1

Archive for

bikram | April 27, 2012
No comments

5 Tips for Meeting Deadlines

Does the thought of meeting deadline scare you till death? Does it bring a chill down your spine? Deadline, the word itself says it’s deadly, so you are not wrong if it makes you feel scared. In real term, deadline means the ultimate date or last date of meeting a project or assignment at hand. It’s a realistic approach towards meeting work at hand within the stipulated time frame. Don’t get bogged down by the deadline, rather respect it and know how to meet it effectively.

Here are some tips about meeting deadlines without being under its pressure.

Don’t get under stress

Don’t get under the stress of deadline, it’s fatal. Take it easy, as a date by which you have to submit your work not your life. It’s not a matter of ‘do or die’ situation, but a professional commitment by which a responsible professional finishes his work to make the whole working process easier.

Work from the beginning

Many of us have the habit of working in the last moment to meet a given deadline. Make it a practice to work right from the beginning; the moment work is assigned to you. Balanced work throughout will ease work pressure and deadline trauma. It will help you to finish work before time, re-check work for further changes or improvisation, present work on time with a pleasant mood, ensuring flawless work and appreciation.

Plan and divide work into phases

Plan your work in advance; divide it into parts like work to be completed in a day, a week, a month. Make your own deadline of work, scheduled for each day. It will set your goal to be accomplished each day. Make sure you accomplish each day’s work. Advance planning and division of work will keep you focused and help you easily accomplish the final goal.

Create a deadline for yourself

Create a deadline for yourself, a personal deadline to ascertain you finish the given work before assigned deadline. Keep a false deadline for yourself a day or two in advance of the actual deadline. Make sure you adhere to it. It will ease your tension and you will easily catch up with work.

Treat yourself when you do it

When you meet a deadline on time, treat yourself with something your favorite. Do it every time. Whatever you wish to buy or experience or eat – just indulge yourself. It will keep you motivated.

Category: Business | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | October 2, 2011
No comments

Don’ts for Interview Behavior

Interview behavior has its own preset rules and regulations. You can’t afford to mess up at the interview desk just because of your ignorance regarding the proper interview behavior. Interview behavior has remained rigid, deep-rooted within set rules and regulations. If you are new to the interview experience and unaware of ideal interview behavior, here are few tips for you.

Don’t try to be too flashy and attention grabbing

Keeping it humble and common won’t do any harm to you. Do not try to be an attention grabber. Keep your attire, appearance minimalistic and simple. Wear formal clothes (industry accepted and approved) of pastel shades. Do not try flashy and glittery textured clothes. Colors like – orange, red, pink, yellow, bright green are absolute ‘no no’. Instead you may settle for formal color hues like – black, grey, brown, dark blue, beige, white etc. Try matte finished textures. Let your clothes speak for your personality. Similarly wear shoes, make up of matte finished formal shades. Do not experiment much with colors. Make sure you stand out for your personality and qualities, not for wrong reasons like flashy clothes or appearance.

Do not talk in very high pitch

Often people assume talking in a high pitch while giving presentations or answering questions make one appear very confident, smart and influential. Well, it is wrong. Talking in a louder pitch may just make you appear to be over conscious, indecent, desperate to prove a point and irritating. So, keep your voice pitch moderate with clarity of diction and a pleasing tone. Do not try too hard, let it flow smoothly and easily.

Do not stare too much

It is popular belief that the interview candidate needs to do maximum eye contact with the board of interviewers or audience of presentation. On the contrary too much of eye contact may spoil your entire effort and make you appear as too desperate. It is true you need to make good amount of eye contact with the interviewer and audience in front; but gazing or staring at the people in front can actually send wrong messages across. Optimum eye contact is always good and will make you appear confident, smart and pleasing. Do not let your eyes wander here and there.

Do not keep fiddling things in front

It is highly irritating to see people in front fiddling things like – pens, paperweights, folders, bag straps etc. Often being tensed and while making up a proper reply in mind people keep fiddling things. Such activity sends poor messages across, like – unconfident nature, lack of knowledge etc. Instead sit straight, with hands folded in front, legs straight and chin up.

Keep in mind these strict ‘no no’s for interview behavior.

 

Category: How-To Guides | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | October 1, 2011
No comments

Why Online Advertising is Picking Up Fast?

Have you ever thought why online advertising is becoming so popular with each passing day, why marketers are considering online advertising over traditional forms of advertising? These days why the media planners are considering online advertising as a major chunk of their media planning proposals and why companies are ready to make online advertising a major part of their budget? Here are some reasons explaining why online advertising is spreading allover so fast.

Cluttered traditional media

The major reasons for growing popularity of online advertising is too cluttered scenario of traditional media like – television advertising, radio advertising, outdoor advertising, press advertising. Advertising in traditional media has become extremely cluttered and has created a saturated market for the same. People avoid advertising in traditional media these days. When there is commercial break on television, people change the television channel immediately. Half of the advertising texts are unread, not remembered. Such activities ensure failure of a brand. Being cluttered and saturated traditional media is failing to penetrate through its target audience. As a result, people seek something new. Since, everyone is Internet savvy these days, online medium has opened a new gate of opportunity altogether for the marketers.

So much variety

Online advertising offers a huge range of variety. Traditional media doesn’t offer much variety in terms of types of advertising. A newspaper advertisement may have different sizes and location of advertisements only. Television advertisement may have different types based on duration and narrative. But online advertising offers altogether a vast array of advertising categories. Online advertising has wide range of variety like – interstitial advertisements; static banner advertisement, interactive banner advertisements, pop-up advertisements, viral advertisements and many other varieties.

Instant action

Online advertisements are blessed with immediate action facility. In other forms of advertising you can’t measure exactly how many audiences responded to it and decided to purchase. But in online advertising you can check the relation between advertising and immediate sales. Since most of your banner advertisements or pop up advertisements will provide call to action buttons like ‘Buy now’, ‘Get it now’ you will have a direct relation with sales. People not only click on these buttons and land into the homepage of the brand and buy, but also send queries and perform other desired actions. As a result, you can immediately measure how many people responded to your online advertising and decided to purchase.

Longer life

Unlike television and radio advertisements, which are gone forever once missed out; in online advertising you can refer to the advertising again and again for comparatively longer time. If you missed out the interstitial advertisement that appeared before the yahoo homepage showed up, you may reopen the site and see it again. You may do the same to see an interesting interactive banner advertisement. So, you have repeated viewing option.

Undoubtedly, online advertising is picking up with full vigor.

 

Category: Marketing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | September 30, 2011
No comments

Why Should You Choose Online Advertising?

Online advertising is buzzing the digital world with enthusiasm and pride. Traditional marketers who were initially frowning at online advertising have at last realized the potent importance of online advertising and have incorporated the same in their advertising practices. Online advertising has at last won its due prestige and respect. A major chunk of marketers have even shifted to online advertising from traditional advertising patterns and have considered a major budget of their media planning to online advertising. Here are some reasons telling why online advertising should be in your priority list.

You just can’t avoid it    

Traditional media of advertising like television or radio advertising can be easily avoided by the audience. In between television programs whenever commercials are aired lot of people change television channel and prefer to watch something else during the commercial breaks. While listening to a good talk show on radio, if radio advertisements intervene people change stations and listen to something else in the meanwhile. But, in online advertising there is no scope of avoiding, ignoring or escaping. When you open a site, you may face an interstitial advertisement first, which can be extremely entertaining and catchy. Then after few seconds the actual site may show up. In some cases you may ‘skip’ the advertising. But still you get to see a part of the advertisement, and you can’t avoid it. Otherwise whenever you open a popular website, several pop up advertisements may appear. Generally these advertisements are seen for dating sites, insurance providers, matrimonial sites, home loan providers. Pop up advertisements at least succeed in sending across the desired message within seconds even if you choose to close them once they appear. You can’t even avoid the interactive online banner advertisements. Some of them are very innovative and attention grabbing. You just can’t avoid them.

Variety is the flavor

Variety is an integral part of online advertising. Television or radio advertising may not offer a wide range of variety apart from nature of advertisements and duration. But online advertising offers a wide range of varieties like – online banner advertisements, viral advertisements, pop up advertisements, interstitial advertisements and many other types. There are many more types. As a result you just can’t avoid its impact. Online advertisements will surely draw your attention.

Online advertising has proved its magic and is innovating new strategies with every passing day.

 

 

Category: Marketing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | September 25, 2011
No comments

Tips for Promoting a Clothing Brand on Facebook

Facebook is a great medium of promotion, for drawing attention towards a brand, increase its fans and followers, get talked about and shared, and finally to pull up the sales figure. Clothes reflect fashion and fashion always attracts people, especially the youngsters. Youngsters being active on Facebook, it is a wonderful medium to reach them and promote a brand. Here are few tips for promoting a clothing brand on Facebook.

Make a fan page first

To get started with Facebook, first you need to make a fan page of your brand and invite friends and all to ‘like’ it. Remember, you need to develop a good profile on Facebook with adequate information. People would love to see clothes more than reading about your brand or seeing it commercials and logo and brand endorser. So start creating albums displaying your collection. You may create different albums for different styles of clothes like – one piece dresses, shorts skirts, hot pants, tube tops and the like. You need to be very active in this fan page. Keep posting new status messages every now and then. But don’t overdo it.

Ask people to tag themselves

Whenever you launch a new collection of clothes post its pictures on Facebook. Suppose you have 8 sets of images in a particular segment, now ask fans to tag their own names on clothes they like. This way you will not only come to know about preferences of people and estimate demand, but also accentuate demand for your clothes and expect sales. People will soon start asking about availability of the same. Make sure you answer back all queries.

Special discount to fans

Once people know about you, some of them may not follow you thinking they can follow your website instead to stay updated. To lure your prospects to become your fan and stay loyal, you may offer special privileges to Facebook fans only. You may offer discount on purchase or free gift with purchase offer. This way people will not only follow you, but also utilize discount codes to buy clothes and will end up buying quite frequently. What more can you ask for?

Run contests about your brand

To generate more brand awareness and brand preference run interesting contests on Facebook and it should be related to your brand only. As for example you may ask, ‘Can you recall which year did we launch our brand?’ or you may simply ask ‘Who was our last brand endorser?’ People will answer such questions with full vigor. In reward you may give away small gifts hampers or special discount coupons.

Let your brand do wonders on Facebook.

 

 

Category: Marketing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | September 25, 2011
No comments

How to Utilize Forum Marketing?

Forum marketing can be a great tool to promote your business. Forums are great places where people converse personally, look forward to others’ inputs and value them. People seek advices, replies and expert help. Thus talking in a forum can actually push your brand much ahead of others.

Here is a guideline for forum marketing.

Relevant forum

It is very important that you find a forum which is relevant and worth of your time and effort. Find the right community for your business. Do your bit of research before finding out relevant forum. Approach people who match with your target market besides talking to your employees, suppliers. Find out which forum they are frequent to. Utilize forum hub sites to narrow your search and shortlist 5-10 forums worth of your time and effort. Always settle for forums which are popular, long established and very active with members nothing less than 1000 and 10,000 posts. A forum is considered to be active when it receives at least 15 posts every day. You should avoid forums full of spam messages.

Do it fast

Do not delay in creating an account once you have decided the forum. Old members are always looked upto with more respect and credibility. New users often face skepticism. New users are often even barred from posting for few days after registration. Early entrant always has an edge over others.

Always read forum guidelines

Reading forum user agreement and posting guidelines is absolutely a must for its members. Read the rules and guidelines carefully before registering. People often skip guidelines and click yes even without reading. You may miss out very important rules and land into grave problem. Do not miss out important issues like if users are allowed to place links in their posts, if users are allowed to promote their businesses or not, if users are allowed to post commercial messages in their signatures or contact other users for commercial purposes. Besides these also enquire what restrictions are placed on new users or what special privileges are given to its veteran users.

Create a detailed profile

Creating a detailed credible profile is very important. Do not take it casually. Apart from choosing an apt username and creating an avatar you need to write detailed description of your skills, expertise and experiences. Some personal inputs will make your profile appear more human and less of a robot. Small details like hometown, favorite sports team, or favorite television show can make your profile appear more credible. Provide your contact detail so that other s can contact you to know more about your business.

Get started today with forum marketing.

 

Category: Marketing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | September 24, 2011
No comments

How to Promote a Public Service Commercial on Internet?

We all know public service advertisements are made targeting the mass, for the sole purpose of mass awareness regarding a cause. Are you just concentrating in traditional forms of media and missing out a big chunk of target people who are mostly on Internet? Well, public service causes like – mass literacy, abandoning racial discrimination, treating old people with care and respect, planting more and more trees, having safe sex, saving water – are some of the issues which can be handled wonderfully and bring about more responses when promoted online. Here are some online promotional tips for public service advertising.

Facebook Advertisements

Facebook advertisements offer high rate of clicks. Advertisements appearing next to Facebook profile page are truly catchy. They have small attention grabbing images and text, which generates lot of curiosity among the visitors. You can write a crispy advertisement. Facebook advertisements will specifically reach your defined target group of audience. Instead of talking about a cause directly, you may take a nice creative approach and convey the desired message. As for example, to encourage people to give up the racial discrimination you may make an advertisement saying – ‘Black is classy and white is elegant. When both are favorites why make a difference when they color the skin?’ See how impactful yet subtle it is. That’s the power of advertising. And Facebook is great medium to reach people.

Viral advertisements

Humorous viral advertisements truly spread like virus. You may conceptualize and create funny viral videos while conveying the desired message in a funny manner with a learning outcome towards its end. You may pick up any social cause and play with the same.

Advertise in the right place

When you are talking to the mass make sure you talk to them through a relevant medium. Your target audience may buy Nike shoes online as well, but seeing your advertisement while shopping won’t do much impact on the audience. Rather he may ignore you since buying will be priority. Buy online advertisement space only in related sites. You may buy space in a popular daily or magazine or television news channel’s official website; where people browse through the content quite often, spend much time and leisurely look around. Your impactful advertisement or video there on the website will draw attention and get easily noticed. You may buy advertisement space in some NGO’s website.

Video directories

An audio-visual always helps to build emotional connect and send the message across. Make sure you post your audio-visual commercial in all leading online video directories like – Youtube, Metcafe and the like. Soon people will start viewing, liking, commenting and sharing with friends and families. It’s a great tool to get seen and shared.

Now what? Just get started! Let people know the cause, believe in it and practice it.

 

Category: Marketing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | September 23, 2011
No comments

5 Basic Tips for Web Designing Beginners

Web designing is certainly not just about the technicalities or putting random shapes and colors in blank space, it is much beyond. Good web designing skill needs good aesthetic sense of designing and color, understanding of which color will match your product and service offering, which place of the site will be strategically fine for putting a certain call to action button or tab. Such expertise and knowledge develops with years of experience. But here are some tips for your help which will help you to evolve as a great website designer.

Color scheme

If your brand already has a corporate color, seen everywhere in office stationeries, logo ; stick to it. Use this color safely in your website as the fundamental color. It will create a coherence of color usage everywhere – in all brand communications and build a specific brand image and personality in the consumers’ mind. Else, use not more than 2-3 colors, which complement each other. Do not use different shades of colors for each page. Some commonly used, safe color schemes are – blue/grey and white; yellow, grey and white; blue, orange and white; red, grey and white; blue and white. If you are a beginner and wondering which color scheme to choose, refer to some good websites. You can simply replicate their color schemes.

Use special effects only when needed

Don’t forget, too much special effect can kill a website and you may lose a visitor forever. Spinning logo, rotating image not only distract attention but also weaken the loading speed of the website. People are impatient; they may not wait too long and simply leave the website with a bad impression. Even if you use special effects, keep it minimum, less flashy and less distracting. Too much flashy and distracting special effects will not only take away attention to somewhere else, but may also make your website appear amateurish and unprofessional.

Available templates on web

If you are new to the business and don’t know how to build it from scratch, pre-set designed templates on web can solve your purpose. There are many sites which specialize in web template designing. Some of them are also available at nil cost. You may refer to these sites for design templates -www.web4business.com.au emplates1.htm
www.newtemps.com
www.website-templates-resale-rights.com
www.123webtemplatesandmore.com

Easy navigation system

Easy navigation makes it easier for the visitor to find things in a website. Websites generally put navigation bar on top or left corner. Stick to it. Too much of experimentation can fall flat. Also put additional navigation bar at the bottom, so that they need not scroll up every time. Even great looking websites fail miserably with a bad navigation system.

External links

Make sure links to other websites or blogs open in a new window altogether, so that visitor need not leave your site and re-open your site again and again while browsing the external link provided.

Follow these essential tips and set your first step towards designing with firm confidence.

 

 

 

Category: Web Design | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | September 18, 2011
No comments

Online Marketing Ideas for a Magazine

Media has always been in the centre of attention – shaping, enhancing, and controlling opinion. Magazines have been general, political, business magazines, travel magazine, beauty and health magazine, fitness magazine, educational magazine and of many other kinds. Magazines have not only nurtured human preferences and interests, but also shaped new thoughts, opinions and beliefs. But promoting a magazine online can altogether fetch a new class of prospective readers. If you have not tried it yet here are some tips for online promotion of magazine.

Advertise in your magazine’s niche related websites

It is always wise to advertise in your magazine’s niche related website. Suppose you have a travel related magazine, you may advertise in all leading travel portals and blogs. Finding niche is very important. Or you may simply buy advertisement space in a leading generic website which has a ‘travel’ tab under it. This way you will get visible to your exact target audience.

Each issue needs to be promoted

Each issue needs to be promoted, talked about, get seen and heard, shared and liked to build up the excitement. Cover page of next upcoming issue needs to be showcased everywhere – in your official site, in newsletters, blogs, forums you participate or advertisements or Facebook fan page. Talk about the core theme or central topic of the upcoming issue, display cover page and some alluring pictures which will be part of the magazine. It will be a nice way of drawing people.

Newsletters are must

Often people may not notice advertisements, so newsletter comes handy in such situation. Those who have already registered in your website, send out fortnightly or monthly newsletter to them in advance of its release to ensure people get to know about it, talk about it and wait for the issue to reach them.  Develop a nice newsletter by a graphic designer talking about the central theme and all attractions to be included in the magazine.

Special discounts to online fans

If you are not on Facebook, Twitter you are missing out a large chunk of people. Create a fan page of your magazine on Facebook and start promoting it. Frequent updates with status messages, polls, images, contests, questions, tips, videos can actually arrest many eyeballs. Whosoever ‘like’s your Facebook fan page or follows you on Twitter may be entitled to 10% discount on purchase of your magazine. Such information spreads really fast on web and you will soon witness growing fan numbers.

Get started. Shout, share, get liked on the web to witness rising sale of your magazine.

Category: Marketing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | September 17, 2011
No comments

Why Online Shopping is Witnessing Growing Popularity?

These days online shopping has taken over traditional shopping practice for multiple reasons. As a result, even big retail giants are coming up with their exclusive websites offering online shopping facility to combat the competition and keep up their sales figure. Here are some reasons why online shopping has taken a toll on our lives.

Lack of time in hand

When work life has gone through changes and life demands extended hours at work, who has time for leisure shopping? If favorite brand, style can be bought sitting in front of the computer at own convenient time what can be better than this? Often weekends are also busy with work, and if not people prefer to rest at home and spend time with the family rather than store hopping. Because of online shopping people can purchase stuffs even while working, during lunch breaks, at midnight and need not depend upon the shop’s timing.

Anytime, anywhere

Best part about online shopping is that you can purchase stuffs at your own leisure, without worrying about time, place etc. Sitting in China, you may buy a product from London, when it will be shipped to your home. You can buy at any point of the day, as online shops are open 24×7 to serve you.

Convenience

Yes, online shopping is all about buyer’s convenience and ease. You need not dress up, think twice before stepping out seeing the rainy weather, get car out of the garage and then finally reach your favorite store. You can sit in front of computer, take a bite of burger, hug your boyfriend, make twenty phone calls, write an email and at the same time browse through the website and place an order. Your convenience is treasured and valued.

Fast processing

In physical form shopping, advance plan often falls flat on face. One may plan to finish shopping and return home within two hours, but unexpected hurdles can tarnish your entire plan. You may get stuck in severe traffic jam of the road, face sudden snowfall and road block, safety threats, overcrowded showrooms, long queue at the billing counter and many other things. Your whole day may go wasted. In online shopping once you decide what to purchase, it takes just two minutes to finish the processing. You can buy with credit cards or debit cards, online banking or cash on delivery services. You may also pay on EMIs. What could be better than this?

Enjoy the ‘Buyer is King’ status, truly exert your power by shopping online.

Category: Articles | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
« Older Entries