Writing articles and submitting them for publication is a very powerful promotion tactic. BUT, this can be taken a step further to put your articles on auto-pilot.

First of all, you need to get a good fr~e autoresponder such as http://www.getresponse.com or http://www.sendfree.com

Each time you write an article, what you want to do is set up an autoresponder account for that article. For example, this article will probably have an account named articlelibrary@getresponse.com What you want to do is put article and a short but courteous thank you note in message.

Here is an example of thank you:

Hello,

Thank you for requesting Re-Gaining Your Groove! Feel fr~e to use this article in your ezine or on your website. Please include entire resource box and do not edit article in any way. If you have any questions, contact me at ter02@newnorth.net For a list of other articles that would be of interest to your readers, mailto:myownezine-index@getresponse.com Thank you.

Terri Seymour ------

If you have competitors, then you should have at least one Unique Selling Proposition (USP). The more REAL ones you have, better - for your Branding, your business recognition, and your sales!

We all have competitors, and more you have, more important it is that you have a Unique Selling Proposition (at least one).

Allow me to explain. Let's use a recent example of a company that sells laser toner cartridges... Do you think they have competition online? You bet they do, another category that is swamped with resellers. Sound like yours?

The task of coming up with a USP can sometimes be tough. But every company needs this, it sets you apart from your competitors. Let me stress this again, it is one or more reasons why prospects should work with you, or buy from you, or do business with you, instead of your competitors, period.

Let me narrow this a little further, it used to be if you had best price, - you got business. Although still a minor USP, price alone should not be only consideration, it's not really that unique... Yes, you still need to be competitive, but I don't want to be cheapest guy... we're in this to make a profit, right? So don't make price your 'only' USP. Combine it with more value, something your competition doesn't do, or doesn't offer.

O.K., back to our example. This company needed more than price, their product pricing is right inline with everyone else, so now what?

First of all, you need to know what your competitors do offer.

This is not a new concept. You can't compete if you don't know what you're up against. So take a little time and check out what they have. Do some research, you'd be surprised what you might find - or not. Special offers, free shipping, a contest, great customer support?

Take a step back, imagine you are customer and you do buy toner from someone a few times a year. If they do not get great service or it's just average, then chances are you can sway them your way. This references "customer loyalty" another chapter, but it follows first getting customer. So, let's get prospect as a customer first.

Now, what do we do to sway these prospects? We offer them what competition doesn't. This can be discovered with your competitive research. Oh, and if you still haven't found a USP or a few - then Hyperformance Media can help you with this as well.

Write down every idea that you and your team come up with. Please don't worry about how silly they might seem (at time), just brainstorm with data you have gained. The reason I say to include silly ones, and others is because sometimes those little ideas that you laughed at can actually be morphed to create your USP. No idea is too far fetched at this point, and usually ideas you laughed at are, in fact, some things your competitors don't offer. That's where we go next.

On toner company we came up with all kinds, some were already offered by competitors, some were not. The idea is to initially come up with as many as possible. Here are some of what we narrowed field to (we started with about two dozen);

* Price (of course) * Free Shipping (varied by quantity/price) * Great Customer Service (so everyone says) * A Contest / Promotion (a what?) * Free Gifts (vary) * Referral Savings (with parameters) * Reminders? (to buy)

The next step is again to nail down our list, get creative, really think here. This alone still makes us more competitive (once implemented), even if others use same approach. Why? Because before we did this, there was a ton of competition, and as we add these USP's we now narrow list of our 'real' competitors. We are now more competitive within our industry, because we now offer things that (most) of our competitors do not!

We are getting more competitive immediately by implementing some simple offerings. Let's take each one in this example and see how we can use it or discard it to our advantage.

* Price - Still very important in any market, but very tied to customer value (or perceived value). If your product or service is not competing here - it does not necessarily rule you out, more on this later. However, this is usually where a shopper starts (because it's easy), and you want to be considered with this group. In this example, we agreed that (based on our research) we were in market on price. So our price is competitive and that's great, but not unique enough to get business.