Invest Your Tax Rebate in a Puppet

A Dummy's Puppet's Ramblings - from Chip Martin, Puppet

Online Newsrooms
   A study indicates that 98% of journalists prefer to receive information through email alerts. If you use media alerts they should include a link to your company's online newsroom. The return link will enable you to determine whether or not individual journalists access the full release.

Electronic newsrooms should contain high resolution photographs of people quoted in releases and products mentioned in releases. Journalists are also interested in video clips which demonstrate products.  Most importantly, journalists expect your newsroom to include email and phone numbers for "media contacts," whether they are outside PR professionals or internal employees.

Do You Know Your Pasta?
 How well do you know your Pasta shapes? Take this multiple choice "Pasta Shape Identification Quiz" (via Slashfood).  I only got 6 of 24 correct ... but I'm just a puppet. Dale's wife, Leslie, got 16 correct. Show off.

Invest Your Tax Rebates in ... Me!
     The U.S. Tax Rebate checks ($300-$600) will begin hitting mailboxes in May. Instead of buying an iPod or a new TV, you can help stimulate the economy by investing in a banquet show or motivational program featuring me! Think about it ... you could be a hero in the eyes of your service club, hobbyist organization or company by donating your rebate check to the entertainment/training fund and recommending me! Or you could just recommend me to your group and let them pay for the program themselves. Either way it'll be win/win/win. Go to http://www.dale-brown.com/ for more information. 

Make Your Web Site Relevant
In your customers' and prospects' minds they've heard it all before ... no matter what you sell or what markets you serve. So how do you make your web site stand out from competing web sites?

1. Make it germane. Before prospects invest their most precious commodity (time) in what you have to offer, it has to stand out from the blizzard of other information out there. Invest in finding out what they want and provide relevant information that can help to solve their problems/needs.
2. Video. It's everywhere. Web visitors expect it. Go beyond talking heads to graphics, demonstrations and integrated design elements to step up from the competition.
3. The site should also provide choices for visitors to interact with your brand, including but not limited to email, mobile, chat and blogs.
4. When practical, make parts of your site entertaining. Information that is consumed the fastest and most often is usually "entertaining." Buyers will be more willing to go through your web site, remember it and buy from you if they are entertained during the process. I know a lot of you are saying to yourselves, "But there's nothing entertaining about my product." Get over that attitude. What's entertaining about laundry detergent, automobiles, cell phones, money management, milk ... and on and on and on? Even funeral directors offer up some entertainment with their "Men of Mortuaries" beef cake calendar. Whether you sell machine tools, printing, carpet cleaning equipment or cement mixers, you can make part of your web site entertaining, informative and admired if you're willing to be different. And in marketing, "different" is generally good.
5. Include a section for "insiders" but let everyone go there. On Dale's site there is a button "For Vents Only." It's one of the most visited sections on his site. Why? Because the average site visitor hopes to gain some behind-the-scenes information. What they get is information on how Dale is respected by his ventriloquist peers ... and that enhances his credibility. It was my idea. Genius.

At the Fair Humor
From reader Mike Kelly.
I was behind a woman and her husband at the fair last week as a group of us were touring the "breeding bulls" pavilion. We all walked up to the first pen and there was a sign attached that said, "THIS BULL MATED 50 TIMES LAST YEAR."
The woman playfully nudged her husband in the ribs ... smiled and said, "He mated 50 times last year."
We walked to the second pen which had a sign attached that said, ''THIS BULL MATED 150 TIMES LAST YEAR."
The woman gave her husband a healthy jab and said, "WOW! That's more than twice a week! You could learn a lot from him."
We walked to the third pen and it had a sign attached that said, in capital letters, "THIS BULL MATED 365 TIMES LAST YEAR."
The woman was so excited that her elbow nearly broke her husband's ribs. She said, "That's once a day. You could REALLY learn something from this one."
He slowly turned to look at her and said, "Ask him if it was with the same old cow."