Considering that consumer spending constitutes 75% of the American economy, business owners are feeling the pinch from wallets snapping shut. Surveyed professionals who claimed that business conditions are “bad” rose from 29.7% in May to 32.5% in June, while those who argued that business conditions have been “good” fell from 13% in May to 11.5% in June.

Whether you operate a brick-and-mortar business in America, or are an international webmaster, the clinch in American spending impacts every business owner around the world. However, with intelligent marketing and savvy strategic positioning, you can maintain your revenues – or potentially grow your profits.

Strategy #1: Market Intelligently Beyond the Big Ad Spenders

As financial advisors are cautioning their clients, the key to overcoming a recession lies in diversification. Diversifying your client base is an important element of weathering the recessionary storm. The internet allows you to reach out to clients who were previously inaccessible, giving you an unprecedented ability to diversify your customer base.

Whereas paying for PPC becomes extremely prohibitive, especially when your budget is tight, search engine optimization becomes your best friend during a recession. Start a blog, which will infuse keywords that boost your SEO, as well as connect you with existing and potential clients. Or, you could hire a freelance blog writer, allowing you to focus on the operations of your business. Visit other popular, relevant blogs and comment on their posts, which also creates a backlink to your site. Write articles for publication in the article directories, or hire a freelance article writer (such as Communicate Better) to ghostwrite on your behalf. Find other websites and businesses that have a synergistic component, create a strategic alliance, and publish articles on their sites that will send a valuable backlink to your website.

Too many business owners limit their budget when a recession is on the horizon, yet this is one of the worst strategies you can implement in your business. Remember, marketing dollars are a wise investment, spent to generate business. Nonetheless, you can be smart with your invested marketing dollars, which goes furthest in achieving SEO and better rankings. Using intelligent keywords, publishing articles, and updating the content on your website will optimize your search engine results, giving you natural, free, and targeted traffic that easily converts into customers.

Strategy #2: Demonstrate Your Love for Existing Clients

Indeed, keeping an existing customer costs significantly less than attracting a new one – and this adage certainly holds true in a recession. Look to your existing clients, as these will be the revenue stream that will keep your business floating through the recession. As your competitors would like to increasingly attract your clients away, you must take precautions and extra steps to cement their customer loyalty. Stay in touch with your clients, and make sure that they know you are receptive to their needs and suggestions. You could even create a rewards program for existing clients, or offer them special discounts. By helping them when times are tough, their loyalty will repay you threefold.

Strategy #3: Keep the Pulse on Your Competitors

During slower economic times, your competitors will make changes to their pricing structure and product offerings. When you constantly keep your finger on the pulse of their activities, you can ensure that you are appropriately positioned in the marketplace. If your competition is offering major sales, make sure that you provide discounts to keep your clients and remain a viable player in the market. In addition, you may also gleam important marketing knowledge from their activities. For example, if you run a website selling herbal pills, and your competitor begins to branch out to reach the gym-crowd, then you may want to incorporate that target audience into your marketing efforts.

Strategy #4: Show Your Humorous, Fun Side

While economic times are tough, spirits are down and consumers are understandably melancholy by the lack of digits in their bank accounts. However, if you can keep the mood light and humorous, both existing and new clients will appreciate your fun side. In fact, according to Tom Peters, who is one of America’s top marketing gurus, 70% of all customers would instantly change brands if they find one that has more fun. This is why Virgin Airlines and Southwest beat out the “serious” airlines, Google wins over Yahoo and MSN, and Trader Joe’s wins greater fans than Whole Foods.

How does this translate to your business? In your marketing efforts, blog, newsletters, website content, and even your email correspondence, show off the personality of your company. Hire a freelance writer and explain to them the importance of being fun and humorous in your web copy. Feel free to include personal stories, client stories, fun adages…anything goes when it comes to relating with your clients and making them feel happier about being a part of your company’s family.

A recession does not have to force your company to suffer. In fact, with intelligent, creative, and fun strategies that cement your client base – and expose you to new customers – you can maintain your revenues through any type of economic turbulence.

The Internet still commands ” location, location, location”

Interestingly, with the advent of the internet, the value of “location” still holds true. Although your location is not determined by how close you are to Rodeo Drive or Wall Street, it is still based upon traffic. A Wall Street address has been replaced by your rankings within search engine results, and “foot” traffic is now substituted by “click” traffic.

Indeed, the value of your online business is clearly and easily measured by how much traffic comes into website. The better “location” you have within the search engines, the more “click” traffic will visit your website, and the higher your value of success.

Although there are many SEO strategies employed by website owners, such as meta-tag information and keyword optimization, there has been one technique often overlooked by many webmasters: article marketing. In one fell swoop, article marketing not only increases your business’ location in the search engines, but also deepens your branding and gives you exposure to your target client base.

Publish one article, get significant benefits free

Article marketing is one of the most powerful techniques for search engine optimization. The adage “content is king” is reflective of the value of article marketing – as is the erudite concept, “publish or perish.” Considering that the search engine algorithms continuously feed off new content, you can nourish the bots (and your page rankings) by spooning “page-fuls” of delicious content in articles. In the interim, you also gain significant footing with your target audience, while you build credibility in the industry.

• Satisfy many SEO elements: Keywords and backlinks are two critical elements in your SEO strategy. Article marketing kills both with one stone. Publishing your content via article directories provides you with valuable backlinks that build your PR – based upon keywords that are optimal for your website.
• Establish expertise: Internet customers are inherently more skeptical than those walking into a brick-and-mortar business. Therefore, by publishing valuable articles throughout the internet, your client base associates you with credibility and expertise – boosting your revenues.
• Garner organic, targeted traffic: With the high page rankings the prominent article directories possess, many people searching for your keywords will read your article and then click through to your website. This free, targeted advertising is very valuable and plays a large role in generating natural traffic to many online businesses.

Capitalizing upon the power of article marketing can give your website the prime location it truly deserves. Turn your web address into the value of a Wall Street address through the power of Internet marketing.

The volume of your traffic is the difference between life and death for your website.  Unfortunately, with the skyrocketing rates of PPC, generating niche, targeted traffic to your website is no longer easy or economically feasible. 

However, you can harness the power of traffic by befriending a superhero strategy – one that generates free, targeted traffic to your website.  Here to save your website’s day are the humble, yet powerful, articles.  Publishing targeted articles can drive exponential traffic to your website, making this SEO superhero your business’ most cost-effective, potent friend. 

The adage “content is king” still reigns true, and publishing SEO articles is the ultimate way to build your online kingdom. 

Increase your SERPs

Consistently publishing unique articles is the most important element to increasing your standings in the search engines – which is the key to capturing targeted traffic.  With nearly 85% of all online business transactions initiated via a search engine, tapping into this powerful source of traffic is critical to unleashing the potential of your business. 

When you regularly add new articles to your website, the search engine bots will return to your website frequently to crawl the new information.  In turn, your relevant, fresh content will contribute to building your SERPs.  When you are publishing new articles on your website, keep in mind the following SEO strategies:

• Utilize a 3% - 5% keyword density ratio for your top keywords.  However, it is still important to ensure that your content reads well, and the keywords should be naturally and seamlessly included. 
• Incorporate your keywords into your meta-tags, including the title and description.
• If you use images in your articles, ensure that the file name, title, and image description include your keywords. 

Keep in mind that a high natural listing on the search engines is invaluable to attracting traffic.  According to consumer research, 70% - 80% of users prefer to click on a natural listing, as opposed to sponsored ads.  

Grow your valuable back links

A relevant, quality article should be shared with the world – while you simultaneously build the back links that increase your SERPs.   Websites, blogs, and article directories all crave fresh content, and if you submit a well-written, valuable article, others will publish your content – giving you a valuable back link.  The number of back links to your website plays a large role in your search engine rankings, and articles are a great way to obtain link partners. 

Attract natural, targeted traffic

The entire purpose of increasing your SERPs is to drive in more traffic to your website.  In addition to increasing your SEO, articles also naturally attract direct traffic.  When you share and publish your articles with other websites, blogs, and directories, you automatically obtain free exposure. 

A valuable, insightful, and helpful article will attract readers, who will be compelled to learn more directly at your website.  In addition, the authoritative information you have shared with the reader builds your company’s credibility and legitimacy, which are important in converting traffic into monetized customers.     

When you capitalize upon the power of writing articles, your website benefits comprehensively – not only from direct traffic and exposure, but from the long-term value of higher search engine page rankings.  

The problem is in the definition of “business casual,” which is often very misunderstood. Business casual can be interpreted in various ways, and this gives a person the opportunity to make big mistakes in the image he or she evokes.

Biggest Mistakes Men Make

If you decide to wear jeans and a Grateful Dead t-shirt to your techno-savvy work place, it can give others the impression that you have very little ambition. If you think that a polo shirt and khaki pants are the true definition of casual, think again. The key to dressing business casual is to evoke the appearance that you have already achieved a superior position within your work environment. However, this is easier said than done, but there are certain image “secrets” you can utilize to maximize your appearance with business casual.

Foolproof Guidelines for Male Business Casual

The best guidelines to follow and achieve an impressive “business casual” are:

• Well pressed, long sleeved, button down collared shirts
• Well pressed, dark, solid-colored slacks
• A plain belt with a simply styled buckle
• Dark colored socks that stay in place
• Nicely maintained leather shoes (Yes, people still NOTICE YOUR SHOES)

The image you project is an external indicator of how much you value yourself, and how seriously you wish to be taken by other people. By keeping this in mind, you can make the appropriate wardrobe choices. A clean and neat appearance will always give a positive impression to clients, managers, and co-workers.

Women and the “Business Casual” Concept

For women in the work place, there is a fine line between “business casual” or “dressing down” and “business faux pas.” The image that a woman projects can directly influence how well clients and managers listen to her. She should be able to find comfortable casual clothing that looks crisp, but she must not wear anything that is too short, too tight or has a bare midriff. Work out clothing, sandals, or athletic shoes just do not represent a good image in an office setting. If you have doubts about what you are wearing, it is probably not appropriate.

The prevalence of fashion in the workplace has given women a larger selection of apparel when it comes to business casual. However, there is indeed a fine line between dressing business casual and being too fashion forward. Remember, you can always inject your own style into your business casual wardrobe, but it is critical to maintain your professional presence.

Infallible Guidelines for Women’s Business Casual

• Casual dresses and pencil skirts
• Neatly pressed slacks with boot cut legs in basic colors such as black, beige or white
• Nicely fitting sweaters or blazers
• Cotton shirts that button, with long or short sleeves
• Low or medium heeled pumps, flats or peep-toed shoes
• Scarves in quiet colors
• Moderate amounts of jewelry

If you are ambitious and want to succeed in your career, you can dress comfortably and still look great! It is possible to be stylish, professional, and well groomed with a few basic wardrobe choices and an appropriate amount of your own personal style.

Regardless of the product or services your company has to offer, the overall success is commonly attributed to several key factors:  branding, pricing competitiveness, and creative advertising.  All these elements are essential ingredients to an effective business plan, and corporations spend significant capital on developing the brand – only to double these expenses with a robust advertising campaign.

Alas, the monumental day has arrived when the many elements of your business plan culminate to a pinnacle, and they simultaneously begin to penetrate the industry you serve.  You have sparked genuine curiosity, striking a chord with those who desire your services. Potential customers peruse your offerings and begin the inevitable due diligence process to make a purchasing decision. What comes next is critical – predicting the success or failure of your company.

It’s not what you say, or how you say it - the key is congruence of the two.

Statements such as “Inquire Within,” or “We are here to help – Just Ask!” have become the norm within any entity which strives to portray a friendly, customer service oriented atmosphere. Most savvy entrepreneurs understand that solid customer service will empower an organization to achieve substantially higher levels of growth in a shorter period of time.  With this knowledge common place for business owners, they tend to go to extremes, regularly overemphasizing their willingness to be at the disposal of their clients. “E-Mail us Today!” is complimented by a “Money Back Guarantee!”  Indeed, the list of customer service promises unfurls infinitely. 

Your marketing efforts have availed success, your business is now launched, and your customer service efforts are well intact.  A formula for success…in theory.  In practice, significant caution paves the road ahead.  The statements which are so freely utilized to entice a client must be practiced to an infinite degree.  A business must implement the art of under-promising and over-delivering to ensure true success.  Without actions that cement your customer service promises, you cloud the confidence of a potential customer. 

Psychological scars impact how we advertise.

How many times have you strolled through a major department store semi-lost, scouring hundreds of thousands of items hoping to stumble upon the product in need?   As you search for the needle in a haystack, you spot an employee who wears the button, “Ask me – I am here to help!”  The mirage of customer service appears, as you are delighted that the company trained the best in employees to help you find your needle!  You approach the young lad, and with confidence, you ask him to direct you to your needed item.

Unfortunately, this story does not have a happy ending.  We are often met with those who shrug off our questions with answers that are half-hearted – or on occasion, the employee pretends to be deaf to your question as they text message their friends about their plans for the weekend.

Many of those who read this are nodding their heads in agreement, as they too have had a similar experience. As with any situation, our minds will learn and grow from our experiences. What have we learned, and how do we grow from this?  Most consumers have learned to take the generic “We are happy to help you” message with a grain of salt.  They have grown into a state of skepticism, approaching new companies with extreme caution.

Match your ebullient claims with enthusiastic actions.

Subsequently, your customer service initiatives must be congruent with your messages.  If you proudly claim that you are willing to help, or have open arms to new clients – be sure to follow through on these statements.  If your website offers live help, ensure that it is staffed and available for inquiries. If you offer a money back guarantee, do not make the client jump over many hurdles, climb a mountain, and win a triathlon in order to receive their refund.

Companies who care, and show their true commitment to customer service, have already won an important battle in the war of business success.  Make sure your actions speak louder than your words, and those valuable first and repeat customers are yours for the taking

Saying “yes” to a good impression

Feedback is an important part of the congruence process, which helps the other person’s subconscious believe that you are similarly likable. Have you ever had a conversation with someone who did not verbally or physically acknowledge your statements? It feels like a one-sided conversation, with the other person not truly understanding what you are saying. Responding and providing feedback in a conversation means that you are paying attention, which all people love. And when you make people feel special, they will like you and thus remember you.

People like your attitude – not necessarily you

In order to make a deep impression, you must know what you want out of that meeting. How do you want someone to remember you? How can you persuade someone to like you? The most outstanding characteristic that people remember is attitude. In business, the three most useful attitudes are enthusiasm, curiosity, and humility. If you express a good attitude, it is contagious, and people will like you.

Talking your way to a positive impression

Contributing to our overall image is the vocabulary you use. Human brains can only process positive language. Can you think of yourself not feeling something, not doing something, not seeing something? For example, if we hear, “don’t kick the dog,” our brain only knows how to think of the actual activity, and then negating it. However, that negative image has already gone through our minds. As a result, speaking in the positives gives off an impression of enthusiasm and optimism.

“Because” will get your further in life

In addition to speaking in the positives, our brains also love the process “because.” Harvard University research indicated that people will respond automatically when given the stimulus “because.” There was a 94% success rate when someone went to the front of the copy line and said, “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the copy machine because I am in a rush?” There was only a 60% success rate when the word because was not used: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the copy machine?” Five minutes later, the success rate show up to 93% when the person gave a mundane answer, but used the word because: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the copy machine because I have to make these copies?” Even without a good reason, using the word “because” allowed the experimenter to be incredibly effective.

Securing that great impression!

When you implement the tips from this series of making a great first impression, you will certainly make lasting impressions that can help you with all your endeavors, whether business or social. Projecting a positive attitude, consciously or subconsciously, will in turn bring positive successes your way. Happy meetings!

Self-inspection check points

For this reason, it is very important to conduct the 30-second detail check from head to toe before you enter a room or meeting. Check for food in your teeth, and ensure that your hair looks neat and combined. For a woman, evaluate your makeup and position your jewelry. Secure your scarf or straighten your tie. Check for stains, loose buttons, and open flies.

Winning that first impression with a smile

Now, as soon as you meet someone, the impression clock starts ticking, and you only have 90 seconds to connect with that person. What is the single, most important thing you can do? According to F.X. Muldoon, EYE CONTACT and a SMILE is what will make or break your first impression. Show your genuineness with eye contact, and use your smile to win over any person.

Psychologically enhance your likability

Once you have exchanged friendly attitudes, the second thing you should do is capitalize on the psychological power of the congruence process. Subtly mirroring the other person’s body movements and attitude will instantly build rapport.

The psychology behind mirroring has to do with the subconscious’ natural liking to those who are similar to ourselves. Therefore, if the other person has a friendly attitude and touches your arm while speaking with you, then you can exhibit that same behavior towards him or her. This will trigger the other person’s subconscious to feel comfortable with you, as you are projecting a similar attitude.

Sealing the positive first impression deal….

You have successfully made it through the first part of making a great first impression, and now you only need to seal the deal. Stay tuned to our next issue with the psychological tips of triggering conscious and subconscious likability through the words you use!

Frequent Entries

In order to receive favorable rankings from the search engines, it is important to maintain frequent blog entries and specialize on your topic. Ideally, you should post daily, or at least five times per week. The more relevant, high-quality entries you post, the more the search engines will like you. Case in point: Google has a specific “Freshbot” to crawl for new content.

Most importantly, when you have developed a pattern of regular posting, the Googlebot and other crawlers will visit your site more. The frequency the Googlebot will visit your site depends upon how frequently you change it; thus, the more you update your site, the more the Googlebot will drop in to see you. Thus, you can use your blog as an opportunity to have the Googlebot crawl your other links and sub-domains (make sure you add permanent links on the side of your blog to enjoy this benefit).

Fresh Content

As it has been emphasized in the past, content is king! For SEO purposes, as well as engaging your readers, it is important that the content you have on your website is fresh and original. Google scans for duplicate content, and if they find it, they will penalize your page rank. Therefore, make sure your content is not duplicated! There are content provider services available that will re-write content for you at a mere two cents per word. If you desire SEO for your blog, two cents is a worthy investment.

Use RSS Feeds and Ping!

Not only is it easy to create and manage RSS feeds for your blog, but it will bring you better SEO as well. When you post a new entry and have it pinged, this adds to the speed in which your pages get indexed. You can ping sites such as FeedBurner, Technocrati, OnlyWire, PingOMatic, and Pingoat to inform them that you have a new posting on your blog. In addition, you can actually ping blogsearch.google.com directly for even faster indexing. PingOMatic provides a service that helps you rapidly choose who you want to ping.

Optimizing The Details

Although your blog may only have a few relevant pages (such as home, archives, etc.), you can still take measures to optimize your blog.

Think carefully about the keywords of the title of your blog, as it gets archived and can greatly increase your SEO for search terms.

In addition, it is important to add new keyword tags and categories whenever you create a new entry. It is easier for the search engines to find your blog when you have directory structures and tags for them to digest.

There are other places on your blog where you can place SEO keywords:

• Posting titles
• Page titles
• In the beginning of each post, as well as throughout (as long as it does not overload the text or negatively alter the article’s conversational flow)
• Heading tags
• Image tags
• Outbound links
• And of course, meta tags

When you take the easy steps to give the search engine bots what they want, your blog becomes a very powerful SEO tool!

When searching Google, you may have recently noticed a considerable change in overall search results and relevancy scores. This has largely been contributed to what I refer to as Googles new virtual relationship counselor, but this is better known as Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). What is LSI and how does it work, you ask? Well, the good news is that you need not make an appointment, pay $200 per hour, nor sit on a reclining couch and answer questions about your childhood to benefit from its services.

Latent Semantic Indexing essentially allows a search engine to ascertain the topic of a web page in a different way than simply matching search query text, or keywords. Rather, it calculates and places weight on related words within content. By performing the related words calculation, LSI will essentially lower the page ranking if it does not recognize related words to support the main keyword. There is a sensitive balance here, as to place too much emphasis on a keyword within an article can create over-optimization and this will have an adverse effect on overall ranking. LSI looks for the relationships between words, and if you have too many of one keyword without the proper word relationships, the site will be punished.

Let’s take a look at an example to better understand the importance and usage of Latent Semantic Indexing. A web page whose main topic is Fast Food would commonly and naturally have keywords such as french fries and hamburgers. LSI considers documents which have a great number of words in common to be semantically close. On the other hand, documents that have few words, if any, in common will be ranked as semantically distant, thus a lower ranking would be rendered. It should be noted that the LSI algorithm will take into consideration words that are located in a similar position or words that are found within related documents when formulating the semantically close / semantically distant determination.

The LSI algorithm may not fully understand the meaning behind the words that are within a document. However, it fully comprehends the patterns and relationships that form within and this generates a sophisticated and uniquely robust step to the indexing process.

So go ahead, consider yourself the Dear Abby of prose and counsel your words to form relationships!

Unless you want to leave your relationship (regardless of what type it is) permanently damaged, at some point you are going to have to apologize.

How do you do it without losing your “pride”?

1) Know when it’s over. Dragging an argument on too long will almost always result in the argument transforming from what it was originally about into something entirely different. How many times has a disagreement about how to spend that extra $500 you miraculously found turned into how much you hate the way they snore?

If you’re trying to make a point, and it just isn’t getting through, it may be a good idea to lay it to rest. Say something like “We clearly do not agree on this, but why don’t we take a bit of time to clear our heads and talk about something else?” Saying something to that effect in a calm, neutral tone avoids further hostility and invites a more productive conversation. Just make sure that when you shift topics you don’t go from how much you hate their snoring to why they need to shower more.

2) Recognize that their opinion matters. Sure, maybe they are completely wrong, but that may only be by your standards. Unless your argument is about why 1 + 1 = 2, there is usually never a concrete and absolute answer. Remember that nearly everything appears different to different people.

The key to effective communication is about equality. Ask people what their number one pet peeve is when they are talking to someone and it’s probably going to have to do with the other person belittling them- no one wants to feel stupid,  and making them feel that way certainly won’t bring about the kind of reaction that you want.

Saying things like “I understand what you are saying and I’m trying my best to see your viewpoint” shows the other person that you really are trying to understand where they are coming from and that you actually care about their viewpoint. This may make the other person feel validated, and it may even reduce tension (the other person might drop their defenses a little bit).

If you are talking about something deeply personal or controversial, your opinion is just that; the other person’s opinion might (and probably will) be very different from yours. Showing the other person that you respect their opinion is one of the most crucial ways to avoid an argument outright.

3) Apologize with sincerity. Don’t sneer when you say that you’re sorry- mean it. If you are apologizing, it is because you recognize that you’ve hurt someone else’s feelings or have offended them somehow.

Saying something like “I’m sorry that I got angry (or frustrated, upset, whatever you were), and I hope that we can come to some kind of resolution. Please understand that I do value our relationship and I don’t want this argument to affect it” shows that you care and have a reason to apologize, as well as showing that you do want to find a resolution. There’s no pride lost in showing another person that you care about and respect them.

A lot of people feel that apologizing is “giving in,” and it is that kind of attitude that will only raise tensions. Apologizing because you were yelling or because you offended someone doesn’t make you a weak person- it makes you an empathetic one.