Most companies need a printing service on a regular basis, whether it is for marketing purposes or for internal communication. Offset printing is the most frequently used printing technology and learning about it is therefore helpful and important.
The users and the printers like offset printing due to its cost effectiveness for printing of large number of prints. That is why for bulk orders any good printing company would recommend you to opt for offset printing.
Offset printing uses oil based ink, which does not mix with water. The offset printing gets its name from the fact that the designs are transferred in an indirect way from the plates to the paper by use of rubber blankets as the agents.
The first step is preparing the images. Earlier the images were prepared by creating film negatives and were then transferred to printing plates made of aluminum. But, a modern printing company would now prepare the plates directly by making use of an image setting system. The subsequent step is to transfer the plate on to a cylinder in the right manner. Water and ink, in that order, is spread on the image plates. The image receives the ink while the rest of the area receives a thin layer of water, which makes sure that the ink does not spill beyond the images.
The image is then taken from the plates to the rubber blanket spun on another cylinder, so that it is reversed. After that, sheets of paper of required dimensions are put together and the rubber blankets transfer the image to the sheets on a third cylinder, where it comes out as the correct side.
The final steps of the printing job involve things such as stapling, pasting or organizing the printed sheets according to the instructions of the client, and any printing company should easily manage these.
Learn more about a printing companythat offers the best printing services. This and other unique content ‘flyers’ articles are available with free reprint rights.
There were times when contemporary office designs were considered just a luxury, but now it has become a requirement that a company has to give a serious consideration to. It is now universally acknowledged that good office design makes employees highly productive and inspires them to stay in the firm for the long term. Besides the office design also exhibits the corporate culture of the firm.
Flexibility, openness and sustainability are the key principles that characterize a modern office, so you have to consider these when constructing a new office. The office system furniture and the office interior design must be picked judiciously in order to successfully attain these critical objectives, and a few considerations in this regard ought to be made.
First of all, it is important to understand the type of work that will be carried out in the office. This consideration and the total floor area of the office will help you decide on what design will fit the office. Designing the layout should also include an estimate of how many employees will be operating in the office currently and in the coming years.
You should include cafeterias and conference rooms as well in your plan within the available space besides essential items like office desks and some pieces of office system furniture. Your office should also have places for recreation with facilities for indoor games so that the staff can have a nice time playing and relaxing after long periods of work. Besides, the office planning must ensure optimum use of available space without making the office too cluttered with furniture.
A theme of minimalism and use of sober and soothing colour choices that would not divert the attention of the employees are important aspects of a perfect office interior design. It should also be well lit, with ample sources of natural light.
Contemporary office system furniture is stylish and more customizable, which contributes towards improving the mood of the staff and creates a favourable impression among the customers. However, ergonomics is a vital factor for choosing office desks and other office furniture, as ill designed furniture leads to health risks for the staff.
You can also present an eco-friendly image of your company by opting for ‘green’ office furniture. It is manufactured from recycled materials and organic fabrics, which will help you lower your firm’s overall carbon footprint. Besides, you can install LED lights and low-energy bulbs to avoid excess energy consumption and thereby help protect the environment.
To design such an office, it is essential that you use the professional services of office interior designers so that together with all the utilitarian and aesthetic aspects, safety related aspects can also be effectively dealt with.
Learn more about the best interior designer providing an entire spectrum of interior design services. Visit the Uber Article Directory to get a totally unique version of this article for reprint.
Because of these downloadable flicks, you will be able to build up that video collection within weeks. Mostly, with the correct web site, you can be able to do it for zero cost! When you are browsing through the movie websites, you ought to make sure they have all of the categories that you want. On the net, you really should be able to come across everything from horror and adventure to romance.
If you are uncertain about joining a website, you can take advantage of a free membership trial from some of the sites. There are also special offers, coupons and many other discounts that you can take benefit of. A free trial period is a excellent way to start out as you can learn how it all works and how useful it can be.
Check out any special offers and take advantage of any coupons from the services you are interested in. If you make a comparison beforehand you will be certain to be getting what you want and the greatest deal for the cash you spend. Most of the best websites have a great assortment of videos from all time periods and all genres. If you enjoy videos you will really enjoy downloading them from the Internet.
When you are ready to start downloading motion pictures to your computer the initial step is to do an online search for movie downloads or online movie rentals. You will likely be aware of some of the big name services. Make a assessment of all of the sites that interest you and see what sort of services they all provide.
Before you start downloading the famous movies that are available it is wise to check out the sites and the services they present very carefully. Make sure that you are attentive of any recurring charges and all charges that may be connected with the service. You do not want any surprises. Check out as many services as you can and do comparisons before you go for the one that you want.
Persons who do use illegal sites present all kinds of justifications. They’ll inform you there just are not many other choices or that the motion picture industry is so huge, they’re certainly not doing any damage. Though there are in reality a lot of other choices presented, and they are, in actual fact, doing harm especially to the people involved in movie production. To realize, It’s crucial to take a peek at how these websites run, both the legal together with the illegal ones.
Many of the download sites have extraordinary offers and coupons that you can benefit from. Also many of them present a free membership trial and that is always a good way to see how you like the service before you actually make a purchase.
It is very important to steer clear of file sharing in nearly all instances, and so you’ll need to change to DVD libraries. You will find a big number of these offered on the world wide web. Usually, you’ll buy a membership fee after which have total access to their choices, where you’ll come across practically everything you require and have the option to download them with their mandatory licenses.
A lot of those online cinema internet sites do not require you to download anything to your personal computer. Why is this? Since they are live streaming and play by way of video players. When online seriously isn’t your foremost preference, precisely why? The thing is that, countless men and women don’t turn to online downloads only as a result of they are concerned with the quality of the movies.
If you are to find cost-free web sites, we know that it may well take some time to find those that offer excellent films, though they can be found. Looking for those web sites are of great benefit. Previous to selecting that web site, be sure there is high quality videos presently there. Assured, many of them could be low quality as they are still appearing in the theaters, however many ought to be nothing less than premium.
These days you can find a first-rate, full-length movie with just the touch of your finger. Learn about bhangra download. Downloading straight to your computer is a great way to watch the best new films.
Brochures play a large role in the packaging of a business. They lend legitimacy to a business by introducing & explaining its products or services, company line and other specific selling points in a compelling manner. Since, they portray an important role as an advertising tool it is important that they are designed professionally and printed in good quality. This article will give you some key hints on brochure printing and design.
The brochure should be designed to look professional, eye-catching and educative at the same time. Along with smart use of colours, an appropriate composition of text and images is also extremely important in brochure design. The basic elements of design such as borders, fonts, and pictures should work well together to bring the desired effect. In addition to being coherent and easy to follow, the brochure must also be a visual delight and not cluttered.
The brochure printing related considerations should also be taken care of at the time of designing. It is always advisable to take a test print to see what the final product will look like before sending the design for large scale brochure printing.
The important aspect of brochure printing budget should not be ignored at the time of brochure designing. It’s a good idea to opt for gray scale printing if your budget is limited, as it will turn out to be cheaper than coloured printing. If you have a bigger budget and are looking for attractive, multicoloured brochures, then you should remember that such brochures go well on thick, shiny papers. If the brochure needs to be printed on both sides of the paper, then the paper chosen for such a product must be strong enough for fine quality printing.
Looking for rebates from the printer is a good approach if brochure printing is being done on a large scale. However, never sacrifice quality, as you do not want to create a negative impression of your company on potential customers.
Find out more about a printing companythat offers the best printing services. You are welcome to reprint this article - but get your own unique content version here.
Article Marketing is one of these easiest and cheapest way of getting traffic to your site. Your articles promote your sites by providing back links to them and therefore increasing their page rank. But first you must catch your audience’s attention
Title is key!! If your title doesn’t catch the reader’s attention, you won’t have any readers. Before you commit to a title, try to make sure it is unique for tracking purposes by first searching for it in the search engines.
Creating an expert author is another important element. It’s like branding the author. People are going to trust an author who writes for twenty different subject. They are more likely to follow someone who “specializes” in the topic they are interested in.
Do you really want to use your own name? Many people do…and many people don’t. It’s really a matter of personal preference.
Now let’s get to the content. There has been a lot of talk about duplicate content. There are a few ways to get ahead of this. One way is to write the different articles yourself and manually submit, which could take some time. On the hand there are some tools that you can use to minimize this.
The author box is also an extremely useful area to use to your advantage. You will get the best results if you place two links in your author’s box, one to your homepage, and the other to the page you wish the readers to go to.
For your link text, use words that relate to your site. Try to make your links keyword rich and avoid using terms like “click here.” This is important when it comes to search engines.
More back links will increase your page rank. Be sure to submit plenty of articles. Try to aim at one article per day, or 3-5 per week is a good start.
To learn more on how to get traffic, visit http://livelifeathome.biz/ This and other unique content ‘articles marketing’ articles are available with free reprint rights.
While individual gift-giving to near and dear ones is a long-standing practice, few people are aware of the culture of giving corporate gifts. Corporate gifts are quite different from gifts to near and dear ones as they are a token of appreciation given to employees or customers.
Corporate gifts are usually valuable products, and they are often given away without any symbol of the organization on the gift, as they are not for promotional purposes. On the other hand, various gift items are often given away for promotional purposes, such as stationery objects, storage devices, or books. In such cases, the items are usually marked with the company’s logo before they are distributed to workers or potential customers.
While giving a corporate gift, it is critical to keep in consideration the interests of the person to whom the gift is being presented, and to tailor it accordingly. Corporate gifting should always be selected with the receiver in mind. There is no point giving a gift - especially a corporate gift - to someone who will not treasure what we have given. We should be looking to create a ‘WOW’ wherever possible.
In order to strengthen and promote a good relationship with a customer or an employee of the organization, it is essential to remember that the perceived value of the corporate gift has a big role of play. Before giving a corporate gift, you should enquire with your legal department about any restrictions that may have been enforced by law on this act.
It is advisable to prepare for corporate gift-giving in advance by allocating a budget, estimating the number of gifts to procure, and looking for volume discounts with retailers. The planning part is more significant with respect to employee gifts, even more so if your company is a mid-sized or large entity. Ensure that you purchase the right quantity so that every employee whom you wish to express gratitude towards by means of a corporate gift is covered.
To conclude, giving corporate gifts is a good business practice, which helps you develop a closer and healthier relationship with both your employees and your clients. However, always make sure that it is allowed by law, and of course, by your finances.
Discover how Corporate Gifts can enhance your marketing today. Visit us to have some important Corporate Giftideas.
A wedding is the kind of occasion that people want to display pictures of for years to come. Your clients - the bride and groom to be - will want the best and will want the quality guaranteed. You can make a lot of money if you decide to be a wedding photographer. As well as the money though there is the risk that you must manage well.
A disclaimer should be included in a well written up first time contract. A disclaimer is something that can prevent you from being sued later on. There are a few reason you should not be held accountable for and they are failure of equipment, miss placed pictures after they were sent away, and photos that do not develop properly. You do not want to be sued for breaching your contract.
The hourly rate and how many pictures are to be taken should also be included in the contract. Something else you should include would be the fees for developing and the fee of the album. Make sure you discuss with your clients what their requirements are. They might want a certain person or family they would like pictures of since they don’t get to see them often, so that should be discussed as well if it is an issue.
Make a list of all the pictures that your client’s requested. Generally your clients will want pictures of the pre-ceremony, wedding ceremony, post-ceremony and of course the reception. Who will be in certain photographs should be discussed with the client as well. Pay attention to what your clients are saying because each one will be different.
It is smart to always ask for a booking fee. Without this you could be caught out if something goes wrong. If they have paid nothing then they are less likely to try to solve any problems that may occur. At least 50% deposit should be paid prior to the wedding. So you don’t end up bothering the bride and groom during the reception, arrangements should be made for when the remainder will be paid. It would look very unprofessional if you did.
If you are developing your client’s pictures yourself, Photoshop is an excellent photo editing program. You can enhance the photos with all sorts of techniques such as flaw removal, montage, changing the color to black and which or sepia, as well as other unique features.
Always look to see how you can add more value than what you said you would give. A special surprise will keep everyone talking and generating more business for you in the future. Think different. Imagine for example if you uploaded all their pictures onto a password protected part of your website so that they and their friends can login and view.
In the end doing wedding photography can be lucrative and fun as long as you build on your people skills.
Discover more about Bridal Photography and Wedding Photography Singapore. You are welcome to reprint this article - but get your own unique content version here.
Definitions of some English words can change quite rapidly these days. In the recent past the meaning of words was often very fixed. Today the meaning can change in the blink of an eye. With faster and newer ways to exchange ideas such as Twitter and with wider and more culturally, socially and educationally dissimilar groups connecting together - words are put back on the anvil of evolution and changed into something new and more reflective of current life.
There is a growing global movement where consumers are asking businesses to take care of the things that they care about. The request is mainly tacit and despite it being an ironic request it non-the-less signals that we are in a time of change. Consumers these days want their ‘goodies’ but they don’t want the environment to be destroyed in the creation of their ‘goodies’. They want cheap products but they do not want workers to suffer to create those cheap products.
There does not seem to be an answer to this conundrum and yet one does exist. It exists in the recoining or reforging of a single word. This word is a simple one - GET. Today, new movements of people who want to get but give at the same time are reforging it. It is being transformed into the word GIVE.
Every day I receive a notice from Google Alerts for two words - B1G1 and BOGO. It tells me all the new places that these words are being used on the Internet. I can now see that the new meaning of these words is coming alive ‘poco a poco’ [Italian: poco, little + a, by + poco, little].
B1G1 and BOGO are acronyms for Buy One GET One free. You buy one and they give you an extra one for the same price.
If you look on Wikipedia you will find these definitions for BOGO (there isn’t a definition yet for B1G1) -
* An acronym in the retail industry that stands for Buy One Get One. For example, you could say “Buy 1 DVD, Get 1 FREE!
* An acronym in slang British that stands for Britons Of Greek Origin or Greek Britons.
* Bogo, Cebu, a city in central Philippines.
* Norway, a village in Norway.
* An alternate name for the Bilen ethnic group of Ethiopia or their language, Blin.
* The mascot of the ITESM CEM.
* BogoMips, an unscientific measurement of CPU speed
* BogoMips, an unscientific measurement of CPU speed
BOGO Lights - torches that give
There’s an entrepreneurial business in the USA called SunLight Solar which was founded by Mark Bent. They’ve created a special torch that’s not only an amazing and sturdy solar-powered light; his company also gives a free torch to that in need in developing countries every time one is sold. If you look up their website you will learn more about their “BOGO light”.
BOGOlight.com. - “The BoGo - our Buy one/Give one - program has successfully provided lights to many, many thousands of people in the developing world, changing lives because of your purchase and participation.”
Mark Bent turned the acronym upside down when he started to use the word as part of his product name. For him now and the thousands who buy his lights, BOGO now means Buy One GIVE One. Each person gets to give a light every time they buy one for themselves. So now with each sale, people who do not have the luxury of electricity can harness the power of the sun to support their lives.
There are many other well known and less well know businesses now doing Buy One Give One giving or transactional giving as it is becoming known. Some of the famous ones are One-Laptop-Per-Child (OLPC) and TOM’S Shoes. Some of the less well-known ones (in the USA at least) are based in New Zealand, Australia and the UK - Earthstar Publishing, Maple Muesli, Blinds Couture, Figure 8 Body Chains, Sunsplash Homes, Honestly Women magazine and Thavibu Gallery based in Thailand are just a handful of special businesses that are heading the Buy One Give One movement.
Many Buy One Give One businesses are coming together under the single brand banner of Buy1GIVE1; a Singaporean based social enterprise which is becoming the home of transaction based giving. Any business can now choose to be part of Buy One Give One giving with ease. It’s like a CSR ‘plug-in’ to allow a business to start giving from each and every sale today - starting from just one cent. It is now not even a matter of giving an equivalent product to someone else. Instead it is about giving to a charity project that is in resonance with a company’s business activity. For example a magazine publisher cannot support the planting of a tree every time they sell a subscription, a restaurant can feed a child for each meal sold, a TV store can gift a cataract blind person with the gift of sight (Get Vision-Give Vision), and a builder or property developer can build a budget home for those in need who have lost their homes in a disaster (Buy1BUILD1) - the list is only limited by imagination.
The stats now add up saying consumers do care. The 2008 Goodpurpose global study of consumer attitudes revealed that nearly a huge 68% of consumers would remain dedicated to a brand during an economic slump if it supported a charity cause. This study also highlighted some other key points as well such as:
* Half (52%) of consumers globally are more likely to recommend a brand to others when it supports a good charity cause over one that does not.
* 54% would sing the praises of a brand to promote their products if there was a good cause behind it.
* Globally consumers are voicing a distinct desire for marketers to associate their brands to social causes. Forty-two percent say that if two products or services are of a similar quality and price, commitment to a cause trumps factors like innovation, design and brand loyalty when selecting one brand over another.
Transforming Getting into Giving
In the minds of consumers, Buy One GIVE One is expected to replace Buy One GET One as the new global giving movement led by Buy1GIVE1 spreads. Certainly with the massive sales results and consumer demand shown for companies like BOGOlights, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and TOMS Shoes, this tide will continue to spread and grow.
I did a recent Google search to find the 25 top key words associated with the keyword BOGO. The results were very interesting in that none of them currently contained the word Give. I have displayed the results below. It will be interested to repeat this test in twelve months time and see what changes. Consumers are starting to drive major change and despite still wanting to receive free gifts (as in traditional B1G1/BOGO), they equally want to help others and the environment. This sentiment is validated by the 2008 Goodpurpose global study.
Here are the search results:
Free, photography, blogging, discount, networking, African, boots, groups, music, dallas, togo themes, wallpapers, buy, applications, skins, values, coupon, gift, sharing, shopping, pics, join, prose
Transactional or transaction-based giving
Unlike normal charitable giving Buy One Give One giving is transactional. What is meant by that is: every time you buy something you give something. In the case of SunNight Solar they give a physical light for every light sold. In most cases, businesses that become part of this special form of transaction-based giving, give in a different way. At Buy1GIVE1, giving can start from just USD 1c contribution per sale. At this amount no business in the world can say they cannot give and 100% contributed goes to the cause.
The amount contributed from each sale is not the point of focus with Buy1GIVE1 transaction based giving. The focus is instead on the story and sharing the simple joy of giving. In the end, if you think that 1c is not a lot to contribute and is unlikely to make much of a difference think again and consider the following idea.
From its origins in Ethiopia, where the main coffee production is still from wild coffee tree forests, coffee consumption has spread throughout the world. Today Brazil is still by far the largest producer producing an average output of 28% of the world’s total coffee. Brazil produced enough coffee in 2006 to make 216 billion four hundred million - 216 400 000 000 - espresso coffees. If we calculate that across global production then we get a daily global consumption of around 2,117,416,830 cups of coffee. The figures are hard to find but let’s guess that 40% of the world’s coffee is sold in coffee shops then we would get that 846,966,732 cups are sold commercially each day globally. This would equate to about’5,485,714 cups in the USA alone seeing they purchase around 21.9% of the world’s coffee beans.
Imagine now that for every cup of coffee sold a child in a developing region like Africa received drinking water from its own well and it costing only one US cent per person per day. Now any coffee shop could afford to contribute this amount from the sale of a single cup of coffee because it has a high profit margin sale. Imagine the different that this alone would make in the world.
Transactional giving is the story of the thousand-mile journey starting with that first single step. Digging a well costs a few thousand dollars so it’s a big barrier for communities in developing nations. However if you break the cost down it only takes the sale of a cup of coffee to give clean water to a single person for a day1. This is the power of transactional giving. It is like the compound interest of giving - a little turns into a lot very quickly.
Of course any company can do transaction-based giving with any of its products or services and do it on their own as some are like TESCO in the UK giving school uniforms to kids in Africa in partnership with Save the Children. And yet if companies choose to join together under a commonly recognised banner/brand they can have a powerful effect. The ripple that a single company creates is added to that of another and the ripple grows into a tidal wave of giving. This is the power of giving and doing things together.
Everyone wins with Buy-One-Give-One transaction-based giving. The consumer wins - at no extra cost to themselves they’ve made a difference to the lives of others through their purchasing choices. The business also wins in so many tangible and intangible ways. And of course the charity partner wins because they are now able to receive small amounts from numerous sources aggregated and paid in a lump sum on a regular basis allowing them to focus on what they do rather than raising funds.
A new start - a new world - new thinking
If you check Wikipedia today you should find that a new definition has been added for BOGO. It is time for a change. A change from focusing on GETTING to focusing on GIVING. The subtlety in the words that we use so often point to a deeper underlying meaning. I added this small addition to Wikipedia, “… an acronym in the marketing industry that stands for Buy One GIVE One.”
Just imagine our world where every time you shopped and bought something you gave something - automatically and seamlessly. This is the simple joyful magic of transaction based giving.
This is the world I want to be part of.
Just remember - you don’t ‘get’ giving till you get giving.
References:
http://www.coffeepoet.com/2007/09/
http://www.goodpurposecommunity.com/
http://www.scfnw.org.uk/site/article183.html
http://www.tesco.com/greenerliving/what_we_are_doing/ethical_clothing.page
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee
http://www.goodpurposecommunity.com/
http://www.coffeepoet.com/2007/09/
Footnotes: 1 Calculated by taking the average cost to dig a well, dividing it by its average expected life without major maintenance divided by the number of people in the community benefiting from the well on a daily basis.
Find out more about how Buy1GIVE1 (BOGO) can transform your business using Cause Marketing. Don’t reprint this exact article. Instead, reprint a free unique content version of this same article.
A new experiment is completely changing lives in the rural areas of India by bringing luminosity where there used to be darkness.
An article was published in The New York Times named, “Husk Power for India”. Current, which is routinely available in the lives of most in industrialized nations, is an unimaginable luxury in out-of-the-way corners of emerging countries. What was once fodder for cattle is now used to produce current - rice husks.
Being brought up in the pastoral Bihar State, Manoj Sinha knew what it was like to be without light at night. Being an engineer with Intel Corporation he had all the competence to bring a lifelong idea to fruition. He led the creation of his power generation equipment from rice husks and other wastes from farms and now he sells power to rural areas across India.
Sinha is what could be called a social industrialist because he feels entrepreneurship is a way out for important problems of the society. “Business leaders must realise that the world’s poor need investments more than handouts,” he says, adding, “these are customers, not victims.”
The article motivated me to think about offering things in a different way that made me ask myself, “what is the most perfect form of giving?” Is it edification, commerce or disaster aid? There are so many ways to create a difference. One way of giving can seem more productive or practical than other ways depending on the way it is given expression, viewed or put into practice.
I then came to delineate there were eight segments to giving as a way to see this. So, let me chart out the eight differences; which in effect are often ’stages’ of giving as well.
Phase one: Exigency - salvaging and helping others who are suffering due to natural calamities, epidemic diseases or other insurmountable problems.
Stage two: Relief - providing relief from long-standing hunger, poverty, diseases, handicaps or discrimination which otherwise would continue or worsened because of the lack of information, education or resources.
Stage three: Healing and protection - mentally, physically and emotionally. Many people carry traumas that may be invisible but severely limiting their lives. Giving the healing to release the deep-rooted pain creates more opportunities for them while giving suitable protection gives them a sense of security.
Stage four: Training - giving better training, knowledge and skill instruction to create empowered and practical solutions to resource creation while encouraging people to identify their singular talent to survive.
Stage five: Creative investment - lending a hand, money or resources to those who have great potential to make a difference. This gets leveraged many times as the resources increase and passed on to many others who again make more out of the opportunities given.
Stage six: Tenability - working together with the people in the local surroundings, creating tenable groups - ambiance-wise and reciprocally.
Stage seven: Empowerment - empowering and inspiring the people to unleash their true potential and motivation to make a difference. In this group of giving, the aim of giving changes from ‘giving to the people who are in need’ to ‘giving people opportunity to give to others’ and to the community.
Stage eight: Cherishing - just doing whatever we like to do to tend and care for others. No approach or expected upshot exists in this stage of offering. ‘Giving’ does not even exist here in the physical sense of the word, as there is no sense of owning or decision or craving to modify things. This is where we do not even have to consider anything, we give out of a sense of our own fulfilling sensations.
What we also perceive is that at each one of these eight stages of giving there are distinctive things that the donor gets back.
One: Sense of relationship
Two: Sense of contentment
Three: Relief from pain (our own)
Four: Gratitude for our own knowledge, skills and circumstances
Five: Long-term sense of contribution and satisfaction for our own life
Six: Improved atmosphere for our own life and for the lives of all those we value and cherish
Seven: Soul rewarding stimulation and commitment to our own purpose
Eight: Love
Giving has many levels and experiences depending on the giver and the receiver. And the ’stages’ do not describe which one is more important than the other. All are necessary.
I was gifted with an experience early in 2008 while travelling with a group of dedicated entrepreneurs through India to see how we could be more effective in our giving. I was blessed to have one particular experience that made me think about what ‘effective giving’ really meant.
We were in a little town one day. Four of us had just booked a taxi to take us to another town nearby. We negotiated with the driver carefully as our hotel staff had warned us in advance about the rip-off we might experience seeing we were not local.
We stopped in front of the local train station for a short break on the way. While the others disappeared off to use the bathroom, I started a conversation with our taxi driver standing next to the taxi. With very limited English and a full smile exposing his blackened front teeth, he told me that he had a house on the outskirts of the town and he had a young wife and two children who went to the local school - I started to feel connected to him.
I appreciated the fact of his having such a wonderful family and told him that I too had two little ones of almost the same ages as his. When the others were back the driver suddenly invited us to come to his house and have lunch. I took it only as a formality that was customary courtesy. But after taking us to the town center and leaving us there, he told us that he would wait for us until all our wandering in the town was over. And he really did. I was actually quite astonished to see him still remaining glued to the side of the road next to his taxi more than one hour later. We got into the taxi and he drove fast up the road to where he had his family.
When we arrived we were actually quite shocked to see how he was living. It was almost like the same condition (if not worse) to the lifestyle of people living in slums we had visited previously. From the nice new taxi he was driving, who could have imagined
As the car turned into the narrow unsealed road between the hut-like houses that were constructed with crudely made concrete blocks and painted mud walls, we felt contrite about having agreed to his invitation. For a brief moment I felt mortified. “How could I have exploited the generosity of a man who didn’t seem to have anything and I didn’t even get any edible stuff or presents for his family”, I thought.
As we went inside his house, we saw a vessel and a small stove on the floor. His timid young wife raised her head in surprise and withdrew into the small store room (a cupboard size) adjacent to it. As I took in the scene, I saw the neighbours residing next door giving her a few cups across the broken down concrete fence. The young couple did not even have sufficient teacups in their house. There was a single room fitted with one single bed and a pretty old galvanised box near it.
The cab driver swiftly took out three hand-woven rugs from the galvanised box and placed it neatly on the small space of the mud floor keeping one on the bed.
Steaming cups of tea and hot snacks arrived soon. Both his kids as well as kids from the neighbouring houses came to see us and remained at the doorway. The six of us could just squeeze into the tiny room. I was curious to know where his children were sleeping. I thought maybe they had another space somewhere. To my astonishment, he just pointed at the chest and said with his happy smile that it was their bed.
He happily told us that he was an amateur dancer in the town and showed us some plaques on the sill above the bed. Enthusiastic to show us his dancing proficiency, he ran outside all at once. From somewhere music came flowing into the tiny room. He had no apparatus for music within the house, it was coming from outside. Surprised, I looked around to see him reversing his vehicle towards the back of his house keeping the doors open with the radio of the car blaring forth!
With his dancing and the cups of tea his wife produced, time moved quickly and it was soon time to thank them for their wonderful hospitality and proceed on our way. As we got up to leave and give our thanks to him and his wife, he took the best of the rugs he had, rolled it and gave it to us. It was practically one of the handfuls of good things he had. It was difficult to comprehend the enormity of the gesture.
We all courteously begged off his gift and moved out waving goodbye to all the people waving back at us. We got real baffled about the whole affair. Should we have paid them something as they surely had only too little money? Should we have consented to take the cherished gift he made us?
As I was thinking about this life-changing experience a few days later, I thought about the refusal of his gift. He looked disappointed that we didn’t take the gift. It wasn’t just about saying no to the gift that stuck in my mind.
I realised that the feeling of restlessness I felt was in reality the result of seeing him as less privileged. I was feeling that I couldn’t probably receive anything from someone who owned too little.
But did he really have so little? Maybe he had more - a lot more.
Maybe the perfect gift we could have given him then was to accept his gift in total surrender and gratefulness.
All actions of gifting and getting are essential for us to fill our world with plenty and contentment equally for both giver and getter. We can begin doing this instead of assessing and defending one over the other. The perfect act of gifting and getting needs no further clarification.
Manoj Sinha’s words echo in my mind once again, “these are customers, not victims.” I can imagine the smiling faces of the villagers who are now proud to have electricity in their villages and the children who now can read books and learn in their homes at night.
Discover more about how Buy1GIVE1 (BOGO) can transform your business using Cause Marketing. This and other unique content ‘religion’ articles are available with free reprint rights.
The internet is one of the best mediums you can use to advertise your business. As an attorney starting out a practice or already doing business then this can work as a suitable medium. You can make an attorney video for clients who look for legal solutions online. It is a good platform as a large number of people across the country have access to it at all times. This makes it possible for you to reach a bigger audience quite effectively which is important in growing your clientele folder.
If you are going to grow your business using an attorney video, follow these methods. Providing effective communication to your customers. The idea is to build the costumers confidence so that they can rely on your practice for effective representation. Assure them that you are the expert in what they need. Give relevant details of your practice in the attorney video.
For your video marketing to be more effective, let your clients know that you can be reached at anytime. Making the client feel assured is the key to making them make a decision. Most decisions are made in an emotional way. Come off as approachable and friendly. It is one of the methods you can use to gently make the customer choose your legal services.
Looking professional boosts up the video a lot. Your surrounding used will bring out the environment aspect of the attorney video when shooting. Make sure your presentation is comfortable and relaxed while at the same time informative. The client will surely feel at ease. You can use a bit of legal terms to explain your point in the attorney video presentation. However make it simple so that potential clients have an easy time when understanding your video.
You can also make it a practice to update and review your video marketing presentation regularly. It is advisable to make changes so that your advertising content reflects what is going on in your practice. This makes this form of business campaign more effective. Customers benefit by getting information on some of your services.
One of the benefits of using the internet to advertise is that it is effective as you are assured that people will come across it. Many people turn to the internet to look for all kinds of information. This platform allows you to give useful information to such customers who might be looking for attorney services on the internet.
If you are just starting out as a lawyer or have been practicing for a while then using attorney video to market your firms services can work as a perfect way to put up your client base. Letting more people know about your firm helps you succeed. All you have to do is to get an attorney video marketing service. They help in production of an informative and high quality video.