Testimonials are a powerful marketing tool. However their overuse and too often lack of authenticity have impacted on their ability to influence or reassure prospects. To really promote your business, your testimonials should be:

1. Authentic:

When you see the number of websites offering ‘genuine testimonials’ generators, it is no wonder that prospects may hesitate to believe what they read.

To make your (real) testimonials sound as trustworthy as possible, include as many credibility indicators as possible, such as the authors’ full name, business name, web address of the business and a photo. Video testimonials bear even further integrity. After all, would you give a fake video testimonial?

2. Specific:

Good testimonials go beyond “They did a great job” or “The product made my life better” by explaining why and how the service/product made a difference.

To get valuable feedback on your work, help your clients by asking specific questions such as:

3. Diverse:

It is best to display varied testimonials from a diverse panel of people: These reviews should be provided by a range of individuals (companies, positions, background) your prospects can relate to and cover a variety of experiences and benefits that are meaningful to them.

4. Approved:

Always obtain authorization and written consent to use any client’s testimonial, name and other details in your marketing and business materials.

5. Published:

Once you’ve collected some valuable testimonials, what to do with them? – Post them on your web site. Placement matters, as this Marketing Experiments study shows.

- Publish them on your marketing materials.

- Add them to your social network profiles.

- Upload video testimonials to services like YouTube.

- Write a success story blog entry that explains a problem and how you solved it. Use the clients’ quotes in the story.

Effective testimonials cost nothing except the time to collect and publish them, which is more than paid off by the credibility you gain in return.

The sooner kids are comfortable and adept at using the computer the better. Positive early experiences help individuals to reach their fullest potential and encourage children engaging early in the learning process.

Besides there are now some exceptional learning programs for toddlers! Some spatial/sorting/counting concepts are so easy to learn with good educational software.

In early years (ages 2-5), children can use computers to develop fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. The advantage here is that children can see and hear and do all at the same time, which is not always possible or convenient. Also, the activities are likely to be visually appealing.

In ages 5-8, children can enhance their literacy skills. When in numeracy education, being able to drag and drop (in sorting, graphing…) is more educationally appropriate than endless scissor cutting and pasting!

From age 8, children may be ready for more formal skills. The basics of most of an Office suite is attainable. Most children are extremely resourceful and adaptable and will combine the skills taught in wholly unintended ways.

Computer skills are such an integral part of society and of the curriculum nowadays that children must have them! It is up to the educators and parents to ensure that computer use is balanced with ‘real world’ activities and conventional teaching methods: Computer use should supplement the curriculum but should not and cannot replace human interaction.
So get started!

(more on superuser.com)

• The look
Spend time looking for the right template: You DO NOT want to change it later.
The look and feel as well as the usability of your blog will set readers’ first impression.
Play around: Change the text and background colours, the fonts, the sizes…until you are happy with the result.

• The content
Content is king. Look for news, shock your readers, make them smile, open debates… Keep it fun and meaningful.
Use relevant add-ons to find new sources and automatic updates.

• The style
The main difference between your blog and the next one is YOU.
Choose a style and stick to it.
Have a voice but be open to discussion.

• The bloggers rules
- KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)
- Choose a topic and stick to it
- Content is king
- Create value for your readers
- Think WIIFM: “What’s In It For Me?”.
- Use clear headlines
- Link often and mention sources
- Return comments
- Tell a bit about yourself
- Have a voice
- Make it easy to interact
- Make it easy to contact you
- Be consistent
- Write clearly
- Proofread

Entrepreneurs may want to be cautious when starting a new venture, but a corporate website is a necessary first step. It doesn’t have to be expensive, and can grow with the company into a fully featured online business tool.

Whether users seek information or reassurance on your company, your corporate website is the best way to communicate effectively by delivering a message and an image that you fully control.

Features will typically include:

• About us, contact us, about the company, history
• People, the team, employees, biographies, executives
• Products, services information
• Contact us, send a message
• Community, our values, corporate citizenship, standards of conduct
• Terms of use, legal, user agreement, privacy policy

And eventually:

• Employment, jobs, careers, join the team, join us
• Customer support community
• News, in the news, press, publications, brochure
• Investors, ownership
• Downloads, media, library
• Store locator, find a store, find our products, locations
• Links
• Blog

In a technology driven world, no matter how far your target audience is, if they look for your company, products or services, they MUST be able to find you.

For customers, clients, investors or prospects, if you don’t exist on the Web, you do not exist in the World.

More sophisticated web analytic tools can also:

• Track the number of total and unique visitors
• Count views for every page
• Split results based on hour and day
• Show which countries the visitors are from
• Indicate what operating systems and browsers are being used
• Specify which links or search engine terms users used to find your website

Web analytics are important to anyone who worries about who visits their site and how they got there. Traffic may play a major role in the success of your business. Web analytics will provide you with useful information allowing you to enhance your website’s visibility and help your customers to find you.

There is no doubt that with the growth of Internet and computer technologies, personal training has never been more important to all individuals and professionals wanting to keep up with the industry.

What to look out for:

• Technical expertise.

In order to run a training course on a particular topic, the training provider should be competent, professional, and experienced within the specific field.

• Training material.

The written material is also key to its success. Rather than expecting participants to write lots of notes, loosing track from the topics, the best courses are those that supply a comprehensive training handbook and other adequate supporting material that participants can refer to once they leave the course.

• Adaptability.

The aims of the training should be carefully assessed to provide the most accurate program. By determining precisely what participants expect from the training it is possible to focus on what is most important and work on practical and tailor-made exercises.

• Class size.

It is essential that the class size is manageable. Each participant should have access to all the relevant equipment and receive the attention they deserve. Often the bigger the class size the poorer the results. For companies, it is far better to send a number of smaller groups than to expect a trainer to teach a large group of participants (this also reduces the impact on the business by having a large number of people away from the office at once). A maximum of about 6 participants is ideal.

• Class homogeneity.

For a better result all participants should be of a similar skill level to avoid frustration from either having to wait or being left behind.

• After-course care.

Many training providers assume that once a particular training is over, it is the end of their relationship with the participants. However, offering an ongoing service that lasts beyond the course completion is the sign of quality from the training company. Some companies offer a post-course technical support service and a comprehensive consultancy service.

In short, good trainings rely on the trainer to assess the participants’ level, set the target/s, give clear explanations, provide practical exercises and encourage interaction within the group. These are the main keys to making training a great and useful experience.

Generally, search engine optimization relies heavily on the proper use of keywords and keyphrases that describe the site’s content.
The keywords can either be placed in sections or elements aimed specifically at Search Engines or in sections visible to all as part of the text.
Search Engines will crawl through each webpage, looking for any information relevant to understanding what the website / page is about, so it is important that keywords and keyphrases are accurate so that the site appears when users search under particular criteria.

Keywords in my BODY.
An important location for keywords is in the header fields (H1, H2, H3…) of each page. The most important keywords or keyphrases should be found here.

Other tricks for helping SEO are naming image files and anchors (crosslinks within the same page) with keywords.

Useful “friends”
Finally providing links to and from external sites, called backlinks is also important, as search engine spider bots navigate by links. The text in your page that points to external links can contain keywords too.
Since SEO relies so heavily on keywords, the most important keywords and keyphrases should be used abundantly in the first and last two paragraphs of the content of each page, then scattered throughout the body. A keyword density (describe what this is, eg. 5 words per 100) between 5 to 15% is ideal.

SEO a necessary start.
With the billions of web pages on the Internet and the hundreds or even thousands of “hits” that can be returned from any single online search, SEO is a necessity for anyone looking to benefit from search engine traffic. In the long term, the popularity and/or financial investment will help your website make its way to the top of any search provided that the SEO was done appropriately.

The first thing to consider when developing a logo is its purpose: a logo being used primarily on a website may differ from one printed on promotional objects.

If you wish to use your logo for multiple applications you must consider one that will look equally as good in small and in large prints. You should also consider whether the colours you use can be easily reproduced for a variety of purposes.

Above all, remember that your logo symbolizes your company. It should represent the image you wish to communicate to your customers and clients, i.e. if you are a lawyer, your logo would normally be professional and conservative, while in a more creative domain, something a bit more fun and light-hearted may be appropriate.

Your logo should be original. If it looks similar to other designs it will be difficult for customers and clients to distinguish it from other companies’. A unique logo will help set you apart from the competition by conveying the idea that you have something new and different to offer to your potential customers and clients.

Your logo must also be appealing to your target audience: Upper middle class business people and teenagers are unlikely to share the same tastes.

Think: Who are you, what do you do, whom for. Does your logo convey the right message?