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By Sherri Garrity

Many organizations, large and small, do not have the luxury of preparing well-researched, detailed communications strategies for every opportunity that comes along. Much of the time, project management and communications are ‘just in time’ activities.

Whether or not you already have an annual communications plan, you’ll likely have some ideas or things you’d like to do next year. Your organization’s strategic plan or a priorities document will outline the broader goals for your organization, e.g. to secure sustainable funding, to launch a project or initiative, to build relationships with group A, etc. Let this plan be your guide. To define your audiences, think of the groups of people you need to collaborate with, or influence in some way to achieve your goals.

Now, as you encounter opportunities, such as an invitation to participate in a conference or event, or the chance to work with another organization in an area of mutual interest, you’ll need to decide whether it’s strategically worthwhile.

Ask these questions:

1. What objective does it serve?

There’s a reason why this is the number one question on the list. If your idea or opportunity doesn’t get you closer to achieving at least one larger objective, preferably from your organization’s strategic plan, you probably shouldn’t pursue it.

2. Who is the audience?

Secondly, if the audience reached by the opportunity isn’t one that you have defined as a key audience for your organization, it may not make a lot of sense to spend too much time communicating to it. There are many promotional opportunities that fit into this category; they are often nice to haves rather than have to haves.

3. What do you want to achieve?

If you determine the opportunity is a good fit to advance a larger objective, and that it reaches the right audience, you’ll want to identify specifically what you intend to achieve. For example, if you have accepted a speaking presentation, your goal might be to use it as a platform to announce a new initiative. Deciding this will help figure out what you’ll need to focus on in developing material for this opportunity.

4. What’s the payoff?

At the end of the day, there has to be a return on your investment. This can be measured in hard results, for example, the number of media calls, new clients or donations, or softer results, like making your cause known to a new organization or community. Events are a great example of this. They are labour intensive and not always a huge money maker, but they can’t be beat for cultivating relationships and raising profile quickly.

5. How much will it cost – time plus money?

Even ‘free’ opportunities have a real cost. Be sure to factor in staff and volunteer time, as well as budget into your decision making and planning.

6. Is the timing suitable?

Sometimes the best opportunity comes at the worst time. The timing should line up with your organization’s timeline. For example, participating in a newspaper supplement that comes out in a season your organization doesn’t offer programs, or when your audiences’ attentions are focused elsewhere, may not provide you with enough return to make the expense worth your while.

7. Who will do the work?

Beyond the actual delegation of tasks and deadlines, it’s important to think about who will need to be available and who else might be affected. You will need to identify and plan for this in advance. Examples that create communications mayhem are sending out a news release when the spokesperson isn’t available to interview, or not having people available or prepared to answer inquiries.

8. How will you define and measure success?

Back to number three, take the time to verbalize or document what you will consider as achieving your goal. Without doing this, you can only rely on subjective impressions to measure your success. When your action is complete, make sure you evaluate it and note any lessons learned for the next time.

9. What work have you already done that you can reuse?

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Reuse information you have developed for other projects, by adapting them for this. Tip: keep a sample binder with speeches, ads, funding proposals and reports, etc. and use this as a source.

10. How can you leverage it after it’s done?

Sometimes the value in the opportunity is what it leads to. If you’re going to put a lot of effort into something, seek other opportunities to take it to the next level. A presentation is a good example. Identify other places you can present it, write an article based on it, make it available on your website, and use it as a basis of a cultivation letter with your donors or others important to your organization.

Use this list and you will feel the satisfaction in seeing an objective set, a strategy implemented and evaluated to a successful conclusion, even without the advantage of a fully documented plan.

About the Author: Sherri Garrity is a consultant and coach who specializes in helping organizations achieve greater results through better communications from the inside out. She is the president of Make It Count Communications and author of the Ready, Aim, Inspire! blog for nonprofit organizations.

makeitcountcommunications.com/blog

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By Todd Herman

Internet marketing is the essential part of your business operations. Many entrepreneurs are trying to snatch their piece of the market these days but this possible only with search engine optimization, and social media optimization.

You have to select the right company that will take care of your needs. You should spend some time to research the industry to discover the best company that will be good for your project. The company with a good track record, extensive portfolio and modern website can be professional in their ventures and so it is better to select such company.

Search Google to find out the best company. Those who have good rankings could be said as the good company. Do not select those that do not have good ranking for their chosen keywords.

If they could not optimize their own site for their selected keywords then how could they optimize yours? Any successful company will have good ranking in the search engines.

But keep in mind that their market rate will also be higher than others in this niche. If you have limited budget then you must go for moderately famous companies who show good track records.

Before you choose one ask them about the methods they follow. There are so many internet marketing strategies out there. Watch out for such words as white hat methods, or ethical methods, or quality articles and building quality links.

Be careful about companies who follow black hat methods. Only those who follow black hat methods can give you front page ranking within few days. Otherwise this is virtually impossible in a competitive industry like online marketing.

The unethical methods, search engine spamming, article spinning or other illegal activities will be picked up the search engine spiders and may black list your site. All the efforts that you have put so far will go a waste.

Whether it is a sole trader or partnership or major corporation, it is always better to take time to research and find out the person who will be in charge of your internet marketing campaign.

Know for yourself what is meant by SEO, SEM, and SMO so that you can ask them few questions to understand whether they are thorough with their proceedings. You can investigate the credibility of the company on Twitter, Facebook and other media sites.

They will surely have these accounts and so reviewing the thoughts of their clients will make you understand their integrity.

You can find many articles in internet marketing niche online. Spend some time to read some of them so that you can know which method will be good for your business.

Each one of them has his own views and opinions about this industry and this will give you an overall knowledge of the common factors that they mention in their articles.

If you equip you with the necessary knowledge of these factors, then you can check with the internet marketing company you select whether they offer the essential service needed for your business. If they offer, you can readily sign up for their package.

About the Author: You are going to invest money into

Internet Marketing

in future and so do not take chances in selecting right

Internet Marketing company

.

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Submitted by: David Blaire

Week 1 Bootcamp Day 1

OK welcome to The Biz Of Showbiz Bootcamp Week 1.

If you are just looking at a sample of the course then please visit Voiceover-Success.com to find out more.

Alright so you’ve probably been through your free 5-Day Power Sessions training before you started here. If you haven’t then visit us at FreeVoiceoverCourse.com and opt-in.

So before we get into it, firstly I’d like to share with you a little of my story and just how I grew my own voiceover career… and… hopefully you might be able pick up some insights that will help you along your path. If you’ve watched the Power Sessions you probably would have heard some of the story and probably more detail so we’ll just touch on it so I can help get you into the right mindset. Then we’ll get into the guts of the next 6 weeks straight away.

Alright we’re gonna look at the process by which a voice over artist would come to work on a project and how you can learn some methods that will really empower you and give you a sense of control around your career. As an artist it can be really tough because there’s this thing you love to do and sometimes it feels like the world won’t let you do it. And I just want you to know that I really know that feeling, I’ve experienced it before and it’s not fun. And the answer is just learning how the system works and that’s what we’re gonna do.

OK so the next 6 weeks I just need to let you know it’s not gonna be a breeze where you just watch a few videos and then wait until next week. You’e gonna do some work. It’s gonna be fun and interesting but you are going to be doing some activities throughout the week that will really help lock in what you’re learning and also help you to prepare for the week ahead because there’ll be stuff every week. And if I’m giving you a little bit of homework it will help you prep then you’ll get a lot more out from those sessions. Now if you don’t get round to it, it won’t be the end of the world but if you really want the true value of this training, I recommend that you watch the

videos, watch the slide show videos possibly a second time and then download the MP3s that will come with the course and listen to those. Studies show that people learn in different ways and receiving it in different ways will help with your absorption of the information.

And finally that you take the time just to do the homework and actually begin to gain momentum around your voiceover career.

OK so let me tell you a little bit of my story first.

This story goes back to 1990. I’m sure some of you weren’t even born but here we go.

I was in my first big profession show. It was called a Buddy…The Buddy Holly Story. It had opened as a smash hit on Broadway and the West End in London before Toronto and then the next stop was Australia. So we opened in Sydney and pretty soon we were playing to packed houses. We stayed in Sydney for about 8 months before we went on tour. Now the next stop was a 6 month stint in Melbourne which if you’re not from Australia is, you know, the other major city after Sydney in Australia. Now one of my mates on the show was this girl. Karen Jacobsen- Now most of you actually know Karen. Her name is, in the US, is “Australian Karen” the most popular GPS voice in America and is also Australian Siri. So any of the iPhone owners that use Siri in Australia or if you choose the Australian voice as Siri on your phone then you probably talk to Karen everyday. Alright so this was a couple of decades before that. And then we were, everyone who had done the show in Sydney was going on tour with the show took it and studied in Melbourne… everyone except Karen that is. Karen told me that she wasn’t going on tour because she wanted to protect her voiceover career. That was the first time I’d even heard anyone say the words

“voiceover career” and considering we were 19 yrs old and about to go on tour with a rock’n’roll musical I was suitably impressed that there might be something out there that would be considered as more valuable than that.

So cut to a couple shows later, I mean a couple of productions later, and I was doing this great show out of New York with the New York director. The play was called Tony and Tina’s Wedding- another very fun experience, I’m sure a lot of you know the play, and that’s where I met my buddy Ric. Now during rehearsal Ric would get paged, yes I want you to imagine how far away that was, he was getting paged. He

didn’t have a cell phone yet, we didn’t have those. He’d get paged he’d leave for about an hour and then he’d return. Now and it turned out that Ric had cut a deal with the producers that because he was playing the wedding singer and was only in a certain section of the play, if we weren’t rehearsing that section, that he could literally just duck out and do a quick voiceover and then come back. You see Ric

was making far more money as a voiceover artist than he was in the play and so it was important for him to keep working if he could. That was it, I was like way past the curious stage and I was really keen to explore voiceover by that stage. Now my generous buddy Ric was good enough to help me put together my first demo and luckily I had some good natural instincts in VOs and I started to look for work with my

first demo.

Now shopped around for an agent, I got rejected, by my current agent (I think this is a very valid point for those who have been guilty of being stopped by the first obstacle) but I kept shopping around and I found a small agency. And with that agency I started to get my first voiceover jobs. I was later poached by an up and coming agency that is now the second largest in the country. And over the next couple of years my work began to grow.

About the Author: Get Free Access to Voiceover Training Video Series here

freevoiceovercourse.com/

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By Maxx Johnson

Discovery of your “physical limitations” is the first step to a lifelong better game of golf and you can set up a game plan to improve it by strecthing for golf. Your swing faults can be a flexibility issue for you or it may be a strength issue for you. Regardless, you have got to find out what your challenge is so that it can be addressed and improved.

Especially for the older golfer, the most common issue is flexibility for most. A lack of flexibility will not allow you to rotate your body fully on the backswing and keep the golf club on the correct plane. This, in turn, makes creating power and torque for maximum club head speed very difficult. This means that you will not be able to produce the maximum amount of length that you can produce. Without question, you will LOSE yards on your drives if you can not create a coil or a proper load on your back swing. Along with your routine practice, you must do specific golf stretches to improve this limitation and increase your range of motion.

Weak hamstrings are a golf specific factor of strength. The role of the hamstring during a golf swing is critical as they allow you to maintain your golf posture throughout the golf swing. Your golf posture prevents strain on your lower back. Lower back pain is the number one injury to golfers. This can be avoided by a regular stretching and strength training program.

Do you have a challenge of “coming out of a shot?” Many mid to higher handicappers have this challenge. Coming out of a golf shot can very well be due to not having hamstrings that are strong enough. As you take your golf swing posture, your hamstrings need to have optimal strength and flexibility. This allows you to maintain the forward flex in your upper body and overall balance in your golf swing. If you can not keep your balance, your hamstring will send a message to your brain saying, “get out of this position, I can’t hold it any longer.” Hence, you end up coming out of their golf shot. Has this ever happened to you at some point during your round of golf?

Working on the physical side of your golf game may be the missing link for you to improve your game and lower your handicap. There is no doubt that your golf game will improve by implementing a golf stretching program with a training professional. It does not take much to get your body to move just a little better. You can start your program slowly. This will not shock your body. In addition, you can keep your goals small so you will not feel overwhelmed and quit doing the exercises. Even moving just a little bit will make a huge difference in your ability to make an optimal swing during your next round of golf. So before you take that next golf lesson, take a look at your body first!

About the Author: Maxx Johnson of VGS Golf Click to learn how to create more

Online Golf Tips

. Click for more info on

Golf Instruction. Source: isnare.com

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