Marketing For Power Packed Business Growth

I was reading the excellent Gary Halbert Letter where Gary was finishing telling us, his subscribers, about a particular piece of copy he wrote that was an absolute stormer. By the way if you want to write your own copy you must read Gary's stuff he is without doubt one of the best copywriters on the planet.

Anyway, hero worship out of the way...

About half-way down the letter Gary reveals that,

"On January 16, 1994 I, Sir Gary of Halbert, Invented Email And Internet Marketing!"

Further on he admits that he also invented spam.

Who'd have thought?

The point is though that he has the ability to catch people's attention with the unexpected. He's selling some 11 year old marketing-related tapes (which I have no doubt are fantastic). And he's able to draw us into buying them by involving us in his stories.

Go check out that letter and see what I mean. Then go forth and do likewise.

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The Internet is a gift to the procrastinator. I was doing a little research on a marketing angle when the site I was on mentioned the cluetrain manifesto and how it defined what the site was about.

Hmm. I thought...

So I immediately clicked onto the link and found this great quote:

"Life is too short," we say, and it is. Too short for office politics, for
busywork and pointless paper chases, for jumping through hoops and covering our
asses, for trying to please, to not offend, for constantly struggling to achieve
some ever-receding definition of success. Too short as well for worrying whether
we bought the right suit, the right breakfast cereal, the right laptop computer,
the right brand of underarm deodorant"

Having been in business for quite some time now I've seen every single aspect of life mentioned in the quote.

So if life is too short what should we concentrate on?

To my mind there is only one golden rule: "Do what you believe is right".

That doesn't mean take decisions with no knowledge or recklessly. It means knowing as much as feasible - do the right thing.

I've always followed this rule, sometimes I've been wrong. Sometimes I've followed it in a political situation which has made my situation more difficult. But like taking responsibility in the end you need to look back at all you've done and know you followed the Golden Rule.

Otherwise you're just another pawn in someone else's game.

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In Roy H. Williams regular Monday Morning Memo from The Wizard of Ads he notes:

Conduct a survey. Ask the public to describe in detail the kind of place they'd like to shop. Then build that place, exactly as described, and see if they ever show up. Experience tells
us they won't.

This is borne out by almost any business. Look at the computer, or IT industry, how often does the finished IT system look as the original users asked? I remember asking a very experienced and knowledgeable user if he thought the requirements and the draft design we were presenting to him and his user team was what they expected and wanted. His answer was, "we won't know until it's been delivered".

That's why I think Focus groups can be so dangerous. Because the group can tell researchers what they thin they want to hear. And most basic of all: people's behaviour changes when it's being observed. This has been shown in a number of scientific studies.

In a series of research studies funded by the Western Electric Company at its Hawthorne plant in Chicago from 1924 to 1932 researchers looked at how worker productivity was influenced by the workplace lighting, among other things. They found that despite poorer and poorer conditions worker productivity steadily increased. This became known as the "Hawthorne Effect".

This effect is better defined as "the tendency, when observed, for worker productivity to steadily increase, even when working conditions are made more and more difficult".

Although this relates specifically to the workplace it's a small step further to see that placing someone in a group so they are observed will affect how they behave. And the behaviour may not be how they act outside of the focus group.

Does that mean focus groups are a waste of time?

Well, as I say I'm not a fan, but look at other psychological principles in play in Focus Groups too.

For example "Risky Shift", which basically means that any decision made by a group can be much, much more risky than one an individual in the same group would have made.

That means agreement could be reached within the focus group that many of them are unsure of. But because the "risk" of being unsure is shared out it's not as worrying as if only one person was unsure. So the focus group presents a result that you shouldn't bet your business on!

Look at Paul Lemberg's article What One Thing?

In it he quotes Earl Nightingale as asking, "What one thing would you do if you knew you could not fail?" And also Jack Palance as Curly in City Slickers asking, "What is the one thing?"

Paul says that you need to sacrifice, or let go, of some of the less important things on your to-do list.

I can see his point.

But I believe he's coming at the strategic focus from the wrong angle. Don't look at the thousand and one things you have to do.

Better is to list your top 5 responsibilities.

Then list the activities that must be completed to achieve all those responsibilities.

Then against each activity assign a category according to how well you can do the activity as follows:

A - Awesome ability to do the activity
G - Great at the activity
M - Most people could do the same as you
W - Weakness (if you're honest - which you must be)

Now what you have is a list of activities that all need to be achieved for you to have success in your role.

What if you could make every activity an 'A'?

You can you need to assign all activities that you're not 'A' or 'G' to other people. Or decide if that activity is really needed.

You must assign all 'W' activities to other people. Don't get trained up on it because all you'll get is a slightly stronger weakness!

So what happens if you're a solo company?

Still undertake the task and think of ways of working with other businesses to minimise your 'W' tasks. One obvious one is that if you're weak with producing accounts - you hire an accountant.

The final point is WORK hard on your 'A' tasks because you're going to get even more awesome and when tied together with people who can deliver your weak activities awesomely you're going to go stratospheric.

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The Financial Times in the UK has some sobering thoughts on business failure, particularly start-ups.

The UK government is saying that there has been a massive increase in companies.

So that means the economy is doing brilliantly doesn't it?

Well, actually no...

When you consider quite a number of people have been going through Jobcentre supported business start-up schemes and that companies have been making redundancies and people invest their money in starting businesses.

According to Barclays, nearly half of all start-ups during a 12-month period between 2001 and 2002 have gone.

An interesting example is Hoxton productions, a corporate video producer who found that he relied on too few clients. So that when one closed 40% of company revenue dropped. The CEO and owner now says that he would 'commit to "a serious amount of money" for a marketing campaign."

A pity that people wait too long before really seeing the importance of getting new sales as well as servicing the old and loyal clients.

The key points brought out by the article for failure are:

The article also notes "A good mentor can often make the difference between success and failure."

I also think that business failures arise due to the following:

Can you think of any that should be added to the list

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In 1996 the the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization created a law. The law lets people that claim that their copyrights are being infringed have the offending material quickly removed from the Internet.

A good idea in theory, but as this Boing Boing Internet Copyright Abuse Study shows how it's actually worked in practise.

And yes you've guessed right. It's being abused by people.

I must admit as I read this study about how certain organisations have got stuff taken down without any proof of infringement I wondered whether "astute and cynical" commerical companies would do the same.

Sure enough a little later in the study it says.

"Over half -57% - of notices sent to Google to demand removal of links in the index were sent by businesses targeting apparent competitors;"

And just in case you think this only applies to companies in the USA the study also notes that 37% of the notices recevied by Google were for sites that apparently are outside the United States.


PS in case you were wondering about my previous post on Do You Know The Relative Importance of A Marketing Guru, Consultant or Expert? Find Out Now. the answer is that a Marketing expert appears to have more importance than either of the other titles. Who'd have thought? What price Guru's now?

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This is an article on Why Your Business Will Fail.

It makes interesting reading even though it's aimed at web hosting businesses. It's actually applicable to almost all businesses.

Johnder's final point is that word of mouth about your business is the only thing that ensures you stay in business.

That's why I make such a point of using properly structured referrals in my book, "How To Leap Ahead Of Your Competitors".

The other thing about this article is that it has a lot of useful comments too.

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You want to be interviewed on TV, or interviewed on the radio, or maybe get an article in the print media.

To do that you must understand how the media work. There's several different and useful sites I've found over the years that have helpful newsletters and some great special reports. I'm going to give you just two to get on with...

The first is from Joan Stewart, also known as the Publicity Hound. Her web site and blog are interesting and her ezine is great too.

I blogged about one of her articles (see Corporate Hallucinations: Are there P.O.O.P.s in your publication?) which I thought was an excellent comment on boring PR.

The second is from Annie Jennings whose web site has a bunch of useful (and quick to read) special reports.

One that I liked in particular was Tips For Leaving An Effective Voice Mail. One of the points it makes is that your tone is a major decider as to whether someone will ring you back (or take your call if you ring back).

PR is not rocket science. But it does need an appreciation of your audience (journalists). Because they have a very astute eye for their own market (that is the people who read, watch listen to their output). Of course they happen to be your ultimate market too.

Ultimately there is a right and wrong way to produce a press release or news pitch. The resources I've given you are going to get you started on the right road.

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This is truly fascinating.

With an idle moment on my hands (you don't know how rare that is -- unless you've 4 kids too!) I checked out blogpulse and in particular the trends tool.

I decided to check out my own trends so I entered "marketing expert", "marketing guru" and "marketing consultant".

Blogpulse produced a line graph showing a line for each marketing person type and the percentage of posts about each one against all blogs in the blogsphere.

Can you guess which one usually had the highest number of posts?

Check out the answer at the Blogpulse trends tool, alternatively I'll let you know in my next post.

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Even Google says that Google Analytics sign-ups exceeded their most optimistic expectations.

They're having to add more infrastructure to cope with the demand for the service.

I thought Statcounter was good for free but Google Analytics is really brilliant for the reports you can get.

On the marketing side as an example you get the following:

Unique Visitor Tracking covering:

Daily Visitors
Visits & Pageview Tracking
Goal Conversion Tracking
Absolute Unique Visitors
Visitor Loyalty
Visitor Recency
Visitor Segment Performance
New vs Returning
Referring Source
Marketing Campaign Results
Campaign Conversion
Source Conversion
Medium Conversion
Referral Conversion
Campaign ROI
Source ROI
Medium ROI

Search Engine Marketing, covering the following:

CPC Program Analysis
Overall Keyword Conversion
CPC vs Organic Conversion
Keyword Considerations
Day Parts Breakdown

The only problem is that it does take some time for updated data to hit my account.

Like several days.

I'm assuming the updated infrastructure will improve things in due course. At which point I can give you a better impression of how it's working.

PS Google have been quick to act and have removed the spam check from my blog. Well done Google!

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In a previous post about Google Analytics I said I'd be trying the stats out.

However, it's proving slightly more problematic than I expected. I waited the 12 hours that Google said it would take to get the data.

Nothing happened.

So I looked at where I put the code and thought it might be better somewhere else so I moved it. A day later I got some data. But from the previous location of the script.

Then nothing...

I read Search Engine Optimisation newsletters and apparently Google's analytic servers are going slow because of all the web masters hitting them at the same time. One reckoned over half a million of us! So I'm waiting...

As for the stats themselves I'll comment more fully when I've seen more data. But it looks realy, really useful.

Robin Good's Exhaustive List of Directory and RSS Sites

Now this site I really like.

Robin seems to have made it a life's work to check through the Internet for sites where you can let people know about your blog.

It's without doubt the best blog resource I've found for a while.

Some of the links are dead, but usually Robin tells you if they are.

I'm currently up to site number 102 and I've not come to the end yet!

Also some of the sites are pure news sites so my blog wouldn't fit with them.

But...

In general it's great.

Another great aspect is that Robin offers an email facility where you can get each new site added to the directory as it's added.

It's on my favourites list and I've subscribed!

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I went to a business exhibition in Manchester this afternoon.

This is the fourth one I've attended in the last 12 months. The same organisers ran a succesful one last year which I attended.

This one seemed to be about half to one third the size of last years event.

When I talked to exhibitors they expressed concern that it was so quiet. Even the networking area had shrunk from last time.

One business owner had expressed an interest in a stand this yearto the organisers because last year's was successful. But he said he was glad that the organisers hadn't followed up with him and sold him a stand. He also noted that he'd seen very little advertising.

This comes on top of a previous business exhibition which had very few attendees too.

Why?

IMHO I think there's several reasons:

1. No one I spoke to saw much, if any advertising
2. I suspect people who attended the last event and were disatisfied stayed away
3. Because the exhibition was much smaller it only took 30 to 40 minutes to go round. So people didn't stay and bump into people they knew - thus lacking any buzz at the show
4. The stands were uniformly boring, OK one had an owl on it. But there was a stand with an owl last year, so that's been done
5. One comment after the last show was

   "why would business people come to an exhibition to be sold to?"

6. The free seminar titles were deeply uninteresting and today had no one I actually knew.
   

My personal favourite is number 5.

If you think about it all the stands were pushing their wares. Ok some were definitely useful to businesses. But do you have the time to wander round some stands just to find one or two that would help you when you can use the Internet to find them?

That said I still think all the reasons contribute to a general disinterest in exhibiting.

I know one seminar organiser who does very successful London events. He said that they'd tried to organise a seminar in Manchester and had to cancel due to lack of interest.

Yet if I go down to a seminar in London I know I'll meet people from Manchester and the Northwest!

Strange...

Does that mean business exhibitions are dead in Manchester?

I think the organisers need to think very seriously about who their customers are.

Firstly, it's not the booth exhibitors. Because with so few attendees they're definitely going to want a chunk of their money back.

If they're truly aiming at SME's in the Northwest they need to think about the following:

1. What does an SME WANT from going to an event?
2. Is an exhibition/seminar programme the best way to deliver what they want?
3. What can we, the organisers, do to make the show so attractive people have to attend?
4. How can we make sure they come back next year?

Then they can decide who to invite to exhibit.

Then the stands and exhibitors are another can of worms, as are the seminars. But they both flow from asking the 4 questions above.

Finally email me with the word "trade" in the subject I'll send you my Tradeshow Checklist and Countdown to running a more succesful booth in an exhibition.

Interesting...

I've been using a lovely little product from Zoundry.com for producing my blog.

It's great for formatting, easier than Bloggers own editing tool and you can compose your post offline.

Then suddenly this week the upload of my posts stopped.

I investigated and found that Word Verification (usually to stop comment spam) had been turned on by Blogger.

I couldn't post without entering the verification code, so Zoundry couldn't do it.

The reason it had been turned of?

Because my blog "has the characteristics of a spam blog"...

Well thanks very much!

Come on Blogger I know my posts aren't full of nosensical text, or loads of links to the same spam, I don't "scrape content from other sites" and I'm not guilty of "using other people's writing ".

I mean Bloggers own definition of spam blogs is that they:

"can be recognised by their irrelevant, repetitive or nonsensical text,
along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site"

Blogger Please note: I've copied and pasted this from your help information so I hope this isn't counted as scraping!

So what happened? Did someone report it as a spam blog, have I pinged the blog directories once too often? Maybe my posts are too long (hmm, must be the long beats short copywriting blood in my veins).

I'm sure Blogger will let me know in due course - I'm guessing but I suspect it's going to take days, maybe weeks, to sort out.

So in the meantime ... I don't know how I got tagged as a spam blog but ...

Blogger has tied me to their editor and I can't post in as nice a format as I'd like.

PS If I was being Machivellian I'd think that a competitor had flagged the site as objectionable (no it's ok I'm only joking).

It happens to all regular bloggers I'm sure.

Every business person has a life outside of blogging. But we feel responsible for posting useful marketing, business improvement or copywriting stuff to our blog, or blogs.

If you've a blog I'm quite sure you feel exactly the same.

Anyway The Blog Herald has some great points on time management when creating more than one blog.

I do have several blogs but the others really take a back seat to this one. But with the point raised in this post I'm considering posting more regularly to those too.

And the tips apply to even those of us who write mainly to one blog. In particular the comments about dealing with email - speed read them and your own feeds - group them by blog (or subject you want to comment on).

PS In a previous post about Google Analytics I said I'd be trying the stats out. However, it's proving slightly more problematic than I expected - I put the code in the wrong place!

It happens to all regular bloggers I'm sure.

Every business person has a life outside of blogging. But we feel responsible for posting useful marketing, business improvement or copywriting stuff to our blog, or blogs.

If you've a blog I'm quite sure you feel exactly the same.

Anyway The Blog Herald has some great points on time management when creating more than one blog.

I do have several blogs but the others really take a back seat to this one. But with the point raised in this post I'm considering posting more regularly to those too.

And the tips apply to even those of us who write mainly to one blog. In particualr the comments about dealing with email - speed read them and your own feeds - group them by blog (or subject you want to comment on).

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As a marketer you know how impressed I am with a Visitor Tracking service I use called Stat Counter?

I've found it gives very interesting, and useful marketing data.

I've now discovered that Google has moved into this same arena.

So I'm trying them head to head.

That means each post I do on my blog will show up on my Stat Counter account and also, hopefully, on my Google Analytics account.

Potentially Google may be better as you can analyse traffic over each hour of the day to see peaks and troughs.

I'll let you know how they compare...watch this blog!

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If you want your business to make serious cash you need a great marketing strategy.

Notice I didn't say you need great marketing tactics.

That's because without a strategy you'll just try tactic after tactic until you hit on one that seems to work. But what if the next tactic you would've tried could have doubled your income?

Simply by churning through trying lots of different marketing tactics that's what you're in danger of doing. That's one of the reasons Jay Abraham says you shouldn't just market like everyone else in your industry if you want better results.

So...

The strategy needs to look at your goals for your business then build in the tactics that you believe will achieve them.

And maybe you'll need to change some tactics as you go on. But as you've a strategy your marketing changes will be within your overall strategy. So you wont badly affect another part of your marketing approach.

Within my overall strategy one of my tactics was to have a web site where I would add to the content on a regular basis.

Unfortunately my choice of web development tool (it uses frames) meant that the site was difficult to make search engine friendly. So I've just not updated it. Instead I've decided to completely redevelop it using Dreamweaver.

I'm currently considering what things would be most useful for people looking for information and help on a business growth and marketing web site.

If you've any ideas email me, or comment, and I'll think about them and see if I can include them.

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Fascinating marketing idea.

Darren speaks about how blogs need to have a hook, or hooks, to draw people into them.

From a marketing viewpoint that's exactly right. The initial hook is that your search term has listed your blog fairly high in a search engine.

But once people have read your blog once how do you hook them into coming back?

Obviously you can provide multiple ways for your audience to connect and be informed about updates.

The hooks that Darren suggests are just content. It could also be style, readers comments or any other unique and interesting thing in the blog.

Because let's face it...

Unlike reading a book you don't feel the urge to finish reading a blog you find boring. Or to come back later.

Nuff said!

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Adage has an interesting story about IBM's use of blogging

IBM has 15,000 registrants on its internal blog. More than 2,200 of them also maintain external blogs.

IBM is using them to present a consistent message of its people and their expertise - good marketing.

The article notes that the techie industry has people who are more able to use the blogging tools that a company provides.

Experts aren't convinced that blogs are going to take off for mainstream business.

On the other hand which experts were convinced that powered flight would transform the way we travel? After all only the rich could afford to travel, couldn't they?

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Actually if you read the this article The Brain's Ear For Info - Forbes.com:

by Jack Trout you'll hear that in fact we've mis-translated what he said.

We've all thought he said,

"a picture is worth a thousand words."

Universally, we're all wrong. Jack had the phrase re-translated and it actually said,

"A picture is worth a thousand pieces of gold."

Jack then goes onto investigate whether hearing is more important for retention than seeing.

Guess what?

Yes, indeed. Hearing something actually means you retain it better. And reading, because you're hearing it in your head, works better for retention too.

What does that mean to us?

Firstly, I'm afraid it bears out what I've always said about brochures. The words in them sell. The pictures don't.

That said it's still useful to have the support of appropriate pictures. Pictures where it's obvious how they relate to the words and which have a caption explaining about the picture.

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Roy H. Williams, The Wizard of Ads, asks in his Monday Morning Memo whether you need a web site for a local business.

He asks "how many months has it been since you went looking for information in the yellow pages? How many minutes has it been since you asked your favorite search engine?"

The answer my friend is that you can see that people are searching all the time. He says that web sites are the most overlooked advertising form there is. I agree, although I do think the USA is actually ahead of people in the rest of the world.

He says that every small, owner-operated business needs one. Think how many businesses that covers!

But it doesn't mean that everyone needs to take orders online. What he's saying is that people are moving more to the internet than the yellow pages.

As the web develops further and broadband becomes standard the web will be theonly directory people need to use to find companies, services, products and people.

That means that the information you have on a great yellow pages ad needs to go into your web site.

You need to make getting your service easy for your prospects. Do you think it's easier if all they need to do is to look on the Internet and see what you do and how you can help them?

Do you think it's easier if they can order online from you?

Do you think it's easier if they can hide behind a computer screen to talk to you?

Why do you think catalogue selling used to do so well? For the same reasons the ease and comfort of shopping from your favourite chair without the hassle of a pushy salesperson.

The point that Roy makes is as follows:

"Don't think for a moment that your customers aren't already online."

I believe this point is hugely, vastly important but viewed complacently by many and as more and more prospects get online its going to become more and more important.

Look at the tracks we're all leaving all over the Internet.

Search on "Jim Symcox" on Google and you get the articles I've posted, the forums I posted to years ago on Deming, my web site and this blog.

It's dangerous to your profits to assume your prospects are "too old", "too rich", "too poor", "too technophobic" to be online. Because you won't see them come to your site, but they'll visit. Whether they do anything while they're there depends on you and what you're doing on your site.

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Seth Godin's new book ("All Marketers Are Liars") makes the fantastic claim that all marketers are liars.

Then he differentiates between lies and story telling.

We the great unwashed public like to be told stories.

That has to be true doesn't it? Otherwise blogs just wouldn't have taken off.

So Seth has got together a number of interesting anecdotes about adverts and people that lie.

One very interesting point he makes on his Liars Blog is that politicians who can't or wont tells stories don't get elected by the electorate.

Similarly just the vanilla facts in your presentations isn't going to win you business...

So how do you go about getting together and telling a great story?

Doug Stevenson runs Story Theater International and has written a book about How to "How To Never Be Boring Again". A book that I wish 80% of the people I've heard speak had bought and memorised. But not only does Doug tell you about a better story he tells you how to present well too. Doug has retreats in the UK and USA where he trains people in exactly how to do it.

Another great story teller is Tom Antion - you can get his book ("Wake 'em Up! Business Presentations" ) to learn how to present your story for maximum impact too. An added bonus is that Tom's site is a mecca of links for all things speaking-related, including links to other sites. You could spend weeks retrieving the golden nuggets from everything you come across there.

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I was re-reading the Jay Abraham Blog.

Yes, I know I've got work to do!

But I'd half-remembered something I'd heard in his tape set with Peter Thompson (by the way go and sign up for Peter's CD programme (The Achiever's Edge, it's wonderfully useful!)

Anyway to get back on track...

I'd half-rememebered something about how you can make your own rules in business.

I looked on Jay's Blog and there it is "You Make The Rules".

The reason I like this view of business is that I believe it's so easy to get sucked into doing things the way everyone else does. You know, "lets do marketing this way, because George down the road does and he's making a mint".

Instead, we need to make our own rules.

When I started blogging I purposefully didn't read anything on "how to blog" because I wanted to make sure my voice came through and it wasn't like everyone else who wrote about marketing.

I remember coming out of my first Jay seminar and metaphorically punching the air and shouting "YES". I'm probably a bit too restrained to actually shout in a 5 star hotel lobby. Anyway, Jay gave me a belief that anything is possible and marketing is one great vehicle to help yourself and other people achieve freedom. Not by breaking rules but by making your own.

So go make your own rules. You deserve to live your life according to them, don't you?

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This Search Engine Optimisation article is very interesting.

It's been written by someone who has tested exactly what is happening under Google's continuosly shifting search strategy.

So exactly what is happening?

The answer is that Google's strategy is killing off the importance of reciprocal links in a sites ranking. So if your site depends on these links for its rank it's going to slide down the listings.

In my opinion getting rid of this type of linking is a good thing. After all just linking for no good reason doesn't help your customer/prospect at all. Google recognises this and is doing it's best to restore a more level playing field for people who provide good content. Hurrah!

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I've rejoined Ecademy.

It's basically an online networking club. Funnily enough the day after I joined I was emailed and asked if I'd like to go to a breakfast meeting by someone I met several months ago.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes -- watch this space.

I'm also a member of LinkedIn which is a bit of fun.

If you see me online let's join up and have a virtual coffee. Well tea for me please, no sugar but plenty of milk.

How do you produce Radio Ads that perform?

Walter Koschnitzke is a passionate DJ and like Dan O' Day he wants people to produce radio ads that sell!

So with that in mind he's produced an irregular blog. One of the items I particularly liked on it is "The Sins Of Synergy".

Walter lists some fallacies regarding radio advertising

1) The number of ads is important- No, it’s the exposure frequency
2) Customer intention translates into sales - No, you can’t measure what hasn’t occurred. Because people change their minds.
3) Advertising is more important than the personal experience factor - look at me, like Walter's wife, I drink Coke, more advertising will not change my mind, ever.

My own take on this is that people say that radio doesn't work for their business. Given how many station types we have now I would be suprised if that is ever the case.

The reason for the request in the title is that I'm trying a little experiment.

Debbie Jenkins from Lean Marketing in the UK said,

"I actually tried a headline out that simply said...
"Do Not Read This Ad..."
The response rate went up by almost 500% from the previous headline I used!"

I've never actually tried a negative heading so that was the test. To see whether the negative heading produced more hits than my usual headings.

I'll let you know the result in a future post! So sign up if you're as intrigued as I was.

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Discipline that's the thing about getting things done.

I remember when I first started working I created a to do list structured by projects. Because I was in computing and we worked on projects it was pretty intuitive anyway. So it was fairly easy to do. Then I listed tasks per project.

I found that I achieved huge amounts.

So when I found David Allen's CD series - "Getting Things Done... Fast" it was natural for me to buy it. The audios taught me a few things I hadn't realised - like stratgey and the real importance of longer term goals.

But the great thing is I've just discovered that David Allen has a blog so I can keep an eye out for any useful organizational tips

In looking through a seminar brochure I came across someone I'd not heard of.

I've found it always pays to search for them on the web.

In this particular case the person was Philip Calvert who specalises in Marketing and Business Growth in the SME market in general and finance sector in particular - worldwide.

One of the things that caught my eye was his blog and it said:

"Martin Bamford, Director of IFA Informed Choice in Cranleigh, Surrey, UK has achieved a 370% increase in hits on his website and has an estimated 5000 subscribers to his personal finance Podcast - in a little over one month!"

Which shows the power of podding.

I'm still considering it myself, but it does take some time to do right.

Watch this space...

Gary Bencivenga the copywriter voted the "Best in America" by Boardroom, Inc. and other leading direct marketers has a fantastic ezine.

Of course it's free and he's not particularly pushing people's products. Or at least not overtly.

I've been a subscriber for a while now. But his latest edition is great. It talks about 'The “Fuzzy Dice” Secret
For Exploding Your Sales'. Which apart from being a nicely manufactured headline also has a great point an old salesman made to Gary.

The point was: "you'll corral lots more customers by intercepting them wherever they are looking for someone like you"

Which basically means if they're looking in the yellow pages - be there. If they're looking on the internet be there.

Gary gives a nice little case study about a very poorly performing car dealer which a salesman that understood this principle exploded their sales almost overnight!

I'd recommend you sign up for Gary's letter - it's very irregular but very rewarding.

Nice one Gary, great copywriting shines through all he does.

PS - I had titled this piece "For All Web Site Owners Who Want To Sell More" but then I realised this applies equally to every business.

PPS - We all know this don't we? But we know so much the important things can get left at the back of the brain and forgotten

I was told a few days ago that some of the links (and one in particular) on my blog weren't linking to the web pages suggested.

I tried the one suggested and it worked.

So I really hope the links are OK.

Technology, eh?

Anyway.

I'm currently writing articles and I found this site which gave a list of 30 article directories to submit articles to.

"Great", I thought, "there must be some I've not heard of".

Sure enought there were.

You can use the links too for your articles.

But beware some of the links are dead, so be prepared!