Unfortunately, many people who are running a home based or small business act like Ostrich with their head in sand. Hopefully, you are not one of those people.

Many people think if they pretend something doesn’t exist it will just go away. Not so with E-marketing. It is becoming more and more prevalent all time.

I began using Internet in my marketing years ago. I had my first Ezine before there was such a name for it. As I reflect on growth of my business in last few years, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that had it not been for many of E-strategies I implemented, I wouldn’t be in business.

I also know that I cannot rest on my laurels and neither can you. It is essential to always stay on top of information that is available. Granted, it is difficult to know what you need to learn, from whom and when enough is enough. Here are a few recommendations on what you can do.

1.Look at what your competitors are doing on Internet. What does their site look like, do they have systems in place to consistently market to their customers, and do they appear to be leading way. 2.Sign up for online Ezines that keep you abreast of trends. Some excellent resources are http://emailuniverse.com and http://sbinformation.about.com 3.Learn all you can about how to market using Internet. Regardless of what your product or service is you need to know how to use Internet to gain greater market share.

Fact is, very few people can avoid using Internet in their overall marketing strategy. This doesn’t mean you have to go from A to Z in one leap. It does mean that each day you need to do something to increase your knowledge base. Perhaps you need to bring someone on board who has knowledge that you need. Whatever you decide, make decision based on being proactive rather than reactive.

As you think about 2005, question you must ask is, “Will 2005 be Year I am Known as a Trendsetter or Someone Who Got Left Behind?” I know what my answer will be.

As well as moving to be natural, our discussions show that great presenters are interactive. They ask questions, they involve audience and essentially they treat presentation as a conversation. This helps boost connection between themselves and audience. That’s because for audience interactivity appears normal, whereas being spoken at for a great length of time does not.

Another important aspect of making your presentation appear normal is that your audience expects you to deliver your material without any prompts. Conversations do not need notes! Hence your presentation will benefit from appearing normal if you do not use notes or any prompts of any kind – including bullet points on slides. Discussions at our training sessions show time and time again that audiences do not like presenters who use notes, prompt cards, bullet point slides or any other form of memory jogger. Audiences expect presenters to know their stuff. Great presenters never use notes.

An extension of lack of notes concept is that great presenters talk from heart. They are passionate about their subject and they are emotional. The dispassionate, business-like presenter is one of most disliked, according to our discussions. What this means is that you should talk less about your subject and much more about your experiences as this will help boost your passion.

Our training sessions also reveal that audiences want to have fun. They want to see you enjoying yourself and they want to have a laugh. This does not mean you need to tell jokes, but it does mean your audiences expect you to be light. Even for serious subjects it seems that audiences expect some kind of lightness. They want humour and they want you to smile. Straight faced, dry presenters are particularly disliked by audiences.

One final aspect that is revealed by discussions at our training sessions and that is everyone in your audience expects presenter to motivate them. This does not mean you need to be a motivational speaker. Rather what it means is that your audience is expecting you to tell them what to do. Your audience does not expect a presenter simply to deliver information – they can get that from a book or a web site. Instead great presenters give audiences some action to take.

All of these discussion points suggest that those presenters who treat their presentation as a conversation – who just have a chat with audience – are ones marked out as truly great. People who give presentations by delivering content are seen as boring and uninteresting. This also means their messages are not conveyed, so they may as well not be presenting in first place.

Oh, and one final thing. Our discussions show that audiences simply detest use of computerised slides. They just want to hear from you. Truly great presenters therefore do one other vital thing – they switch off projector!

Graham Jones runs The Presentation Business at http://www.presentationbiz.com which specialises in helping people become great public speakers.