Carol Bentley

This post is completely off-topic and you will only be interested if you travel (or plan to make a journey) by rail in the UK.

Our rail system has some quirky ways of pricing up train tickets, especially for longer journeys. And if you know how to schedule and book your travel arrangements you can trim, no… slash the price you pay for your journey.

I’ve known for a long time that savings can be made dependent upon the time you travel and I vaguely recall, in the dim and distant past, discovering that splitting your journey can be worthwhile (and sometimes you don’t even have to change trains to do that).

But making a saving of £303 on a long-haul journey from York to Plymouth is just breathtaking. The price dropped from £374 tp £71 - just by knowing how to use the system.

And there are savings to be made on shorter journeys too.

Personally I think it would make more sense for the whole railway ticket pricing system to be overhauled so there are sensibly priced tickets across the board, but I don’t think that is likely to happen soon.

Find Out About Cheaper Rail Rickets

So- if you are planning a rail journey - whether for business or pleasure - you might like to check out this website which describes all the different booking options that could, potentially, save you some cash.

Sorry this is off-topic, but I felt it was something worth sharing.

~ Carol Bentley

The book containing almost 1 year’s worth of blog posts is ready and will be released tomorrow (26th Sep). But, I have a dilemma. . . comes of being too close to it I suppose. . . and I need your help.

Would you please pop over and answer just 3 questions - won’t take more than a few minutes. Thanks.

Here’s where the questions are.

Book questions

I don’t ask for your details so your answers are completely anonymous

Thanks so much for your support, I really appreciate it.

~ Carol Bentley

Question: What is one of the worst things that can happen to a right-handed copywriter?

Answer: Something that stops you using your right arm! And yep - that happened to me this week. I woke up Monday morning with an extremely painful right arm. And, on top of that, the schools have just broken for the summer holidays which means my PA is on her ’summer schedule’ so I couldn’t even get her to do the typing for me!

Am I getting the violins from you yet? I’m expecting loads of sympathy here you know

Anyway after a physio session I can at least use my keyboard for short periods, so I’ll continue the RPT’s (Recession Proof Tips) tomorrow.

~ Carol Bentley

I don’t normally get involved in ‘political discussions’ but sometimes a decision seems too outrageous for words! And I think that is the case where the Red Arrows are concerned. [Info update… see the comments added below this post]

I received an email from a business colleague about the decision the Department of Culture, Media and Sport have made regarding the appearance of the Red Arrows at the 2012 London Olympics. Here’s the email. If you feel as strongly as I do then follow the link to the petition and add your voice.

The world-famous Red Arrows have been banned from appearing at the 2012 London Olympics because they are deemed ‘too British’.

Organisers of the event say that the Arrows military background might be ‘offensive’ to other countries taking part in the Games. The display team have performed at more than 4000 events worldwide, but the Department of Culture, Media and Sport have deemed the display team ‘too militaristically British.’ Red Arrows pilots were said to be ‘outraged’, as they had hoped to put on a truly world class display for the Games, something which had never been seen before. Being axed from a British-based event for being ‘too British’ is an insult - the Arrows are a symbol of Britain.

The Red Arrows have been excellent ambassadors for British overseas trade, as they display their British-built Hawk aircraft all over the world.

The Arrows performed a short flypast in 2005 when the winning bid was announced, but their flypast at the Games was to have been truly spectacular.

It is to be hoped that common sense prevails.

If you disagree with this decision, sign the petition on the link http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/RedArrows2012/?ref=redArrows2012

And tell me what you think… click comments below

~ Carol Bentley

There’s been a few problems behind the scenes with the blog over the last few weeks, which hopefully can be sorted quite quickly. So this is just a courtesy post to let you know that the site is scheduled for maintenance tomorrow (Sunday 13th) and may not be available if you visit.

If you are subscribed, I’ll drop you a line to let you know when it is ‘open for reading’ again. If you are not subscribed then may I invite you to do so so you always know when a new post is made and, of course, you get the two free reports described in the previous post.

Otherwise (fingers crossed) all should be OK by Monday - thanks for your understanding.

~ Carol Bentley

If you are already subscribed to this blog you got an extra email today with information on how to get your subscriber gifts - check your Inbox or filtered email folder if you haven’t seen it.

And if you are not a subscriber yet you can get these gifts too, as I’ll explain in a moment.

Why am I giving these gifts?

Well, all is revealed in my original post on 1st April - ‘I had a Doh! moment’. You see, I decided to add to the value of this blog by giving these gifts to anyone who decided to keep up to date with my posts by subscribing for the email notices.

And I do try to be fair-minded, so I didn’t want people who are already subscribed to miss out. Hence the email that was sent separately.

Subscriber Gifts

So what do you get as a subscriber?

Two Great Reports

Report 1:

Profit Mastery Series - Marketing: Paul Stewart Interviews Carol Bentley

In this 16-page transcript of the interview I had with Paul you read about:

• Why targeting your market is crucial
• How marketing can give a return on investment
• Making your customer your best friend
• Breaking the £1m turnover barrier (or whatever level you are currently facing)
• Three copywriting mistakes you should avoid like the plague
• Using AIDA-A in your sales letter

And

Report 2:

How to Banish, Forever, The Hair-Tearing Frustrations of Microsoft® Word® When Writing Your Sales Letters!
31 tips make your writing a lot less stressful!

These quick tips get rid of the irritation you feel when Word suddenly ‘does its own thing’ - you can make it behave as you want. And they save you a great deal of time. Tips apply to all versions of MS Word since version 2002.

Claim Your Gifts Now

If you are a subscriber - check your email notices.

If you are not yet a subscriber simply pop your name and email address in the boxes in the panel on the right and click the Tell Me! button or you can use the pop-up invitation if you prefer.

BTW - once you are subscribed you won’t get the pop-up box appearing ever again. That’s good news isn’t it?

~ Carol Bentley

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In the post I made on 13th March ( 3 Time Management Tips ) I talked about how we can control what we do and perhaps regain some much needed time for ourselves.

Tim Ferris (author of The 4-hour Work Week) describes another time thief in his blog. And d’you know, this is one that might be more difficult for some to handle because of the associated guilt certain people are good at creating!

See what you think…
The danger of expectations and the beauty of duty

And here’s a few pertinent quotes on time management that a business colleague (Nigel Risner) sent to me in his last newsletter…

“Time has a way of getting away from us, because we never have a grip on it
during the day…” — Doug Firebaugh

“Learn to use ten minutes intelligently. It will pay you huge dividends.” –William A. Irwin

“Lost time is never found again.” — Benjamin Franklin

“Don’t mistake movement for achievement. It’s easy to get faked out by being busy. The questions is: Busy doing what?” — Jim Rohn

~ Carol Bentley

technorati tags: time management tim ferris

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If you haven’t already done so, don’t forget to claim your copy of Offline Marketing Strategies in exchange for answering just 7 questions. The survey is open until 12p.m. (GMT) today at copywriting4b2b survey

If you have already given me your answers - thank you. Your feedback is really appreciated and will help me to keep this blog vibrant, relevant and interesting.

If you’ve completed the survey and asked a question about web marketing, getting visitors to your blog etc. then please check the Q&A’s at this posting on Ed’s blog, which may give you your answer immediately.

I’ll be covering the questions that were specifically for marketing and copywriting in my future blog posts.

Have a good weekend - I’ll catch up with you next week.

~ Carol Bentley

No matter how well we plan ahead sometimes things just don’t go as we’d hoped.  And that’s what has happened which is why I’m sending an apology and asking for your patience and understanding.

Let me explain; when I started this blog I made a commitment to you, my reader, to make a daily (well, week-daily) post.  When I had days out of the office scheduled I simply wrote up the posts in advance and set a date and time for publishing.  That way I kept my promise and you got your daily dose of my thoughts.

If you are a regular reader you may have noticed I’ve missed a few days this week.  The reason for that is a completely unexpected absence from my office (actually I’m still away).  That is because my Father has had a sudden, serious stroke which the Doctors do not expect him to recover from.

I’m sure you appreciate my family must take precedence. So, please forgive the erratic posts that may happen over the next few weeks.  I promise my usual daily post will resume as soon as possible.

 Thank you for your understanding.

~ Carol Bentley

Sometimes stopping a subscription is the right thing to do. If the information offered is not useful to you, or it doesn’t supply valuable insights to what you need to know then making that decision should be your choice - and your choice alone.

Which is why you have complete control over the notification emails from this blog website. In every email notice you receive there is an unsubscribe option. If you use it you get a chance to say why you are leaving the group, which is good feedback for me as the host.

One gentleman did that when he dropped out last Friday. His reason? “Too many emails”

I wasn’t sure if he meant he was generally getting too many emails or if he was specifically referring to the emails about this blog.

Either way I totally understand how he feels and I’m sure you do too! Does cancelling his subscription mean he will miss out on the future posts? Maybe, but not necessarily.

Keeping in the loop without emails

So what do you do if you want to know about the posts made so you can choose what to read, but you don’t want the daily email?

You can use the RSS feed in the bottom right panel. If you are not familiar with RSS feeds you can read about them here. It can feed each new post through to your desktop without sending emails.

Disadvantages of Subscribing

In the early days of this blog I was undecided about how frequently I should post; daily, couple of times a week, weekly or even monthly. Although my subscriber numbers at that point were quite low - were you one of them? - I asked those readers what they would like to see. The feedback I had was very positive and the content of most of the messages was similar to Gail’s comment:

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong in blogging every day as long as the content is useful and informative to the readers! With your blog, every post so far has had something worthwhile in it!”

(Gail is still a subscriber, thanks for sticking with me Gail )

So I went with the majority opinion and I’ve continued the daily blog since - of course that means you get a daily email. Actually it’s only sent out on weekdays, I take the weekend off However, I appreciate for some it may be too much with all the other emails bombarding their inbox.

Disadvantages of RSS Only

On the surface there may not seem to be any real disadvantage to using an RSS feed to get your notifications. You can still see when a new post goes up and choose whether or not to read it.

Where you do lose out with an RSS feed is accessing any private posts I make. Why? Because these are password protected. And the password is only released to the email subscribers.

“So what? Will I really miss anything by not being able to read the private posts?” you might be thinking.

Well, actually, yes!

I’ve only used the private post once so far when I shared a birthday gift. But there are more in the pipeline. They will include more valuable information, sometimes in the form of a free report or audio or video and the only way you can get it is with the password supplied in the post notification email.

What do you do?

It’s a dilemma isn’t it?

If you don’t subscribe you don’t get the extra goodies I gift from time to time.

If you do subscribe you get a daily email when a post is published.

The good news is - it’s purely your choice. And it’s instantaneous - subscribe and you are immediately ‘in the loop’. Unsubscribe and you never get another email about posts on this blog again.

I hope you choose to stay subscribed, but I fully understand and respect your decision if you decide to use the RSS feed instead.

~ Carol Bentley

technorati tags: copywriting blog RSS feeds

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On Monday I invited you to ask your most burning question and said all questions sent by today (Friday) would be considered for the accolade of being chosen as the best question asked and would receive a gift.

And so far I’ve received some very interesting ones, a few of which I’ve already answered in this week’s posts.

Now is your last chance to send your questions in. Have you sent yours yet? What is puzzling you most? It can be a question on anything to do with marketing your business; writing sales letters; advert or other material. Marketing or sales techniques or anything else you’d like to throw into the pot.

Use the comment link below or - for a more private question - you can use the question contact form (let me know if you don’t want it to be answered publicly on this blog).

I look forward to helping you.

~ Carol Bentley

Have you got your birthday celebration gift I posted on Friday? Remember the gift expires today at 12p.m. GMT.

You’ll need the password that was in Friday’s notification email to open the gift post.

~ Carol Bentley

Just a quick reminder that the deadline for entries for the Cialdini book and Advertising Secrets audio CD competition closes tomorrow, 4th January.

Check the original post at my post How persuasive are you.

~ Carol Bentley

technorati tags: persuasion Cialdini copywriting