« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Internet Marketing – The Importance of Presentation

One of the most important aspects of internet marketing has to be presentation. Your website must at all times look professional. As must all your correspondence with your clients. This is the image and impression you must seek to convey to all who visit your site and join your list.

It must be appropriate for your target market. If it is aimed at teenage girls, think pink, If it is aimed at the black magic market, Black, strangely enough. If your market is self improvement consider something calming like blue.

Colours and graphics are a major part of any website and go a long way to determining if someone will stay on the site or just click away. They should not be too bright or garish to the point where they hurt your eyes. Use animated gif files sparingly they can be a distraction. If you want to use them consider putting them on a page after your squeeze page, once you have acquired the prospects email address.

Text needs to be clear and easily read and understood. Consider which is the smallest text size you should use for ease of reading. Don’t change styles and fonts at every opportunity. Your text colour should be coordinated with the background colour to ensure good readability by the viewer. Remember there are numerous people out there that do not have 20/20 vision and you don’t want them struggling to read your words through lots of colours. And there are of course many people out there who suffer from colour blindness. This does not necessarily mean that they cannot see colours but that they have difficulty differentiating between similar colour tones and hues.

Your text needs to also be well laid out. Crammed together text screams the word “cheap” and should be avoided at all costs. You need to put plenty of white space in between lines. Strangely enough space sells! When anything written is not spaced correctly and sits there like a lump of letters on the page it looks sometimes as almost unassailable to the reader and they are very likely to click away and onto someone else’s web page. Try and cater for all the types and ages of readership that might be interested in your site from the young to the senior citizens, who, are becoming more internet wise as time goes by.

Finally, use pictures and graphics to illustrate points that you are trying to convey in the text. They must be appropriate to the text and improve on peoples understanding of what you are trying to relate on your web page. Ensure that the text and picture are positioned in such a way as not to cause confusion between one image and another. There is a saying that “a picture can paint a thousand words.” With today’s photo editing software you can probably get them to paint double that.

Tags:

How to Present the Compelling Idea in Your Article

The best way to present a new idea is to do it fast and to do it early.

Your first paragraph is one of the most crucial parts of your article. This is where readers decide whether to continue reading or to move on to the next interesting thing they see on the Internet. Without anything compelling to keep them glued to your website, you run the risk of being quickly dismissed. Some people will tell you it’s best to save the big idea for the end. That’s when you sum up all your major points so that they all nicely close on one compelling idea at the end. That’s fine if you’re writing a scientific paper, but we don’t think it’s going to work for a blog article.

People won’t stick around if you’re going to keep them waiting till the end. Whereas if you stimulate their mind and appeal to their emotions first thing in your article, they’re a lot more likely to read up to the last word.

An Idea Needs Support, No Matter How Compelling It Is

The thing is, a great idea will always have its detractors. It’s human nature to want to stick with the old and tested. Even when your readers are deeply fascinated by what you offer them, there will still be that little voice inside their head that tells them to be wary of this new and compelling idea. This is why you still need to provide support in the body of your article.

There are three ways to do this.

One, you can show them factual evidence that supports your ideas. If you did a lot of research, there’s no way you’re not going to incorporate facts into your article. Plus, people can easily verify factual evidence by going on Google and doing the research themselves.

Two, you can tell them stories that make your idea come to life. People love stories. Stories have been around perhaps since man’s discovery of fire. When people read or listen to stories, their defenses are down. It’s like connecting with another human being in a deep and touching way. When you tell them a story as evidence for how good your idea is, it’s easier to convince them.

And three, you can ask experts to give a testimonial to your idea. People trust the experts. They have years of experience behind them and they know what they’re doing. Naturally, when experts say they believe in what you’re offering, people will come flocking to you to try out what you can offer them.

If There’s a Simpler Way to Say It…

We know a lot of esteemed authors, prominent bloggers and writing coaches have been saying this over and over again. “KISS! Keep it simple, stupid!” Another version is “Keep it short and simple.” The idea stays the same, though. It’s been said so often that it has become one giant cliché by now. Sadly, not many writers seem to take this advice seriously. There seems to be a myth persistently going around that a good writer uses big words and long sentences. Supposedly, writers are seen to be more intelligent when they pepper their work with words readers have to look up the dictionary for.

On the contrary, it only makes you look like an amateur. An amateur whose articles nobody likes to read because they’re just too difficult to absorb.

We’re saying this not because we’ve been writing books and other things for quite some time. We’re saying this because it’s true. You can ask any other seasoned writer out there. They’d tell you the same thing. Ditch those words that your readers cringe at and go for words they can easily understand. And it’s not only other writers who agree with us.

There’s a new idea in psychology that supports the idea that people prefer simple things to complicated ones. It’s called cognitive fluency. Apparently, it’s an evolutionary concept that helped our ancestors decide which ones to pay attention to. We know they didn’t have much time to figure out what to think when a saber-tooth tiger bared its teeth at them. Seeing those giant fangs told gave them the familiar pang of fear that made them bolt for their lives.

The same idea applies when people read something. They don’t have a lot of time to figure out what you’re trying to say in your convoluted article. They’d rather have the big idea presented to them in words their minds can easily understand. Put yourself in your readers’ shoes. Do you honestly want to look up from what you’re reading to consult a dictionary? We know you don’t. You would rather look for another article that talks about the same thing but in a way that’s easier to read.

Is Your Article Readable Enough?

One way to gauge how easy it is to read your article is to run it through the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Tests. The tests take a look at the length of your words and sentences to predict how easy it is for human readers to read your article. Generally, you want your article to be completely understandable to fifth to seventh graders. This is measured by the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, which is patterned after the US grading system. A score of somewhere between 5.0 and 7.0 indicates that students in the fifth to seventh grades will easily understand your articles.

On the other hand, the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease indicates how easy or difficult it is to read your article. The higher your score, the easier it is to read your article. You would want your score to be above 60, which is the score that indicates that fifth-graders can easily understand your writing. If you go lower than that, go over your article and give it a good slashing.

Tags:

Delivering a Grand Presentation

For business people, the thought of presenting in a public situation can be a frightening and often unavoidable proposition. If you are tasked with making a presentation to others, here are a few simple tips and considerations to help you deliver a grand presentation.

1. Show your confidence in yourself!

The first few minutes of your presentation, the audience will give you the benefit of any doubt so capture them! Audiences generally want to like a presenter, and they will give you a few minutes at the beginning to engage them, but if you miss this opportunity, you may not be given another. Give them the tip of the iceberg. In other words tell them enough about what you are going to talk about to create intrigue and curiosity. Your confidence in your presentation material combined with enthusiastically capturing the audience will showcase your passion for your presentation.

2. Speaking of passionate

Be passionate about your topic and let that enthusiasm show through. If you do, you won’t have to worry as much about voice projection, intonation, gesturing, or posture. Your message will not only be evident in your material but in your body language. Your content, professionalism, and visuals are leveraged by your enthusiasm and passion for your material.

3. To use or not to use the podium

Many presenters head straight to the podium after being introduced and never leave the podium until they’re done. Unless you’ve been invited to give a lecture on binomial nomenclature or the archeological significance of trilobites, move around. Try to move closer to your audience by standing in front of or away from the podium. A podium is a barrier. During my undergraduate studies, all I ever remember of my American history professor was from her nose up. The podium covered up the rest of her body. The goal of your presentation is to connect with the audience. Touch the audience with both your physical proximity and the passionate content of your message.

4. Keep it concise

People have short attention spans and most are multitasking out of necessity these days. Audience attention is greatest at the beginning of your presentation and will wane as time passes. So, evaluate the organization of your presentation so that you can keep coming back to your central theme you used in the beginning when you gave away the tip of the iceberg. This will keep your audience centered and more attentive. Stories are great anecdotal tools in a presentation however keep them short and lively, make sure they support the central theme of your presentation, and enhance the message.

5. Practice

Practice your presentation often. You will find yourself modifying your presentation iteratively until you have it just where you want it to be. Video yourself practicing from several angles and see if you would enjoy your own presentation. We tend to be our own worst critics. Ask a trusted friend to critique your presentation. Most of us can easily talk about ourselves because the subject matter is well known to us. Through practice, practice, and more practice, you will come to know your subject matter so well that it will be as easy to cover as talking about yourself.

Considering all the work that goes into making a grand presentation, the delivery of the presentation takes the least amount of time but represents the showcase of your efforts, talents, energies, and passion about the material you cover. So deliver with confidence, passion, enthusiasm, and respect for brevity and you might be surprised to find yourself invited back to present again.

Tags: