Hard Asset Money Loans

This article is going to discuss what is a hard asset money loan, what are the requirements of obtaining one and finally some of the particulars of getting one funded

A hard asset money loan borrower receives money in exchange for giving up an asset base loan on a particular piece of real estate. The money received usually is short term anywhere between six months to two years. Additionally, the loan to value ratios usually run anywhere from 65-70% of the property value. The lender fees generally run anywhere between 4-10 points. The interest rates on this property usually run between 13-18%.

Your credit score is sometimes a factor in the decision making of the lender, however the main criteria is the value of the property and it's underlying equity. The long intentions of the borrower are examined as a factor into the credit score criteria. Flipping a property vs refinancing the property at some later date is important information for the lender.

Hard money lenders usually don't lend on farm operations, mobile and residential homes. Hard asset money can be done quickly, appraisals can be as simple as a drive by vs a full blown appraisal. A Party near a foreclosure may want to consider this as an option before this event occurs,( Time can be of the essence )

Each lender has his own rules on prepayment penalties, so the borrower should be aware of all the fine print. Tax liens, judgments etc will be paid off as part of the closing of a hard asset money loan.

There are many lenders out there to do a hard money loan so please check out all the variables before commencing this type of asset based loan. The spread between points and interest rate can be substantial therefore shopping for the best deal is important.

The following are some of the eligible properties that would qualify for a conventional/ hard asset money loan:

Partial List of Eligible Properties

Apartment Buildings Medical ( Hospitals, Clinics)
Auto Malls Mini Warehouses
Automotive( gas stations) Mixed Use Projects
Bed & Breadfast Office Buildings
Churches Office- All Types
Gas Stations Office - High Rise
Golf Courses Office- Medical
Health Care- Hospital Restaurants
Hotels/ Motels Retail Strip Mall
Industrial Buildings Self Storage
Leisure ( Marinas, RV Parks) Subdivisons

Thanks.......J.M Luna

Atlanta Meeting Planning-Conference Center Search

"We're planning a conference in Atlanta," he tells me, "so get right on it." When is this conference for, Boss? A week from Friday (this being Wednesday)? NO problem. I work miracles (that you get the glory for) all the time! How many people?! What, only a hundred and fifty, flying in from all over the country? No problem! I've heard all about how you pulled off the feeding of five thousand people with just a couple loaves of bread and a few fish, so I should be able to handle this. I'll get right on finding Atlanta Meeting Facilities.

There are a number of worthy venues in Atlanta for meetings and conferences. How you select the right one depends, in part, upon the nature and duration of that conference. If it's just a one-day event that needs a Marietta Banquet Rooms for a hours long event, then proximity to the airport may be your only real concern (assuming people are flying in. But if the attendees are going to be there a while, then proximity to the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport may not be as important as qualities of the convention environment.

The focus of the group may be business, but they're expecting to enjoy the stay in other ways as well. For some, that may be the opportunity to enjoy a bit of luxury away from home. For others, it may be the chance to play 18 holes of golf. Is it summer or winter? That can be a consideration as well, especially if some of the attendees live in areas of extreme temperatures. In the winter, visitors from colder climates may want to bask in the relative warmth and take some time for the aforementioned golf or other activities. If it's the height of summer, many may be looking for relief from that heat. Atlanta may not be as exhausting as Phoenix, but you may still be looking for a complex that has everything under one roof, so they don't have to go out. What will the quality of the catering be? Will the attendees want to take in some local nightlife? What about availability? Longstanding reservations for other gatherings may preclude a particular venue. It's crucial to find out about that before investing a lot of time planning for a convention based upon a particular location.

If you do a great job, he'll look great and get the bulk of the credit for having been smart enough to hire you. That might tempt you to do less than your best. A bit of self-preservation is in ordeer here. Remember, if there are hitches in the giddyup, hiccups or problems, he's going to step back and graciously let you be broiled, so even though he may take the lion's share of the credit, you'll still want to make the best choices possible.

How do you know about the quality of a facility? Start off with previous experiences, independent testimonials and verifiable reviews. You may not be able to trust everything their public relations department puts forward, no matter how often they may swear it's the Gospel truth. To some extent, you're going to have to go by Star ratings, but it's a safe rule of thumb to deduct one star from all but the most reliable of hotel chains with ratings under 4 stars. Then when Murphy's Law applies, you'll still come out of it alright.

Planning a conference really can be a lot of fun. You'll know you're talking to the right venues when they're making an effort to make your job easier, offering to handle details and arrange for catering, assuring you that adding an extra 10 people will not be a problem, that sort of thing. If you encounter a very rigid establishment, it may be wise to keep on moving on down the list.

Make a point of putting on your best Happy face before you pick up the phone to contact the venues, take a minute to relax with your favorite non-alcoholic beverage, make a list of essential requirements, no-nos, and options. Be sure, for example, to provide vegetarian, Muslim and kosher meal choices and to ask the attendees their preferences. Do a little homework and find out what well-respected public golf courses maybe in the area, if the attendees are interested in the game. Make sure the conference center has AV equipment available. If they don't, you'll want to arrange for equipment rental and a backup supplier in case that one proves unreliable. But with a little planning, some investigation and a few days' footwork, you'll have your boss walking on water in no time! Atlanta has plenty of facilities to choose from. Now all you have to do is consult that list and find out which of them is best for you!

© 2007 RightNow Communications

Save time best tips for teachers

As an educator, you probably "wear many hats" and perform a daily balancing act of taking full responsibility. And you certainly do not have a surplus of time on your hands. But teachers who are not their responsibility and to balance priorities can quickly feel "burned", or are in a sinking ship. The suggestions to help you save time, so effective in your career, but always to follow some time for yourself. Read on, whileYou can also save your sanity.

Organize

The organization is the key to saving time and organize your class and students will help you take control of your time more efficiently. Make sure that the class is accessible when it comes to supplies and materials is necessary. The ability to quickly and easily find things when they are needed makes the day much easier, even if it takes time to organize everything in realityfirst.

You should also invest some 'time over the preparation of lessons prior to their presentation. In fact, many teachers plan their lessons in the summer months, so that the workload on their return in the fall. Your students should also be arranged. Start a graphics area that makes it easy to remember their names in the first weeks of school. Create weekly flyers for students who are clearly on the objectives for the week, includingLectures and homework assignments and their due dates.

Enlist

An important task for most teachers is grading papers, but peer grading can be significantly reduced in this work. Allowing students to level, while the papers discussing the correct answers not only reinforces the concepts are taught, but relieved that the formalities have to do. And while we can not allow students to quality documents as the book of essays or reports, you can use for your position paper, which allowhas a multiple-choice or answer a fill-in-the-blank, and spelling tests, and so on.

classification of documents also give the students a short break to relax and makes them feel important. You can also access some features of classroom students each week and use a chart to show who does what, when. Students like to feel as if they were an important part of the organization and class assignments, like cleaning the blackboard and dusting the shelves and onlyeasy to complete for them - and no time for other things to do.

'S Printable Flyers

When you do your spreadsheets, you're probably under a lot of time before the question and then press in creating a response. You can find tons of flyers printed on the history of the Internet for ideas in mathematics and language arts. Take advantage of the hard work that someone else has done and save a bit 'of timethe process. The only effort is to make some copies.

Useful Tips For Online Shoppers

Online shopping can be both convenient and confusing. Because you no longer need to drive and wait in line just to complete your weekly shopping, buy goods on sale or make a go for that latest season's wardrobe, buying products online enables you to save fuel and time. Not only does it offer ease in the selection of items, online stores make it easier for buyers to compare product features and prices. This way, it enables ordinary shoppers to get the best deals in every item that they intend to buy. What's more exciting is that online store prices are lower than those in conventional boutique and retail stores. However, there will always be a risk that the wrong items will be sent to your home by mistake. And because of the complicated systems used in every purchase transaction, there is a chance that the delivery of your purchase may be delayed. For a person that is not Internet savvy, online shopping experiences can bring inconveniences rather than convenience.

To guide novice online shoppers in their online shopping experience, we have compiled some of the pointers that can be useful in making the experience worthwhile. You can even print this page so you can easily review the tips as you shop.

Follow your instincts: If you are not comfortable with the idea of buying or bidding the item on the internet, then it's best not to do it. Avoid feeling pressured to place your order immediately. Take time browsing other online stores for the same item so as to compare the prices and features of the items that you need to buy.

Learn about web auctions: Online product auctions operate similar to traditional auctions. The item goes to the highest bidder. However, to avoid any trouble with the items, try to familiarise yourself with the rules and policies of the auction site. Take time studying or reading its legal terms as in warranties and refund policy.

Double-check the item price: Online shops can sell new and used/old items that are still in marketable condition. But if you happen to encounter a price deal that is too cheap, be suspicious. Sometimes, £10 becomes £1 due to typographical error. Also, it is advised to check the prices of the item that you intend to buy in other online stores before you buy to yield savings on possible discounts.

Privacy policy: Avoid dealing with sites that do not have privacy policy. Often, the seller will ask the buyer some information. Some of which concerns credit card numbers and other security information. Without a privacy policy, you are subject to higher risk of identity theft.

Return, refund and shipping policies: This information will be useful if your purchased items stay too long in the verification and delivery stage and in cases when the items delivered to you have manufacturing defects or is already damaged.

Credit card: When shopping online, the use of credit card is the safest way to pay for items. Since it does not instantly credit the purchase to your own money, you can easily trace back unauthorised transactions. The terms of using credit cards will protect you against fraud.

Make online shopping an enjoyable experience. Learn how it works and you will be rewarded with tremendous gains. The time flexibility and savings that are enjoyed by most online shoppers complements the demands of today's fast paced lifestyle. It's a shame to be left behind.

Affiliate Marketing Tips - 5 Creative Ideas to Bring in a Tremendous Rush of New Affiliate Sales!

Affiliate Marketing tips are certainly desired by every internet marketer who is doing affiliate marketing. It certainly makes any task easier when you have guidelines, pointers, tips or a track to run on.

When you have these types of help, you are much more likely to succeed with any task you undertake..

That is true for many things, and it is true for people who want affiliate marketing tips

We are going to look at five great tips for affiliate promotion. These tips will help you to get people coming to see your affiliate products time and time again.

1. Target Broad Niche Markets

This means that you will start with a broad market of products This could be very important because then you will be able to become an affiliate for several related products.

However, even though you start with a broad niche, you will then want to drill down and focus on a narrower aspect of that market. If your broad niche is "golf clubs," you narrower niche would be a particular type of golf clubs.. Not doing this or not doing it correctly could mean the rest of these affiliate marketing tips will not be as effective as they could be.

2. Get Email Subscribers

This is really great because you will be able to do an affiliate promotion to these same people over and over again. You will also give them the opportunity to get to feel like they know you. After they feel like they know you, they will trust your judgment and perhaps follow your recommendation to buy a specific product or products.

3.Give Free Products to Get People to Sign Up

This may be a critical element because people would be reluctant to give you their email addresses for no reason. They already have enough spam coming to their inboxes..

4. Provided Helpful Information to Your Subscribers

Another critical element is usually to provide helpful information to your email subscribers. You don't want to just bombard them with affiliate products. You actually want to help them; however, you do know that you also can point them to products that will help them further. Give helpful free information to those on your subscriber list.

5. Stay With Your Niche Before Branching Out.

Pay close attention to this important step: Staying with one niche in the beginning will help you perfect the learning curve that comes with learning anything new. I mean you will be able to shorten the learning curve as you master the promotion of products in one niche. Once you have mastered one niche, then you can branch out and do things over and over again..

Another reason why this is very important is that you will not become overwhelmed with all the different ways you can do affiliate marketing.

When you follow these 5 tips for affiliate promotion, chances are that you will succeed rapidly.

In case you omit or ignore any one of them, you risk getting poorer results than you may otherwise expect.

Success comes to those who follow these 5 affiliate marketing tips!

How to Troubleshoot a Club Car Golf Cart

Today would be a rare thing on a golf cart golf course without at least one. Before the introduction of these vehicles were the golfers on their shoulders the burden with their golf clubs on their own and were soon in another tired feet from the hole to be. The introduction of golf carts have it easy for them to drive his car from a hole in another, while the storage of golf equipment in the cart. With the increasinguse of these vehicles, you can now find people using them even in their neighborhood and localities for a short ride or for carrying small loads without the need for taking their car.

Transportation have become easier and affordable now as the electric carts of today run with chargeable batteries and therefore saves on the fuel expense. But, in order to maintain the quality and durability of these carts, you have to offer more care and conditioning to your cart. If you are using an electric cart, you should check the condition of batteries and keep them fully charged regularly. You should also carry out regular maintenance and repair to keep it going. If you have purchased a Club Car Golf Cart, then you should offer it with more attention and care to retain its efficiency. This article can provide you with easy ways of troubleshooting your Club Car Golf Cart if you are not aware of how to do that.

Being a reliable and affordable option, most of the golfers today go for a Club Car Golf Cart. But you should also know the simple things that will keep your vehicle go for a long term. In order to start, you should first check whether the key and the gear settings are in the proper positions. The key has to be turned on for starting the cart and the gear should be kept on the central or neutral position. Depending upon what model you have chosen, you should also set the parking brake. In order to come in contact with the battery, you should remove the cart seat and always work while wearing protective gloves in your hand. You should tighten any loose cables of the batteries and check for any damage or corrosion on the battery terminals. The water level should be checked and added with distilled water if the level is not correct.

Viral Marketing in Social Media

VIRAL MARKETING IN SOCIAL MEDIA FINAL

It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners.

Pre-Cable TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users..

The internet took four years to reach 50 million people...

In less than nine months Facebook added 100 million users.

For less than a $1,000 you can launch a viral marketing campaign with the potential to reach thousands of people, if not millions quickly and almost effortlessly.

Take for example the Blendtec Company, a maker of food processors and blenders, who placed a series of YouTube videos called "Will It Blend?" Arising our curiosity and sense of dark humor Blendtec blended golf balls, an iPhone, and even a bag of marbles. It was fascinating to watch a glowing iPhone being reduced to black powder and shredded plastic. In a short matter of time Blendtec logged 8 million visitors while sales increased over 800%. Don't we just enjoy watching things being destroyed?

Burger King launched an interactive video on their micro website with a man dressed as a chicken. In the message bar you can insert a command and the chicken-man would jump, run, dance, and play dead. You get the picture. People loved the creativity, fun, and sense of control. Within 24 hours the site received 1 million hits and by the end of the week eight million. Not bad for a chicken man.

Down in Orlando Florida, Universal Studios launched a new attraction based on the Harry Potter series. Instead of deploying expensive advertising through mass media, Universal teamed up with the author J.K. Rowling, to give a special webinar to the top seven Harry Potter maven fans. Afterwards, the seven maven fans shared their news on blogs and forums with great energy and enthusiasm. The media picked it up and ran with the story. Meanwhile, Universal setup a micro site for bloggers and the media to ascertain more information on the park's new attraction. In just a few weeks this viral marketing tactic spread the news from seven people to over 300 Million. Of course, it helps when you have an established base of loyal Harry Potter fans.

TRUST: Content Democratization: We are migrating from push advertising to pull; allowing users greater access, participation, and control based on trust.

In the last ten years both the media and information technology industries have been migrating from a traditional push advertising environment (TV & newspaper ads) to interactive (pull) advertising using interactive content. The days of advertiser content dominance is being transformed into a democratization process whereby quality content is interacted, shared, and rated. The democratization process allows the consumer greater control and influence to recommend products and services to their peers. In the end, it's creating trust between the buyer and the seller. Trust builds loyalty and repeat business. Trust is the glue that will cement the relationship and it's done by allowing an interactive participation in the communication and collaboration process. There's nothing more powerful and trustworthy than when a good friend makes a recommendation.

Using a combination of our imagination and creativity one can use viral marketing tactics within social media channels to capture the attention of millions. Of course, getting their attention is only half the battle. The other half is harder. The real challenge is converting their attention into sales or a call-to-action, and to sustain that effort over a period of time. This is what separates the amateurs from the professionals. As my mom use to say to me, "You get what you pay for."

SOCIAL MEDIA ECOSYSTEM

Social Media on Web 2.0 is simply the ability to have conversations with people through a variety of communication tools and communities. By nature people are tribal and we seek to converse and share with other like minded people.

According to the 2009 Cone Consumer New Media Study, 62% of users polled believe they can influence business decisions by voicing opinions via new media channels. About a quarter have contributed their point-of-view on an issue (24%) or contacted a company directly (23%). 74% expect companies to join conversations about their corporate responsibility practices happening on new media. MediaPost January 22, 2010

Social media platforms can leverage the collective wisdom of the community to collaborate on a given objective, such as; to increase sales, create content, engage customer feedback, nurture a community, amplify your marketing message, and to develop peer relationships between manufacturer-distributor-retailer-partner-customer. Typically, the social media conversation is uncontrolled, unorganized, nor always on target with the message. Web 2.0 has become a democracy of information usage with a bit of anarchy thrown in.

The power of Web 2.0 allows the individual to spread their conversations or word-of-mouth in multiple formats; image, video, text, and audio. Individuals can leverage their social media communities, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, MetaCafe, SocialText and a host of others platforms. The most popular social media network activities ranged from posting messages, downloading and uploading music, videos and images. These communities and tools allow photo sharing, videos, communities, blogs, forums, articles, news, entertainment, news, and tutorials. They also allow individuals to use their collective intelligence to collaborate on online projects. The power of these tools is the ability share, create, and product from one-to-many quickly, effortlessly, and seamlessly. Good news can travel fast but with even greater trepidation; bad news can travel at light speed.

SCALING UP VIRAL MARKETING

Scaling up your viral marketing campaign requires an environment of easy access and collaboration. Ross Mayfield, founder of Socialtext, coined the concept of the, "Power Law of Participation." In it, he describes that social media portals should make it easy to access, to read, and to share content. The intent is to accelerate productivity and creativity by engaging participants to use their collective wisdom in sharing their knowledge and intelligence. It's a well known fact that the wisdom of the tribe will exceed the wisdom of the individual.

In James Surowiecki's book, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few, the author explained that the collective decisions of the group far exceeds the individual and the added dimension of social internet sites offers a diversity of ideas. It can easily be said the world is our village. We see this today on Wikipedia where a community of people collaborates to create and share its knowledge base.

The new paradigm of Social Media marketing is to embrace the democracy of knowledge, respect the intelligence of your audience, and allow them the ability to participate and ideas going viral and establishing a collective intelligence to enrich creativity and productivity. Here are several suggestions to grease the skids for your viral campaign to generate a higher participation rate.

Make your content access free and easy to share

- Create multiple touch points for others to reach you: website, blog, Microsites, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, SharePoint, SocialText, and mobile applications.

- Engage and maintain the consumer's conversations with the goal of closing the loop from the behavior to consider a purchase, to purchase, and finally, to encourage them to make recommendations.

- People want to be understood and recognize. Promote and encourage comments section and recommendations.

- Emotions move us to action. Make it personal. Stories paint pictures and have high retention and share rates.

- Building a community of like minded people can empower greater influence to change Events politically, economically or socially. For example, the presidential elections in 2008, a milestone in its viral marketing in social media.

VIRAL MARKETING

It is passion that motivates people to share something new. Think of your passion in politics, sports, religion, cuisine, and movie stars. If something moves you to share your feelings immediately.

Viral marketing is a fast and almost effortlessly the spread of an idea (word of mouth)one-to-many by leveraging both internet and communication tools from one person to millions. Think of tribal communication behavior, think of gossip, think of how people when empowered with special news want to share it with their friends and circles of influence. A viral message will spread rapidly when the idea is quickly understood and the person feels empowered to send it to other people. The best viral messages are emotionally charged stimulating the person's desire of happiness, greed, anger, hatred, and other passionate emotions. Emotionally polarized messages moved quickly. Neutral emotions go nowhere.

To make viral marketing work you need the tools to spread it and the audience to receive it. As was previously mentioned the evolution of Web 2.0 offers great power, intelligence, services, word-of-mouth recommendations, and the delivery of relevant information in real time. Today, Web 2.0 can deliver multiple formats of content quickly, seamlessly, and effortlessly, which is; email, video, photographs, audio, and text messages.

EMOTIONAL AND BEHAVIORAL DRIVERS

Excellent viral marketing will seek common emotional trigger points to motivate a person into action. People like the sense of exclusivity and the power to invite their friends into the club. It makes them feel cool as you were one of the inside people. Other common emotional trigger points can be happiness, humor, anger, envy, pride, or greed.

For example, when EA Games launched their next generation soccer game called FIFA Soccer in 2006, they used tricksters from Toronto's Ryouko mixed martial arts team to create an amazing video display of stunts and acrobatic feats. Using a combination of traditional and viral marketing, EA leaked the video to selected fans in Europe reaching a peak hit rate of 1.5 million fans.

Social activity and the underlying emotions that drive it are a means to an end, the tools that execute the logic of survival. Status, leadership, power, affiliation, reciprocal altruism, cooperation, sharing of knowledge, trading of goods, pair-bonding, and even aggression are all part of the social environment that help a group work toward that same survival end game.

At the base of this is a powerful drive to connect what is felt. Humans feel a strong need to connect with others to make sense of their world, to not feel lost in a sea of infinite possibilities and to share in mutual benefit. Though the subconscious motivation is survival, the conscious emotions are social.

In trying to take the guess work of anticipating people's emotion, today we can use behavioral targeting to understand and predict user behavior and purchasing patterns. One way is using Internet software cookies which are placed on the user's computer to track their behavior on websites to identify their unique tastes and interests. Cookie placement is like giving someone a unique cell phone number. You can analyze where and to whom. You can track when an online advertisement is served, and improve it based on the feedback and relationship you already have. The gathered information is then used to create audience segments, which enable advertisers to make reasonable choices about where to buy advertising space. For example, AOL Advertising offers behavioral targeting plus a host of services that can effectively target your audience with precision and the methodology behind it. Another favorite is AudienceScience which has methodically divided the global audience into many types of segments.

What doesn't work? Social media is similar to having coffee with a few of your friends in your kitchen. When a man intrudes and announces his big sale at the furniture store its invasive and annoying. No one likes it. Early in the history of Facebook this is what advertisers did, until they understood the nuances of their target audience. Advertisers discovered that Facebook users rarely click through ads, but happily participated in events, communities, and causes. Now it's easy to become a fan of Coke or a gangster in Mafia Wars.

Unlike direct marketing where you can predict a given response rate of 1-3%, viral marketing can be hit or miss. On the positive side, a viral marketing campaign can be done inexpensively. On the negative side, you might have to deploy multiple types and levels in a campaign. You may also have to engage traditional media to seed the viral messages.

Common elements for making a viral marketing campaign to work are:

- Make the content seamless and easy to send or transfer

- The content uses existing internet and telecommunications infrastructure

- Products or services are given away for free

- The content is emotionally charged: Polarized messages will motivate action in people

- The content can easily scale from a few people to millions

BUILDING YOUR VIRAL MARKETING

To be successful in social media and using viral marketing tactics requires the same discipline as any other marketing endeavor.

- Good planning and goal setting

- A commitment for the long run and the patience for campaigns to gain traction

- Ample dedicated resources to sustain conversations and offer a quality level of service.

- Being authentic, transparent, and honest. The end goal is to develop ongoing trust and loyalty.

- Make your touch points intuitive, easy access, and minimal restrictions.

Building your social media viral marketing campaign requires four major segments.

1. Start with the proper planning, messaging, target, audience, and budgets.

2. Build a story with wings to fly.

3. Select the media channels to disseminate your story.

4. Measure and manage user attention and participation.

STEP 1 - PLANNING, GOALS, TARGET AUDIENCE

- Identify and understand the needs and wants of your target audience - put each individual into segments based on actual behavior across the web.

- If your product requires consideration to purchase, then determine the level of research your prospects are doing today on the internet.

- Identify your competition. Determine what websites your target audience has been visiting recently and what draws their interest.

- If you're going to advertise on other websites, then determine which of those sites are already converting ads into leads in your category.

- Determine which social media sites are attracting your best prospects and understand their behavior.

- Determine the health and reputation of your brand by tuning into relevant blogs, microblogs, and forums.

- On your website run A/B tests to measure messaging and conversion ratio.

- Monitor and measure the prospect's conversation along the entire communications chain; from emails, live chats, recommendations, and call center. You'll need strong interactive marketing software tools such as Aprimo, Eloqua, HubSpot, and Omniture.

- Close the conversation loop with your visitors by encouraging them to complete a comments or product recommendation.

- What are your goals?

- Sell something

- Build awareness

- Capture their attention

- Engage them in a conversion

- Call to action

- Retain customers

STEP 2- BUILD A STORY WITH WINGS

Every good viral marketing campaign requires an emotional story that is original or sticky. Video by far is the fastest and easiest tool to spread a story that sticks. In addition, a sustainable campaign will need layers of various components to keep the momentum going. Using the billboard affect, users will give you three to five seconds to receive your message to take action. All the elements of your viral campaign should have these attributes.

- GOOD STORY - You're a story teller. Stories paint pictures and evoke emotions. Good stories are remembered, original, and begged to be shared.

- When the story catches on be prepared for sequel stories, bloopers, and behind the scene blog. Keep putting the logs on the fire.

- Be sure to have a comments section. Observe it closely. Sharing emotions is acceptable but edit offensive language and insults.

- Your goal is to engage in conversations and eventually a call to action leading to the fulfillment of your goals.

- Keep the conversation personal, for example don't place barriers between your stars and audience. People want to connect directly to the artist or rock musician.

- EMOTIONAL - It must offer an emotional appeal. The more polarizing the emotion then the greater chance of becoming viral.

- ORIGINAL-Do not be predictable. Be original and creative. Fascinate them. Make them laugh. Make them cry. Can you make them say - wow?

- RELEVANT-The story must be relevant to your target audience. Soccer fans are fascinated with advertisement demonstrating a trickster pro team.

- WINGS-give it the wings to fly whereby the message is designed to be portable, scalable, and shareable.

- DYNAMIC-You need to develop momentum and sustainability. This requires multiple entry points to experience your message such as (video, blogs, TV, print, quality content, and tie-ins). A well done story will demand a sequel, behind the scenes production, bloopers, and interviews.

- CATCHY-You must have a catch to it that hooks people in and there will be reward in the end. Ask yourself, what's in it for me? Does it entertain? Does it provide great information?

And two don'ts

- Please don't compel people to forward their emails for viral marketing

- Please don't use obvious commercials unless they are especially clever, entertaining, or funny.

STEP 3 - DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS

A successful viral campaign will have multiple steps and components. In 2006-7 Microsoft launched a ten month five-step marketing campaign for Halo 3 for the purpose of gaining new gamers and building brand awareness. Step One was an advertisement played on a Monday night football game using an attention getting reenactment of the Halo game. The ad reached 8 million households and another 3.7 million viewers when placed on YouTube. The advertisement triggered Step Two inviting gamers to be beta testers; they acquired 850,000 users. Step Three was a scavenger hunt using a combination of online websites and traditional media channels. Step Four was co-sponsorships with major fast food and beverage companies. Finally, Step Five was an impressive back story reenactment of combat action scenes. Altogether the campaign sold 3 million copies in the first week.

For a viral campaign to be sustainable it will require multiple steps, components and channels to build awareness, capture, engage, and convert your target audience. Naturally, your channels of distribution will be determined by where your target audience shops, researches, and socializes. You can begin to research your target audience at Digital Scientists or Audience Science.

USING Facebook

Today, Facebook is the fastest growing social media platform and a great starting point to launch a viral marketing campaign. In 2010, Pepsi announced they will not advertise in the Super Bowl. Rather, they will invest their advertising using Social Media platforms. Unlike the one-way push of TV advertising communications, Facebook and other forms of social media allows you to capture your audience, engage them in a conversation, nurture the relationship, convert them into sales, retain their loyalty, monitor and shepherd their word-of-mouth recommendations, and scale peer approval ratings without restraint.

Facebook Statistics for early 2010

- There are now 350+ Million users

- 50% perform daily updates

- Less than 1/3 are college students

- 30% of users are just in the U.S.A.

- The fasting growing segment is greater than 35 years old

VIRAL MARKETING IN Facebook

The first place to start on Facebook is to build your own profile and company Facebook page. Naturally, you want to cross link all of your portals to one another; website, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Facebook has excellent tools to identify and target you audience down to the granular and local level. Use it. Similar to tribes, Facebook users with like minded interests will gravitate to stories and events. Always make your content with good quality. You want to be authentic and interactive.

Facebook requires dedication, creativity, and interactivity. To compete for attention you must constantly provide a steady stream of content, promotions, events, and communications.

As a company you'll have to define who you are to the market. What's your brand and personality? Your purpose is not to sell but to inform and share knowledge. Through tacit approval Facebook users will accept you and be your fan.

Engaging Facebook users requires a two way conversation or being interactive. Feed them a good story or video to determine if they will click the "LIKE" button. Encourage them to comment. As your level of trust increases with the users, seek to convert their actions using promotions and discounts into joining a website or making a purchase.

Get your Facebook fans involved in contests and promotions. Make them do things to share photographs or videos. Let them all share in the fun and discovery.

STEP 4 - MANAGE AND MEASURE USER ATTENTION

There's a scarce commodity called the consumer's attention. Some call it the "Attention Economy," whereby a marketplace has developed such that consumers agree to receive services in exchange for their attention. If you want the attention of a consumer, just think of "what's in it for me?" News feeds are a primary example where they provide a steady stream of current news in exchange that you look at their advertisements. The end game is to prompt a "call-to-action" from the consumer. Since you can never ask directly for a sale, you must provide a steady stream of relevant news, entertainment, knowledge, or tools. By using behavioral targeting tools you'll be able to steer quality prospects to a call-to-action.

Gaining the attention of the consumer requires three important attributes:

- RELEVANCY - Your information is relevant to your target audience

- CHANNEL DISTRIBUTION - Channel the information through the appropriate social media channels where your target audience is available

- ENDORSEMENTS - Engage your consumers to be your trusted references through sneak preview webinars, product reviews, endorsements, and recommendations.

Once you gained the attention you need to manage, measure, and respond. Today there are many solutions to manage and measure your interactive marketing. These solutions will manage the entire life cycle of a customer engagement to determine both your campaign's Return of Investment, and the life time value of your customer. You're also looking to manage the Consideration Factor. Before a consumer makes a purchase they'll seek peer reviews and product recommendations. After the consumer makes a purchase they will experience the product and form their own opinions upon which they will cycle back comments for new consumers to review. Some of these companies include Aprimo, Eloqua, HubSpot, Omniture, Based on the 80-20 rule your goal is to seek your most profitable customers and understand the process to achieve these results.

MEASURING CUSTOMER LIFE CYCLE

According to the 2009 Cone Consumer New Media Study, consumers are most interested in information that will inform their purchasing decisions. Respondents said they want companies to tell them what is in products and how they are made (85%) and provide additional details about information, Labels and receivables divided offline (for example, in the shop, on the packaging, advertising) (83%). MediaPost 22nd January 2010

The life cycle of acquiring and retaining customer has a predictable flow. Phase 1 begins with creating awareness for the product / service through the use of different marketing channels and campaigns. Stage 2 is the view of the product on peer evaluations, recommendations and other social media tools. After purchasing the product his heavylifting begins to ensure the customer's expectations are met and they have a satisfactory experience. Phase-3 is the formation and sharing the consumer's experience with the product. Typically there will be three types of customers. (1) Immensely satisfied and willing to share their experience, (2) Satisfied and complacent customers with no passion to share, and (3) the Dissatisfied customer who will tell the world of their terrible experience as they seek to restore their balance in life through retaliation.

As we can see from the illustration, word-of-mouth recommendations are cycled back to the consideration phase for the next customer. It therefore becomes important to manage these word-of-mouth recommendations by ensuring a good experience, observing the results, and responding immediately to damage control.

If we can measure it, then we can manage it. As your campaign reaches your audience you're looking to measure some key variables to ensure your message is reaching the right target audience, you captured, their attention, engaged them in an interactive process for purchase consideration, convert them into a sale, and finally offer the experience to steer and share their positive opinion. As such you are looking to measure variables such as; Traffic Visits, Click through behavior patterns, Conversion rates, and Source of visitors.

CONCLUSION

As a general rule, we are fearful of things we do not understand. As marketing and advertising professionals, once we embrace the idea of democracy and participation in sharing content to our target audience, we can enjoy the immense surge of collective wisdom and the loyalty of our fans. In building a business it's expensive to acquire new customers and pointless to have a hole in your bucket when they constantly drain out. Embracing the power of Web 2.0, deploying viral marketing, and using traditional media platforms can give you a full complement of tools to reach a vast audience who are most interested in having a relationship with your organization. By increasing the ease of customer access and participation you'll be able to build a loyal fan base that can deliver a steady stream of profitable revenue. As many business leaders have discovered, by taking care of your customers first, your profits can be realized.