Making Your Online Testimonials More BelievableWritten by Dan Brown
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6. HAND WRITTEN LETTERS This is similar to "electronic signature" tip. Scan and upload entire written testimonial or letter to your web site. This will give your testimonials a feel of realism. 7. RECORDINGS You could record peoples testimonials over phone with a mini tape recorder. Then, take recording and record it to an answering machine or voice mail system. Under each one, include a phone number they can call to hear actual testimonial. 8. E-MAIL MESSAGES When you get e-mail testimonials, publish entire e-mail message instead of just contents. It will be more believable because it will include date, time, subject, who it's from and who it's to. 9. CONTACT INFORMATION When you get testimonials from people, ask them if you could include their contact information under testimonial. This will allow potential customers to ask your current customers questions about your product or service before they buy. Usually, they will trust them more than you. 10. ONLINE VIDEO If some of people who give you testimonials have a camcorder, ask them to record their testimonial on video and send it to you. Then you could convert video to an online video file and upload it to your site. You can find more information about converting audio recording's by typing "real video" at a search engine.

Dan Brown has been active in internet marketing for the past 4 years. Dan currently is working with the Zabang search engine, introducing their new affiliate program which is due out July, 2005. http://www.zabangaffiliate.com/
| | Motivation ABC’s: Tune Up Your Booth Staff Written by Susan Friedmann
Continued from page 1 Many employees value opportunity to build personal relationships with upper management. Mingling together in trade show environment can help create a culture of recognition and appreciation. Never underestimate power of personal recognition. A compliment from boss carries a lot of weight, and can spur your staff to even higher achievement levels. Tangible rewards also provide an effective way of encouraging higher levels of performance and can encourage friendly competition amidst your booth staff – with end result benefiting your bottom line. Create a Team For best results, everyone in booth should be working together as a team. Having a group that helps each other wherever and whenever necessary doesn’t just happen. Great teams don’t serendipitously occur -- they are made. Designate your teams before show. Pre-show time is needed to give team members time to get acquainted, develop trust, and learn each other’s strengths. If you’ve got a large staff, split them up, mixing technical and sales staff. That way, you’ll always have customer service and product knowledge skills on sales floor. Have them establish plans of action for working show, and promote a certain level of autonomy within groups. This creates a sense of collective responsibility. Be sure that whole team is aware of and fully understands company’s goal for trade show. Additionally, teams should set goals for show. These will dovetail nicely with personal goals set by individual staff members. Offer incentives for those teams that meet – or surpass – those goals. When you have good team chemistry, you’ll find team members coaching each other and striving to keep collective morale up. Revisit your team roster throughout show season. If a certain group doesn’t click, mix it up. Switching team members may enhance overall performance. If you have a staffer that doesn’t work with any team, perhaps utilizing them at trade show is not best use of their skills. Don’t forget Details Rewards and recognition should be constant – and they don’t have to break bank. A small gesture like morning coffee costs next to nothing, yet shows you care about your team. One creative manager provided gel insole inserts for her sales staff – a thoughtful present for folks on their feet twelve hours at a go. Which brings us to E – for Enthusiasm. An Enthusiastic booth staff will turn in a top notch performance. It’s as easy as ABC!

Written by Susan A. Friedmann,CSP, The Tradeshow Coach, Lake Placid, NY, author: “Meeting & Event Planning for Dummies,” working with companies to improve their meeting and event success through coaching, consulting and training. For a free copy of ExhibitSmart Tips of the Week, e-mail: susan@thetradeshowcoach.com; website: http://www.thetradeshowcoach.com
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