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Friday 23 July 2004

Newsletter Issue 82, July 2004


Sam Young Newsletter

Issue 82, July 2004
Hi guys,
The World Globalisation Rankings for 2004 are out below. Keep an eye on this type of listing - a trawl through information like this may pop up trend indicators that could help your business.
We give you an easy tip for Printing Lotsa Docs the Easy Way
Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.

World Globalisation Rankings

Once again, Ireland ranks as the world's most global nation, according to the fourth annual AT Kearney/ Foreign Policy Magazine Globalization Index™. Despite a faltering global economy, Ireland has maintained their three year world lead through strong economic links and high levels of personal contact with the rest of the world, helping it hold onto the top spot even as many countries saw their globalisation scores slip.
Religious theologians often argue that globalisation undermines traditional morals and values replacing those with a culture of materialism and excess. Interesting indeed, then that the most global society in the world one of the most completely religious societies in the world.
New Zealand has come in at number 8 - and our religious observances are pretty meagre. Above us are Ireland, Singapore, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Finland, Canada and the United States. And rounding out the top 20, below us are Austria, Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Czech Republic, France, Portugal, Norway, Germany, Slovenia and Malaysia.
In the previous annual AT Kearney/ Foreign Policy Magazine Globalization Index™, New Zealand ranked 16th. Our rise to 8th place has been attributed to our first place ranking in financial and personnel support for UN peacekeeping operations (relative to our population size and GDP), with troop contributions to missions in East Timor, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and the Middle East; and our surge in e-commerce after our enactment of strong legal protections for online transactions, helping to push us to the second-highest number of secure servers per capita in the world, just behind the US.
The  AT Kearney/ Foreign Policy Magazine Globalization Index™ is run every March/April.

Printing Lotsa Docs the Easy Way

If you regularly need to print more than one copy of several documents, you could either go into each file separately and print out however many copies you wanted, or go to your files in Windows Explorer, highlight them all, right click on them and select print which will print all of them, but only one copy. Regardless of which method you use, you still have to manually collate all the documents.
And while you could collate all your individual files into one large document, it is not always convenient or practical to do so.
However, in a recent edition of TechRepublic's newsletter, they showed the way to print all the files, in order, and as many copies as you require in one hit, as follows;
  • Open the document that you want to print FIRST, and place the cursor at the very end of the file
  • Go to Insert | Field
  • Select "IncludeText" from the Field Names list box
  • In the File Name text box, enter the full pathname of the second file you want to include (go to Windows Explorer -  ensure that "Address Bar" under the View menu is ticked - navigate to your file and then hightlight the address in the Address Bar & copy using Ctrl & C). Click OK
  • Repeat to create an IncludeText command for each document you want to include in your printout
Word will print the original document text first, followed by the text of the documents - in the order specified in the IncludeText commands. If you highlight all the "IncludeText" commands and change the font colour to white, you won't even see the entries.
Nothing to it!

Words that Sell

I was checking out the American Management Association's website recently, and found an article by a very smart lady, Dawn Josephson, on words that sell.
Luckily for all of you, while you have to be an AMA member to be able to read her AMA article, Dawn has kindly approved reproduction of her article in my newsletter.
English is a rich language that contains hundreds of thousands of words. But did you know that only 21 of them can easily sell your clients? Once you learn these golden words and how to use them, you'll save both time and money.
What's in a Word?
The exact words you use in your company's marketing materials can make the difference between success and failure. Choose the right words and your prospects will find you and your company irresistible. Choose the wrong words and you'll spend most of your time convincing prospects to do business with you. Why waste your time selling prospects on your products or services when you can let strategically written marketing pieces do the work for you? When it comes to writing marketing pieces, your word choices do matter. Following are the top 5 of the 21 words that sell. Use them wisely and watch your marketing response rates soar.
The Top 5 Words That Sell
  • You/your—"You" is the most powerful word in the English language. It's more powerful than the word "money;" it's more powerful than the word "sex." Prospects want to feel as if you're talking to them directly, and the word "you" accomplishes just that. So instead of writing, "Our clients report increased productivity as a result of using the Widget 2100," write, "You will experience increased productivity as a result of using the Widget 2100." Keep every sentence in your prospect's perspective.
  • Money—Ask people what they wish they had more of, and chances are they'll say "money." People love to save money just as much as they love to earn it. So if a benefit of your product or service is that it saves people money or helps them earn more money, state it along with a monetary figure. For example: "Using the Widget 2100 saves you money—over $5000 per year!"
  • Health/healthy—The second thing people wish they had more of is good health. People want products and services that are going to either improve their health or at least not negatively impact it. For example: "Vitamin X improves your health and well being by …" or "Pesticide Y has no known health implications," or "Product Z is part of a healthy diet."
  • Guarantee/guaranteed—Most people are not risk takers. They want assurance that your product or service can live up to its claims and that they're not wasting their money. By giving some sort of guarantee, you put prospects at ease and gain their trust. For example: "We're so confident the Widget 2100 will work for you that we offer a full money-back guarantee."
  • Easy/easily—Between 40+ hour workweeks and increasing demands at home, people don't want products or services that are going to make their lives more difficult. So always state how easy your company makes things. For example: "The Widget 2100 makes it easy for you to…" Or, "With the Widget 2100, you can easily remove spots from your carpet once and for all."
The Other 16 Words That Sell
Free, Yes, Quick/quickly, Benefit, Person's name, Love, Results, Safe/safely, Proven, Fun, New, Save, Now, How-to, Solution, More
While synonyms to all 21 words are acceptable, synonyms are not as powerful as the actual words themselves. So in order to avoid redundancy in your marketing piece, use the appropriate word wisely -don't overdo it. As your marketing writing prowess increases, consider combining words that sell within the same sentence. For example, maybe your product works "quickly, safely and easily." Or, perhaps your service makes cooking "easy and fun." Or, are your "proven results guaranteed"? You get the idea. Since short marketing pieces are more powerful than long ones, make sure every sentence packs a punch.
When you use these 21 words in every marketing piece, you'll quickly increase your prospect's interest in what you write, which ultimately leads to more money for you. Can you do it? Yes! And you're going to love the results. Guaranteed!
Dawn Josephson is the president and founder of Cameo Publications, an editorial and publishing services firm. She is the author of Putting It on Paper: The Ground Rules for Creating Promotional Pieces That Sell Books. Contact her at dawn@cameopublications.com or 001 84 3785 3770.

TLAs for SMEs

Here are this newsletter's TLAs for you;
  • QOTD, Question of the Day
  • CTR, Click Through Rate. The number of times web users click on a webpage banner ad. The clicking "requests" a transmission from the advertiser's website to go to the users PC. CTR can be one of the determinants for advertising space payments

Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.

Short+Hot Keys... and now tips
Over the next few newsletters, we are going to look at all the Function keys for Outlook. Here is the first selection - all you can do with Alt & punctuation marks;
  • "Close the visible menu and submenu at the same time; works with menu commands" Alt
  • "Switch to week view when using general keys for moving around in day/week/month view" Alt & - (Minus)
  • "View anywhere from 2 through 9 days at a time; works when using general keys for moving around in day/week/month view" Alt & <number>
  • "Select a Help topic while using Office Assistant or select a toolbar button in the Save As dialog box (on the File menu, click Save As)" Alt & (1 Is The Leftmost Button, 2 Is The Next, And So On)
  • "Switch to month view when using general keys for moving around in day/week/month view" Alt & = (Equals)

Hot Linx
Want to double-check your email etiquette? Then go to the definitive rules list at http://www.emailreplies.com/#rules
Not getting the search engine referrals you hoped for? Then get along to http://www.wordtracker.com/ & see if keywords are the reason that your site isn't getting found
Need the latest Microsoft downloads, but can't be bothered trawling through the list? Microsoft NZ have a page on their website at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en

                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here