2009 November |

Archive for November, 2009

I believe there are two essential strategies in business.

1: Never reveal all you know.

2: Joking apart, sometimes business owners get caught up in business development and business growth and end up not being able to see the wood for the trees.

Many directors only ever consider conventional academic business training from leading consultancy agencies. However sometimes we are presented with excellent free business case studies, which identify fantastic business growth strategies that are never considered in conventional business universities.

One such business study falls under the auspice of brand building and brand awareness. Business experts recognize it as self promotion and free advertising.

Business Consultant Provides Insider Business Advice Tips To Fast Track Your Business Growth # 1 Self Promotion Free Advertising

If you want to know how to run business or how to achieve growth in business then it’s wise to consider alternatives to a conventional business support service or business management training offered by a business consultant or business experts.

To fast track your business growth the best insider business advice is to study celebrities like Katie Price AKA Jordan a master of the consultancy favored art of self promotion & free advertising.

Many business owners fail to realize the relevance or importance of self promotion free advertising for achieving the exponential growth of business.

And yet some of the great heavyweight business entrepreneurs gain maximum publicity which in turn raises their business brand recognition which ultimately leads to increased sales.

One only has to look at the likes of Richard Branson, Donald Trump, Paris Hilton, Madonna and the current UK phenomenon of Katie Price AKA Jordan the model and highly successful business woman.

As a very successful model Katie Price participated in a UK TV reality program called, ‘I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here,’ which was filmed in an Australian jungle six years ago.

Although she was never known as a shrinking violet, she ruthlessly grabbed every opportunity for her business self promotion.

It worked out fantastically for her. She fell in love with one of her jungle camp mates and married him. The press fell in love with this celebrity couple and they graced front page media publications throughout the six year period they remained married.

Six years later the divorce caused a split in the public’s perception of the couple, and it was played out in the media and TV stations the world over. Irrespective of how rich you are you could just not buy this amount of business and self promotion advertising.

Following her divorce,her husband seemed to be gaining the upper hand as the darling of the UK media, Katie Price pulled another fantastic ace from up her sleeve and entered this years, ‘I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here,’ TV Show.

Massive ratings ensured she received unbelievable opportunities for business and self promotion which as mentioned turns into business growth.

This intelligent and business savvy business woman knows how to run business and she will go down in business circles as the master of self promotion and free advertising. And rightly so, she has taken her knocks and always comes out fighting.

Business experts understand precisely what she is doing and how this translates into growth in business. Sadly you just don’t get this type of insider business advice on many of the business management training programs.

The business consultant or management consultancy agency tasked with providing her business support service can only be overjoyed at the ease with which she turbo charges her business growth.

Her business demeanor proves the phrase, ‘it’s not how many times you get knocked down, it’s how many times you get up again’ to be valid.

If you think you could never personally utilize self promotion free advertising as part of your business growth strategy, then think again. Most of us have already done it to a certain extent, but many of us have forgotten, or not even realized we have done it.

Think back to your school days when your teacher asked you a question and you raised your hand to answer. This was a form of self promotion and you were prepared to advertise to your audience that you knew the answer.

Every individual business consultant refers to this as shameless self promotion, which is extremely valuable to the growth of business.

The opposite of shameless self promotion, is called shameful self promotion. This is when high profile or celebrity individuals cross the line in search of free media advertising coverage.

A perfect example of this was in November 2009 when Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Conservative Party leader both instructed their personal photographers to take a photograph of them individually posing in front of the mass of crosses symbolizing the deaths of our UK armed service personnel.

When rumbled, both had to issue a hasty apology.

Good, bad or indifferent, this self promotion worked as both of these individuals were splashed across front pages of International press & TV publications. If nothing else business experts concur there is no such thing as bad free business advertising.

Insider business advice suggests that there are two forms of self promotion, covert and overt. Overt self promotion is utilized by business owners like Katie Price Jordan.

In order to achieve growth in business she is very determined to identify the best business opportunities which will grant her maximum publicity. She is totally unafraid to appear in question and answer TV programs where the TV presenter asks her very personal questions.

If anyone really knows how to run business then its Katie Price.

Perhaps when she gets older and decides to slow down, she might move into business consultancy offering business support service and business management training because this business woman has a PHd in business development skills achieved at the ‘University of Hard Knocks.’

Before you consider self promotion as a means of gaining free media advertising then you should spend a little time researching who else utilities this

insider business advice

Politicians are the industry leaders in this field. Think back to Tony Blair, Margret Thatcher, Bill Clinton and George Bush. Every single one of these politicians mastered the art of self promotion.

Many celebrities utilize self promotion to sell tickets to their performances.

Business entrepreneurs like Alan Sugar, Duncan Banatyne, Peter Jones, James Caan and Debra Meadon frequently utilize self promotion to raise their business brand awareness to fuel their business growth.

Business experts advise caution when business owners consider adopting self promotion strategies into their growth in business strategic plan.

There is a fine line between mastering self promotion and getting it completely wrong, which ultimately translates into halting the growth of business.

Usually it is the overt style that comes across as being dignified and shameless. Frequently the overt style which often, but not always appears to be undignified.

To sell yourself as dignified self promotion you have to ensure you can deliver what you are saying you can deliver. If you can’t, then people will know you have no real credibility and no real understanding of how to run business.

Every consultancy agency offering you a business support service and/or business management training should strive to ensure you don’t fall into this lack of business credibility trap, because every business consultant knows that it very difficult, and sometimes impossible to recover from a mistake like this.

A simple slip of the tongue can sometimes have a devastating effect on your business. No one knows this more that Gerald Ratner who was the high flying owner of the UK chain of jewelers known as Ratner’s.

He simply joked about some of the jewelery he sold as being crap at a dinner function. Sadly his self promotion backfired when the press and media widely reported his comments. His jewelery business folded soon after and he has never really recovered his high profile business entrepreneur status since.

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Dr. Mark D. Yates The International Business Guru & Growth Consultant grows businesses fast delivering exponential growth, increased turnover & profit margins. He delivers business support to small, medium & large businesses in 42 countries. To claim his FREE business case files visit his web site at http://www.markdyates.bcoss.org or e-mail him at drmarkdyates@aol.com

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6 Useful Wordpress Plugins to Prevent Spam

In starting your wordpress, there’s a great possibility to receive spams. Receiving comment spam when first starting a blog can gain such traffic that could be alarming for beginners. For this reasons we don’t have the access to prevent spammers to read our blogs. In just a minute your blog can be spammed by thousands of comments. This article introduces 6 proven useful plugins that is available in wordpress to help you fight and eradicate spam.

  • yaCAPTCHA
  • It is a CAPTCHA plugin designed for WordPress, it helps you block comment spam from automated bots. So if you post comments, users have to write down the characters of an image provided. It is planned for automated programs to find it hard figuring out those characters, a great help in preventing comment spam.

    These are the requirements to have yaCAPTCHA in your computers: WordPress 1.5 or above, PHP 4.0.6 or above with GD2 library support, Theme must support the ‘comment_form’ action.

  • Trackback Spam Resources
  • A very simple b ut effective test on all trackbacks in order to stop spam. The TrackBack Validator, a plugin for WordPress that are sent by people commenting on your weblog that go along by a URL that points to that commentary. Spam TrackBacks are accompanied by a URL that points to a pay-per-click affiliate website or other irrelevant material. The Validator exploits this key difference:

      1. When a TrackBack is received, the plugin retrieves the Web page located at the URL included in the TrackBack.
      2. If the page contains a link to your weblog, the TrackBack is approved.
      3. If the page does not link to your weblog, the TrackBack is flagged as spam and rejected.

    Because TrackBack spammers do not set up custom Web pages linking to the weblogs they attack, this simple test will quickly reveal illegitimate Trackbacks.

  • WP-SpamFree and Trackback Validator
  • A very powerful anti plugin for WordPress that eradicates comment spam, have a good performance in eliminating trackback and pingback spam. It works invisibly without CAPTCHA’s, or other inconvenience to site visitors. The plugin includes spam-free contact form feature as well.

      Features
      1. It’s completely free for both commercial and personal use.
      2. The beauty of this plugin is the methods of blocking spam. It takes a different approach than most and stops spam at the door.
      3. Powerful trackback and pingback spam protection.
      4. It works like a firewall to ensure that your commenters are in fact, human. Virtually eliminates comment spam from bots.
      5. It has a counter on your dashboard to keep track of all the spam it’s blocking. The numbers will show how effective this plugin is.
      6. Includes drop-in spam-free contact form. Easy to use ? no configuration necessary.
      7. No false positives, which leads to fewer frustrated readers, and less work for you.
      8. You won’t have to waste valuable time sifting through a spam queue anymore, because there won’t be much there, if anything.
      9. Easy to install ? truly plug and play. Just upload and activate.
      10. The code has an extremely low bandwidth overhead and won’t slow down your blog (very light database access), unlike some other anti-spam plugins.
      11. Completely compatible with all cache plugins, including WP Cache and WP Super Cache. Not all anti-spam plugins can say that.
      12. Display your blocked spam stats on your blog.
      13. Helps keep your database slimmer and more efficient.
      14. Works in WordPress MU as well.
  • Invisible Defender
  • wpsecurity1 This plugin specializes in protecting registration, login and comment forms from spambots by addin g two extra fields hidden by CSS. This approach gave me 100% anti-spam protection on one of my sites.

    The idea behind this plugin is simple: SPAMBOTs either fill every form field they find (generic spambots) or fill WordPress-specific fields only (spambots which will recognize WP or are targeting WP only). Therefore it is sufficient to add two extra text fields to form (one empty and one with predefined value), and check their values after the form is submitted. 1st field (empty one) will be filled by generic spambots, and 2nd one will not be filled by spambots targeting WP only. With these two simple checks probably all spambots can be easily detected, so WP can return error “403 Forbidden” for them.

    These two extra fields are hidden with CSS rule, so they will not be visible for most users. Only users with text-based browsers (and very old ones which not support CSS) will see them. Invisible Defender also shows number of blocked spammers in Dashboard, so you can see that it really works.

  • Akismet
  • Akismet is quite possibly the most important and useful plugin you will ever install. It has been developed by the actual team behind Wordpress, if that is not enough of a seal of of approval and a guarantee, I don’t know what is. In a nutshell, Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.

      Requires WP2.0 or higher and is compatible up to WP 2.8.4.
  • Maximum Security for Wordpress
  • Maximum Security for Wordpress is packed with strong protection that makes your site extremely secure. It guards against intrusion; tracks a plethora of events; blocks malicious content that could harm your readers and your search engine ranking; and includes a strong Web application firewall along with a full blown intrusion prevention system, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. No other security plugin for Wordpress comes anywhere close to matching the powerful features of this tool.

    ————————
    Stace Zimmerman is an Internet Marketer who owns & maintains many websites online. Please visit http://themelib.com for wordpress themes and other blogging information. He also runs a hoodia information site at http://hoodiaandweightloss.com

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    • StumbleUpon
    • Technorati
    • TwitThis
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    • Yahoo! Buzz
    • YahooMyWeb