Blitz Ezine #240 August 2nd, 2004

Ten things to Include in your Holiday Marketing Plan

The Blitz-Promotions News Letter
Issue no. 240, August 2nd, 2004

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Blitz Comments
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Make sure to check out this month's special - click for details.

Make sure to check out daily promotion hints and tips.

http://smallbizpromo.blogspot.com

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In this Issue
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- Getting ready for the holidays.
- Keyword location.
- Goal setting help.
- Some useful (and fun links).

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Food for thought
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" When you're a professional, you come back no matter what happened the day before."
Billy Martin

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Getting your site ready for the holidays
10 things to include in your plan.
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1. If you don't have an action plan - now is the time to make one. An easy way to create one is to use a calendar (or create one on an erase board). Make sure that you have all of your important shipping / sales dates / ad campaigns listed... otherwise you may forget.
2. Make sure you have all your policies listed / linked on your site. Make sure to include: last days you ship, returning products, methods for shipping, gift wrap, etc.
3. If you don't email folks that bought last year, you're missing a great opportunity. Send them a thank you note with a special coupon just for them.
4. Advertising - have you got your holiday campaign started. For a lot more information on this you can check out our blog - start with choosing your fish.
http://smallbizpromo.blogspot.com
5. Do you have your order plans for when you get a rush of orders. If not plan now before you have to do things last minute in a rush.
6. Test your site - ask a few friends to check your site out and order something. Some things that may be clear to you, won't be to a potential customer.
7. Now is also the time to plan your follow ups when someone asks a question.
8. Don't forget to thank your customers as well sometime during the holidays. The more personal (ie handwritten notes), the better.
9. Make sure that you're in control of your product suppliers. Know how much (the most) you can get, how long it takes to get to you, discounts if you order more, etc.
10. Don't forget to plan some downtime. After all... all work and no play....

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Guest Articles
Does Keyword Location On Page Affect Ranking?
by Jon Ricerca
http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com
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One of our members asked for a study of keyword location on a page. Is it more effective to have your keyword mentioned in the top third, middle third or bottom third
of a page?

Here is the methodology I used to answer this question. I gathered the results of the queries naturally performed last month by myself and three associates using Yahoo and Google. I then fetched the pages and divided the body section into three equal parts for each page. I tallied
the results for the first 8 rankings on both Yahoo and Google (keeping the results separate) and then converted them into a percentage of the total results for each search engine.

Here are the graphs showing Google and Yahoo results:

http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com/graphs/dfg02.gif
http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com/graphs/dfy02.gif

The X-axis shows the ranking (from #1 through #8) of the search engine results in the study. The Y-axis shows the percentage of domains that contained the keyword in the top (red line), middle (blue line) and bottom (purple line) thirds of the body section of the page.

It is interesting to note that pages containing the keyword in the top and bottom third of the body section ranked much better on Google. The top section had a normalized correlation of +42 on a scale of -100 to +100. The bottom third also showed a remarkable positive correlation of +46 on the same scale. Having the keyword in the middle third had no significant effect (no correlation whatsoever... neither positive nor negative).

The Yahoo results were even more interesting. I generally ignore any correlations between -35 and +35 as being generally insignificant. On Yahoo, none of the three sections showed any remarkable correlations. The scores were a +17 for the top, -3 for the middle and -17 for the
bottom third of the body section. Does this mean that Yahoo doesn't even look for the keyword in the body section?

Advice: Mention your keywords near the top and/or bottom of a page for Google ranking.

Jon Ricerca is one of the leading researchers and authors of the Search Engine Ranking Factor (SERF) reports at SearchEngineGeek.com. For access to the other SERF reports, please visit:
http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com

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Guest Articles
Three Steps for Positive Goal Setting
By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore
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As I conduct my Time Management Seminars all over, my audiences consistently tell me they want more out of life. Almost everyone I speak with has a yearning for improving several aspects of their lives. They have dreams and goals about their futures that are as yet unrealized.

Many come to the end in life with those visions unrealized, pictures in their minds only.

Achieving goals helps us to get the “want to’s” in our lives. Life ought to be more than just achieving the “have to’s”.

I offer three important tips to help increase the probability of achieving your dreams, getting more of what you want in your life.

Put your goals into writing. There is something powerful about writing out what you want, getting your dream out of your head and on to a piece of paper. It then seems more realizable. It’s a stonger affirmation of what you are working towards rather than having a vague, wispy notion floating around in your head.

An even stronger tool is to prepare a goal scrapbook. Nothing fancy. Get a three-ring binder and fill it with notebook paper. Then get a picture of each your goals and paste them into your new goal scrapbook. You can go to the car dealer and get a brochure of the new car you want. Visit a travel agent and pick up brochures of your ideal vacation’s destination and add that. Clip a picture of your dream house out of the newspaper’s real estate section and add this as well.

Then, each night, review your goal scrapbook and see a picture of what will surely be coming to you. It’s like viewing a crystal ball and seeing your future.

Quantify your goals. Many do not get what they truly want in their lives because they are too vague about what they want. It is not enough to say, “I want more money” or “I want to be rich”. Instead, if you write, “I want $10,000”, you now have a clear target to shoot for.

Set a deadline. Did you ever set a New Year’s resolution and never achieve it? Most people have. And most people fail to achieve their dreams because they did not include a deadline with their goal. Deadlines move us to action.

When we fail to include a deadline for our goal, when we commit to achieving it “as soon as possible”, the goal winds up in our “as soon as possible” pile of things I will do another day, which is probably never. Why? Because we all too much to do and not enough time to get it all done. The items that have deadlines for completion tend to bubble up in priority and importance so that we take action and achieve them.

Having written out the goal, placed a picture in our goal scrapbook, quantified it, and set a deadline, we can now break that goal down into its little component pieces so that achievement becomes realistic and manageable.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. No goal achievement is a leap across some huge canyon. Many are intimidated and driven away from going after what they really want in their lives for fear they will have to take a giant leap across that canyon and, hey, what if I don’t leap far enough? Disaster.

Let’s say you have a goal to get an additional $10,000 in savings two years from today. Make up a picture of your new bank statement two years from now showing the additional $10,000 in your account. The goal is in writing. It is quantified and a deadline has been set. Now you can break that goal into its little steps for achievement.

To get $10,000 over the next two years requires getting an additional $5,000 per year. A year is made up of twelve months, so that means you need to get approximately $400 per month. A month is made up of four weeks, so that’s $100 per week. And a week is made of, let’s say, five business days. That’s $20 per day. (I have not added in interest to these calculations just for simplicity.)

I don’t know about you, but the notion of going out in the world tomorrow and getting an extra $20 is a whole lot more realistic and certainly a whole more doable than getting $10,000. Getting the entire $10,000 is the leap across the canyon. It scares me. $20 is the single step. That’s something I can handle. Now the goal seems realistic and is realizable.

But until you write out your goal, quantify it, and set a deadline so that you break it down to its small steps, it will forever appear to be too big a stretch and therefore unattainable. But every time you follow these three steps and break the goal down, you will always find that you have within your control what it takes to accomplish that next step. And once you begin, you are on your way!

Invite Don Wetmore to speak at your next event. “Uplifting! Motivational! And content rich!” Time Management Seminars available from one hour up to three full days. For free details, send your request for “on-site” to: ctsem@msn.com

Would you like to receive free Timely Time Management Tips on a regular basis to increase your personal productivity and get more out of every day? Sign up now for your free “TIMELY TIME MANAGEMENT TIPS”. Just go to: http://www.topica.com/lists/timemanagement and select “subscribe” or send email to: timemanagement-subscribe@topica.com. We welcome you to our list!

Dr. Donald E. Wetmore
Professional Speaker
Productivity Institute
Time Management Seminars
127 Jefferson St.
Stratford, CT 06615
(203) 386-8062 (800) 969-3773
Fax: (203) 386-8064
Email: ctsem@msn.com
Visit Our Time Management Supersite: http://www.balancetime.com

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Links you can use -
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If you're looking for something to cook - I'm almost certain that you'll find it here.
http://www.recipezaar.com/

How to create corners in your CSS.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/customcorners/

An excellent checklist for marketing your website.
http://www.wilsonweb.com/articles/checklist.htm

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Fun and Games
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Optical illusions - do you see what you really see?

http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/saishin-e.html

Lots of fun stuff for you and your kiddies.
http://www.sillybuddies.com/

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Reviews
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Ok ... I'm bad - no reviews this month. Need a couple of more hours in the day :o)

Coming Soon -

Crimson Skys and D and D
Open Range
Secret Window
Scooby Doo (Nintendo system).
Rise of Nations (PC)

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Ads
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5 Lessons To Make More Money In Your Life.
Latest new ebook revealed 5 ways you can copy
easily on how to become rich. Download it for free:

http://internetmarketing-tactics.com/x.php?adminid=497&tid=1514

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Useful links to our site
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Find more useful promotion and design articles here -
http://www.blitzpromotions.com/articleindex.htm

Check out our archives for issues you may have missed.
http://www.blitzpromotions.com/ezinearchives.htm

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Next Issues
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Sept. - Revisiting Froogle
Oct. - Optimizing Froogle
Nov. - Thanking your customers.
Dec. - Holiday Issue
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Final Thoughts
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Till next time we hope that everyone is enjoying their Summer.

Tim and Lisa Hamblin
Tisa Enterprises
PO Box 221
Hazard KY 41702
http://www.blitzpromotions.com
http://www.crochetnmore.com
http://www.webpageplanner.com
http://www.ineedlinks.com