Here are five strategies for ensuring that your marketing is fully prepared for economic recovery:

Promote most optimistic tone possible. Now isn't time to hide your strength or to conserve your energy - show your industry leadership by promoting a tone of bold optimism in every written work that represents your company. Every word of every sentence should be carefully crafted to project good news that your company is doing well, growing strong, and standing ready to carry your customers' confidence to new heights in coming year. There's simply no room for doubt or even neutrality in words that represent you to world.

Stress growth, not survival. Your business survived recession - pat yourself on back, but not in public. Some companies begin an economic recovery by merely reminding old customers that they still exist; don't be one of them. Instead, demonstrate how your business grew, evolved and improved in recent years - and is now providing more value to your customers than ever. In communications that mention economic downturn, don't deny facts, but present them as historic opportunities for your company rather than ordeals to be survived.

According to International Telework Association and Council (ITAC) of Washington, D.C., there are more than 19.6 million people who reportedly work from home (1999). The ITAC estimates that by 2010, there will be around forty million people working part- or full-time from their homes. (http://www.jala.com)

Sage Research, Inc. reported that companies will continue to initiate telecommuting programs. The use of remote workers will become a necessity as overhead costs continue to rise. (http://www.sageresearch.com/)

Yet, even though trend of telecommuting (working from home) has steadily grown over past two decades, it remains an untapped benefit for majority of North America’s workforce. This makes many job seekers ask: “Where are companies that allow individuals to work from home? What does it take to land a home-based job?”

With a bit of thorough research, this information can be found. Without proper research, however, there are plenty of unscrupulous people trying to make a lot of money from others’ need to find home-based work. Through tricky advertising they take millions of dollars from very individuals who are trying to earn a living. These scammers, as they are commonly called, are all too aware of how desperately people want to earn a paycheck from their homes. And their target market grows by leaps and bounds every year.

Compared to amount of misinformation out there, amount of reliable information about working from home seems scarce. That’s why it’s important to search it out and take advantage of it when it becomes available.

To learn what it is like trying to find and actually land a telecommuting job, Telework Recruiting, Inc. surveyed dozens of people who frequent online E-mail groups that focus on telecommuting issues. The results of this survey will help give job seekers an understanding of what’s involved in a search for a telecommuting position. These results should also help employers realize value that having a telecommuting option has for so many candidates.

Although telecommuting is a work option that increases each year across North America, it is still not norm. According to Telework Recruiting, Inc.’s survey, average length of time a job seeker spends searching for a position that allows telecommuting is two years. For individuals who want to start out with a new company as a teleworker, it can take longer than for those who try to persuade their current companies to allow them to telecommute full- or part-time.

The number-one reason survey respondents believe that it takes so long to find telecommuting work with a new company is that they simply can’t find legitimate companies to work for. Their research usually takes them to companies offering bogus job opportunities or scams. These supposed hiring companies either want people to pay for information about job or to file an application or, they want people to perform idiotic activities such as sending spam E-mail or posting advertisements all over Internet.

The second reason is that they believe companies are afraid to trust them to perform their work from home. Despite numerous studies that indicate that teleworkers are actually more productive, it still seems to be a concern for employers that home-based employees will be sitting around watching television, rather than working.

The third top reason people feel they can’t find work from home employment is there are simply too many people competing for few telecommuting opportunities that are out there. This may be true, which only reinforces point of how it is important for job seekers to invest in creating a top-notch resume and to continually hone their skills.

Other reasons attributed to inability to find telecommuting opportunities include:

-- Lack of training or experience for jobs they are seeking

-- Not being open to other types of work; that is, being too narrow in their job seeking focus

-- Not looking hard enough

-- Or not actually having a home situation conducive to telecommuting. (I.e. Having a child around that requires almost constant attention.)

For survey respondents who have been successful in finding and keeping telecommuting positions, we asked for their input on what were some factors related to their success. The number one reason they gave: Diligence. They believe they were successful mainly because they didn’t give up looking. They researched everything. As one person put it: “Leave no stone unturned.”

Another top factor for their success was having a good employment track record. These days background checks are almost always performed. (The growing number of background checking services out there evidences this.) Maintaining exceptional references by previous employers is extremely important.