DO NOT DRINK & DRIVE

Really heart touching.........

(Taken from some sources, it's not my personal experience..)

I was walking around in a Big Bazaar store making shopping, when I saw a Cashier talking to a boy couldn't have been more than 5 or 6 years old.

The Cashier said, 'I'm sorry, but you don't have enough money to buy this doll. Then the little boy turned to me and asked: ''Uncle, are you sure I don't have enough money?''

I counted his cash and replied: ''You know that you don't have enough money to buy the doll, my dear.'' The little boy was still holding the doll in his hand.

Finally, I walked toward him and I asked him who he wished to give this doll to. 'It's the doll that my sister loved most and wanted so

much. I wanted to Gift her for her BIRTHDAY.

I have to give the doll to my mommy so that she can give it to my sister when she goes there.' His eyes were so sad while saying this. 'My Sister has gone to be with God.. Daddy says that Mommy is going to see God very soon too, so I thought that she could take the doll with her to give it to my sister...''

My heart nearly stopped. The little boy looked up at me and said: 'I told daddy to tell mommy not to go yet. I need her to wait until I come back from the mall.' Then he showed me a very nice photo of him where he was laughing. He then told me 'I want mommy to take my picture with her so my sister won't forget me.' 'I love my mommy and I wish she doesn't have to leave me, but daddy says that she has to go to be with my little sister.' Then he looked again at the doll with sad eyes, very quietly..

I quickly reached for my wallet and said to the boy. 'Suppose we check again, just in case you do have enough money for the doll?''

'OK' he said, 'I hope I do have enough.' I added some of my money to his with out him seeing and we started to count it. There was enough for the doll and even some spare money.

The little boy said: 'Thank you God for giving me enough money!'

Then he looked at me and added, 'I asked last night before I went to sleep for God to make sure I had enough money to buy this doll, so that mommy could give It to my sister. He heard me!'' 'I also wanted to have enough money to buy a white rose for my mommy, but I didn't dare to ask God for too much. But He gave me enough to buy the doll and a white rose. My mommy loves white roses.'

I finished my shopping in a totally different state from when I started. I couldn't get the little boy out of my mind. Then I remembered a local.

News paper article two days ago, which mentioned a drunk man in a truck, who hit a car occupied by a young woman and a little girl. The little girl died right away, and the mother was left in a critical state. The family had to decide whether to pull the plug on the life-sustaining machine, because the young woman would not be able to recover from the coma. Was this the family of the little boy?

Two days after this encounter with the little boy, I read in the news paper that the young woman had passed away.. I couldn't stop myself as I bought a bunch of white roses and I went to the funeral home where the body of the young woman was exposed for people to see and make last wishes before her burial. She was there, in her coffin, holding a beautiful white rose in her hand with the photo of the little boy and the doll placed over her chest. I left the place, teary-eyed, feeling that my life had been changed for ever...

The love that the little boy had for his mother and his sister is still, to this day, hard to imagine. And in a fraction of a second, a drunk driver had taken all this away from him.

Please DO NOT DRINK & DRIVE.

Now you have 2 choices:

1) Share this message, or

2) Ignore it as if it never touched your heart.

The value of a man or woman resides in what he or she gives, not in what they are capable of receiving.

Top 10 Tips for Becoming a Professional Speaker

1. Be Prepared! The number one reason why people get nervous is that they don’t feel prepared. It is important to practice your speech over and over and over in the mirror and on tape so you can feel comfortable that your message will be strong. Fear is minimized by visiting the location of your speech in advance, meeting some of the people in advance if possible and dress for success! If all else fails, use deep breathing exercises before you go on stage to remain calm.
2. Know your subject well and have facts to support your opinion.
You will have left brained and right brained people in your audience. Some people respond best to facts and figures and some of them will respond best to stories. But your story will be unique and it is important that you pay attention to getting the facts straight and list your resources. People will remember how they FELT in your presence.. and not all of the facts and figures you’ll toss out. But, it’s important to show your expertise along with being a great story teller.
3. Be a great storyteller!
Not only must you have great facts to back up your speech or training, but make it personal by adding stories that are fun, interesting and have a point. Make the stories short enough to keep peoples attention and if you can be dramatic during your presentation.. even BETTER! Be willing to BE YOURSELF and incorporate aspects of your life that are unique.. if you ride a motorcycle, or have a child, add it! These are ways to make people feel closer to you as a person.
4. Have top notch marketing tools!
Speakers traditionally have a one sheet that is a glossy printed sheet of a short bio, references, their picture or pictures, and the topics they can discuss. Speakers also must have a well written bio, topic sheets, any press that you have had on you, articles that you’ve written or have been written about you, and as many references as you can get on letterhead if possible. If you have out of date reference letters, white out the date and copy the letter and send it. If you have a book, you can include it but it’s not necessary. The video is perhaps the most important and should be between 5-10 min. of you speaking in front of a live audience.
5. Have a marketing & PR plan in place.
Most people are using their website as a marketing tool and on the website should be downloadable pages for meeting planners to bring to their committee. Many people even have color printers so if you send a mailing out announcing your Website, they’ll be able to download everything. Send regular updates via email and even in mail form if you can afford it. It might get tossed, but it’s the consistency that people are looking for. If they see you pop up year after year, they are bound to give you a shot at some point. Many speakers have freebies on their website, give workshops to spread the word, and network with other speakers to mutually support one another. Spending time getting your name out to the media is a very worthwhile thing to do and ALWAYS mention that you are available to speak and your website by referring to it during your interview. You can offer some sort of free list or information if people go to your website. People always like to get stuff for free!
6. Be willing to be flexible and tailor presentations.
Many organizations are going to want a tailored presentation. They might have a need for a keynote and a seminar and if you can offer both, you might get the business over someone who can’t. Also, if you offer a 3 day workshop, the corporation might only have 1 day available for you to work, so if you can also offer a shortened version, you’ll be seen as flexible. Many speakers work with the meeting planners or agents in advance to get as much information as possible about the group or industry. This shows you’ve done your homework and aren’t just showing up.

7. Assess your audience in advance.
Organizations are made up of many different skills and skill level. Education backgrounds vary according to industry or job title. Be aware of the group that you are talking to so you won’t speak over their head, or quite frankly, below it. Audiences are smart and you really can’t ‘wing it’ much any more. While they might be polite to your face, they WILL tell your agent or spread the word and not have you back. Stay away from sexual jokes, political talk, religious references and knocking an industry or company if they are down on their luck. It is best to only speak positive about others because you are ON STAGE and people ARE WATCHING.
8. Speak for free!
When you are first starting your speaking business, do whatever you can including speaking for free, workshops, training, keynotes, coaching and consulting. You never know when opportunities will arise and most speakers do a combination of all of the above in their business until they are well known and profitable.
9. Meet as many agents and bureaus as possible.
If you are working with several agents, you are more than likely to get more bookings. Agents are people and like working with individuals who are professional, trained, and successful. It makes them look good. Agents usually get 20-30% commission on top of your fee, and they earn every penny. They are on the phone and marketing full time and developing the relationships that you need in order to be booked at associations, corporations and colleges.
10. Show me the Money!
Back of the room sales can more than pay for your honorarium if you can arrange it. Speakers sell books, tapes, video tapes, workbooks and collaborate with other speakers on projects to sell them jointly. The most common advice is “do tapes before you think you are ready”. You can always upgrade and you should continue to upgrade!

Learning at Cognizant

This 15 minute film provides a comprehensive view of Cognizant Academy's learning portfolio by target segments with associates and BU (business unit) leaders sharing their learning experiences.

Digital Marketing - A new way to increase your Business

Digital Marketing is the promoting of brands in the field of marketing. It include Television, Radio, Internet, mobile, social media marketing and any other form of digital media.

Digital marketing is a term that has been around for quite awhile but hasn’t been very well defined, encompassing things like banner advertising, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click. Yet, this is too narrow of a definition. What about email, RSS, voice broadcast, fax broadcast, blogging, podcasting, video streams, wireless text messaging, and instant messaging? You get the idea.

Digital marketing centers around the Internet, which has become both a communication vehicle and a very powerful marketing medium as the recent Doubleclick acquisition by Google demonstrated. The Internet can be used both to push a message to someone like email, IM, RSS, or voice broadcast, as well to “pull” content serving a banner ad and Pay Per Click search terms. Digital marketing, therefore, can be thought of as the combination of push and pull Internet technologies to execute marketing campaigns.

Because it is digital, a reporting engine can be layered within a campaign allowing the organization see in real-time how that campaign is performing, such as what is being viewed, how often, how long, as well as other actions such as responses rates and purchases made. Please note that each digital marketing technology is different and they cannot all provide the same types of reports. Also, digital marketing is constantly evolving and new technologies are being created all of the time.

To help promote this new concept of digital marketing, we recently updated the Wikipedia entry for the term and did our best to not only define digital marketing but to explain what it is as well as the players in this space. In the true collaborative spirit of Wikipedia, we invite you to add your own thoughts and ideas, as we too are still adding and editing. Currently our definition is:

Digital Marketing is the pratice of promoting products and services using database-driven online distribution channels to reach consumers in a timely, relevant, personal and cost-effective manner.

There are 2 different forms of digital marketing, each of which has its pros and cons.

For more information about digital marketing, must visit my blog http://digitalmarketingcontest.blogspot.in/

PULL

Pull digital marketing technologies involve the user having to seek out and directly select (or pull) the content, often via web search. Web site/blogs and streaming media (audio and video) are good examples of this. In each of these examples, users have a specific link (URL) to view the content.

Pros:
Digital Marketing and Power Users of the internet are an integral aspect to the United States economy. Interactive Media is a form of art and creative inspiration.

• Since requests are inherently opt-in, the size of content is generally unlimited.
• No advanced technology required to send static content, only to store/display it.

Cons:

• Considerable marketing effort required for users to find the message/content.
• Some types of marketing content may be blocked in mixed content scenarios (i.e.: Flash blockers)

 PUSH

Push digital marketing technologies involve both the marketer (creator of the message) as well as the recipients (the user). Email, SMS, RSS are examples of push digital marketing. In each of these examples, the marketer has to send (push) the messages to the users (subscribers) in order for the message to be received. In the case of RSS, content is actually pulled on a periodic basis (polling), thus simulating a push.
Pros:

• Faster delivery - push technologies can deliver content immediately as it becomes available.
• Consistent delivery - some push platforms have single content types, making it difficult for the user to block content by type.
• Better targeting - since push technology usually justifies subscription, more specific marketing data may be collected during registration, which allows for better targeting and more personalization.
• Better data - marketing data can be correlated to each request for content, allowing marketers to see information such as user name as well as demographic and psychographic data.

Cons:

• Smaller audience - push technology not implemented on common platforms generally need client and/or server software before content can be created, distributed, and/or viewed.
• Higher cost - less popular platforms may have higher implementation costs.
• Lesser discoverability - smaller audiences mean fewer views mean less visibility in search engines.