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Whatever our insincts towards entrepreneurs there is no doubt that they will continue to have a huge impact in our societies brining new products to market and shaping social norms.
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What does the shorter new product cycle and drive towards global economy mean for managers and individuals in an international business environment? Developments will be trace dsimplistically in terms of opportunities and threats.

What are the implications of a global marketplace?

Globalisation ensures specialisation in production of goods and services as more competition ensures unique needs are catered for. – “A good thing?”.

There will be an increase in the super rich and the divide will increase daily between the wealthiest and the poorest. There are billionaires created every day in this marketplace FACT. – “A bad thing?”.

What are the opportunities that international business can take advantage of?

Speed of communication – (Information can be sent with the push of a button from anywhere and be received in seconds. A product launch can be emailed to millions of email addresses with the click of a button.)

Automation – Product may be mass produced at reduced cost per unit. Sales processes can be automated scripted from a call centre. Sales can be automated your web presence can be your 24 hr sales team. (Customer Services, R&D can be automated based on customer feedback depending on your website architecture.)

Centralisation – Can reap economies of scale not only on production but on human resources, a central legal and financial unit would also be sensible options to have on board. Massive cost savings can be had and everything here can be scaled.

Product Lifetime Extension – A re-launch of a mature product in a less developed environment can breed new life and sales. A change of package or presentation can do the same. Do you sell an ebook online? Get it turned into an audio an sell it pre-loaded on an mp3 player on ebay.

Some threats posed by the increase in globalisation

Technology becomes more available - Michael Porter has mentioned five forces in a competitive environment. With the rise of the internet then each individual will face an increase in all five namely
New Potential Entrants
Increased Customer Choice
More Power to existing suppliers
Threat of substitution of product increases
Rivalry among competitors in the marketplace.

Socio-Cultural issues – often called “psychic distance” there are barriers created by cultural disparities between the two countries, problems arise due to differences in social perspectives, attitudes and language. ( It would be wise for international marketers to target countries that are psychically similar to begin launching new products into.)

Some examples of translation issues

A Thai Dry Cleaners – “Drop your trousers here for best results.”
A Spanish Sports shop – “The athletes foot.”

Even for the giants

Come alive with Pepsi – translated “Rise from the grave with Pepsi” :happened in Germany.

Political/Legal – An understanding of the general attitudes of foreign governments to imports and foreign direct investment will be extra specially important. ( Some legal issues will be involved with certain types of MLM type organisations as they are deemed pyramid and illegal.)

The Chinese governments censorship of information has been a barrier to the early entry of Google into that country.

Understanding the processes is key online there are many - How I Quadrupled My Blog’s Traffic In 3 Months Is an awesome post.

This is cool and is asking you for backlinks back to yourself. One way links OK not anchor text but I’m going to investigate this somewhat further and update asap. However I did post two links pointing back to my mini reveiw of Internet Marketing Success Formula and see a little inbox stampede of 4 sign ups for Sorens free eBook.

What is ListCamp?

Seems to be a catalouge of lists compiled by it’s users and it is very very new or as yet very under used. I’m quite happy that a resource recommended by Stephen Pierce has a link back to my site on it’s front page right on the home page a link to my post 5 ways to make money from plr.

Click the What is list camp heading above and you’ll be taken back to their about page. There is not a huge deal there but this is the point in this social networking and bookmarking site that you can gain alot of exposure to your articles that contain lists because it is in it’s infancy you can build up a pressence. It’s a good idea people love lists.

It is being whispered about now at the very least get accross there and add a list of your products and services.

KillerStartups.com - list making fun

Ok Bloggers, Product owners affiliate marketers and I mean everyone here here’s some things you can do today to put yourself out of business and loose your readership for ever.

Ignore EXTERNAL environmental influences

1.cultural differences - Is your marketplace global, national local be aware of this bloggers install some kind of tracking code. You can get one free from mybloglog.com and most self hosted blogs will be able to see the nationalities of their readership from their cpanel which will produce an array of stats for you check with a future web hosting provider that they do indeed allow this.

2.Subcultural differences – Do not try and penetrate a teen market with your knitting blog. Keep it on topic however if you can be aware of subcultural differences then you can keep ahead of future change in your marketplace.

3.Ignore class differences – If you have demographics of your readership and existing client base, info on earnings and spending power then you can segment your lists and market what is appropriate to each customer as appropriate.

4.Social Group Influences – If your part of an online network then if you ignore the fact that the power of many is very hard to raise your voice against then you may be able to speak to the people who won’t voice an opinion because they feel they are going to get into trouble or look stupid. For way too much information on this topic goggle groupthink or groupshift two related terms from the depths of sociology.

5.Family Influences – You must address the partner, kids, parents in your communications they are going to have feelings about your readerships time online and spending address these fears and you have loyal readers and customers. (My wife and kids also would also like me to spend more money and time with and on them. This is the end goal of the whole adventure.)

6.Personal Influences – Please bear in mind everyone is unique and will have tastes and preferences you have to be yourself, but please accept just now that if you get feedback about stuff that is un wanted then you should probably want to pay some attention to that and see if you can cause less offence or confusion in the future.

Communication is a minefield most of us do not speak the same first language, start to look at some of these potential barriers to communication and you will have a stronger customer base and readership.

Ok social networkers here’s a new twist to the tale. We all look for some added functionality for our online networking capabilities how about if you could combine the power of digg and twitter to let those who veiw your feed at twitter have a feast of your recent diggs. Well now you can with this cool little offering.

Some potential drawbacks might be annoying the hell out of your current following at twitter if you digg 20 posts a day. I do about 2-3 so I don’t think I’ll really piss of my following especially when they start to notice some of their best posts in the twitter feed.

Although the benefits could be multiple growth in the amount of diggs that you and your network receive and end up on the front pages of Digg. Plese bear in mind there is no point ending up on the front page of Digg.com if there is nothing for them to read when there get back to your website that has any value at all to them.

Find me on Twitter.

mind me on Digg.

If your in the internet marketing niche and you post decent content on this site you are in serious danger of me using these tools to promote your site. If you link to my site you are in much greater danger.

Have you got the time to submit a story to

1. Digg
2. Propellor
3. Reddit
4. Shoutwire
5. Plime
6. Newsvine
7. Mixx
8. I Am Bored
9. Indian Pad
10. Link Filter
11. Hugg
12. Stumbleupon
13. News Cloud
14. PlugIM
15. Sphinn

On a daily basis, no I thought so how about you get your hands on the Web2Submitter software from Jack Humphrey it’s a steal at $49 it automates the submission process and gets your posts done to all the above services in about 10 minutes so you can spend the rest of your time writing productive articles and reading blogs that you want to be linked to.

Wait up just get it for free when you join social powerlinking. What else can you have for free?

Well I’ll make you a very big list

1. Howie Schwartz on Twitter Domination - 75 mins video
2. Setting upp Feedblitz and Feedburner - video
3. Digg Friend Explosion - video
4. Creating Linkbait - video
5. Remote Blogging with clipmarks - video
6. Technorati - signing up and claiming your blog -video
7. Learn how we create software - audio
8. Be a social power Publicist- audio
9. 20+ pdf’s on every social net marketing tool you can think of.
10. A free upgrade at BlogCatalog (6 months).
11. I know we like lists but this could have gone on for a long time.

Below you are going to see displayed a technique taught by Jack Humphrey it’s called a power-trackback. Read more about this and everything else related to generating masses of trafic to your blog in social powerlinking.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Barbera House - proves this is not for the IM niche alone self promotion web 2.0 and social linking for photographers

Todd Allen- social power linking saved me from blogger.

Marc Berry -An interview with moi. On his guide to Blogcatalog for SPL members a high quality read.

Martin Malden - How to turbo charge your efforts with social marketing. See proof of the traffic increase

AnneMarie Callan -understands the $1 a day winner

The master Jack Humphry will show you in action what we are doing for ourselves at social powerlinking if you would like to watch as an authority site is born.

Stumble it!

That’s the first reason it’s easy to use they give you loads of free tools for example buttons to add to your website for people to share your content with others other places that you can make kenny ritchie public.

Why do I have a sudden love of StumbleUpon?

Well I’m a bit of a stats junkie and I’d never miss a jump in traffic of any note now having a look at my cpanel and mybloglog stats there has been some recent spikes and the refering url’s have been stumbleupon.

Anything to do with me? - well yes I commented on some sites with some helpful remarks and their owners have come back to mine to see the value of the links back to them and low and behold submitted my blog post to 5,946,241 members wow.

What has the value been to me in the last few days I’ve had 26 unique visitors and 110 unique visitors to this site with no furter effort from myself. So the point of linking to other bloggers is not only the fact that they may link back toyou at some point in the future but also the fact that they might just understand how social networking works and drive some traffic to your site because it links to theirs.

What features does StumbleUpon Have?

It’s not a search engine like google it targets the content the veiwer has requested to veiw by tag. Anyone can suggest a site or a blog url to StumbleUpon and give it a classification or tag. I have tagged quite a few recently and will become a much more active on this site it is simply genius.

Stumble Upon will update the sites you are surfing through depending on what you have told it in the past making it a perfect research tool and an almost necessary addition to every student,marketer or information junkie on the planets arsenal of tools.

A peer to peer rating system that will make great stuff be veiwed by thousands without any input from the author.

Web 2.0 and social networking are important to your future personal and business needs check out this recent post at web20portals.
This Free E-Book will explain everything you could ever need to know about this.
A Top Internet Marketer understands this concept.

Aside from linking to some very highly trafficed site you should be frequenting places like PRweb for their content. No matter what your marketplace is there will be some related content over here.

I was researching for blog traffic sources and training in Prweb when I happened accross a press release of the first article of bloghology So I went ove to the site and there is a host of articles there that you can gain some valuable insights into the psychology and marketing of blogs. I especially liked the article how can color influence your site? Have a look and let me know if I’ve got mine right.

Some more relevant info from PRWeb.

BlogCatalog Boosts Blog Readership with new Social Networking tools
Premier Blog Directory Announces New Paid Search Designed to Boost Blogger’s Blog Traffic

Day 5 of Internet Riches Series

Turning your article into a call for action is half of the battle online. What is your goal for your article, well if you’ve been listening to the audio book then I’d be thinking to get an email address so you can keep in touch with your prospects.

Now you are going to have to stand out from the crowd. People are bombarded by marketing materials online and offline day in and day out.

How can you stand out?

You can make a start on understanding why people act. now I’ve read a lot on the subject and I do have a favourite author in the field Robert Caildini author of “INFLUENCE:The Psycholgy of persuasion.” Go to Amazon today and buy it. You will learn something gauranteed.

OK - not willing to wait for it to arrive here’s a quick summary of the top 6 reasons humans act.

1. Reciprocation - a bit of give and take (you give me your email address and I’ll send you a free report).
2. Social Proof- If others seem to be doing the same then you are more likely to follow suit when you have the proof make it available in the form of testimonials.
3. Authority- We’ve been programmed from birth to listen to our teachers, policemen and other figures. (This also applies to authority sites on the net and why you want to hit the first page of somewhere like digg)
4. Liking- people tend to take recommendations from their friends more seriously than the average sales pitch. So make sure you tell your future subscribers they can give your report away for free,
5. Commitment and consistency- Once someone has taken their first step in a process the second is easier. Why because we hate admitting that we are wrong under almost any circumstance. So if the next step is spelt out then people are more likely to proceed.
6. Scarcity - If there is a limited number or a time limit on your offer it makes the matter more urgent and makes the choice slightly more emotonal and logical. (Please note if you’ve been closing in an emotional manner then you should appeal to the logical part of the brain as soon as possible.)

To explore some of these themes further check out these other bloggers.

Lynn Terry - improving response rate
Michael Savoie - 3 Things YOUR Business can do right now to forget recessions
Michael Fortin guesting for Jack Humphrey - Want Better Copy? Go on a Quest!

Thanks for reading
Have an excellent day
Kenny Ritchie