Will You Add? - Writing and Speaking

Foreclosure Real Estate Investing - A Few Important Tips
Many entrepreneurs have made loads of money in real estate over the years and you shouldn't be any different. It's always been said that one of the most lucrative investments can be found in real estate and there is truth to this statement. One of the best ways to go about this is investing in foreclosure real estate.In makes perfect sense that anytime you can buy something for less than what it is worth, you stand to make a larger profit when you resell it. Simple enough, but don't be fooled. Buying foreclosure real estate can either make or break you.When you buy a property that has been foreclosed on you have to be particularly careful to details because there are no warranties, guarantees, or safety nets to catch you if you fall. Learning everything you can about real estate foreclosures is very important and if you follow these tips it should greatly increase your chances of making smart investments.First, when a property is under foreclosure, chances are the owner hasn't been paying their mortgage. This sounds like common sense, but the mortgage that is being foreclosed on may not necessarily be the first mortgage. In this case, the new buyer will be responsible for assuming the first mortgage.Secondly, if the current owners are behind on their I.R.S. property taxes then you will also be responsible for paying the back taxes.Lastly, when a homeowners learns that they are being foreclosed on, chances are they aren't going to be very inclined to take care of the property. This can be as simple or as severe as they like to make it, but don't be surprised to see damaged interior walls, neglected bathrooms, and outdated mechanics.These are only a few tips and guidelines to follow. The best way secure your investment is to pay attention to details. Be as thorough as possible and consult your local court house or housing authority for detailed information on the property you are interested in buying.

mmar, but you can greatly improve your writing just by following 11 simple tips.

TIP #1: Be Active, Not Passive

A common error is writing in the passive voice when active voice will sound better and make more sense. Active voice is usually preferred because it makes the sentence clearer and shorter.

Instead of this: The man was bitten by the dog.

Old Hiring Foxes vs. The Hedgehogs
You are about to compete for the best people again. The recovery is happening. Labor statistics indicate over 280,000 new jobs were created in the U.S. last May. Is your company's hiring process a competitive weapon-or a ball and chain? If you're not sure, here are some places to look:1. You abdicate hiring responsibility to an HR person or executive recruiter. That's their job, right? Wrong. The job of HR is a support and advisory role. The role of a recruiter is to help you build a stronger pipeline of available candidates and advise you on key hires. For key positions, take a proactive role and implement a recruiting and interviewing process.One software client of mine once relied on HR to design their job descriptions. For years, they attracted people with the right education and skills for open positions. The bad news is that the job description did not help a hiring executive assess a person's behaviors or cultural fit for that division. Two Directors who were hired under the old model were demoted after much customer uproar about missed deadlines on product launches.2. You think lunch appointments and golf outings are great settings to conduct interviews. How much do you spend time wooing high-flying producers this way, yet cannot seem to get any decision from the interviewee? Listen for the much-dreaded response: "I'll think about it (which is a polite, wimpy way of saying no)."3. You become attached to specific candidate(s). Do you ever hear yourself saying things like, "she would really do well in our culture…we go to the same church…I have a good feeling about her…" You lose commitment to hiring the best person, and get attached to a personality.4. You confuse selling with interviewing. I recently heard the VP of a mortgage company tell me, "we want to build our candidate pipeline, get them in here for a meeting, and pitch them on our company." If you have to waste 2 hours "pitching" somebody to come work for you, what kind of loyalty and credibility are you fostering? How likely will they see through that inauthentic gamesmanship? Pretty likely.5. When someone asks, "what makes you

Communicate to motivate!

Table of Contents

The Importance of Good Writing

TIP #1: Be Active, Not Passive

TIP #2: Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say

TIP #3: Don't Be Verbose and Run On and On and Use More Words than You Really Need to Use to Get Your Point Across

TIP #4: Skip the Big Words. Your Reader is Not Impressed

TIP #5: Shorter is Usually Sweeter

TIP #6: Structure Your Paragraphs Logically

TIP #7: Are You Sure That's the Right Word?

TIP #8: Have a Conversation

TIP #9: Say What?

TIP #10: Avoid Qualifiers

TIP #11: Get Rid of Repetitive Redundancies

The Importance of Good Writing

Does your job require you to write? Anything at all? If not, you don’t need this article. However, if you’re occasionally called on to write a letter to a customer, instructions for a subordinate, details on the operation of a process, a training manual, an annual report, an article for the company newsletter, or even an email to a co-worker, you’ll develop a reputation as a writer.

Will that reputation be good or bad? Will people enjoy reading your work – or cringe when they get something from you? Most of the time, that will depend on your writing style. People like to read things that are easy to understand, are written in plain English, and follow a logical progression of thought. Misspelled words, grammatical errors, and poor sentence structure are all distracting to your message. This booklet is not intended to be a primer on spelling or grammar, but you can greatly improve your writing just by following 11 simple tips.

TIP #1: Be Active, Not Passive

A common error is writing in the passive voice when active voice will sound better and make more sense. Active voice is usually preferred because it makes the sentence clearer and shorter.

Instead of this: The man was bitten by the dog.

Traffic Generation Techniques for 2007 and Beyond
Traffic generation has changed over the years. As always, the more traffic, the better. Now, I am assuming that by traffic generation we are talking about quality traffic generation. For example, if you are selling dog toys, cat lovers are not quality traffic. If you are selling dog toys, then people who own dogs or who are interested in dogs are considered quality traffic. So it is extremely important that when you think about generating traffic, you think about generating quality traffic. You cannot simply send any kind of traffic to your website, and expect to monetize that traffic.So that pretty much excuses any form of guaranteed website traffic. So you have to generate your own website traffic.One of the traffic generation techniques I think will be most popular in the year 2007, in terms of your response rate and quality, is that of traffic generated from articles that you write and post online. I do not think it matters whether those articles are posted on your website, or posted on the websites of the various online article directories.However, I think that one thing that is important to remember is that some of the article directories online are ranked very highly by the search engines, and therefore have a much greater chance of getting your article placed in the top 10 search results for your keyword or keyword phrase, than does your website, unless your website has a higher page rank than six or seven. The biggest issue when you're generating traffic, is not your pride, but it's generating quality traffic, because quality traffic makes you money, if of course your website is optimized for making money.So my first traffic generation techniques for the year 2007 is article marketing.My second traffic generation technique for your 2007, if you have at least $2000 to invest on testing and tweaking, is pay per click advertising. I believe pay per click advertising can be an extremely targeted source of traffic generation, however I believe that most people going to pay per click advertising undercapitalized, and give up too soon, and then blame the pay per click company. Now, don't

A common error is writing in the passive voice when active voice will sound better and make more sense. Active voice is usually preferred because it makes the sentence clearer and shorter.

3 Keys to a Great Working Relationship
The key to a good business relationship is being clear and detailed up front - this includes when asking for a proposal or hiring an employee. Any business relationship can benefit from clarity and details.Many business relationships are put in place with little planning or little conversation. A good relationship takes a little up front work from both sides. It is not merely the business has a job that needs to be done and the vendor/consultant has the skills or products to fulfill that need. A business relationship that is not well defined up front can lead to many problems as time goes on.Amazingly too many businesses set out to look for a consultant or a vendor with little or no real thought into the details of the project.A great working relationship needs to have three basic items.1. Objectives: What are the objectives of the project? What do you want this consultant or vendor to accomplish? You decide that you want to understand how the company has grown to its current size and what is needed to grow to the next level. You decide that current staffing does not allow for this to be done in house and you want a fresh set of eyes so you decide to hire a strategic management consultant.The objective is appears fairly obvious. But then again, it may not be. Is the owner looking for a simple overview report that gives some basic guidelines and direction or are they looking for specifics like how much money it will take to grow the company, what types of staffing levels and expertise are needed, will additional technology be needed, new products that can be added, additional third parties that can be brought in to assist or a multitude of other items.Ultimately, a business needs to take the time to outline their objectives and make them as clear and even specific as possible. The objectives should be refined as conversations and negotiations with the vendor/consultant take place to put them into a realistic perspective.2. Expectations: Expectations are the next most important element. Now that we understand the clear objectives of management, th

A common error is writing in the passive voice when active voice will sound better and make more sense. Active voice is usually preferred because it makes the sentence clearer and shorter.

Using Your Online Presence to Drive Offline Sales from Your Customer Base and Beyond, Part 2
In the last article in this series, I talked about a few basic ways to drive in-store sales by using your online presence. In this, the last installment of the series on this topic, I’m going to cover some more in-depth strategies to boost sales at your brick-and-mortar location.Create an Online Customer Rewards ProgramYou can institute a customer rewards program that you post on your web site exclusively to drive offline sales from your online presence. First, encourage both current and new customers to sign up for the customer rewards program when they buy something in your store. They can then visit your website and participate in the program from the convenience of their homes. For example, you could set up a points system whereby your customers acquire points for every purchase, and then keep track of their progress on your website. Once they rack up a certain amount of points, they can redeem them for merchandise, discounts, etc.Having a program like this in place will encourage repeat visits from customers to both your store and your website, and once they’re there, you can introduce them to new specials, upcoming sales, etc. This will, in turn, encourage repeat patronage from these customers. Many times, in fact, customers will actually buy more products than they normally would if the rewards that you feature in your program are incentive enough for them to desire more points. High-profile rewards could include things like plane tickets, new electronics, spa packages, etc.If you’re at a loss to what kind of rewards program to implement, there are a ton of turnkey solutions out there. A quick online search turned up customer-loyalty solutions from Destination Rewards (http://www.drloyalty.com/), Online Rewards (http://www.online-rewards.com/index.html), and iRebates (http://www.irebates.net/) along with countless others. Obviously you’ll want to shop around, do some research, and make sure that you find a solution that best fits your needs. And of course these are paid programs, but often times turnkey solutions are lifesavers for busy businesses owners.Develop Online Incentives to

A common error is writing in the passive voice when active voice will sound better and make more sense. Active voice is usually preferred because it makes the sentence clearer and shorter.

Web-Communication - Getting Heard
"No matter how elegantly a dog barks, he can never tell you his father was poor but honest." - Bertrand RussellThe Vervet monkeys of East Africa have 3 distinct vocal alarms to warn of leopards, eagles, and snakes. The warning for leopards causes the monkeys to run for the trees; the warning for eagles tells them to search the sky and look for shelter; while the snake warning causes the group to standup on two legs and scrutinize the grass for predators.But as sophisticated a verbal warning system as this may appear to be, these creatures do not have the capability to communicate complex information like, 'checkout the bush at two o'clock, there's two leopards hiding in wait.'The Evolution of Web-ManThey say the thing that separates man from other animals is our ability to speak - that, and our posable thumbs. So the first thing we learn to do is stick our thumbs in our mouths, crippling our ability to speak intelligibly, not to mention creating huge orthodontist's bills. We have this incredible ability to take a good thing and screw it up. Take the Web for example.As marketing professionals we have this astonishing ability to communicate with infinite variation, nuance and meaning using the multimedia Web-environment; a communication platform that is begging to be exploited to its maximum potential.Our thinking of what constitutes a website has been corrupted by a cadre of unimaginative 'techno-geeks' and trendy design-gurus who may know graphic design, database development, and even every Internet Explorer bug-fix and work-around, but what they don't know is how to deliver a marketing message on a website.What these new-age 'techno-nistas' don't get is that our job as marketers is to communicate. Sophisticated communication is a uniquely human activity requiring some understanding of how an audience perceives, comprehends and retains information."If sound is the delicate touch of a practiced lover, then sight is the desperate groping of an inexperienced adolescent in the backseat of his father's Chevy."These twenty-six words convey a wealth of experience and a flood of

A common error is writing in the passive voice when active voice will sound better and make more sense. Active voice is usually preferred because it makes the sentence clearer and shorter.

Instead of this: A rude noise was made by the student, and the principal was called by the teacher.

Try this: The student made a rude noise, and the teacher called the principal.

Your writing shouldn’t cause your reader to scratch his head and say, “Huh?”.

Instead of this: If the Internal Revenue Service finds that an individual has received a payment to which the individual was not entitled, whether or not the payment was due to the individual's fault or misrepresentation, and whether or not the payment was due to a miscalculation by the Service, or some other type of error, nevertheless, the individual shall be liable to repay to the Department of the Treasury, the total sum of the payment to which the individual was not entitled.

Try this: If the IRS overpays you, regardless of the reason, you are required to return the amount of the overpayment.

TIP #3: Don’t Be Verbose and Run On and On and Use More Words Than You Really Need to Use to Get Your Point Across

Some writers seem to enjoy long sentences. The go for quantity rather than quality. In reality, it takes more talent to be concise.

Instead of this: ABC Software, Inc. today announced its early adoption and planned use and support of Microsoft's new Visual Studio for Applications (VSA) technology as a fundamental component of the platform on which ABC Software’s next-generation so

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Will You Add? - 11 Tips for Stronger Writing

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