Techniques Archives - BOLLYWOOD SURKHIYAN

12 Surefire Brainstorming Techniques

Writers, students and anyone else will occasionally need an idea or two. While you may have times when ideas come with little or no effort, there will be times when the fountain of creativity seems to have dried up. Have no fear, however. Even if you’re not feeling particularly creative, you can still think and reason. By thinking clearly and using the following techniques, you’ll find an endless supply of ideas.

Free-writing – Just write. Don’t worry about format, topic, or anything else. Just write, about anything at all. It might be a description of your kitchen ceiling, or a diatribe about the lack of parking spaces at your local veterinarian’s office. The important thing is that you get writing, and keep writing. Let one thought lead to another, or just write on one thing, in ever increasing detail. Maybe you’ll write for a set amount of time, or maybe your aim is to fill a page or multiple pages. Pick out individual topics, ideas, names or anything else. Whatever you do, you’ll soon have many ideas to work with.

Breakdown – Take your initial topic, and write it at the top of the page. Divide the topic into subtopics, questions, themes, and such, listing them below. Continue to break down and list those subtopics as before.

Listing/Bulleting – List everything about the topic, then list any related phrases, keywords, questions, sources, etc. If you can think of it, add it to the list. Then take each item from the list, and do it again.

Cubing – Cubing refers to taking your topic and examining it from six different sides, like the six sides of a cube. Consider the topic in the following six ways:

Describe it
Compare it
Associate it
Analyze it
Apply it
Argue for and against it

Now, examine your answers. Are there any connections between them? Do any themes emerge?

Similes – Complete the following sentence: [Blank] is/was/are/were like [Blank]. By comparing your topic to another, seemingly unrelated word, you’ll begin to see new ideas about your topic, better understand different aspects of it, and new ideas will emerge.

Clustering/Mapping/Webbing – This technique allows you to expand on a topic in a freeform, organic manner. Write a keyword or words about your topic in the center of a blank page and draw a circle or box around it. Branch off in as many ideas as possible, connecting them visually to the topic. Then branch off from there. Go as far as you can or want to, continually branching off.

Parts – Look at the relationships between the whole, the parts and parts of parts. Make the following lists on opposite margins of a sheet of paper:

Whole………………………Parts

Part…………………………Parts of Parts

Apply these labels to topics and subtopics, words, etc. Then draw conclusions about relationships, patterns, connections, etc.

Journalistic Questions (The Big 6) – Ask yourself the 6 important questions of journalism:

Who
What
When
Where
Why
How

List related questions for each one, then seek out the answers; repeat as many times as you need to.

Outside the Box – Try approaching your topic from a totally different angle. Ask questions from a seemingly unrelated viewpoint. You might think in terms of occupations, academic subjects, demographic groups, cultural groups, etc. Examine it fully from each new perspective, jotting down every thought, question, commentary, interpretation, etc.

Charts/Shapes – Instead of words and phrases, think visually. Put things in terms of charts, shapes, tables and diagrams. If you can find photographs related to the topic, use them as well. List anything you see, any thoughts that come to mind and any conclusions drawn from the images.

Slanting/Re-slant – Examine an idea or topic in terms of purpose and audience. If stuck, think about a different purpose or a different audience. For example, if you’re writing about married couples with the purpose of entertaining couples with at least five years of marriage, try looking at the topic from the newlyweds.

Referencing – If you have a basic idea or topic, look it up. Go to the dictionary, the thesaurus, the encyclopedia, an almanac, quote collection, any other reference. List any information. If you don’t have a topic, open to a random page, pick any topic, then go from there.

Combination of Techniques – Start with any technique then apply another technique to the results. For example, after listing and bulleting on your original topic, try referencing each listed item.

Once you have used these techniques, you should have a list of the ideas produced. These ideas must then be organized in some way. You may start by listing them neatly, then categorizing them. Group them according to subtopics, put them into an outline, or try to sequence them in some way. The idea is simply to impose some sort of order on the disorganized results, giving you a clear collection of ideas to work with. Now equipped with these ideas and some related information, you’ll have a better idea of what to work on in your writing.

Techniques For Entrepreneurship Development

There is a certain way to carry out entrepreneurship. One has to follow certain fixed guidelines to develop an entrepreneurship of any choice. Designing a clear cut plan is necessary. Following are seven guidelines or techniques on the basis of which any entrepreneurship or business can be developed;

1. Focusing on the key product:

Your business revolves on the key product so focusing on your core product is the first step to create a business opportunity. A certain successful entrepreneur has stated that “Prospects buy when they trust your value is applicable to them and believe your company is stable” suggesting that an entrepreneur should focus on providing value to the customers. This suggestion is the key to the core plan. An entrepreneur of small business needs to differentiate from big business by concentrating on the core products. Specialization is the biggest asset of entrepreneurs.

2. Keeping it simple and short:

One should be able to tell what their business is in few precise and concise words(I.e the patter or pitch) lasting for 30 seconds since any prospect can understand clearly about the business without being confused.

3. Staying true to who you are:

You can reach your goals by knowing who you are and what gets you excited and not. Notably procrastination as human nature is can delay your growth plan so it’s better to not procrastinate and go for a perfect result oriented plan

4. Mapping it:

The best way to determine your service strategy is by mapping your capabilities with your target clients’ needs. Hence the customers who do not need your particular expertise are also avoided. The urge to cast a wide net is one common trait among many entrepreneurs. However a small business flourishes since it has limited service offering. Specializing in distinctive top quality service is the value in having a small business. So in many instances, a small business flourishes. Significantly, while choosing a provider, a list of decision making criteria can be made, from which, your client can choose as per your expectation. Then categorize yourself honestly or evaluate intensely as to where you would be position in each category. After this, make sure that your patter or pitch is still on target.

5. Utilizing the best marketing tools that work for you:

Implement the best marketing strategy that suits your personality and that of customers to be served. Identify the top two marketing tools that have worked for you in the past and then start adding new ideas from a fresh perspective. It’s also important to evaluate the selected marketing tools from cost basis. You have to take a decision as to which marketing tool will yield the best returns on your efforts. In one or another each tool should be result oriented or revenue productive.

6. Implementing a plan of action:

It’s essential to know whether the plan of action made is in progress or not. This can be done by establishing goals at short term say 3 months to long term of 6 months. During short term, you need to check your plan every month. If the plan is not being met you need to ask questions to yourself like did I select the appropriate tools for my target customer? Did I integrate the strategy into the plan? Or did I focus on only one of the marketing tool? Thus there should be a strategy check on a day to day basis so as to know if the plan is in progress as per your plan.

7. Exercising the plan:

The final step is to complete the daily actions and to put n extra efforts to accelerate your plan towards success. Precious time should be not wasted and used for reaching your goal soon.

These are the basic most important techniques for Entrepreneurship development.

Thanks

Time Management Techniques For Small Business Owners – 7 Steps to Getting More Done in Less Time

Otherwise known as… how to knock the competition bandy whilst having more free time to have fun and spend with your family and friends. The primary aim for any small business owner is to make more profits. In order to be successful in business, time management techniques are critical.

Follow these seven essential steps:

1. Goals

What do you want? Why do you want it? If what you’re working on isn’t taking you where you want to go… you’re ultimately wasting your time. I consistently see people talking about time management habits without ever mentioning this first important step.

2. Break big projects into smaller tasks

This makes getting things done more manageable. It will reduce the risk of you becoming overwhelmed by your workload. Use project management software such as Mindmanager. This gives you an excellent visual overview of the tasks that need to be successfully completed. You can also see: In what order they logically need to be done. Who has been given responsibility for each of them. When they need to be completed. And how you will measure successful completion.

3. Prioritisation.

Prioritize the importance of the tasks. This depends on not only what will create the most profit for your company. But also what tasks need to be completed before others can even begin.

4. Outsourcing/delegation

Outsource or delegate all non-critical, time-consuming tasks. The only tasks you should be doing are the ones that create the most profit and value for your company. Do the tasks that you are best at and most enjoy… and offload the rest.

5. Systematization.

This applies to any task or activity which needs to be repeated within your business. Document step-by-step, the most efficient way to carry out the task. Make this documentation available to all your employees. As more efficient and effective ways are discovered to complete this task…update your documentation. The ultimate goal is that every task is carried out in the same efficient way every single time.

6. Time planners.

Have one for every working day, week, month, and the forthcoming year. Put the tasks that need to be completed into your planers based on your previous prioritisation. Stick rigidly to these planners. Make sure you that you successfully complete each day’s tasks. There will always be times when this is not possible. Update your planners appropriately. Cross off each task is its completed. Move on to the next task straightaway.

7. Set a time limit for each task

Your accuracy of judging the required times will get better with practice. Unfortunately, the human mind as a habit of filling the allocated time you set for any activity. Tell yourself you need an hour to complete it. An hour it will take. Tell yourself you need all morning, and surprise surprise, all morning it takes. Use an egg timer. Find out what the most efficient working period of time for you is. For most people it is between 40-90 minutes. When you complete each time period, get up and walk around for five minutes. Get the blood flowing. Move on to the next allotted time period.

These may sound like relatively simple time management techniques. The fact is they are incredibly powerful. You don’t need to over complicate things.

Sit down next Sunday and plan your working week using these seven steps. The following Saturday review how much you have achieved. I think you’ll be shocked and pleased at how much you’ve achieved in your business.

How to Create Profits Using Viral Marketing Techniques

The Difference Among Viral, Buzz, and Word-of-Mouth

There are certain words, jargon that stands in for theory, that starts with marketing industry insiders and before you know it becomes the ‘in’ subject of books, blogs, articles, and MBA dissertations. But as jargon filters down to the less sophisticated, the meaning and ideas behind these words becomes lost. Such is the case with the current state of thinking on Buzz, Viral, and Word-of-Mouth marketing.

These terms are often used interchangeably but are they the same thing? Dave Balter and John Butman in their book, “Grapevine,’ describe Buzz as a marketing tactic aimed at generating publicity or awareness often without regard to any specific message, while Viral marketing is a means of spreading a marketing message through the use of contagious creative most often Web-video and Word-of-Mouth is the process of product story-telling. Balter’s marketing agency concentrates on creating word-of-mouth campaigns for his clients but the name of his company is BzzAgent – no wonder the confusion.

Mark Huges, author of the book ‘Buzz Marketing- Get People to Talk About Your Stuff’ points out that in order to create buzz about your company or product you must develop a marketing campaign that incorporates at least one, and preferable more, of his Six Elements of Buzz:

Taboo,
Unusual,

Outrageous,

Hilarious,

Remarkable, and

Secret.

It would seem that these six elements are the same elements that generate the contagious spread of information – Viral marketing. In order for something to become viral, people must talk about it, ergo word-of-mouth. But people can talk and spread the word of a video or stunt without ever generating much talk about the product. The famous, or infamous, Oprah Winfrey-General Motors audience car give-away stunt is a prime example of generating talk about a stunt without generating much talk about the product. If as Balter suggest, word-of-mouth is ‘product story-telling,’ then there is definitely a difference between Buzz and Word-of-Mouth.

So if Buzz is the tactic for drawing attention to your company; and Viral is the method of spreading the message; and Word-of-Mouth is the result; we then have a clear distinction between the three marketing terms.

The question is how can we construct a Web-based marketing campaign that uses the Buzz tactic, Viral method, and Word-of-Mouth message to produce the ultimate marketing objective: more sales and profits; and are Huges’ Six Elements of Buzz the only media attributes that deliver a marketing stir?

Solve The Marketing Mystery: Discover Means + Motive + Opportunity

We’ve all watched enough ‘Law and Orders’ on television to know that solving a mystery requires learning the means, motive and opportunity of the puzzle. For today’s marketers these elements are clear.

Motive: to attract attention, breed interest, stimulate desire, and generate action that ultimately produces increased sales and profits.

Means: the advent of relatively low cost desktop digital video tools and the creation of a new class of professional multimedia Web-video producers brings affordable multimedia creative to businesses that in the past could not afford professional video content.

Opportunity: the penetration of high-speed Internet connections plus the Web’s ability to delivery multimedia audio and video combined with the introduction of Web-video search databases by dominant Internet players like Google and YouTube create the necessary opportunity.

Why Web-Video Solves the Buzz-Viral-Word-of-Mouth Mystery

The 5 Strategic Goals of Marketing
The Anthropomorphization of Brands

Maslow’s Extended Hierarchy of Needs

The 5 Elements of Communication

The 5 Strategic Goals of Marketing

Increased sales and profits is every company’s prime motive, however, in order to achieve those goals, certain intermediate objectives must be met, especially as it concerns the Web that by its nature is a sterile, remote environment. Marketing campaigns should be constructed to provide the appropriate audiences with five essential elements:

Awareness
Emotional Utility

Functional Utility

Process Facility

Confidence

Target audiences must be made aware of the company’s existence and must be made to comprehend its relevance to their needs; and market audiences must be provided with a platform to participate or get involved with the company.

A successful marketing campaign must tap into an audience’s need for emotional utility, a quality created in the audience’s collective consciousness from brand personality resulting from corporate behavior and audience experience.

The campaign must also be able to speak to the functional utility of the company’s products or services. Hard information and easily understood instructions must be made available so that customers are actually able to generate the promised benefits of the product or service.

The campaign must facilitate the process of moving potential customers easily and conveniently from awareness, to utility, to incentive, to sale. The process must be transparent and mechanisms must be put in place to accommodate customers when things go wrong.

The campaign must also create confidence in the organization’s ability to deliver the promised benefits both emotional and functional.

The Anthropomorphization of Brands

More marketers are beginning to appreciate the effect of brand personality on their relationships with customers and prospects. It is apparent that markets have a clear idea as to a brand’s personality, whether a company pays attention to it or not. And just as significantly, it is clear that companies can’t just change their television commercials or advertising agency to overcome an unwanted or undesirable personality.

Brand personality is a function of audience experience: everything from the way you respond to telephone inquiries, to users ability to comprehend packaging instructions, to your website and email inquiry response times. No amount of smiling friendly faces in advertisements will make up for the irritation of a multiple-transfer-disconnect when trying to resolve a problem over the telephone.

Companies are ultimately separate entities whose personalities are composed of a collective consumer consciousness created through experience, interpreted from a very human perspective. It is human nature to anthropomorphize non-human entities in order to better deal with them. Batra, Lehman & Singh point out in their 1993 paper that there are five significant human personality traits.

The Big Five Human Personality Traits:
Extroversion/Introversion,

Agreeableness,

Consciousness,

Emotional Stability, and

Culture.

Jennifer Aaker in her ‘Journal of Marketing Research’ article, Dimensions of brand personality, relates the Big Five Human Personality Traits to the Big Five Brand Personality Traits.

Big Five Brand Personality Traits:
Sincerity,

Excitement,

Competence,

Sophistication,

Ruggedness.

When companies build a website or implement any marketing initiative there are consequences in the market collective; managing those consequences is critical to not just developing a brand personality but managing and fostering it to meet your ultimate marketing motive; generating more sales and profits.

Maslow’s Extended Hierarchy of Needs as it relates to Marketing

Abraham Maslow, who was the chairman of the psychology department at Brandeis University in the early 1950’s, developed a theory for the hierarchy of human needs. Before his death in 1970 he revised his theory by extending the hierarchy to include higher value components.

The bottom of the pyramid starts with our physiological needs: the need to maintain physical well-being and self-preservation; as you move up the pyramid the needs become more socio-cultural: the need to be accepted in society; while at the top of the list the needs become more abstract and intellectual as they relate to self-identity and the need to communicate that identity to others.

Maslow’s Extended Hierarchy of Needs

Physiological Needs
Water, food, sleep, warmth, health, exercise, sex.

Safety & Security Needs
Physical safety, economic security, comfort, peace, freedom from threats.

Social Needs
Peer acceptance, group membership, love, and association with successful groups.

Self-esteem Needs
Association with importance projects, recognition of strength, intelligence, prestige and status.

Self-actualization Needs
Need to take on challenging projects, opportunities for innovation and creativity, learning at a high level.

Cognitive Needs
Need to acquire knowledge and to understand that knowledge.

Aesthetic Needs
Need for beauty balance, structure.

As marketers, Maslow provides us with a blueprint for developing a brand personality that can effectively deliver a compelling, comprehensible, effective marketing message. Decide which of Maslow’s needs your company satisfies and then construct a marketing plan that delivers both the personality and message that speaks to those needs.

We are lucky to live in the age of the Internet, for even the smallest of companies has the opportunity to communicate its brand personality and marketing message using the most effective communication environment ever invented, The Web.

The 5 Elements of Communication

To effectively take advantage of the Web’s ability to communicate, you must understand the five elements of communication:

The Environment: the Web is a sterile environment that needs to be humanized in order to effectively deliver your brand personality and marketing message.

The Message: the Web is an information-infotainment environment where compelling, informative, memorable content is paramount.

The Messenger: the Web is a one-to-one communication system compared to traditional broadcast and print communication that is a one-to-many system.

The Audience: the Web is a place where visitors choose to visit you, do not short change them with second-rate information, poorly delivered in unimaginative, ascetically challenged presentations.
The Process: the Web’s multimedia audio and video

capabilities combined with the penetration of high-speed access makes for the perfect system to deliver brand personality and needs related marketing messages that humanize your website, speak directly to your audience on a one-to-one basis, and inform, enlighten and entertain your audience in a compelling, memorable manner.

Conclusion

There has always been an ongoing business battle between those responsible for technology services and those responsible for marketing services. The Internet may be a great technological achievement, and it no doubt can be used to provide extremely useful technological solutions, but at its core and from its earliest pre-Web days, it was always a way to connect and communicate information and ideas, and isn’t that the essence of marketing?

The need for businesses to create awareness (Buzz), to spread that awareness throughout the marketplace (Viral), and to involve an audience in the spread of needs fulfillment (Word-of-Mouth) is achieved by taking advantage of the Web’s multimedia communication capabilities. In short, the Web is a communication tool that can be used by marketers to speak with a human voice and human face directly to your attentive publics on a personal, human, one-to-one basis in order to achieve the prime business motive: more sales and profits.

Information Marketing Techniques – The Best Ways to Repurpose Your Content

Information or content marketing is definitely the hottest internet marketing tool today. It’s proven that by giving out useful information, you can easily get people to come to your website. This is the reason why more and more esellers are now using article marketing, blog and forum posting, ezine publishing, eBook and CD distribution, etc. Although this is extremely effective, do you ever wonder how on earth can you possible create new content each time you’re using these tools?

Well, you don’t have to. If you’re currently doing article marketing, you can use your articles or a part of them on your blog. You can also put together some of your copies and create ebooks. Use some for your script that you’re going to use when recording your CDs or when writing your newsletters. Or you can record your teleseminars and webinars to make new informative CDs.

You see, it doesn’t matter how knowledgeable you are in your chosen niche; you’ll still run out of topics or ideas to discuss sooner or later. So it’s very important that you know how to repurpose the content that you’ve written. The secret here is knowing how to tweak them a little bit so people who saw your content on your blog wouldn’t be bored when they’re reading your website.

Here’s how you can easily repurpose your content:

Repurpose your articles. Articles are staple in any content marketing campaign. You can use these on directories, blogs, newsletters, blog series, tweet series, or you can post them on your Facebook fan page. The idea here is using the same powerful content using as many portals as possible to reach out to wider market.

Repurpose your audio materials. So, you’re planning to host teleseminars to a specific group of people. My suggestion is to have it recorded as you can use this on your audio series which you can send to those people who have signed up to your email marketing list. The content of your teleseminars can also be used on blog talk radios and on your webinars.

Repurpose your informative videos. If you’re just like other aggressive emarketers, I’m sure that you’ve already recorded or at least planning to record instructional videos for YouTube. You can repurpose this as well by sending them to other video distribution sites, to WebTV, and by converting them to DVD series. These are much effective tools in building relationship with your prospects and in building trust compare to written content.

You see, there are so many ways to get your ideas or message out as there are now so many portals that you can use when you’re trying to reach out to your target audience. The keys to success here are still the same; ensure that quality of the content that you’re sharing as it will reflect your expertise in your niche and ensure that your ideas are really yours. Copying other people’s articles or blog posts is still something that will not go unnoticed in the online arena.