this is that I have a clear focus on who I work with and how I help them. Helping people to create similar statements is very challenging.
When the first statement emerge there is a tendancy for them to be very broad. I help all businesses to be more successful. Or the way they help is too woolly and full of marketing speak.
The key to it is that you have to realise that an individual cannot help the world. The best we can do is work with a few hundred people. I might speak to thousands, but the people who book me to speak are a few hundred in a year. I can provide information and support to thousands, even millions, but not everyone is going to be interested in this blog or my web site.
I focus on working with Small businesses and in particular women in business - Its a very clear focus. It will probably get more focused with time. But it means I am able to develop a clear set of strategies. I understand the marketing problems of small businesses, I know where to find small busines owners, I can work hard to connect myself to small business marketing keywords.
It meant I had to let go of people I didn't want to work with, I had to find a financial model that would work in a market that is not flush with corporate cash. I made a decision that I only work with people I like - so I get up in the morning and I am passionate about getting to work, I love what I do - and so when I answer the question "What to you do?" the answer comes from my heart and people know that.
One of the tasks on the course that always seems to be the most challenging for everyone is where I get them to really focus on what they do and who they do it for, in simple terms how to answer the question "What do you do?" Most people in the UK tend to answer that question with a job description and when I asked it at a conference in Singapore in April I was surprised to get similar answers there. Sometimes I get an elevator pitch - a sixty second tightly structured promotional speech.
Both answers don't work. The job description vitually ends the conversation unless it's an interesting sounding job description, the elevator pitch stops people asking any more questions and start looking for an exit. 60 seconds is too much. The 30 second elevator pitch has its place but later in a conversation.
I believe that you have only 5 seconds to answer this question but you need to answer it in such a way that the person asking is prompted to ask, "Really, how do you do that" or "tell me more." I have a few prepared answers. "I help women in business to make outstanding business presentations" or "I help women in busines to make more sales and have fun while they are doing it" or "I help women to be more successful in Business and teach men how to understand us."
The key to this is that I have a clear focus on who I work with and how I help them. Helping people to create similar statements is very challenging.
When the first statement emerge there is a tendancy for them to be very broad. I help all businesses to be more successful. Or the way they help is too woolly and full of marketing speak.
The key to it is that you have to realise that an individual cannot help the world. The best we can do is work with a few hundred people. I might speak to thousands, but the people who book me to speak are a few hundred in a year. I can provide information and support to thousands, even millions, but not everyone is going to be interested in this blog or my web site.
I focus on working with Small businesses and in particular women in business - Its a very clear focus. It will probably get more focused with time. But it means I am able to develop a clear set of strategies. I understand the marketing problems of small businesses, I know where to find small busines owners, I can work hard to connect myself to small business marketing keywords.
It meant I had to let go of people I didn't want to work with, I had to find a financial model that would work in a market that is not flush with corporate cash. I made a decision that I only work with people I like - so I get up in the morning and I am passionate about getting to work, I love what I do - and so when I answer the question "What to you do?" the answer comes from my heart and people know that.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Take care - Links can damage your PageRank
I have been delving into the depths of Link Exchange and discovered it's a lot more complex and dangerous than I first expected and it's all down to understanding Google's PageRank, a complex mathematical calculation of the value of a web page. The higher the PageRank the better the page does in Google.
The first thing I learned is that Google is not ranking web sites, it is ranking web pages. As far as google is concerned the entire internet is one big network of interlinked pages. This is important to know because you need to decide which pages it is important to get ranked well and which do not need to be ranked so well. In other words which pages do you most want people to find before they reach your site? And are there some you want Google to ignore entirely.
First important point about Links is that Incoming links are absolutely essential - the more you have the better BUT it is equally essential to link your primary keywords to the page link. Most domain names do not contain keywords, and google therefore cannot index them.
Second important thing - every page gives away some of its page value to the page it links to. To increase the ranking of your page - you need to link to pages that have a high rank. An Inbound link from a page with no value is if limited value. Now the bad news - every outbound link from your site gives away value to that site. Fine of you have a reciprocal link but beware. If your inbound link is to your homepage that improves your home page value - but if the outbound link is to a links page you are taking value away from that and if your links page has low value people will not way to link exchange.
Can you see how complex this gets. There are a lot of Link Farms and Google does not like them so it penalises them - therefore the inbound link has limited value but worse any outbound link may result in your site being penalised. There is an excellent article on this at the Web Workshop
Now I set that link on Blogger's composer - the link below which is one of the links I try to get accepted has built into it a number of features to significantly improve inbound links for me. This one points to my Newsletter page, the link is in bold and there is an incentive of a free ebook if you sign up - that's the human design. But more importantly it is highly optimised for search engines from my current understanding (it keeps changing I may be wrong). The link text contains my primary site and newsletter Keyword Phrase "Small Business Marketing" - the page address is SpeakingandMarketingTips.com/Small-Business-Marketing.html - Lots of keywords. Hover over the link and "Subscribe to Speaking and Marketing Tips today" appears for a moment - more keywords. All of these are indexed by Google. Follow the link and there is a page equally optimised for those same keywords.
Low Cost Small Business Marketing Strategies From Rikki Arundel
Content rich site to help your small business to Get Attention and Be Remembered - Free ebook - How to Get Customer Queuing up to Buy
I am learning to use a lot of attributes with the html for the link. target="_new" to make it open in a new window, title="keywords text" for that little pop up when you hover over the link and a new one rel="nofollow" This tells google not to follow a link and therefore not to rank it. I will use this whenever I have a link and no reciprocal link exists.
Which reminds me that finally you need to watch out for that being used in your reciprocal links because then you are not getting the value of the Link exchange. Other tricks are using links in java script, or having a "nofollow" meta tag on the page. It is also important to check that a page you are linking to is indexed. Type "www.domain.com/page.htm(l)" into Google (with the quotation marks) and you will soon find out.
That's it for today - bit tekkie if you don't do your own web site - but it has really opened my eyes today.
The first thing I learned is that Google is not ranking web sites, it is ranking web pages. As far as google is concerned the entire internet is one big network of interlinked pages. This is important to know because you need to decide which pages it is important to get ranked well and which do not need to be ranked so well. In other words which pages do you most want people to find before they reach your site? And are there some you want Google to ignore entirely.
First important point about Links is that Incoming links are absolutely essential - the more you have the better BUT it is equally essential to link your primary keywords to the page link. Most domain names do not contain keywords, and google therefore cannot index them.
Second important thing - every page gives away some of its page value to the page it links to. To increase the ranking of your page - you need to link to pages that have a high rank. An Inbound link from a page with no value is if limited value. Now the bad news - every outbound link from your site gives away value to that site. Fine of you have a reciprocal link but beware. If your inbound link is to your homepage that improves your home page value - but if the outbound link is to a links page you are taking value away from that and if your links page has low value people will not way to link exchange.
Can you see how complex this gets. There are a lot of Link Farms and Google does not like them so it penalises them - therefore the inbound link has limited value but worse any outbound link may result in your site being penalised. There is an excellent article on this at the Web Workshop
Now I set that link on Blogger's composer - the link below which is one of the links I try to get accepted has built into it a number of features to significantly improve inbound links for me. This one points to my Newsletter page, the link is in bold and there is an incentive of a free ebook if you sign up - that's the human design. But more importantly it is highly optimised for search engines from my current understanding (it keeps changing I may be wrong). The link text contains my primary site and newsletter Keyword Phrase "Small Business Marketing" - the page address is SpeakingandMarketingTips.com/Small-Business-Marketing.html - Lots of keywords. Hover over the link and "Subscribe to Speaking and Marketing Tips today" appears for a moment - more keywords. All of these are indexed by Google. Follow the link and there is a page equally optimised for those same keywords.
Low Cost Small Business Marketing Strategies From Rikki Arundel
Content rich site to help your small business to Get Attention and Be Remembered - Free ebook - How to Get Customer Queuing up to Buy
I am learning to use a lot of attributes with the html for the link. target="_new" to make it open in a new window, title="keywords text" for that little pop up when you hover over the link and a new one rel="nofollow" This tells google not to follow a link and therefore not to rank it. I will use this whenever I have a link and no reciprocal link exists.
Which reminds me that finally you need to watch out for that being used in your reciprocal links because then you are not getting the value of the Link exchange. Other tricks are using links in java script, or having a "nofollow" meta tag on the page. It is also important to check that a page you are linking to is indexed. Type "www.domain.com/page.htm(l)" into Google (with the quotation marks) and you will soon find out.
That's it for today - bit tekkie if you don't do your own web site - but it has really opened my eyes today.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Struggling to get people to read my Blog
I don't know whether you have noticed this but the world is made up of two kinds of people. There are those who know what Blogging is and there are those who sort of glaze over as if in a strange trance whenever they hear or read about Blogging. Technology is funny that way - people love it or hate it.
I have a very good friend who at my encouragement now has a web site and a blog. I say she has them, when she writes an article it's a good days work for a couple of paragraphs. The reason is that she just gets bored and goes off to chat to someone. I keep trying to persuade her to get a microphone and start using the MS voice system which would help. I shall not give up.
But it struck me that there is a divide now between those of us who write online and those who don't and I notice that those who do not write also tend not to read much. Now I am a prolific reader and writer. I can sit down and write 1000 words for a post on a forum. My challenge is write succinctly. Winston Churchill is credited with saying, though I think he was paraphrasing Somerset Maugham, "I'm sorry this is such a long letter, I didn't have time to write a short one."
That said it concerns me that there is such an emphasis on sound byte communicating. It's as if everyone wants to know everything, but "Can we have it in a single paragraph please." One technique journalists use is to tell the story in the first paragraph and then to progressively reveal more of the detail like peeling the layers from an onion. There is an maxim in speaking from an old Baptist minster whose name I forget, that you "Tell 'em what your gonna tell 'em, then you tell 'em, then you tell 'em what you told 'em."
Back to Blogging - having got into it now, I find myself having an even harder challenge getting people to read what I write, but interestingly I notice more and more web sites now with Read My Blog clearly positioned on the site. I suspect however that another step is required, to educate and encourage people to even look - that will be my project tomorrow - to find a way to make the idea of visiting my blog more appealing to my friend. If I can reach her, I can change the world.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
I finally launched my Speaking and Marketing Tips Newsletter
It's taken nearly 6 months, but yesterday, actually I lie, this morning I finally pressed the send button and off my newsletter went to 250 people.
Now there is the first great success - 250 people - Achieving that has been a huge task. I allowed the names to build up very slowly at first. I quickly learned that people needed an incentive to subscribe, so back in March just before travelling to Singapore where I was delivering 5 presentations and seminars, I wrote an ebook, How to Get Customers Queuing up to Buy.
I had thought of using someone elses, but realised then that my newsletter eventually would be the means my which I kept in touch with people who have heard me speak or have networked with me, so it was important that the ebook set a standard for what could be expected in the newsletter. However it had only attracted 100 subscribers by August so I emailed everyone who hade exchange business cards or networked with me online - about 700 of them and 150 signed up.
Then there was the problem of "what did I have to do differently to get people to read a newsletter." I look at my inbox and the huge number of newsletters receive - actually they are not in my inbox - they are all filtered to folders to read later - some of those folders have 1000 unread newsletters in them.
The whole concept of my Speaking and Marketing Tips web site is to present information, lots of practical advice on Small Business Marketing Strategies particulary employing public speaking and technology and public relations with a strong emphasis towards gender issues. Essentially encapsulating my personal strengths.
I decided to theme each newsletter around a specific marketing strategy and look at it in some detail, simultaneously developing a number of web pages to provide additional support. I think it works. I have had a few very nice comments back - most of the subscribers are people who know me so I hope they will take the time to complete a survey I have set up.
If you would like to see the first edition of the Speaking and Marketing Tips Newsletter they are all being archived on the site so please take a look and if you have a moment let me have some feedback - I will be publishing the results which may help you in you Ezine development for the future.
Now there is the first great success - 250 people - Achieving that has been a huge task. I allowed the names to build up very slowly at first. I quickly learned that people needed an incentive to subscribe, so back in March just before travelling to Singapore where I was delivering 5 presentations and seminars, I wrote an ebook, How to Get Customers Queuing up to Buy.
I had thought of using someone elses, but realised then that my newsletter eventually would be the means my which I kept in touch with people who have heard me speak or have networked with me, so it was important that the ebook set a standard for what could be expected in the newsletter. However it had only attracted 100 subscribers by August so I emailed everyone who hade exchange business cards or networked with me online - about 700 of them and 150 signed up.
Then there was the problem of "what did I have to do differently to get people to read a newsletter." I look at my inbox and the huge number of newsletters receive - actually they are not in my inbox - they are all filtered to folders to read later - some of those folders have 1000 unread newsletters in them.
The whole concept of my Speaking and Marketing Tips web site is to present information, lots of practical advice on Small Business Marketing Strategies particulary employing public speaking and technology and public relations with a strong emphasis towards gender issues. Essentially encapsulating my personal strengths.
I decided to theme each newsletter around a specific marketing strategy and look at it in some detail, simultaneously developing a number of web pages to provide additional support. I think it works. I have had a few very nice comments back - most of the subscribers are people who know me so I hope they will take the time to complete a survey I have set up.
If you would like to see the first edition of the Speaking and Marketing Tips Newsletter they are all being archived on the site so please take a look and if you have a moment let me have some feedback - I will be publishing the results which may help you in you Ezine development for the future.
Writing articles to promote my business is paying off.
For the past month I have been actively developing my skills in the the area of using article to promote my business. Now this is not a new area to me. In the past 10 or so years I have had over 600 articles published by trade magazines, mostly for a writing fee or ghosted for a client, but a many were purely to help position me as an expert and I have secured quite a lot of business as a result.
However I simply had not kept up to date and I had missed the explosion that has taken place in this strategy in the past couple of years with the emergence of ezine article directories. Of course it make perfect sence. There are at least 300,000 ezines and gzillions of web sites all desperate for one thing - a regular supply of topical and interesting content.
So far I have actually used 6 articles I found in directories this blog, on my web site and in my Speaking and Marketing Tips ezine. Last week I started to see some returns.
Oh yeah! What's the catch?
No catch - Author Daniel Hall read one of my articles and emailed me to offer a joint venture deal to sell his new book Speak on Cruise Ships. He takes three or four Luxury Cruises every year absolutely Free. Oh alright there is a catch. He has to deliver three of four short seminars while they are at sea and there is nothing else to do. The idea of taking a cruise somewhere every year definitely appeals to me and as I can add value from my site by helping people to ovecome fear of public speaking and improve thier presentation sklls, it is a perfect product match and a great result from my articles.
Then I got an email from a Professional Speaker friend Graham Jones with some nice compliments about my site but even better he informed me that he had just used one of my articles in his September newsletter and it was now on his site. I checked and it is already coming up on Google. Now the interesting thnig is that Graham and I are competitors both speaking about presentation skills and internet marketing, but of course Google likes that. I had already been looking at Grahams articles and will be using one in my next newletter so we are both helping each other to imprive our Google rankings and both driving traffic to each others site. Co-operation is far more effective than competition.
Finally I was struggling with a decision about the first article I submitted to the directories - it is about 1700 words long and everyone was telling me that long articles don't get selected by publishers. I could see the point having already rejected a couple of good articles myself because they were too long for what I wanted. So I was about to remove the article and replace it with three shorter ones when I received an email from the Malaysian Junior Chamber of Commerce asking if they could use the article in this months newsletter to their 1200 members. There are no rules, only guidlines.
However I simply had not kept up to date and I had missed the explosion that has taken place in this strategy in the past couple of years with the emergence of ezine article directories. Of course it make perfect sence. There are at least 300,000 ezines and gzillions of web sites all desperate for one thing - a regular supply of topical and interesting content.
So far I have actually used 6 articles I found in directories this blog, on my web site and in my Speaking and Marketing Tips ezine. Last week I started to see some returns.
Oh yeah! What's the catch?
No catch - Author Daniel Hall read one of my articles and emailed me to offer a joint venture deal to sell his new book Speak on Cruise Ships. He takes three or four Luxury Cruises every year absolutely Free. Oh alright there is a catch. He has to deliver three of four short seminars while they are at sea and there is nothing else to do. The idea of taking a cruise somewhere every year definitely appeals to me and as I can add value from my site by helping people to ovecome fear of public speaking and improve thier presentation sklls, it is a perfect product match and a great result from my articles.
Then I got an email from a Professional Speaker friend Graham Jones with some nice compliments about my site but even better he informed me that he had just used one of my articles in his September newsletter and it was now on his site. I checked and it is already coming up on Google. Now the interesting thnig is that Graham and I are competitors both speaking about presentation skills and internet marketing, but of course Google likes that. I had already been looking at Grahams articles and will be using one in my next newletter so we are both helping each other to imprive our Google rankings and both driving traffic to each others site. Co-operation is far more effective than competition.
Finally I was struggling with a decision about the first article I submitted to the directories - it is about 1700 words long and everyone was telling me that long articles don't get selected by publishers. I could see the point having already rejected a couple of good articles myself because they were too long for what I wanted. So I was about to remove the article and replace it with three shorter ones when I received an email from the Malaysian Junior Chamber of Commerce asking if they could use the article in this months newsletter to their 1200 members. There are no rules, only guidlines.
The hard work is paying off – I typed "Rikki Arundel" into Google and was stunned to see nearly 400 web addresses where my name now appears.
If you are interested in finding out more about how to use articles to promote your business you are welcome to have a look at my September Speaking and Marketing Tips newsletter.
If you would like to consider publishing any of my articles please click on the star for details.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)