I just came back from a business meeting at which time at been set aside to tell jokes, and the twenty-some attendees were in a jolly mood!
However, there were a number of people who had difficulty with hearing, and when one man stood up and started his joke very, very softly, a member spoke up and asked him to please talk louder.
Well, the outcome was less than satisfactory! In response, the man, who had a very resonant (and beautiful) natural voice literally shouted his next sentence. You could see people cringe, and one woman sitting close to him spontaneously clapped her hands over her ears. (Not something one normally sees during a business meeting!)
Joke-teller would start a sentence with a shout, then dwindle to a whisper–then when he remembered to talk louder, he’d blast us again. We’d cower again. It was like listening to a high-volume television which got muted every few seconds. Blast, whisper, blast, whisper. And the audience cringed, strained to hear, cringed, strained to hear…
The joke was a long story-joke, building up suspense to a great punch line. Can you guess what happened? The penultimate sentence was yelled, but the punch line dwindled away to a whimper. The laughter was subdued, to say the least, and the jolly mood of the group was broken.
When you’re speaking, people, take care of your audience. Learn to modulate your voice so that people can enjoy listening to you and can hear–really hear–the point of your message.Then all the good work you’ve put into your speech preparation can be appreciated. And you can feel pleased with yourself!
Carole McMichaels, Speaker, Coach, Author: Fearless Public Speaking: How to Get Rid of Your Stage Fright and Prepare and Deliver a Winning Presentation, invites you to join her free newsletter on speaking in public. You may also get your free report, “7 Valuable Tips on Writing a Mind-Gripping Speech”. at
http://getridofpublicspeakingfears.com/
Building link popularity is one of the most important elements of search engine optimisation and also one of the most time-consuming. It amazes me that I still receive countless emails from so called SEO experts inviting me to participate in link exchanges. Some of them even offering to swap links with a site totally unrelated to what we do! No wonder our industry comes under such fire.
Let’s go back to basics and understand the concept of linking. Linking in its simplest form is about taking a user on a stage in their online journey, whether it be to find a product, piece of news and information or to learn something new. Now most of the time we know what we are looking for online, so our session has a goal, and with that goal in mind we look to trawl the web and put our trust in navigating around websites till we achieve our goal. Sometimes it can take minutes and a straight forward visit to a search engine and a destination site, other times it can takes us hours, with a journey that takes us in and out of a number of different websites.
Now if you keep that concept in mind when thinking about link building you’ll soon realise that the ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ approach to building link popularity is fundamentally flawed. Links should be awarded on merit and not through back scratching.
Seeking out link exchanges is an inefficient use of your time
What I am going to tell you next is going to transform the way you approach building link popularity. Let’s take a look at a classic link swap scenario. You first of all spend a few days looking for sites that have link swap directories on their website. You contact the webmaster explaining that you would like to engage in a link exchange. The webmaster agrees to link to you once you have placed a link back to his site first. You set up the link and email the webmaster. You visit the site to check your link and you find your link buried deep within the site on a page that has a low page rank and surrounded by 50 other web links. You then repeat the process with another site. Now here comes the killer, you’ve spent all that time building up those links, a few months later you return to some of the site’s where your link was placed and you find that some of them have been removed. You get in touch with the webmasters and ask them why your link has been removed. They get back to you and tell you it was an accident. Yeh right, they removed the link deliberately so they could gain a one way link from you. After a few months has passed you notice that your link popularity has not increased in Google - so again you revisit some of the sites that were linking to you and check your links (or by now you might have bought some link checking software to do that for you). You see that your links are still there, but you’ve read that sometimes webmaster’s adopt sneaky techniques to prevent the search engine spiders from following the link. Low and behold you see within the source code of one site that they are using a “nofollow” tag on the link.
Now tell me is all this effort worth it? Link exchanges open up a new can of worms for you - coming into contact with black hat SEOs!
Now consider the opposite. Why not spend the time on creating compelling content or interactive tools that people will naturally want to link to. Not only are they likely to provide you with a link from a page that is likely to be visited, but it will be a one way link, and a few one way links from respected websites are worth more than 50 reciprocals, take my word for it. Plus you’ll have something of real value on your site that visitors will use and may even tell other people about. With this approach to link building you’ll generate more ‘noise’ about your website and encourage other website owners to link to you, because you’ll have something on your own site, that will be of interest to their own visitors.
With link building it’s better to think about building a name for yourself and focus on growing your online reputation as opposed to growing your list of reciprocal link partners. So the message is clear: ‘quality over quantity’ is what counts when it comes to growing link popularity.
Damon Lightley is a director at search engine marketing specialists, SiteVisibility. SiteVisibility helps its clients attract, convert and retain profitable customers through their websites.
For more information on link building visit SiteVisibility
Tags: article submission, articles, email, email marketing, email newsletter, ezine, publishing, writers, writingThere are constant arguments on whether a person is born talented and gifted or a person becomes such in the course of life due to a number of reasons. Of course, inborn abilities are very often crucial; however, only persistent work upon oneself can guarantee success. What characteristics are vital for becoming a successful scholar, for example? Are high achievements ensured by intelligence and research skills merely? We argue that for being truly successful, one has to possess a capability of presenting his work.
Presentation skills can and should be trained. Long time ago it was noticed that a good expression of and idea makes the biggest share in the positive perception of the idea. Centuries ago outstanding writers, philosophers offered their vision on how to achieve best results in public speaking. Although the world is much different from what it was in the past, basic rules for presenting ideas are universal. So what are the most important options one needs to follow to achieve best results in presenting project, research, paper etc nowadays? The first essential notion is your general look when you talk in front of the audience. You have to look accurate, well-dressed and modest at the same time. Indeed, what is important in regards to appearance is balancing between being elegant and modest. Seriousness - that’s what should come to mind when looking at you during your presentation. Another essential thing is your communication with the audience.
With your first words you have to set contact with the listeners. Eye contact is a significant element of contact as a whole. Don’t stare at walls or ceiling, look directly into the audience. Your eyes should reveal your sincerity and interest in what you yourself are talking about. When you demonstrate authentic interest, this will attract audience’s attention for sure. If you manage to touch your listeners so that they ask questions, discuss the matter you speak about, than it’s a sign of real success. And that’s what you should aim at. People appreciate sense of humor and react mostly positive to speaker’s jokes. However, here you should remember not to cross the line to familiarity. You don’t have to make a show out of your presentation; because it is a part of the serious project. But you can use some elements, instruments, like board, some schemes whatever to make your presentation more vivid and appealing.
All in all, you have to demonstrate confidence in what you are presenting. Your outlook should be formal in style, but bearing some aspects of your personality. You have to sound persuasive, providing strong arguments for your viewpoint. One more really important thing is the manner you speak, your voice and gestures. They have to be proof of your confidence, on the one hand, and flexibility, on the other. The way you present your project is very often a key to overall success, because your presentation can convince the audience that your research is worthwhile.
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