Today I want to talk about how “authors” and “writing” in general have been affected by new technology. Consider the following: Humanity has come from a complete oral tradition where all knowledge and experience was committed to memory and some paintings on cave walls. Any transmission of knowledge or experience or news was in one way or another from person to person. The narrator may not have seen the events first hand but with the exchange of stories or knowledge there was person to person contact, eye contact and body language could be observed.

Then a very radical step away from that occurred – languages were turned into writing. Suddenly you didn’t have the person to person contact with the delivery of the story. It was between you and the paper (or whichever medium the words were written on). The whole sensual experience was missing.

Writers are now trying to take narratives and story telling to mobile phones, SMS and the Internet. Read the rest of this entry »

At the outset this may seem to be a very basic and simple question. When asked we all can name some brands, usually the ones we grew up with come to mind first. Some brands have been around for a long time. For some, their colours and logos never changed. People remember them from one generation to the next.

Occasionally brands have become synonymous with the object – just think of hoover and hoovering – the brand became one with the vacuum cleaner and became part of the colloquial English language.

We are exposed to over 3000 branded messages a day. Apparently we only notice about 80 out of those and then we only react to about 10. Reacting can simply mean to just give it a brief thought or comment, it doesn’t mean acting on it and buying the product. Read the rest of this entry »

Today Charly and I talked about what I learnt from a panel discussion at a local Art Gallery.

An Arts Centre may seem an odd place to learn about new technology and what is going  on in cyberspace – but this is where I found out about a number of new ways the internet,  mobile phones, GPS systems and the urban environment as a whole can be used.

I went to listen to a panel discussion. The focus of the discussion was on how the new technology is being used by artists, what new art forms are evolving and what changes  have come about because of this. I see life, creativity and art as inseparable and vital.

Communication, writing, photography and story telling have all been changed and affected in one way or another by new technology. This does not only affect the arts, this affects every aspect of our everyday life. These changes open up new ways of marketing and communicating with your clients or potential clients.

The panel consisted of 4 artists and one MC and the following subjects were discussed:
*    Short stories for mobile phones delivered as SMS
*    Geo caching
*    Locative projects – stories, audios, videos
*    Use of GPS to deliver audio
*    Projecting images or video onto outdoor surfaces
*    Writing has changed, a lot of people speak about the “Death of the Author”
*    Text has been “liberated from the page”
*    Geographic space can become a canvas (or a billboard I suppose)
*    All senses can be brought into play much more easily
*    Interaction and co-creation are becoming accessible to everybody
*    QR or Quick Response codes can be used for a multitude of things

Have I got your creative juices flowing yet? Can you see how some of the above could become part of your marketing or business strategy?

Are you puzzled about some of the above points? Listen to today’s show to find out all the details.

Till next time,

Connie and Charly

from

http://www.stretchyourmindandbody.com/blog

The word marketing conjures up a variety of different images in everybody’s mind. Often the “used care salesman” is described as one of the most undesirable marketing stereotypes. I see marketing as a continuum. There is a a line with a starting point of zero and it goes up to 100. You as a business owner and marketer have to find the point on that continuum that you resonate with, that you are comfortable with and that you can live with. Zero is no marketing at all and 100 is a full campaign with all the bells and whistles. Read the rest of this entry »

Today Charly and I interviewed Janet Beckers from Wonderful Web Women to discuss list building through Joint Ventures. For anyone starting out on the internet list building is crucial – “the money is in the list” – is a much used phrase in the internet marketing world. This is true, but many all too eager internet marketers view their list as some kind of ready teller, they don’t bother building a relationship, don’t treat their list with respect and wonder why people are not buying.

Janet refers to her list as her “community” and talked about community building. After a while the community takes on a life of its own. By doing live calls and creating events in which the community can participate creates a real “buzz” and the products created are amazing.

One of the problems new internet marketers often face is the fact that their JV partners don’t promote as they promised. It is important to realise that often it is simply the fact that they are too busy and they need gentle reminders.

You can pre-write emails and your JV partners links and banners to make their job as easy as possible. Always be clear in your mind that you are coming from a position of having something worthwile to offer to them. Always be grateful for the opportunity and the fact that they agreed to work with you.  At the same time,  don’t come from a position of inferiority or feeling that they are doing you a huge favour and that you have nothing to offer.

Janet shared many more amazing insights in our interview. To visit her site, go here:  Wonderful Web Women

To listen to the whole interview, click here:

Till next time,

Connie and Charly

from

http://www.stretchyourmindandbody.com/blog

Marketing is more important than ever. Here are some hints how to spend your advertising budget wisely.

1. Find out who is interested in your products in services. You can’t be all things to all people. You need to target a particular segment of the population.  They must have the money to be able to buy whatever it is you are offering (seems obvious but is sometimes overlooked).
2. Don’t neglect offline marketing – there are still lots of people out there who are not computer literate, who prefer real letters and who need your services or products. Read the rest of this entry »

In this post I would like to talk about things that make people run from your list and hit the “unsubscribe” button – the very thing you want to avoid as much as possible.

Recently my inbox had reached such a state (1467 unread mails!!) that I had to do  some serious virtual house cleaning.  I couldn’t manage any more. Not only did I delete everything that even had the faintest smell of “hype”, I unsubscribed from lots of so called “newsletters”. I love content rich newletters, especially the nicely laid out ones with some colour and pictures in it. I got one recently where a sunflower was in the top right hand corner and this sunflower was stretching and opening up – I really enjoyed that image.

I  understand that not everybody has the technical resources and know-how to do something fancy like that, but anybody can produce a neat looking, clean layout that is not too cluttered and which is easy to read.

Here are just 4 reasons why your clients will hit the unsubscribe button and run:

Content – I really dislike emails that have no valuable content at all. I am supposed to get a newsletter, I want to learn something, be entertained or even read a provocative article. I don’t want an email full of links leading to sales pages with “one time” and  “urgent” offers that contains no information whatsoever.

Being treated like an ATM – I want to be valued and looked after and not just “milked” for every cent somebody can get out of me. I don’t mind good offers and I will look at them but when I see an email full of links and not much else I just run away.

Getting the exact same email from a number of marketers (even the same subject line). This tells me that the sender of this email hasn’t even bothered to add a few words of his own or what he thinks about the product he is promoting, whether he/she has tried the product out him/herself, whether they think it is good value and what flaws the product may have. Nothing is perfect in this world and I am much more inclined to buy from somebody who gives me an honest opinion. The product may have flaws but it still might the best on the market in its category.

The “wrong link” or sorry, “wrong date” trick. I am really fed up with this one – you get an email about something and then, a day later or so you get another one profusely apologising about the link being “wrong”, or “overloaded”, the “servers crashing” or some other obscure reason why you should click on the “new” and “good” link. Do you think your clients believe you?

I know you want to get ahead and make sales but you want a long term, sustainable business – treat your customers the way you would like to be treated. It might be a much slower process but it will pay off  in the long run.

Connie and Charly

from

http://www.stretchyourmindandbody.com

3) Sending duplicate emails

There are two varieties of these emails. One is where a person
sends out an email that is word for word the same as another
marketer.

This happens when marketers are promoting the same product and they
simply cut/paste an email that the product owner has provided for
them.

This annoys me to no end.

The other variety is when I am on multiple lists for the same
marketer and that marketer sends the same email to each list. So I
get the same email for every list that I belong to for that marketer.

This is very easy to avoid and shows me that you don’t care enough
to take a couple of extra minutes to do things right.

Results of both of these? Unsubscribe…

4) Oooops! Wrong Link

Am I the only person that this drives them nuts?

You get an email from a marketer and then a couple of hours later
you get another mail explaining that they messed up and here is the
correct link!

Is it that hard to test your email before you send it out? No.

If you do screw up a link in your mailing then include an extra
special bonus or discount with the correction. Make it something
that hurts YOU in the wallet and will teach you to take a few extra
minutes to test your links next time.

Those are just a few of the things that will cause me to hit the
unsubscribe button pretty fast. I did some more of my virtual house cleaning the other day. This
time I went through my email and unsubscribed from about 40
newsletters.

Today we spoke to Laura Whitlelaw,  an expert resume writer from

http://www.bestchoice4resumes.com

The first thing to remember is the fact that potential employers are inundated with resumes. They only scan the resumes and you got about 10-30 seconds to get noticed – so a very targetted and professionally written resume is of utmost importance. Read the rest of this entry »

We got some exciting news:We are  in the process of organising our first offline event. It will be a workshop.

It  is all about getting yourself or your small business online. We will teach you how to do it in the most cost effective and simple manner and you will walk out with a “live” site. You will also learn stress management and visualisation skills in the process. For all the details please have a look here:

http://stretchyourmindandbody.com/blog/workshop

As time goes on, we we will tell you more. We are going to hold the workshop on 16 May, 2009  right in the Sydney CBD at a venue that is virtually a “stone’s throw” from Town Hall Station.  We are also going to provide lunch,  morning and afternoon tea – it is my job to look after all that. I love organising events and especially food – it really gets my creative juices flowing.

Talk to you soon,

Connie and Charly

from

http://www.stretchyourmindandbody.com

Charly is at the world internet summit at the moment. She had the privilege of interviewing Sean Roach today about Offline Events and the challenge.

Now I got the link where you can see the actual short interview Charly did with Sean Roach. The link is very long and you need to copy and paste it into your browser – otherwise it may not work.

http://thekeys2internetmarketing.com/internet-marketing/world-internet-summit-gold-coast-2009-live-streamingworld-internet-summit-gold-coast-2009-live-streaming#more-308

On the link below you can sign up to be part of the World Internet Summit from the comfort of your own home:

Join World Internet Summit Gold Coast – From Whereever You Are Now

Connie

from

http://www.stretchyourmindandbody.com