Tips For Marketing Success

The market is becoming more globally-competitive than ever. With the rise of the Internet came an open avenue where everyone with enough computer know-how and capital can take advantage of the benefits offered by the web and market their product or services to reach a wider audience. Marketing isn’t for everyone, though, and not all the time your strategies may work because the market is constantly changing. Hence, you should educate yourself about effective sales marketing because while not everyone is born a great salesperson, you can learn the knowledge and skills needed to be successful in marketing your business.

Conventional sales marketing and strategy is no longer effective in making your mark in a market as competitive like what we have now. You need to consider that technology is a big factor in today’s world for any business to stay relevant and successful regardless of your niche. There are various mediums you can use to promote and market your business that does not always involve face-to-face contact with consumers. But it does not mean that it is any easier because tackling a totally new digital environment can be overwhelming to someone who has little or no background about it at all.

Research

There’s no need to spend copious amounts of time drudging up case studies. Instead, ‘research’ refers to time spent understanding the company and its goals, understanding the industry, and understanding the customers. This is where business owners focus on attracting customers rather than seeking leads and customers.

Clarify what the business is and ask:

What does it mean to ‘grow the business?’

How will someone know if they’re successful?

What are the long and short-term goals?

What is the sales process?

Check out the industry

Whether a person has been in the industry for two, ten, or twenty years, chances are pretty high that the industry will keep on changing. As innovations come up or new expectations are established, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve. This is where industry research comes in.

How do other businesses fare against meeting (or exceeding) the goals?

What marketing strategies are other businesses in that industry doing to attract clients or customers?

What current events and news is impacting that industry?

Is there a business to business marketplace a business owner can access?

Are there any leaders that a business owner can speak to within the industry?

(Via: http://www.business2community.com/marketing/6-sales-marketing-tips-ideas-grow-business-01881578#BLt0gF8FDwSfECu0.97)

Make an effort to learn new marketing practices that actually work right now and don’t just stick to traditional norms that are no longer applicable or effective in modern business or when dealing with people. Consumers don’t want to see the same thing over and over again especially if they already have a bad experience with it. They want fresh ideas that they can immediately relate to and products or services they actually need and will use right now.

Future-proofing

One side effect of increased leads is, of course, business growth. By embracing marketing, small businesses can ‘future-proof’ themselves within the changing market. Customers demand change, and marketing plays a huge role in ensuring that you, as a business, are providing solutions to those needs.

Online helps offline

Offline activity is still an important part of doing business, but by embracing online marketing tools, you could find yourself with an enhanced offline strategy. There is still huge value in putting yourself forward for industry talks and attending events, but tools like social media help to expand your reach even further and give you better and more efficient ways to keep in touch with people you meet through non-invasive marketing activity – reminding them of your business and its value to the world.

(Via: http://www.netimperative.com/2017/06/top-digital-marketing-tips-business-pitfalls-digital-dinosaur/)

It does not take a genius to understand the ins and outs of marketing a business or brand. Most tips are actually timely and practical application of current technologies that are widely used by people today - no rocket science, really. Some of these techniques aren’t even expensive nor take too much effort to do. By learning to prioritize what’s important and multitask, you’d be able to hit your goal without risking your company’s success or future. And as always, the best time to make these changes to your business is today rather than years from now when it will be much harder for you to compete with competitors who have become well-versed with the language of business today.

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source https://www.unabashedlyprep.com/site/entry/tips-for-marketing-success/

Why Male Authors Use Generic Nom De Plumes

Books are something else, right? They give us a glimpse of various stories and situations that make our imagination run wild. Authors also have their mark and we can easily tell what the novel will be like by simply knowing who the author is. And just like any celebrity, there are certain authors that we follow and idolize and collect all his/her books. Most of the time we don’t really care that much as to the author’s gender because it is the book’s contents we are really interested in.

Today, there is news making its round on the web about male authors using gender-neutral names to hide their gender from their readers. But just what is all the fuss? And why are these male authors even doing this? What triggered them to hide their gender from the public? Is it really necessary in order for them to sell books? This are age-old questions because apparently, they've been doing it for centuries already and for good reason.

Riley Sager is a debut author whose book, Final Girls, has received the ultimate endorsement. “If you liked Gone Girl, you’ll love this,” Stephen King has said. But unlike Gone Girl, Girl on a Train, The Girls, Luckiest Girl Alive and others, Final Girls is written by a man – Todd Ritter. This detail is missing from Riley Sager’s website which, as the Wall Street Journal has pointed out, refers to the author only by name and without any gender-disclosing pronouns or photographs. (His Twitter avatar is Jamie Lee Curtis.)

Ritter is not the first man to deploy a gender-neutral pen name. JP Delaney (real name Tony Strong) is author of The Girl Before, SK Tremayne (Sean Thomas) wrote The Ice Twins and next year, The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn (AKA Daniel Mallory) is published. Before all of these was SJ (AKA Steve) Watson, the author of 2011’s Before I Go to Sleep.

(Via: https://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2017/jul/18/riley-sager-and-other-male-authors-benefiting-from-a-gender-neutral-pen-name)

It seems more of a marketing strategy why these male authors are hiding their identity especially if they are writing about romance. It is easier to sell a concept or a story in this case if the readers aren’t prejudiced about the author’s gender. And in a way, this strategy actually works in attracting attention and readers alike. The public is often curious as to the real identity of the author and it keeps them glued to whatever story the author is up his sleeves.

Anonymity can be liberating. The pen names Currer and Ellis Bell, respectively, allowed Charlotte and Emily Bronte to use influences from their local neighbourhood to craft Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. George Elliott, the famed writer of Middlemarch, was actually Mary Anne Evans. The aliases allowed these women to break into a literary market that was rigidly male-dominated at the time, giving us some of the seminal works of 19th-century western literature. In the decade that followed, Charles Dodgson disrobed the identity of a mathematician to write Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as Lewis Carroll. The gender-neutral initials of EL James allowed the writer of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy to engage with a particularly notorious topic. And closer to home, Rabindranath Tagore composed poetry in the literary language of Brajabuli as Bhanusimha, a name he found in the torn leaves of an old library book.

The removal of a name tag brings on the freedom to shift genres, write from the perspective of a different gender, or tackle topics that are particularly sensitive or experimental. This makes the pseudonym itself a powerful and useful tool. But it's troubling to think of how we, as readers, often make writers feel like they can't use their own identity for their work.

(Via: http://www.thedailystar.net/perspective/whats-pseudonym-1434529)

Perhaps male authors feel more independence when shifting genres when they believe their readers aren’t prejudiced about their work. They feel at ease exploring or talking about more sensitive matters in their novels or stories when they aren’t bounded by certain expectations or prejudices from third-parties and the general public. And there are actually lots of readers out there that choose the type of books to read just by seeing the name of the author. It’s why you can’t blame authors why they are using generic nom de plumes. Even female authors are actually doing it too. That way, they aren’t limited to express their creativity without compromising potential book sales.

The article Why Male Authors Use Generic Nom De Plumes Read more on: UP

source https://www.unabashedlyprep.com/site/entry/why-male-authors-use-generic-nom-de-plumes/

Ignoring Children’s Mental Health

Parents are often fussy about their child especially new parents. They often take their kids to the doctor when they have the fever or the flu but rarely do they wonder about their children’s state of mental health. The term mental health in itself is a vague one and most parents and carers have no idea what it encompasses and what the dangers are. Children’s mental health actually includes emotional and developmental milestones and developing positive social skills that children will need as they grow old and are crucial in solving the many problems life throws at them.

In order to become a normal, healthy, and sociable adult, parents should not ignore their child’s social health to help them develop to their full potential. Unfortunately, there are various factors that can affect a child mental state and not all the time they will be showered with love and affection and guided properly as they grow. There are countless children out there that grow up in an environment of hate, violence, and abuse. There are even those poor kids that are born with mental ailments that they totally have no control over. It is the reason why now more than ever, everyone should give mental health the attention it needs especially among young children who still can’t make decisions for themselves and need the support of adults to help them overcome these problems.

Children with serious mental health problems are becoming trapped in NHS psychiatric units, unable to leave because care is unavailable outside hospitals, a thinktank has said.

NHS figures show that between October 2015 and September 2016 children and young people in England spent almost 9,000 days in hospital after being declared fit to be discharged. Some end up stuck in units for several months.

NHS England did not tell the Education Policy Institute how many patients were involved in the 9,000 days, despite being asked this in a freedom of information request. But the thinktank said data showed the problem was growing.

The total number of what the EPI termed “wasted days” was 42% higher between December 2016 and February 2017 than in the same period in 2015-16. In January alone this year, under-18s spent 804 delayed days in mental health inpatient units, compared to 553 the previous January.

(Via: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/26/lack-of-mental-health-support-leaving-children-stuck-in-hospital-thinktank)

Young children are often stuck in hospitals because they can’t receive the same care and attention they need at home and they end up not only becoming an extra burden to their family and the immediate community but a threat as well. While it isn’t always the best experience for young kids to get confined in mental institutions because of a mental condition, at least they’d be able to get treated for their condition and not let it worsen than it already is. However, they eventually say goodbye to the normal life they used to have as total confinement deprives them of education, among other things, and the list can grow as their stay lengthens.

Mental health needs to be integrated into the school curriculum, which will help increase understanding and reduce stigma around issues. Without this, pupils may not be aware their mental health is deteriorating and feel silenced or shamed when seeking help.

If both pupils and teachers have more open discussions about mental health, issues will also be easier to identify early on, and this will help to build students’ knowledge and understanding of the subject.

Ideally, mental health needs to be talked about in the same way physical education or healthy eating is, because research has found that when schools adopt a comprehensive approach to discussing mental health it supports all pupils—including those who are experiencing mental health difficulties already.

(Via: https://qz.com/1023545/childrens-mental-health-five-things-schools-can-do-to-help/)

As the world becomes more globally-interconnected, the dangers affecting children’s mental health also grows especially that kids have greater access to social media and the Internet without their parent’s supervision. Imagine the dangers that lurk in these platforms that bring about increased feelings of insecurity and cases of cyber bullying and suicide that can severely impact a child mentally and emotionally. Children often lose sight of what’s right because of the things they see online and their mental state can get severely shattered without their parents knowing.

Education is a powerful tool that parents and other adults can use to protect and uphold the mental health of children. Their mental health deserves our attention too before we are faced with problems we know nothing about or so little and lack the facilities to get these issues addressed especially among the juveniles.

The post Ignoring Children’s Mental Health is available on UnabashedlyPrep.com

source https://www.unabashedlyprep.com/site/entry/ignoring-childrens-mental-health/

Why Nobody Talks About Child Sex Abuse

As a society, we look after the needs of young children and protect them from harm. In a normal world, it wouldn’t be a problem at all. However, we don’t live in a normal one and today are dangerous times too. The majority acknowledges that you are not safe on the streets anymore and even in your home too as technology creeps further into our safe haven. The first ones to get harassed are the vulnerable groups and that include children.

The issue of child abuse is ever growing as violence become common among people especially that they see it on the news day in and day out. And even if it eludes your understanding, there are certain individuals that are just jerks or perverts that takes delight in the pain and suffering of others. It’s even worse if the subject of their fantasies is young kids that shouldn’t be dragged into nasty stuff like these. Child sex abuse happens and you’d be surprised to find out how prevalent it is in today’s society. Most of the time, the child knows the predator and it hits close to home. If not, it can be someone they met online, which is not surprising as most kids nowadays are quite tech-savvy.

Indian scenario of child sex abuse
A study was conducted in 2012 by Ministry of Women and Child Development inIndia covering 13 states. The study reported that about 21 per cent of the participants were exposed to extreme forms of sexual abuse. Among the participants who reported being abused, 57.3 per cent were boys and 42.7 per cent were girls, about 40 per cent were 5-12 years of age. About half of the participants were exposed to other forms of sexual abuse. The data was reported by the study on prevalence of various forms of sexual abuse.
Challenges.
Lack of parent child communication. Lack of proper mental and criminal verification of staff of schools and public institutes. Easy access to sexually exploitive materials. Lack of stronger social movements. Lack of awareness-to-action plan. Lack of initiatives by schools and authorities.

(Via: http://news.statetimes.in/alarming-increase-in-rate-of-child-sex-abuse-in-india/)

Nobody wants to talk about child sexual abuse. Period. That’s because it is absolutely ugly and disgusting. How can people do those things to innocent kids? How can they corrupt their young minds? Children don’t understand most sexual activities that adults engage in. Why not look for a grown-up and consenting partner instead? But then they’d say, where’s the fun in that? It’s totally sickening. When kids go through sexual abuse at their young age, they are scarred for life. They are left to deal with a sexual trauma that no amount of counseling may ever be able to erase or lessen over the years. Most of the times, cases happen inside the home, which makes it even doubly nauseating. But with the advanced technology we have these days, children can also fall prey to child predators on the web without them or their parents knowing.

When we forgive or make excuses for the behavior of perpetrators, we are contributing to the unravelling of society. The WHO has found a commonality between sexual violence and sleep difficulties, depression, tobacco and alcohol consumption, and even with trauma counseling, up to 50 percent of victims retain symptoms of stress. Children who have been victims of sexual violence do not go quietly into the night. They grow up. And they carry with them the cruel hand they have been dealt. Should we not be alarmed? Should we not say: “Not one more child”?

(Via: https://thediplomat.com/2017/09/not-one-more-child-dealing-with-sex-crimes-against-children-in-malaysia/)

As increasing cases of sexual abuse against children are reported all over the world, the authorities are becoming more vigilant in catching perpetrators and making sure they pay for their crimes and not one more child has to go through the same ordeal ever again. Children are meant to be loved and cared for, not become the object of some person’s perverted imagination. It’s bad enough that the child has to go through such a traumatic experience but having to go through it again or not getting the justice they deserve is a bigger injustice that society subjects them to. These cases have been going on for years and it is high time we step up and protect the rights of the child, if not just for their future but for the future of our nation.

Why Nobody Talks About Child Sex Abuse See more on: www.unabashedlyprep.com

source https://www.unabashedlyprep.com/site/entry/why-nobody-talks-about-child-sex-abuse/