HTML emails can be a great way of reaching out to your prospective customers and clients as they are more interactive and you can pack in great information with effective visuals. There are many email marketers that advise you against using HTML emails because

• The recipients may think they carry viruses or spyware
• HTML emails are often heavier than text emails
• The visuals can confuse your customers and clients
• If the images don’t load they may get a distorted version of your otherwise exceptionally well-prepared message

These are well-grounded apprehensions but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t send HTML emails. With evolved spam filters and ever-increasing bandwidth people are growing less and less touchy about receiving HTML emails.

There are some time-tested guidelines for preparing effective HTML emails and newsletters:

• Mind the width. An HTML email doesn’t equal a web page. Go ahead and create liquid HTML email layout as long as it doesn’t distort your email. A safer thing to do is decide what minimum and maximum width keeps your HTML email best looking and then keep your width accordingly. Different email clients have different sizes of windows and email reading areas.
• Use inline styling. You should definitely use stylesheet definitions to style your HTML elements (fonts, background colors, etc.) but use inline styling like <p style=”background-color:#c0c0c0; margin-bottom:5px;”> instead of using an external stylesheet. If you user is checking his or her messages without an Internet connection or if somehow the link has a problem it will destroy the entire layout of your HTML email.
• It’s OK to use tables. The practice of using tables for creating HTML layouts is disliked by contemporary designers as they mostly prefer DIV-based layouts. But that’s alright. For preparing HTML emails you can use tables for creating your layouts as not all email clients and applications are good at interpreting exact DIV dimensions, whereas tables are easily recognized.
• Use images sparingly. Images need to be fetched from an external link — just as the stylesheet file mentioned above — so in case they don’t load or if embedded image display is disabled in the recipient’s email client then your message may get lost, especially if most of your message is in the form of images. Use text as alternatives and besides, using colors and fonts you can create great HTML emails even without images.
• Test your email on various platforms. People use different email clients — both web based and desktop — to access their daily dose of emails and they may have different ways of formatting the same layout. Spend some time testing your emails on different email clients, operating systems, and even different devises.
• Eventually, it’s the message that counts. Really, what gets you the real deal is your email message. Have you got something really great to offer? Then present it with compelling text and a subject that makes people open the message immediately.

Image Source WikiMedia

Do you need to speak in public and wondering how well you’ll do? Even the greatest of leaders have pondered over how to speak well in public. But why do fear so much when it comes to speaking in front of an audience?

Speaking in public means articulating your thoughts openly and exposing yourself to opposition and criticism. What if they totally disagree with what you say? What if they make fun of the way you speak or ridicule your ideas? What if you become a laughing stock? What if you embarrass your family members and close friends by being so stupid in front of so many people? Well you be ever able to recover from the ignominy?

All these fears are valid and at one time or another everybody who speaks in public suffers from them. How do you overcome these fears and speak well in public? Here are a few things you can do.

Focus on your message

When you are planning to speak in public don’t focus on yourself but your message. There is a reason you are going out there. You want to make an impact. It doesn’t matter what people are going to think about you because that’s not important. There is an idea brewing inside you and you want people to know about it. You have an opinion and if you let that opinion be known it’ll make a difference.

Be passionate about why you need to speak in public

Are you passionate enough about what you have to say? If you are not, you should rather abandon the idea of speaking. If you are planning to speak in public and if you want to do it well then you must know only those people succeed who are passionate about their opinion and ideology. The rest simply try to imitate and 99% among them fail. If you want to talk about the environment feel the anger at the destruction. If you want make a technology or sales presentation think about how convincingly it is growing to affect your bottom line.

Know 200% about your topic

Don’t prepare your speech half-heartedly. The more you know, the more you’ll feel confident. If you have to deliver 5 points about a topic, prepare 10 points. This way there will be no danger of forgetting something. The key to speaking well in public is know more than your audience (or pretending to know more than your audience).

Move around if possible

If there is no need to strictly stand behind the podium then move around in a relaxed manner. Moving around relaxes your mind and body and you are not constantly worried about 200-300 people perpetually looking at you. They’ll be slightly distracted by your movements and subconsciously it’ll give you more space to think and talk.

Talk in a conversational tone

Remember it’s the message and not the language the matters. People are not gathered to see how difficult and jargon-filled expressions you can throw around, they are gathered to listen to your opinion, your wisdom, what you have to say. Trying to sound pompous only makes you sound silly. Use the words you are comfortable with, words that you use in your day to day life.

Make it an enjoyable experience

Crack a joke, try to be humorous and use a funny anecdote people can relate to. Even if you expect some really serious people sitting amongst the audience, don’t worry. Although you should strictly avoid remark that may end up offending some people.

Look them in the eyes

It shows confident if you look people in the eyes. It conveys that whatever you are saying, you are saying it with conviction.

Address some people personally

If you know some people sitting in the audience address to them directly (avoid personal remarks). It establishes a rapport and sets a friendly tone. People know that not everybody sitting there is about to scrutinize you. Even people with a hostile attitude will get a message that you’ve got well-wishers in the audience.

It’s OK to make mistakes

In the end, the skies are not going to fall if you make some mistakes. There’s a reason why you are standing there delivering a speech and the rest are sitting in the darkness, with the spot line on you. It’s the brave one who ventures out and bears the brunt of the elements and myriad circumstances.

You can speak well in public if you can really empathize with the audience and shunning the thought that they are there only to humiliate you at the drop of a hat.

When you become a better listener you remember more and learn faster because your mind is not distracting. Your better learning skills come handy in school, college, board meetings and even during casual conversations. Men are often blamed for not remembering small things their girlfriends, wives, mothers or sisters tell them simply because they rarely learn the art of listening.

You can become a better listener by consciously making an effort. Nobody can force you to pay attention (we’re not talking in terms of somebody pointing a gun at your head and you thinking about whether the girl whom you met just a while ago had silicon implants or…) and it’s you has to decide. If you want to become a better listener, you need to recognize things that stop you from being a better listener:

• You might be constantly distracted.
• You might have been interrupted while you were doing something really intense
• The subject is boring you to death (or putting you to sleep, to be more realistic)
• The appearance of the person is more interesting than his or her talk
• There is a lot going in your head
• You are feeling terribly sick and might collapse if immediate medical help is not provided

And there can be thousands of other things.

In order to become a better listener, prepare to be one first of all. Decide that when you are going to engage in a conversation, or when you are going to listen to somebody talking, you are going to really listen. You are going to avoid everything that make you less than a better listener. Here are a few things you can try:

Become interested in the subject in order to become a better listener

Without an active interest it’s not possible to listen to somebody attentively. Think it this way, now that you are already there, why not make the most of it? If you cannot avoid sitting in front of somebody and if you cannot even stop that person from talking, why not take an active interest in what that person has to say? In case you already know what’s going to be the topic of discussion, do some research and acquaint yourself with the topic. Once you are interested, you’ll automatically listen better.

Get rid of distracting habits

Are you constantly shuffling papers or scratching yourself or changing posture or looking around here and there while the other person is talking? Stop doing that. It not only turns you into a bad listener it may also distract and offend the person talking to you. Feel relaxed. Take a deep breath and be still. The world is not falling apart.

Don’t interrupt midway

Some people have this nagging habit of starting their own binge while the other person is still talking. This shows you’re too obsessed about what you have to say and you are in such a hurry that you cannot even wait for the other person to complete his or her sentence.

Read more on Stepcase Lifehack.

An elevator speech is a business pitch that you can literally deliver in an elevator. Wondering why you’d need to deliver a speech in an elevator? It’s actually just a metaphor.

In an elevator you bump into many people for a few seconds. Within those few seconds (30-120 seconds) if somebody asks you what you do or what business you represent, you should be able to deliver all the crucial information in that short time. Your pitch should be informative, persuasive and at the same time short.

You can use your elevator speech or pitch anywhere, not just in an elevator and it is a vital ingredient of every branding, business and marketing communications and public relations program. You can use it in an interview, while meeting prospective clients and investors and even while creating your online dating profiles. It’s like, you need convincingly sell your proposition in just a few, very clearly defined sentences.

Why you need to prepare an elevator speech or pitch

You may think why you need to “prepare” it when you already know what you do? Getting new clients and customers is very critical to your business, right? You need to make an impact and when you need to make an impact you cannot just take chances. You prepare for job interviews for the same reason — you never know what questions the interviewer is going to ask. When you prepare an elevator pitch you won’t by mistake leave critical bits of information that have the ability to make or break deals. You won’t be caught off-guard. If you prepare the speech there is a great chance you’ll try to learn it by heart and practice it a few times

Normally when somebody asks you what you do you may normally say, “I’m a social media marketing expert” and beyond that you may get stuck although you have tons of things to say. If you have an elevator pitch ready you may say something like:

“I’m a social media marketing expert primarily helping mid-sized and large businesses establish a vibrant presence on websites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube so that they can directly interact with their customers and clients and streamline their products and services accordingly. I help them build communities around their brands so that when they need to communicate or get feedback there is a responsive audience ready for them.”

Now the person has a clear idea of what you can deliver to a business.

How to prepare an elevator pitch

• Clearly define what value you deliver. This is very important. Have you a clear idea of exactly what’s the biggest advantage of working with you? Exactly what do you deliver to your customers and clients and what benefit do they derive from it. And why should they work with you and not somebody else? What is the problem that you actually solve. What would motivate that person to do business with you?
• Clearly define your target audience. For an elevator it might not be possible because you may bump into all sorts of people, but when you are creating your elevator pitch keep a particular profile in your mind. If that’s not possible, then prepare multiple pitches for different target audience profiles (and don’t mix up!).
• Get rid of the unnecessary. Since you need to pack all the relevant information in as few sentences as possible, get rid of things that are not very critical. If you are a content writer, for instance, don’t start on what procedure you follow to create content that performs, just let the person know what effect it has on his or her business and how you maintain the quality.
• Keep it simple but passionate. Prepare your elevator pitch in an elegant but simple language. Don’t use unnecessary jargon and complex expressions as these may distract or intimidate the person you are talking to. At the same time, keep it passionate. You should be excited about what you can deliver because then this passion and excitement may also rub onto your prospective customer or client.

Image Source: WikiMedia

You need to make a good conversation whether you want to talk to a stranger, or your office colleague, or your classmate, or a loved one, if you really want to show you care for that person. The way you converse with people around you shows what you think of them.

Making a good conversation is an art that can be acquired and mastered with practice and persistence. Actually, all you need is, show interest. Remember how you watch your favorite movie or a football match or a hot chic? The subject has got your unmitigated attention. This is how you show interest in a conversation.

Of course a conversation must hold something of interest for you, because you shouldn’t — it shows through — pretend that you are interested in a conversation.

But then again sometimes you need to make good conversation even if you’re not particularly interested in the talk or the person…for instance, the abstract art collection of your boss or that client with a lucrative business proposal. On such instances, this is

How you can make a good conversation

• Be prepared if you can. If you know before hand what’s going to be the topic of conversation you can prepare yourself. This will make it more interesting for you and you will be able to voice your opinion too. It’s very easy these days to look up information on the Internet on almost every topic under the sun. This will also convey to the person that he or she is talking to the right person and not just someone pretending to make a good conversation.
• Adopt a relaxed attitude. Most people goof up while trying to make a good conversation by trying to act too smart or knowledgeable. It shows through your body language, facial expressions and the kind of opinions and reactions you articulate. Instead, just relax and take genuine interest in the topic and if you knowledge of the topic is limited, let it know to the other person without feeling awkward — nobody expects you to know everything. You are not there to prove how smart you are, you are there just to make a good conversation.
• Keep distractions to the minimum. Avoid looking over the shoulder of the person you are having conversation with, or checking your phone messages, or fidgeting. This shows you are interested in everything but the ongoing talk. If you are uncomfortable sitting in a particular position, let it be known and the change the position, or change the place if possible.
• Conduct introductions if need be. If there are multiple participants and if they don’t know each other then you should introduce everybody. Keep jokes and puns to the minimum if you don’t know the informally.
• Control your emotions. Conversations can adapt many hues and you should be in command of your emotions. Don’t start a cursing binge or yelling at people around you just because you don’t agree with them. In order to hold a good conversation you must understand that every body’s opinion is to be respected, or at least, to be given a patient hearing.
• Don’t interrupt. How do you feel when you are cut short just when you are going to say the most important thing of the day? Let the other person complete his or her sentence before jumping forward with your take, otherwise it soon becomes a shouting match.

While trying to make a good conversation keep in mind it’s not a one-up-man-ship affair. Every conversation is just another way of having a good time. Lower your guards and just have a relaxing time without worrying about what the other person thinks of you.

Image Source: ATTENSCION

If you practice enough it’s actually very easy to know if someone is lying by closely observing the body language. It’s easier to know if a kid is lying because he may put his hand over his mouth while lying or twist the body parts in an awkward manners, but adults have much better control over their bodies and expressions and hence can lie without giving physical signs.

Yet, they unconsciously express body language that can tell you that they are lying. This technique is often used by investigators and psychiatrists, and even teachers and parents use them sometimes. Here are a few body language signs to look for if you think a person is lying:

• Unnatural physical movements. If you know a person who is lying, this is very easy. The person will make unnatural body movements like twitching, fidgeting, sitting in an awkward position, moving arms and legs differently, avoiding direct eye contact and having a different tone of speaking. You need to be more observant.
• Touching or scratching nose. Many people touch or scratch their nose when they are lying. This is an instinctive act of hiding one’s facial expression. Since they can’t literally hid the face, the hand goes up, and they end up scratching their nose.
• Facial and physical muscles grow tighter. Lying takes lots of effort because the person really needs to concentrate; you quickly need to make up facts or recall things you have made up a while ago. The person in fact grows so tight that he/she seems to take up less physical space than normal.
• Crossed arms and legs. These are defensive postures. A person who is lying often crosses his legs or arms to prepare for the defense.
• Leaning forward when talking. It means two things actually: the person is intimate and confident, or he/she is lying. When lying, you need to focus all your energies and control your reflexes that may give you away. That’s why the body contracts and you lean forward.
• Scratching neck. This is common body language sign when a person is lying and you must have also seen goons in movies rubbing their necks while lying.
• Excessive sweating. Since lying is a high-tension activity and since a person often lies when much is at stake (according to that particular circumstance) he/she may sweat excessively while lying.
• Excessive swallowing. The effort of lying also causes you to feel dehydrated so your throat dries up. Consequently, you swallow your saliva again and again to keep your throat from drying.

These are some basic body language signs that you can read in order to know if a person is lying to you. Know some more signs? Please share them in the comments section.

Do you know you can use Google Apps to create and manage your business email account, for free, and on top of that you also get to use the friendly Gmail interface. Yes, you no longer have to get stuck to a crappy web mail interface. When you use Google Apps to manage your business email and use the familiar Gmail interface you can

• Access your email from anywhere provided you have the net access.
• Use Gmail’s advanced search features with your business email too.
• Use the threaded conversations feature to track email interaction.
• Stop worrying about taking backups each time you need to change your computer or format your hard disk.
• Create 50 email accounts under your own domain for free.

In case you are wondering using the Gmail interface means you’ll have an email that looks like “yourname@gmail.com” that’s not the case. You’ll have a professional email like “yourname@yourdomain.com”, and no, you don’t even have to host your website with Google in order to use their email service.

All you need to have is a Google Apps account. You can create an account by heading to http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new. You’ll need to be the admin in order to create a successful account for your domain name, and you’ll need FTP and control panel access to your web hosting account.

Please note before proceeding: your emails may stop coming during the transition period because it takes some time to propagate the changes throughout the Internet. Also, if you end up messing up with your email account (it shouldn’t happen though) the author of this article is not responsible.

After entering your domain name you get a form where you can enter all the related information. Carefully fill in the details in the form, and to begin, you can just fill in the boxes that are required. When you submit this form you get a form where you create your admin username and password. Create them and note them down somewhere.

The proceeding page is important. This is where you actually verify (actually this should ideally by the first screen, but anyway) that you actually own the domain. The less geeky way is to choose the first option. It asks you to create an HTML file of a specific name, copy/paste a string in it, save it, and upload it into your web hosting root folder.

Once done, you click “I’ve completed the steps above” and you’re done with setting up your Google Apps account. But it’s not over yet. Email in normal circumstances is handled by your web host.

In order to use Google Apps for your business email you’ll need to log into your web hosting control panel. Then you go to the Mail section. There are some web hosts that automatically create the needed MX records so that you just have to select Gmail as your mailing interface. But there are very few of them.

Wondering from where did the phrase MX records pop up? MX records, in simple words, handle email associated with your domain. There can be multiple MX records associated with a particular domain name with different priorities (something like, use MX record A as top priority, if A is not available, then use B, and so on). So in your Mail section, you’ll need to create MX records that specify to your web host that you’re going to use Google Apps for your email instead of its own email servers.

In the mail management section of your web hosting control panel you’ll see an icon to the tune of “MX Entries” or something like that. Go there. If you are hosting multiple domains then you’ll need to select the domain that you are using with your Google Apps account. If there are already some MX records you can either delete them or lower their priority. The highest priority is 1, then after that, 2, and so on.

For email routing, you can select Automatically detect configuration.

There is a section that says “Add new record” where you can add the priority and the destination. One of our domains have the following MX Records setup configuration:

1 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
5 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
10 ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM

(priority 1, 5 and 10) and it works like a charm.

Here is what Google suggests:

Once you have saved these records, you can check whether they’re working or not buy heading to http://google.com/a/yourdomain.com and logging in using your login information. If it doesn’t work, don’t worry, it will once your new information has properly propagated.

Image Source: Za3tOoOr!

Countries like Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia are constantly blocking websites like Blogspot, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and even Google, but if you have the right knowledge you can easily access blocked websites. Now we don’t mean to say that you break the law of the country and get arrested or something; just be careful, and don’t get caught because these autocratic governments can be really dangerous.

On lighter side, you may also need to access blocked websites at school, college or office.

The most prevalent way of accessing blocked websites is using proxy servers. Normally when you surf the web you do it through some designated server provided to you by your ISP. Instead, you can use a proxy server. A proxy server acts as an intermediary between and lets you browse even blocked websites if these websites are cleared by the proxy server.

It’s very easy to use a proxy server. Simply go to its website and type in the URL you want to visit. Here’s a list of some good proxy servers:

http://www.hidemyass.com
http://www.anonymizer.com
http://www.ultrareach.net
http://surfshield.net
http://anonymouse.ws/anonwww.html
http://www.browser-x.com
http://www.spysurfing.com
http://www.xerohour.org/hideme
http://www.proxyz.be
https://www.proxify.us
http://www.proxify.net
http://www.unipeak.com
http://flyproxy.com
http://alienproxy.com
http://proxify.com/
http://www.unfilter.net
http://www.proxymouse.com
http://www.surfonym.com/cgi-bin/nph-proxy
http://www.superproxy.be/browse.pl
http://www.websiteguru.com/mrnewguy
http://www.letsproxy.com
http://www.fsurf.com
http://www.myfreeproxy.com
http://www.gezcem.com/nph-proxy.pl.old
http://mpleger.de
http://indianproxy.com
http://www.letmeby.com
http://Boredatschool.net
http://www.ibypass.org
http://www.ipzap.com/
https://proxify.biz
http://kproxy.com/index.jsp
http://www.attackcensorship.com/attack-censorship.html
http://mrnewguy.com
http://www.proxify.info
http://www.torify.com
http://www.switchproxy.com
http://www.proxifree.com
http://www.secure-tunnel.com/
http://www.nomorelimits.net
http://www.proxify.de
http://www.bywhat.com
http://www.snoopblocker.com
http://www.anonymizer.ru
http://www.proxyking.net/
http://www.perlproxy.com
http://www.proxylord.com
http://tntproxy.com
http://satanproxy.com
http://zombieinvasion.info
http://demonproxy.com
http://www.evilsprouts.co.uk/defilter

Source

All might not be working but many do.

There are other ways too that sometimes you can employ to access blocked websites in your location. Some of them are mentioned below:

• Use Google Cache. This way you don’t have to directly visit the website. Just go to Google, or even Yahoo! Search for that matter, and search for the domain name. Its cached version might appear. The downside is that since it’s the cached version, you won’t be able to access latest content.
• Use a short URL redirection service. There are hordes of URL shortcut services these days, the most famous is tinyurl.com. Go there, enter the URL you want to visit, shorten it, copy it, paste it into the location bar of your browser, and you might be able to go to the blocked website.
• Use IP address instead of the URL. If the website is being blocked by using its URL, something like facebook.com, find out the IP address (go to the command prompt and simply run “ping facebook.com” — without quotes — and you’ll know the IP address) and simply type the IP address into the location bar and press Enter.
• Use Google translate tool as a proxy server.

Have some more tips on how to access blocked websites? Please share them in the comments section.

Google Apps (http://google.com/a) provides some great small business solutions and one of them is the Google Apps POP3 email. With Google Apps email you can have Google manage your personal or business email account instead of your web host. One of its greatest benefits is that you can use the friendly Gmail interface to manage your business emails, but some prefer POP settings so that they can use desktop email clients like Outlook, Thunderbird to manage their emails.

In order to setup or configure your POP3 account settings you first need to log into your Google Apps email account, click Settings and go to the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab and activate the POP downloading feature as shown in the image:

Without activating it here you won’t be able to use your desktop email account to download and send your emails.

Once you have saved the settings, launch your favorite desktop email application and start the process of adding a new email account. Just enter the following information:

• Account name: youremail@yourdomain.com
• Email address: youremail@yourdomain.com
• Password: the Google Apps email password
• Incoming mail (POP3): pop.gmail.com
• Outgoing mail (SMTP): smtp.gmail.com
• Use SSL: yes
• Use Authentication: yes
• POP port: 995
• Port for TLS/STARTTLS: 587
• Port for SSL: 465

This is all you need to setup or configure your POP3 account with Google Apps email account. You may not need all this information, but whenever, wherever you need, this is all you need.

You can find more information on this link.

Google Voice is a great service to make cheap international calls and even if your iPhone came with unlimited free incoming calls and data plans, you can save a lot by using Google Voice with iPhone. With an unlimited data plans you can not only make free local free calls you can also make very cheap international calls.

First of all you need a Google Voice account. There are two catches here. The first is that it’s invite-only, that is, you need to be invited to have a Google Voice account (simply having an iPhone won’t do). The second catch is that Google Voice is available only in the USA.

Anyway, assuming that you are in the USA and you own an iPhone and you don’t have a Google Voice account you can get an account by heading to this link: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/

Once you’re lucky to have an account log into your Google Voice account and select the Phones tab under settings. There, make Google Voice forward all the calls to your iPhone.

Then you can manually add the names and the phone numbers to your Google Voice account or you can import them from friendly and compatible sources. After having done that, through your iPhone log onto http://voice.google.com/m/ and go to the contacts section where you have added all your contacts.

That’s it. Once you click on one of your contacts Google Voice first calls your iPhone and then connects the call to your contact and you can have a long chat without burning a whole into your pocket.

If you buy some credit from Google Voice you can also make cheap international calls from your iPhone.