The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational asks readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are the winners:

1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realise it was your money to start with. (my personal favourite)

2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

4. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

5. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

6. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

7. Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer. (second favourite)

8. Decafalon (n.): The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

9. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

10. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web. (oh, I sooo relate to this one!)

11. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

Which is your favourite? And can you go one better and come up with a word and definition of your own? Share your word inventions, hit the comment link.

Happy Independence Day to all my American readers - have a great holiday.

And have a good weekend.

~ Carol Bentley

On February 6th I shared my thoughts about using the mindmapping software from Buzan - iMindMap™ (read the original post at Getting your thoughts on paper - opens in a new window).

Today’s email came from the Buzan team telling me they are soon to release version 3, which contains three new editions of the software. And Tony Buzan is giving a surprisingly generous gift to anyone who already has iMindMap™ before the release date - more about that below. The three new versions are:

Elements: for basic mind mapping
Professional: for businesses and organisations. It includes a high level of integration with Microsoft Office and Open Office
Ultimate: “The ultimate package of features, including an impressive creative and comprehensive Project Management System and publishing tools.” You can import mindmaps created in MindManager and FreeMind.

Naturally I took a look at what the new versions cover - impressive. But I had an ulterior motive because I was invited to get in early by joining their private testing team. If the new features looked good, it might be just what I need for my new project and getting to grips with it now would be great (apart from which I can spill the beans to you on what’s good or not so good! )

So yes, I’ve taken up the invitation to get the early releases (who wouldn’t?)

Tony’s Gift

Giving upgrades at a reduced price is standard procedure for many software companies. Some generously give free upgrades to the next version of the same level of a software package. So I would have expected to get a special deal on this new version of iMindMap™. What I didn’t expect was to be told…

“Tony Buzan is making a once only offer for iMindMap™ users to save over UK£90/US$180/EUR€99 by giving away free upgrades to the ‘Ultimate’ Edition of iMindMap™”

…that’s the top-of-the-range edition - with all the new bells & whistles. And it’s a saving of almost double the current price of a single licence. Not bad.

Plus - the offer applies to everyone who has a copy of the current iMindMap™ before the release date of version 3.

So - if you’ve been thinking about treating yourself to a mindmapping program, here’s one to consider - iMindMap [Affiliate].

I’ll let you know what I think of the new version before the official release date. As they say… ‘Watch this space.’

~ Carol Bentley

I particularly liked the last image because it demonstrates a phrase that was used in advertising this particular fruit when I was in my innocent, pre-copywriting youth!

Enjoy Lesley’s images.

~ Carol Bentley

And the best thing? It does not cost you a penny and every single person on the planet can do it - no experience is needed!

What is it? I’ll let John Wood share this particular gem with you…

Try This for 30 Days and You’ll be More Welcome Everywhere You Go
By John Wood

No matter what country you’re from or what language you speak, everyone in the world understands what a smile means.

According to Dale Carnegie, famous self-improvement lecturer and author of the best-selling How to Win Friends and Influence People…

“It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive it, without impoverishing people who give it. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever.”

English essayist and poet Joseph Addison (1672-1719) was also well aware of the power of smiling. He wrote…

“What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are bug trifles to be sure, but scattered along life’s pathway the good they do is inconceivable.”

Here are eight reasons why you should make smiling part of your daily routine…

1. You’ll live longer and be in better health. University of Michigan professor, Christopher Peterson, PhD, says, “Overall we found optimistic people are healthier. Their biological makeup is different. They have a more robust immune system.”

Peterson adds that optimistic people generally take better care of themselves – they are more likely to eat sensibly, drink in moderation and exercise regularly.

According to a November 2004 study by the Archives of General Psychiatry among people 65 to 85 years of age, optimists were 71 percent less likely to die than pessimists.

When you smile it also boosts the levels of serotonin, which plays a vital part in regulating moods, sleep, sexuality and appetite, and releases endorphins which are the body’s natural pain killers.

2. It’s easier to smile than frown. Someone once said that “It takes 17 muscles to smile and 43 to frown.” I’m not sure if numbers are accurate, but you get the point – being miserable requires more work than being happy. [Carol: I like the idea of less work, plus for us more mature ladies it might mean less wrinkles as well! ]

3. It makes you more attractive. There’s a reason people insist you smile before they take your picture, everyone looks better with a smile on their face.

4. Smiling makes you look younger. Not only do you look better, you look younger. Forget the face lifts or Botox shots; just smile more often.

5. Smiling makes you seem more successful. People who smile are assumed to be more successful. If you’re always frowning, people automatically assume things aren’t going that great for you.

6. People treat you differently. If you’re smiling, people are more likely to start a conversation with you. People want to be around people who smile.

7. You’ll spend less time in jail. Studies have shown that judges give lighter sentences to people if they’re smiling. [Carol: e-er! Hope you don’t ever need this benefit! ]

8. You’ll have a more satisfying relationship. A study by Dr. Dacher Keltner showed that women who showed an intense happiness in their smile were more likely to marry by the age of 27 and maintain a satisfying relationship.

In his classic book, How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling, Frank Bettger told of how when he’d give talks across the country he’d challenge people to greet others with smiles for 30 days. He received thousands of letters talking about the impact this simple gesture had on their lives. He cites the following letter as typical of the letters he received:

“My wife and I had just about agreed to separate. Of course, I thought she was entirely at fault. Within a few days after I began to put this idea into action, happiness was restored in my home. I then came to realize that I had been losing out in business because of a sullen, losing attitude. At the end of the day, I would go home and take it out on my wife and children. It was all my fault, not my wife’s at all. I am a totally different man from what I was a year ago. I’m happier because I’ve made others happy too. Now everybody greets me with a smile. In addition, my business has shown surprising improvement.”

Here are four things you can start right now to put you on track to a happier life:

1. “Fake it till you make it.” Dale Carnegie said it about enthusiasm, but it applies to smiling too. Put a smile on your face and even when things aren’t going so good, you can’t help but feel better.

2. Find the humor in situations. Who can forget the last scene of Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” when Brian, sentenced to death by crucifixion for his part in a kidnapping plot, joins in with the other 140 doomed men and sings “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”?

3. Smile at least five times a day for no good reason. Make smiling part of your daily schedule. Add it to your day timer so you don’t forget. Make a point to smile at yourself first thing every morning when you look in the mirror.

4. Sing a song that makes you smile. There are certain songs that when you hear them, you can’t help but smile. One of the more famous ones is “Put On a Happy Face” from the musical “Bye Bye Birdie.”

But in my opinion, the greatest song about smiling was written by the person many consider to be the greatest film comedian of all time. Everyone knows Charlie Chaplin was a great entertainer, but you may not know that he was also a prolific composer. Eighteen years after his most famous melody appeared on the soundtrack of his 1936 film “Modern Times,” two Englishmen, John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons, wrote lyrics to it and titled it “Smile.”

No matter where you are, if you’re feeling less than stellar, you can’t help but feel better about the state of your world if you sing these words to Chaplin’s melody:

Smile tho’ your heart is aching,
Smile, even though it’s breaking,
When there are clouds in the sky – you’ll get by,
If you smile through your fear and sorrow,
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You’ll see the sun come shining through – for you.

Light up your face with gladness,
Hide ev’ry trace of sadness,
Altho’ a tear may be ever so near,
That’s the time you must keep on trying,
Smile – what’s the use of crying,
You’ll find that life is still worthwhile,
If you just smile.

—————————————
[This article appears courtesy of The Golden Thread, an e-letter from AWAI that delivers original, no-nonsense advice on how to build your freelance copywriting business. For a free subscription, visit http://www.awaionline.com/thegoldenthread]

And remember - when you are on the phone the person you are talking to can hear a smile in your voice as you speak. You come over as friendlier and more pleasant to deal with. And that’s got to be good for business, hasn’t it?

~ Carol Bentley

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Have a great weekend,

~ Carol Bentley

We didn’t quite reach my intended target of giving away 800 copies of the copywriting book; we had 317 downloads, which wasn’t too bad. And of course other people may have seen it without visiting the website - so who knows, maybe I did reach my target

I rather like looking at figures and some of these stats were interesting. For instance, on average, only 30.6% of the people who were invited by friends to visit the offer website, did so. Now that could be because the other people decided they didn’t need help with their sales letters; so ignored the invitation.

Or - if I was really cynical I could say it might be because the people sending the invite used their own alternative email addresses instead of their friends’…

Hmm! I suppose that might happen where someone really wants the valuable gift being offered but is wary about giving a friend’s email address out online. And that got me thinking (as you do)… I’ll tell you more about my thoughts in a moment.

First off [drum-roll please]….

The Bentley Makeover Gift goes to…

Susan, from www.habitbreakers.co.nz, who came top with an impressive 55.6% take-up of her invitations. (I think the trick was sending out a tad more than one set of invitations). I look forward to working with Susan on her sales letter.

And my thoughts were…

Going on from what I was saying, the memorial offer of a free e-copy of my sales letter writing book finished at midnight (BST) yesterday. So anyone visiting the site, whether in response to an invitation you sent or from seeing the link on this blog, is now too late to get the complete book.

However, I know sometimes things can happen that stop you doing something you meant to. So I decided to leave the website up, just for another week, with the option to download 5 crucial chapters from the book. That will help anyone who gets there a bit late but still needs expert tips on writing their sales letter.

Plus - you do not have to invite anyone to get your copy of these chapters - it’s available as a completely free download (you just have to confirm your request to stop any ’spammers’ activity). And that’s it! No commitment, just an extremely useful gift.

So, if you haven’t downloaded your copy yet, or you want to tell your friends privately - it’s available at www.WriteLettersWinSales.co.uk

Please note: This 5-crucial chapters offer expires on 25th June 2008

~ Carol Bentley

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This is what I wrote:

Here’s My Idea

Apart from giving you your free e-copy of the book, ‘I Want To Buy Your Product… Have You Sent Me A Letter Yet?’ I’d like to acknowledge the support you are showing me.

So I decided I’d offer a gift to the person who has the highest number of friends accepting the invitation to download the book before the invitation expires at midnight (BST) on 18th June (my Father’s birthday). And don’t worry - my system has already recorded the number of people you’ve invited and how many have collected their gift, so you won’t lose out if you’ve already been pretty active with this memorial project.

You can send your invitation to more friends at Invite More

The New Gift

I’ve decided the most valuable gift I can give is some 1-on-1 time. Specifically the lucky recipient gets a complete Bentley Makeover on a sales letter and response form. The Bentley Makeover Service has a value between £427 ($838) and £967 ($1,899), dependent upon the length of the letter.

After sending your letter and response form to me, I record a review of the letter, advising changes to make it stronger and more compelling. I’ll also give suggestions for headline, sub-heads, copy content and P.S. if these need enhancing. The recording is supplied as an MP3 file that you can keep and refer to at any time.

So all you need to do, to be in with a chance of gaining this extra gift, is remind the people you’ve already invited to collect their ebook and invite more people to claim their copy before midnight (BST) on 18th June. You can invite more friends at Invite More

Thanks once again for your support.

~ Carol Bentley

P.S. If the invitation link in your email was not used, the people you invited are not contacted by me again. You might want to remind them that there is now less than 36 hours before the invitation expires.

And I thought it’s a good one to share with you.

Q:

HOW DO YOU BRAINSTORM HEADLINES FOR A GIVEN PROJECT?

A:

For many people, getting started on headlines can be an insurmountable problem. And sometimes I think it is because enough research and thinking about it has not yet happened.

You see, first off I do research on the project so I know everything there is to know about the company I’m writing for, their business; their products (or services) and the specific offer they are making.

I find out who their ideal customers are and what result the customer is looking for. I pore over letters the company has received from customers, including letters of complaints and how they were dealt with. Reading about an unhappy customer who has been turned into a satisfied, sometimes delighted, customer can be a great catalyst for innovative ideas.

I research their competitors to see what else is on the market - not just direct competitors. We are often competing against something completely different when it comes to persuading people to part with their money. For example if you were selling a portable CD player, your competition is not just other makes of CD players it could be MP3 players, iPods - in fact any other technology that can deliver the result the customer wants; to be able to listen to their music on the move.

Then, having decided I want to write some good headlines, I let it brew. The important step here is to state your intention; “I need some cracking headlines” so your sub-conscious knows what it is supposed to be working on.

I move away from the project and go do something else. And the good ideas; the approach to take; the results purchasers gain when they take up the offer start to percolate through my sub-conscious.

This process helps with the letter itself, as well as the headlines.

When things are starting to ‘bubble through’ I create a mindmap of the proven response - or ‘Power’ words as some people call them, starting with the 79 in my book. These words also act as a catalyst as I start to formulate the headlines.

(I’ve shared the next section of this process with you before on this blog) For each response word I write 2 or 3 headlines. Some are absolute rubbish - especially in the early stages - but as I warm up the better ideas start to flow.

By using a mindmap I can go back and forth between the different response words adding more headlines as they occur to me.

Using this method makes it really easy to create the 100 headlines I advocate in my book. And, more importantly, I find the stronger headlines to test as well as good ones that are natural sub-heads to use in the letter itself. And often a good P.S. can come out of this exercise.

So there you have it - my approach to crafting headlines.

If you are stuck on ‘what to write’ for your headlines - review all your material. Even if you are writing for your own product or service, take the time to refresh your mind. Then let your sub-conscious do the work for you. The combination of research and your sub-conscious is a powerful one, if you let it work for you.

~ Carol Bentley

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And it doesn’t matter if the help we ask for is expert knowledge to achieve what we’re aiming at or encouragement and belief from our family and friends to reach the goals we’ve set for ourselves.

Many businesses fail because the owner cannot be the expert in everything that is needed to make a business successful. Their passion is usually the service or product they are supplying; that’s where their inherent knowledge lies. But sometimes a business fails because the owner does not know:

• how to create and implement a business strategy
• how to market their business
• how to get sales
• how to control their finances properly
• how to handle customer support effectively
• how to build a website and get it seen by their prospective customers

And a host of other related issues that crop up in business.

And the person that tries to handle all these on their own is creating a huge millstone for themselves.

Getting The Help Needed

The person who asks for help in the area they do not have experience in is showing wisdom. In the early days of a business the funding probably isn’t there to opt for outsourcing.

That’s where networking - talking to like-minded people, offering help and asking for help comes in. And networking can be online and offline.

Offline frequently takes the form of business clubs or groups, chambers of commerce, business support groups - different ones in different countries - and master groups.

Online help is available through forums, discussion boards and blogs, like this one. And sharing those resources can be your gesture of help.

Will you help others?

So - I’d like to ask your help for those people who read this blog.

Which are the most useful online websites you’ve found? And why?

Share your experiences of where you’ve found helpful people who’ve answered your questions and given freely of their expertise - or maybe forums where you already contribute your expertise to help others. In fact if you have a business related blog that I haven’t already discovered, now is the time to let me and everyone else know.

Click the comments link below and tell us all about the support you’ve found, or given, on the net. And, if I believe it is a valuable resource for my other readers, your comment will be approved and will show on this blog.

Thank you in advance for participating and sharing.

~ Carol Bentley

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