Archive for December, 2009
December 28th, 2009 | 
Author: How To Get Your Contact Details Across: When The Organisers Wont Let You
Have you ever spoken at an event and they wont allow you to give your details? Have you gone on the radio and they forget to announce where you can be contacted?
If your contact details are left out or if youre prevented from giving information youll need to play the game a little smarter.
Understand that most reporters/radio announcers/organisers are quite accomodating. They understand that youre giving your valuable time in exchange for the publicity. But often enough youll run into someone whos power drunk or whose organisation just wont budge.
And heres what Ive done. And you can do too.
Refer to your product or service many times in the speech. Give an example and say how that particular example coincides with the example on Page 34 or Page 65. Or in the third CD of your 20 CD Workshop. Or the FREE Report you gave at the last event. As long as youre making perfect sense you will not be stopped or reprimanded. Your speech will meet the hosts guidelines yet all the time youre leaking out information.
By the end of the speech you should have created enough leaks for the audience to be extremely curious. Theyll want to know about Page 34. Theyll want to know about the FREE Headline Report you gave at the last event.
As your fame grows you may not need to do any of the above. If the organisation doesnt allow you to give your contact details you can refuse to do the interview/speech. However when youre starting out you may crave the additional publicity and thats okay.
Be sure of one thing. Dont let your speech be random. Create leaks and watch how the audience swarms around you after the event!
About the writer:
Sean D’Souza
Wouldn’t you love to stumble upon a secret library of small business ideas? Find simple yet electrifying ideas onmarketing strategypsychological tactics and branding. Head down to http://www.psychotactics.com today and judge for yourself.
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How To Get Online Press Releases On Your Stocks Before Others Hear About Them
It is a fact of life that press releases influence the current price of a stock. People react emotionally and buy stocks on good press releases and sell stocks on bad ones regardless of the validity of the press release. If you can get the news first you can be in a favorable position to take advantage and gain financially. This article describes how to obtain online stock press releases when they are first announced.
One way to be the first to obtain online press releases on stocks would be to constantly watch one or more of the financial News web pages for a press release via Business Wire. Yahoo provides a popular and reliable financial news web page (http://biz.yahoo.com/bw). But manually watching web pages requires your full time attention. Unless you are some rich tycoon who sits by a Palm Springs swimming pool reading the financial news web pages as they update this is probably not going to work for you. Like most people you probably have other things to do such as working for a living.
A better way to accomplish the task of monitoring the financial news web pages would be to have someone or something else do it for you and then notify you. For instance you can use web page watching software on your computer or you can subscribe to a web page watching service on the Internet.
Running software on your computer to monitor a financial news web page such as Yahoo’s is easy to do and gives you complete control over when and what you want to watch for. It can also give you faster notification on press release discoveries. There are many programs available on the web to do this. Easy Web Page Watcher by Patrick DiRienzo (http://www.patdirienzo.com) is an easytouse low cost program (15) that does a very good job of monitoring Yahoo and other financial news web pages. To use the program simply enter the financial news web pages that you wish to monitor and the name of your stocks. When the name of your stock appears on the web page in a press release your computer when notify you with an audible alarm and by email. You can also watch for keyword phrases such as “contract awarded” or “stock buyback” that would appear in any stock press release. If you have full time broadband Internet access such as cable or DSL you can leave the program running all day and night. The program runs in the background with no disturbance to your other computer tasks. You can set up the program to send you email alerts at work or anywhere else.
If you do not have full time Internet access but have email the next best method of obtaining press releases automatically is to subscribe to a web page watching service. Again there are many services that do this. WatchThatPage (http://www.watchthatpage.com) is a free web page watching service that will alert you by email when keywords you specify such as the names of your stocks appear in press releases on financial news pages you specify. The disadvantage is that you do not receive an instant audible alarm when the press release is first noticed on the financial news web page. You have to wait for the service to send you email before you hear about the press release.
About the writer:
Bill Peifer holds a degree in Electrical/Computer Engineering and has written several computer technology related articles.
How To Get A Job Offer From Every Interview
About four years ago a friend told me one night that she had an interview the next week and was looking for some comfort as she was extremely nervous as most people are about interviews. I thought back on my my carreer and realized that in the nine year of my career I had been to thirteen interviews and more importantly that I had received a job offer from every one of those interviews. I did not accept all the offers but the point is that I had not once been to an interview without getting a job offer from it. In the past four years I have been to another 6 interviews of which I did not get job offers for 2 of them. The one was an interview at Volkswagen which a friend had setup because he “wanted” me to work there and by the time we started the interview I realized that the position was not in my field at all. The second one was a telephonic interview which I hate and I simply did not see eye to eye with the person who interviewed me. I did go for an interview with another manager at the same company a couple of weeks later and started working there 2 days later.
Job offers from 17 out of 19 interviews is not a bad track record and no I am not some kind of a technical genius that every company would want to employ simply by looking at my resume. I am a computer programmer and there are many programmers out there with better technical skills than me.
The secret I believe is confidence. Not necessarily confidence in yourself but creating confidence in your interviewer’s mind. I once had a 4 1/2 hour interview in Sydney Australia. Before that I could not imagine such a long interview was possible it was for a very senior position. If like most people you don’t like interviews in general imagine sitting there for 4 1/2 hours. Anyway about halfway through the interview the interviewer told me that he had another 2 or 3 people that he’s considering for the position but that he’s got a “warm and fuzzy feeling” about me. Not something I really want to hear from another male but when he said that I realized that the job was mine.
Your objective then is to create that “warm and fuzzy” feeling in your interviewer’s mind.
Before an interview I always think of what I would like to see in the other person if I was on the other side of the table in other words if I was interviewing somebody else for this position. Computer programming is considered as a technical field even on a managerial level but the technical aspect has very seldom been the deciding factor unless the interviewer has poor people skills or a lack of experience. Generally anybody with a bit of experience will be more interested in your personality than your technical abilities. I am assuming of course that you are applying for positions which you are in some way qualified to fill. So how do you focus on your personality and what personality traits should you try to demonstrate? Let me give you some examples of what I consider as important in an interview.
There are two dreaded questions that used to come up in every interview a couple of years ago though I haven’t heard them for a while now. What are 5 of your strengths and what are 5 of your weaknesses? Whenever I got the first of these two questions I would start my answer with “Yes I knew this was coming so I thought about it last night and…” or something along those lines.
It sounds wrong because the intention of those questions is to see whether you know yourself. If you have to think about it the previous night it doesn’t say much about your selfknowledge. Nonetheless I do this for two reasons. Firstly I’m being honest with them. Everybody prepares for an interview or at least you should! I’m just showing them that I’m a real person and that I don’t claim to have all the answers. Secondly it’s a tension breaker. Quite often if it is an experienced interviewer they will make some comment about you having to prepare your answers in advance and this gives you an opportunity to sidetrack from their “prepared” questions. The more you can get to speak freely with the interviewer and not as a response to a question the more opportunity you have of showing them your real character. It also passes the time so that they don’t have to think up irrelevant technical questions to make the interview “long enough”.
Also keep in mind that nobody is expected to have all the right answers. As I said before I am not the knowitall genius of computer programming so in most interviews there is at least one question for which I do not have the answer or topic that I do not know about. When this happens I do not pretend to have the answer or try to sound intelligent about the topic. I simply tell them that I do not know. What’s important though is the way you say you don’t know. Even if the words coming out of your mouth are as simple as “I don’t know” the perception that your attitude should portray is that he or she does not know but it’s okay that they don’t know. In other words say it with confidence and self respect. “I don’t know because I’ve never needed to use that in the past” or “I normally use such and such instead” and if possible tell them why you prefer your alternative. Also try to tell them how you would learn this topic if it is required in your new position. This again achieves two objects. It shows them your problem solving abilities and it gives you another opportunity to speak freely. Finally if you have no clue what they’re talking about ask them to explain the topic or to give you an example. Again speaking freely and showing them that you are interested in learning and also that you are comfortable in their company.
I also think one of the key factors for anybody in an interview is to see that you can think for yourself and that you have your own opinions. DO NOT use yes/no answers!! Every question that an interviewer asks should be seen as an opportunity for you to speak and not a hurdle that you have to cross as quickly as possible. Of course you must stay on topic or they will think you are trying to evade the question. However try to elaborate and give them examples to show your experience and understanding of the topic. Even if this is your first interview and you have no working experience it should not be a problem remember you are trying to steer the conversion towards your personality and not your technical skills. Even after 13 years in the industry I still use a lot of examples and stories (short stories stay on topic) from my personal life to answer interview questions.
I have now mentioned this “speaking freely” a number of times and I guess that’s the basis of it all. Remember that the person on the other side of the desk is nothing but that just another person. I always try to be early for an interview so that I have some time to relax after the traffic. During those last couple of minutes I stand outside having a cigarette and I play out a little scene in my mind which I would rather not repeat here. Anyway it boils down to me having a casual conversation with the interviewer and explaining to them that we’re all in the same boat. We’re all here on this planet for a short time and all just trying to make the best of things. Yes it sounds stupid I know. But for me it reaffirms in my mind that the person I am about to talk to is just another person and that I should treat them as that.
So let me summarize. Focus on your personality not your technical abilities. Unless you’re the best in your industry in which case I’m talking to the other 99.999 in your industry. Remember that the interviewer is just another person and treat them as one by speaking to them as you would somebody that you have known for a while. This is the only way you can have some control of steering the conversation in the direction you want. While being comfortable and speaking your mind do show respect at the same time and remember it’s still their interview so let them have the final control. Finally BE HONEST.
About the writer:
Dirk Wessels is a computer programmer and runs uniquejobs.co.za in his spare time. You may reproduce this article as long as you include this About the Author section and a reference to uniquejobs.co.za.