Word of Mouth Marketing in a Recession

Advertising is expensive for small businesses, but word of mouth marketing is not. It's also very effective.

Where there is a seller, there is a buyer. Your customers need to know about your business. And most people like the idea that they are referred by someone they know and trust. Most people choose their dentist and doctor from a referral rather than the Yellow pages. They would rather have a real estate agent or mechanic that has been vetted by someone they know.

A business should have a network of word of mouth warriors that will get your message out to the world in the best possible way. Expanding your network of contacts is important for your business. The more you actively network with them, the better your results will be.

Help the people in your network by carrying around their business cards and referring business to them as they will do for you. You should work on a percentage basis to encourage others to promote you and vice versa.

It looks obvious, but have a great product, great service and a great message. As many people as possible should know about it. Get them to use your product or service and give you a testimonial. Enthusiastic and loyal fans are great for business. And you want them to spread the good word about you.

You must have the best customer service on the planet. Customer service is free and should be at the top of your list when it comes to your business. If your customer has a negative experience, they will likely tell ten other people about it. You want as little negativity as possible and you want people to want to shout your praises from the rooftops.

You need to be persistent if you want your WOM campaign to work. It takes time to cultivate good working relationships. People buy from people they know and trust. You also have to be willing to help others achieve their goals at the same time. But a good word of mouth plan will pay off in spades in the long run if you stick to it.

Copyright (c) 2010 Julie Austin

The LG Pop Is Probably the Cheapest Touch Screen Smartphone Ever

LG has recently been catering for the cash conscious buyer and the release of the LG Pop is clear evidence of this. The Pop is probably the cheapest touch screen smartphone ever; and with a full touch control interface and social network integration, it really is a smartphone. No it may not have a huge powerful operating system, and no CPU is not that big, but LG has managed to cram in quite a lot of smartphone technology for a very low production cost.

As looks go, the Pop is impressively pleasing and the colorful UI looks bright and vibrant on the 3.0 inch 240 x 400 (WQVGA) pixel display. The resistive touch receptive screen allows users to gracefully glide from one application to the next quite smoothly and as the device is reasonably compact (97.8 x 49.5 x 11.2mm) it is very pocketable and palm friendly. Noticeably there is only one button benefit the screen; it can be used as the primary action button, along with call and end functions.

With the majority of smartphones today, the UI can be quite fiddly with intricate menus and sub-menus all over the place, but LG has supplied the Pop with a very simple swipe and tap 3-way interface and iPhone style menus, perfect for smartphone newbie's or the technologically challenged, like my mother. LG has also included there LiveSquare feature which is a glorified call log and contacts interface. From ere you are presented with various avatars which represent contacts and each one can be interacted with via the touch screen.

The LG Pop can be set up to handle various e-mail accounts from multiple providers; also social networking has been covered by a dedicated application which enables you to handle MySpace, Twitter and Facebook accounts. Along with the standard support for SMS and MMS messaging, LG has supplied a full web browser supported by EDGE Quad Band (850/900/1800/1900) which covers all of your online activities including social networking and gaming.

LG have thrown in an efficient little 3MP digital camera system; it delivers all the tools needed for general day-to-day snapping and QVGA 10fps video recordings, the camera loads up quite quickly and you get a nice, full screen viewfinder. The Pop has a Muvee Studio application which can be used to create slideshows, but pictures can also be viewed in basic gallery mode. The video player is capable of playing MPEG-4 files in 320 x 240 pixel resolution, while the music player hosts a very nice interface and plays back via the phones in-built loudspeakers or the wireless Bluetooth headsets. FM radio is also supported for users who like to be up to date with there favorite channels and shows.

LG has delivered a pretty strong candidate for the most affordable touch screen smartphone ever. The Pop is devoted to cash conscious buyers who require touch screen technology and mobile social networking. This device is well sized and well designed with stylish being an appropriate word, the minimalistic features and curved edges give the phone a fashionable, reliable frame. The tasteful interface is incredibly user friendly while the price tag will not heart your wallet.

How Piano Lessons Benefit Young Children

Piano lessons provide a wide range of benefits to young children. Here are my "Top Five."

1. Piano lessons help preserve and develop children's natural creative abilities.

The best analogy of how children learn through music that I've found is Donald Kroodsma's book "The Singing Life of Birds." Every songbird can be identified by the unique song it sings, but a baby bird has to be taught by its parents to sing the family song. Baby birds, like humans, just 'babble' at first. Mother birds sing the family song over and over to the baby birds as they try to repeat it back. At first, the baby birds are only able to sing back one or two notes, but they gradually learn to sing the whole song. And birds with two voice boxes even learn to sing their own harmony parts! Once baby birds learn the family song, they can start developing their very own songs. Similarly, I encourage students to compose their own music after developing needed skills. In my experience, young children in piano are a lot like baby songbirds!

2. Piano lessons help children perfect their natural learning processes.

Music is a language, and children are programmed to absorb languages. Studies have shown that kids can most easily learn new languages ​​when they start at a young age. Piano lessons help children develop the very same skills needed to accomplish language arts, like reading. In piano, students learn how to follow directions, scan written materials, think critically, create solutions and translate writing into action. For example, students must look at each note, measure and phrase and decide how to play each note to make the music come to life. Many children (including my own sons) have become much better readers after starting piano lessons. Further, piano lessons involves an interplay of both right and left brain activity that stimulates neural development.

3. Piano lessons help children learn how to stay focused and achieve goals.

Piano lessons help children set specific goals and then work towards reaching these goals. Each new piece of music a student learns requires a specific set of skills and playing habits. To achieve these goals students must learn to stay focused and study each note, measure and phrase to understand how to play the song. In doing this students learn to think critically and creatively as they decide how to make the music come to life. Staying focused over time develops good study habits that become natural. This is important because learning to practice good habits that match their goals shows children how to make their dreams come to life!

4. Piano lessons help children develop courage.

It takes courage to face challenges without letting our anger and worries get the best of us. Piano lessons help students learn to accept challenges such as learning a difficult song, as well as to perform pieces in front of teachers, friends, and families at recitals. Lessons also help kids learn the importance of keeping a positive perspective sustainable difficulties. Learning to handle uncertainty and stress in a way that minimizes anxiety and maximizes creativity is a valuable life tool. We all need practice at this!

5. Piano lessons teach children to persevere.

A key part of accomplishing anything difficult is not to give up easily. As children grow, piano lessons teach kids to try and then try again if they do not initially succeed. However, as Yoda explained to Luke Skywalker, the objective is not just trying itself, but accomplishing the desired goal - "Do or do not, there is no try!" Piano lessons teach students how to adjust their expectations if they can not initially master a tough song or skills, and to tackle these big goals by taking small incremental steps. In the end, just like the baby songbirds that ever learn to sing, students learn that they can accomplish great things and reach their dreams through careful and consistent effort.

Women's Business Grants

Television, magazine, and web ads keep promising that there is over 400 billion dollars available in grant money today. They promise that if you send them money they'll tell you how to get a federal grant that you do not have to repay. Women owned businesses are the fastest growing markets in today's world. These ads target women want to start or expand their own business. They promise women business grants are easy to find and even easier to get.

The first part of their promise is true. Google women business grant and you will get 357,000 results. Few of them are actually helpful though. Most of the hits are for ad sites promoting more of what you've been hearing. Remember the shocking statement in the add; that less less than fifteen percent of people ever apply for these grants? That part is true too. But there are reasons for that. Many of these grants have eligility criteria the average person can not meet. Others are location specific grants. Meaning that if you live in Massachusetts and find a great women business grant for starting a home remodeling company, you may have to live in Alaska to qualify. Still, there are grants that you can apply for.

The Amber Grant offers women business owner's small grants for everything from start up to expansion. The amounts are small, usually not more than a thousand dollars. But that small grant can help you buy a new computer for your business or pay for business cards and other advertising.

Most states and the Small Business Administration offer women business grants of varying amounts. It takes some research to find them. Your best bet is to go to your state's web site and search under business assistance benefits. For instance, when you search the Commonwealth of Massachusetts official site for women business grants you are directed to their SOMWBA site (State Office of Minority and Women Business Assistance). This site provides links to information ranging from the private sector, to federal government, the state, and local assistance programs. When you register with the site you can receive updates on financial assistance and access to technical assistance as well. Registration is free.

Money, in the form of grants and credit, is available to women in business. Many of the loans are subprime and easy to acquire with a better than decent repayment plan. And though you will not qualify for every grant, the odds are good you'll qualify for a few of them.

As a final note, WomensNet and WomenOwned are two good resources for finding women business grants. In fact WomensNet is the place that offers the Amber Grant. They are worth looking at, but as with all things business related your best bet is to have a plan in place before you start your search. Knowing what specifically you want a grant for will shorten your search tremendously.

MS Word - How to Fix and Recover Word Document Files

Microsoft Word is one of the most extensively used Microsoft applications that allows user to create, view, paste, copy, edit, save, print, and share documents. It enables the user to enhance their documents by inserting animated images, photographs, diagrams, charts, images, shapes, etc. MS Word create an electronic document that is broadly used to type articles, letters, essays, memoranda, legal content and member list Owing to its user-friendliness, MS Word finds its utilization for commercial, noncommercial and private sectors.

Do you know that MS Word document file is already to severe corruption? Yes it's true; a doc file can get easily damaged. MS Word file gets corrupt due to various reasons including Trojan or Virus attacks, abrupt system shutdown, malfunction of any hardware or software and sudden failure of the application.

At first instance, a corrupt MS Word file will not open and if it opens it might show some unusual behaviors like improper formatting, incorrect document layout, re-pagination and even the system crash. These changes are the clear indications that your file has damaged.

There are several ways by which you can repair the damaged doc file, these include:

• Try opening other documents in Word on the same computer
• Look for other copies of your document on another computer or email
• Run CHKDSK utility to check corruption at the file system level.
• Save the document in a different file format like.rtf or.txt. After opening the converted doc, resave it in a new version of.doc or.docx
• Use Word's built-in text converter utility. In Word, click on Microsoft Office button in the upper left part and then select Open from the File
• From the Open dialog select "Recover Text from Any File" from dropdown file list, select the file that you want to convert. Reset the dropdown file list into one of the Word document formats to prevent Word from using the recover text utility
• Use Word's Open and Repair. This feature repairs Word documents. To use this feature, follow these steps:

1. Choose the Open option for your Word 2007
2. In the Open dialog select the file you wish to open and repair
3. Click the down arrow below the Open button and select Open and Repair from the menu

• Use a shadow copy by right-clicking and selecting Properties from the popup menu. Select Previous Versions tab from one of the available versions on the Properties dialog. (NOTE: Previous Versions tab appears only if your hard drive is NTFS formatted). Be aware of the fact that a shadow copy will not be as complete as a backup you created

If all these steps fail to fix the corrupt file then the possible solution left with you to go for a 'third-party' Microsoft Word Recovery Software. Microsoft Word Recovery Software can effectively perform strenuous task of repairing as well as recovering from If all these steps fail to fix the corrupt file then the possible solution left with you to go for a 'third-party' Microsoft Word Recovery Software. Microsoft Word Recovery Software can effectively perform strenuous task of repairing as well as recovering damaged file in just a nick of time.

Why Do People Travel?

Can you imagine what is life without traveling? Is it possible? Whatever your reason is, traveling is a part of people's life. We all travel. The reason behind that is up to you.

There are different reasons why people travels :.

1.) Most People Travel because they want to see their families and friends who live far away. Invitations from families and friends are seldom so you will decide to travel just to see them.

2.) People Travel because they want to see their soul mates. Some people believe that there is only one person for them and if they have not had much luck searching in their area, they figured it out that even though there are millions of people around the world, they can still find it in other place.

3.) People travel to seek for work because they want to experience how to work from another place. We must admit that earning money is hard and some people decide to work abroad because they are looking for greener pasture. Other place pays bigger rates than their own place. We may also say that their expertise is not favorable in their own place. Unfortunately, they have to leave their families for awhile for a job opportunities abroad.

4.) People travel because they want to learn others cultures. They want to see the difference between their culture and other cultures. They want to learn others culture because for them traveling is fun while learning. One particular thing about the culture is the food. They want to know how food is prepared and how it is done. Obviously, we all love to eat.

5.) People travel because they are writers. They want to give the readers relevant article to their readers especially since they are making a story in that particular place.

6.) People travel because they want to see all beautiful scenery of different countries. Others would want to take pictures because it serves as souvenirs.

7.) When opportunity arise, it is hard to decide whether to leave your family and open a business far away your place. Some businessmen would rather put up business in other place because they want gain and it is more profitable than staying in their place. Business is nothing without profit.

Traveling is not only for rich people. Whether you are poor or in the middle class, you can travel as long as it fits your budget. Some travel for their goals, some travel for fun and relaxation and some travel for experience.

Portfolio Management to Meet Investor's Goals

As a salaried individual from a middle-class family, it is quite likely that you want to increase your wealth. You might want to earn more from your savings than the interest amount at the bank. In such a case, an investment looks like a good option, but it is also a scary option. There are numerous people who have lost lakhs and crores in the investment markets, and you can not afford such a loss. You definitely have some goal in mind, a reason behind trying to make more money, but how will you reach your goal? Here, portfolio management , the science of making investments and allocating assets comes to the forefront. A portfolio manager is a professional who is trained in the science and art of making investments and the balancing of risk against performance.

The professional management of assets and securities is known as investment management. This professional asset management is done with the specific aim of helping investors to reach their goals with regards to their investments. Portfolio managers and investment managers work with a team of people who do research on the market and analyze the behavior of the market. They are also given information on investments by investment bankers, and sift through all this information before reaching an informed decision about how best to use their investor's money keeping the investor's goals in mind. There is a team of analysts who look at the market before deciding on such an investment strategy for their clients. Based on the current market situation, these professionals monitor current investments and also plan for future investments. They select assets and stocks for their clients as well.

Having professionals manage your investments is a good way to cut back on losses in the investment market. These professionals will talk you through the investments that they are making for you, and why they are making them. By doing so, they may be able to give you a better understanding of the way in which the market works. Apart from this, by hiring a professional, you will have someone to keep a constant check on the money you have already invested, based on which you can make decisions for the future. Always remember that even though the professional you hire is a trained analyst, the market is always volatile and may take a sudden dive. No investment is absolutely loss proof, and even though these professionals may try and minimize your losses, there may still be losses. Always try and fully understand any investment before you commit to it so that you are aware of all risks before investing large amounts of money.