Article Writing – Are You a Shopping Channel Presenter Or a Teacher?

What is the difference between a shopping channel and a schoolteacher? If you don’t know, then perhaps you don’t watch enough shopping channels, which is entirely understandable. Personally I find any more than five minutes of viewing and my brain starts trying to crawl out of my ears.

However, the difference between the way that presenters work on the shopping channels and your teachers attempted to impart essential knowledge about oxbow lakes and differential equations is of great relevance when thinking about article marketing. The reason is that an astonishing number of articles seem to have been written by teachers, rather than by people who could work on the shopping channel and who are attempting to sell something.

Teachers teach, shopping channel presenters sell. What are your articles for if not for selling? But the tough aspect of article writing is that of course the more successful articles teach something at the same time, otherwise they’re not articles, they’re adverts.

When it comes to article writing it’s worth stopping for a moment and thinking about how to learn from each of these fairly contrasting types of people, applying aspects of each to your writing in order to improve both the standard and the effectiveness of your marketing articles.

If you think back to your school-days, and in particular to your teachers you might remember one, or if you’re lucky two, who really made a difference. But why was this? What was it that they did that made such a difference to both your enjoyment of learning and of their lessons?

One of the factors was probably humour. We all get a bit fed up of the dull and rather beige quality of writing on the web. Articles seem often to be devoid of much humour, and yet we all seem to pay more attention to things if there’s a little humour involved. Teachers who cracked the odd joke (even if they made you groan) probably had more of your attention that those who wouldn’t know a joke if it blew up in a chemistry lab.

But successful teachers would also often include a way of learning that maximised the chance of a ‘learning moment’. The ‘Eureka’ moment when a light bulb seems to switch on in your head and you realise that you’ve just understood something, or learned something new, can be tremendously powerful. Providing both humour and the occasional learning moment in your articles can be very powerful, but on their own they may well still restrict you to being categorised as a teacher.

One of the striking features about many of the best shopping channel presenters is not that they’re trying to lecture you or teach you, but are learning with you, discovering things at the same time, being surprised, and of course highly enthusiastic about it all. Appearing highly knowledgeable is certainly valuable and beneficial, but sometimes as article writers we need to be a little less didactic and rather more human. After all, it’s humans we’re trying to reach, not teach.

Marketing With Presentations That Are Spectacular – 21 Ways to Boost Your Online Presence

Right away, many people see the powerful benefits of using spectacular presentations for online marketing and eLearning, but aren’t quite sure “how” one of these presentations can be used in their specific business.

There are an abundance of ways to use spectacular presentations; and for starters, we’d like to present this list of 21 ideas…

  1. Presentations Sounds fairly obvious, but yes… for making a presentation they work extremely well.An example would be a stage presentation or seminar that you’ve done in the past and want to use it to engage your new audience and have them experience your message. These presentations can be delivered robotically over and over again. So take your best presentation and make it spectacular.
  2. Course Previews Online and offline courses can be previewed in a spectacular presentation. Highlight what the course teaches, and peak the interest of the prospective student.
  3. 52 Week Coaching Automatic delivery of a weekly spectacular presentation can be used as an ongoing coaching tool.
  4. Converted Teleseminars Recorded teleseminars are perfect for being converted into spectacular Presentations. The “listener” will get more out of it through the added visuals and user control.
  5. Viral Marketing Do something different… do something that gets people buzzing… then put it online in a spectacular presentation. Peak their interest then demonstrate what your business has to offer.
  6. Prospecting Demonstrate to prospects what your business has to offer through the visuals of a spectacular presentation. This will create a more compelling and lasting impression in their minds than text or audio alone.
  7. Affiliate Marketing Create your marketing message once and all your affiliates can use it again and again; a powerful marketing tool for your affiliates to use.
  8. Traffic Generation From within a spectacular presentation, live links can redirect the viewer to a promotional or affiliate web site, a sales page, or any other site that the presenter desires.
  9. E-Coaching What better way to coach than to be able to visually demonstrate the methods and techniques spoken of within the coaching session.
  10. “How-To” Course Showing “how to” is extremely more effective than telling “how to”. A spectacular presentation is the show and tell of “how to” education.
  11. Quick Start Training Training can begin at any time. Whenever the student is ready, the training can be delivered instantly. Start now… learn now. For any new student, starting any NEW course the most asked question is “How or where do I start?” Give them that answer, make your courses easy to consume. You’ll get less refund requests, but more importantly you’ll get happier students who are engaged and using your courses.
  12. Expert Interview Having an expert interview delivered as a spectacular presentation is a great way for the audience to really “get to know” the expert. There’s the intimacy of hearing their voice, but even more intimacy with being able to put a face to that voice.
  13. Public Web Critiques The actual web page can be displayed with notes, pointers, callouts, etc. As well, sections of the web page can be isolated or enlarged to allow the reviewer to focus in on them. It is so much easier to be able to see what they are talking about rather than having to try and follow a description of what they are talking about.
  14. Affiliate Training What a great way to train affiliates. They all get trained the same way, see the exact same information, and then can use the same presentation in their affiliate campaign. Basically it is “Robotic training”.
  15. Inner Circle Training The Inner Circle is the “elite” clients of any business. The are your Evangelists. Give them something a little more special than simple audio training. Allow them more vivid and in-depth training with a spectacular presentation.
  16. Free Bonus Training With free bonuses, the value is dependent on what the client perceives it as. By adding visuals and graphics to audio training, the perceived value of the “free” training increases.
  17. New Client Introduction Introduce prospective new clients to your business. Introduce them to what you do, and how you can help them solve their problem. Also, you can state any requirements you may have for working with a new client and what their initial investment will be. This will save you and them a lot of time in getting to understand what’s involved in a business relationship with you. You can both see if there is a fit between you and them to create this new relationship.
  18. Tips and Tricks Save time for clients, employees, etc. by showing them tips and tricks. With a spectacular presentation, they will be able to actually see how it’s done, and you won’t have to be hovering over their shoulder to show them.
  19. Live Seminar Follow-up After you’ve made a presentation at a live seminar, and it’s been recorded, you can roll it out into a spectacular presentation. It gives you a product to sell… a kind of “remember this point” or “since you weren’t there” type of product. It’s a great tool for seminar follow-up or for people who couldn’t be there.
  20. Frequently Asked Questions People get a huge benefit from listening to others get answers to their questions. They find out things that they never thought of asking, or answers to questions that they had as well. Putting FAQ’s into a presentation enables people to get the benefit of listening to others questions, being able to see graphics that show them the answers and clicking on links that take them to solutions.
  21. Limited Only by Your Imagination The ideas of how to use a spectacular presentation are almost endless. Whatever you can imagine, you can create. A spectacular presentation is a great tool to use in your business for training, marketing, information and bonus gifts. These presentations can be delivered robotically, faster, better and with the least amount of human effort.

Hopefully these ideas have tweaked something in your mind on how you can use spectacular presentations in your business.

Effectively Reduce the Use of Authority When Negotiating

When you negotiate, to what ‘authority’ do you succumb? When we negotiate, information is presented to enhance or demur the perception of authority. At times, we are told information being conveyed came from some form of authority. Thus, the projection of that information is supposed to possess validity and impress us. When such information is presented to you, dressed in the trappings of authority, if the information doesn’t appear to be valid, or you have a ‘gut’ feeling that it doesn’t reside well with you, question its validity.

It appears that Michael Jackson, bless his soul, relied upon an authority to address his concerns of well being. In the end, it appears that authority misguided him.

Another problem that occurs with information, coming from the quarters of authority, is the fact that some people will view it as being suspect, when in reality, it’s valid. As an example, had Michael Jackson not passed away, but instead was rushed to the hospital and the public was told he was hospitalized due to some undisclosed illness, or whatever the reason his ‘handlers’ felt would serve Michael’s interest, some people would have sought something more sinister behind the message. They would have questioned the motives of those presenting the information and possibly thought it was a publicity stunt to highlight his pending tour. They might have even thought it was some form of disguise to solicit empathy for Michael. Those possessing such thoughts might have justified their beliefs based on what they may have considered to be, ‘the strange behavior’ that Michael displayed in the past.

The point is, when you’re negotiating, don’t always rely on information to be factual, in the form in which it’s presented, and don’t be too quick to discount its validity. You should always mentally question, the motives of the other negotiator, what it is that he’s attempting to do, and what he seeks as an outcome. By doing so, you’ll get insight into how he wishes you to perceive the information being presented and you’ll be able to reconcile how you’re perceiving the data against that backdrop.

When negotiating, use all of your senses. Observe the manner by which the other negotiator is presenting. Look for signs through his body language that indicates dissimilarities between his words and body gestures. Pay attention to his pitch and tone when he’s speaking. Once you note variations in his speech from that of earlier parts of the conversation, mentally note those differences and follow the lead of his body. The body never lies. It will project the truth much clearer and assuredly than the spoken word. Once you’re able to discern fact from fiction at the negotiation table, you’ll start winning more negotiation sessions. You’ll become a savvy negotiator that will walk away from the negotiation with more of what was on the table… and everything will be right with the world.

The Negotiation Tips Are…

• As we negotiate, there are times when we intuitively don’t trust what we hear or see. When that occurs, question why you’re experiencing such feelings. There will be reasons behind such emotions.
• In order to become a more experienced negotiator, commit to gaining insight into the subtle nuances of body language. There’s a hidden world of secret information in the gestures of someone’s body maneuvers.
• If you are astute and don’t allow your position to be swayed by the misrepresentation of information coming from ‘authority’, you’ll be very well positioned to point the negotiation in an advantageous direction.