An interview is an inevitable hurdle everyone has to jump to get their ideal copywriting job. As such it is essential that you are well prepared for you interview, know what to expect, and feel confident about your work and the work the job might require you to perform.

Interviews give your prospective employer a lasting impression and can certainly determine whether you get the job you want or not. To ace your copywriting interview follow these easy tips:

1. Anticipate questions the interviewer will ask you: most job applications will have a job description which should give you some ideas. If, for example, the job description details search engine optimization copywriting you might expect questions about what kind of SEO techniques you use in your writing (don’t worry too much about this – most companies do SEO a bit differently and the interviewer will probably just want to know that you understand the concept of SEO). You should also prepare for the more generic questions that most job interviews have such as “what skills do you have that suit this job?” or “what are your short terms and long term career goals?”.
2. Research the company you are being interviewed for: it is essential that you have a clear idea of what the company does, what it specializes in, and any values or principles it operates around when you go for your interview. A simple internet search should yield enough information, but if not take careful note of any information provided in the job advertisement.
3. Use your research to prepare questions for the interviewer: even if you ask a bunch of spontaneous questions during the interview, most interviewers will set aside some time at the end for questions. Therefore it’s better to always have a few questions prepared in case nothing comes to mind at the time.
4. Organize your portfolio for the kind of copywriting job you are applying for: if you are applying for a job to write sales letters, you should put all the work you have done that relates to this in the front of your portfolio, such as sales brochures, leaving your other work for the back of your portfolio. Obviously if you are applying for a job which requires a number of different types of writing you can put different types of copies towards the front of your portfolio.
5. Make copies: photocopy samples of your copywriting as well as your CV and resume that you can leave with your interviewer.
6. Take a notepad and a couple of pens into the interview: even if you do not write anything down during the interview you will look prepared and interested. You should also dress in formal attire to give a professional impression.

Don’t forget the more generic advice for interviews such as coming across as confident, looking the interviewer in the eyes and being friendly and polite. You should also note that each copywriting interview could be very different as interviewers have different styles and interviewing techniques.

This post was written by Marianna Muscat

Marianna Muscat is talented in many different Internet Marketing Solutions. Not only is she able to sort most technical problems you put in front of her, she also has the rare ability to manage technical people and has won numerous ‘Man Manager” awards in her Corporate career. She is highly skilled in Google paid search, Search Engine Optimisation and project management. She has held Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer positions in a large South African bank for many years. She brings the skills on-board to take our WSI Franchise business to the next level.

The International Franchising and Entrepreneurs Expo 2012 is kicking off tomorrow at the Sandton Convention Centre. Our team are setting up and getting everything in order to meet all the visitors at IFE 2012.

The event is aimed at encouraging the development of small business and entrepreneurship. Visitors will have the opportunity to chat to franchisors and compare the concepts and business opportunities on offer.

WSI will be there to educate South Africans about the WSI brand and about opportunities that exist with a white collar franchise. Drop in at our stand from 17-19 May 2012 open daily from 10h00 -18h00. You can find us at stand B10. Follow our live Tweets and Facebook posts or find us on Foursquare during the event.

WSI Franchise stand at IFE 2012

This post was written by Francois Muscat

Hello there, I started our business in 2004 and am enjoying every minute of it. I am a professional speaker (with the PSASA) and speak frequently  at Digital Marketing conferences all over the world. I am the current WSI training ambassador and last year I trained over 450 WSI Internet Marketing consultants world wide in digital marketing and social media.

Francois is the WSI area representative for Africa and is a member of the exclusive WSI President’s Circle, ICAC Council, operates a Regional Solutions Centre. Francois has won nine WSI awards including – Best Product Showcase, Excellence in Search Engine Optimization, Excellence in PPC, and two mentorship awards. Most recently he won the National Sales Award as Africa’s Franchisee of the Year at Stansted 2009. He enjoys mentoring over 12 WSI Internet Consultants internationally.

If you would like Francois Muscat to speak at your conference, seminar, workshop or provide in-house training to your team, contact him via the site or by phone at +27 11 468 3138.

Why are many businesses failing with their social media marketing campaigns? In my opinion, social media marketing is very important, but many businesses are still failing to get it right. One of the main reasons businesses are failing with their social media campaign is because they don’t have the right person or team to use their selected social media channels at a personal level.

In all essence, people don’t like to interact with a logo, personality less social media page or an auto responder. This isn’t difficult to understand, but there are many businesses on t he social web getting it wrong. If your business is not transparent online, and not looking real then they are going to fail most definitely with their social media campaign before they start. Find below a couple of tips that can help you get on the right track with your social media campaign.

Being transparent

Who is the leader of your social media campaign? This can be the business owner, marketing department, employee or even a dedicated team. The important thing is that the audience you are trying to reach much know who they are dealing with. Without being transparent, your business will never be able to develop trust and relationships with your audience.

Your Twitter profile

@z123abc is not very personal. Your business name and other information about your business should be in your bio, but you must always try to include your business name in your Twitter profile name. Use a picture of a real person because other people want to talk to real people and not to the logo of @z123abc.

Facebook fans

Customize your profile and Time picture that represents the image of your business. If you have more than one person managing your Facebook fan page, use your real name so that people on your fan page will know who they are engaging with. You can adjust the settings of your fan page to display the owners of the fan page. Also, never be afraid to add more customization to your fan page, by adjusting the pages on your fan page. There are many tools on Facebook that can help you with this.

The tips above may be small, but they can make quite a big difference towards creating a trusted brand that people will want to engage with and trust.

This post was written by Francois Muscat

Hello there, I started our business in 2004 and am enjoying every minute of it. I am a professional speaker (with the PSASA) and speak frequently  at Digital Marketing conferences all over the world. I am the current WSI training ambassador and last year I trained over 450 WSI Internet Marketing consultants world wide in digital marketing and social media.

Francois is the WSI area representative for Africa and is a member of the exclusive WSI President’s Circle, ICAC Council, operates a Regional Solutions Centre. Francois has won nine WSI awards including – Best Product Showcase, Excellence in Search Engine Optimization, Excellence in PPC, and two mentorship awards. Most recently he won the National Sales Award as Africa’s Franchisee of the Year at Stansted 2009. He enjoys mentoring over 12 WSI Internet Consultants internationally.

If you would like Francois Muscat to speak at your conference, seminar, workshop or provide in-house training to your team, contact him via the site or by phone at +27 11 468 3138.

Everywhere you look online you will see internet marketing agencies promoting LinkedIn for social media marketing. LinkedIn is a professional social network and it is very different to the other popular social media channels. Once you create your profile on LinkedIn, what do you do on this network that everyone is talking about?

The first thing you must understand about LinkedIn is that it is not very different from real-time face to face networking. At a network event, you cannot expect to meet someone instantly to start doing business with them. LinkedIn is very much the same, you cannot add someone on this network to your connections and expect business to happen immediately.

LinkedIn is very much like traditional networking, except it is now easier. The same rules apply on this professional social network and lets look at how traditional networking works.

Traditional networking

• Who do you wish to meet? What are you looking for in a real connection?
• Where can you find people to network with? This can include networking meetings, BI events, etc.
• Who will be attending the network event?
• Traditional networking is not about you. It is about meeting like-minded people and networking with them.
• What is going to be your message?

The above explains traditional networking in plain English, but how can you make this work on LinkedIn? To start off, complete your LinkedIn profile so that it is 100% complete. This will include the professional photo of your profile, links to your website, blog, and Twitter profile, your work history, and your interests. Your profile is your face on LinkedIn, and if someone is interested to meet you, this is the first place that they will look. An incomplete profile shows you in a very poor light.

LinkedIn Answers

A great feature on LinkedIn is LinkedIn Answers. This section on LinkedIn gives you access to millions of people asking questions. You can use this section by answering and asking questions that will interest your target audience. This help you get chance to start a conversation. Some of the most well written questions can receive over 50 answers. This can mean a lot for your exposure on LinkedIn.

When using LinkedIn answers, I usually follow-up a with a personal response to every person that answered one of my questions. Here’s a couple of the responses that I send out.

• If they are already a connection of mine: I thank them for the time they have spent by answering my question.
• If they are not a connection of mine, but I want to add them: I thank them for answering the question and I send out an invitation to them to connect with me.
• Not connected, and not interested in connecting with them. I thank them for the answer.

This post was written by Francois Muscat

Hello there, I started our business in 2004 and am enjoying every minute of it. I am a professional speaker (with the PSASA) and speak frequently  at Digital Marketing conferences all over the world. I am the current WSI training ambassador and last year I trained over 450 WSI Internet Marketing consultants world wide in digital marketing and social media.

Francois is the WSI area representative for Africa and is a member of the exclusive WSI President’s Circle, ICAC Council, operates a Regional Solutions Centre. Francois has won nine WSI awards including – Best Product Showcase, Excellence in Search Engine Optimization, Excellence in PPC, and two mentorship awards. Most recently he won the National Sales Award as Africa’s Franchisee of the Year at Stansted 2009. He enjoys mentoring over 12 WSI Internet Consultants internationally.

If you would like Francois Muscat to speak at your conference, seminar, workshop or provide in-house training to your team, contact him via the site or by phone at +27 11 468 3138.

Web design is constantly changing and developing as technology, user preferences and the uses of the internet change. As a web designer it is therefore essential that you are able to keep up to date on these changes and not fall behind the times!

Here are three tips for keeping up to date on web design:

• Making use of the mobile web: with mobile phone usage spreading faster than wildfire and mobile technology developing at a rapid pace, it’s essential that you take advantage of the mobile web. If the website you are designing does not have a mobile version, cannot be viewed by mobile phones or doesn’t have plug-ins on platforms which do support the mobile web (such as Facebook and Twitter) then you will be missing out on a huge target audience! First prize would be to develop a mobile web version of your site – this will involve cutting down on some of the content and functionality, but having a fully functional mobile website will allow users who only access the web through their mobile devices to access your site.
• The rise of social networking: social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have become wildly popular and form a substantial part of what people are using the internet for. By combining aspects of these social networking sites with your own website, web designers can ensure that the sites they design are far more prominent, functional and popular. Using plug-ins such as the Facebook ‘like’ application or Twitter feed will connect your site with these popular social networking sites, providing a unique opportunity of exploiting an existing and much used part of the internet to your advantage. People are more likely to come across the site you are designing, more likely to interact with it positively and will therefore leave the site with a memorable experience.
• Keeping up to date on trends: keeping up to date on web design trends is an essential part of any web designer’s work. Trends in the past such as the use of drop down menus, image galleries, floating navigation bars and others have changed the way websites are designed and experienced by the user. If you do not keep up to date with these trends by regularly checking other websites out, reading forums and blogs on web design and talking to other designers, then your work will start falling behind.

Taking these three factors into consideration can have a large impact on the quality and success of your web design, keeping your clients and the users of their sites happy – and keeping yourself in business!

Need help with your web design? Contact WSI OMS today!

This post was written by Marelise da Silva

Marelise has been with WSI since 2004 when Francois first opened his franchise. She fills a dynamic role in Francois team including Project Management, Web Administration and Client Services. Marelise is well versed in HTML, PHP and ASPX and she enjoys applying her skills to an ever changing industry.

Facebook has become one of, if not the greatest social networking site in the world. Social media marketing strategies which do not take this into account and take full advantage of its opportunities are missing out. There are a bunch of different things you can do if you plan on including Facebook into your marketing strategy.

These are the top ways to use Facebook to market your small business:

• Facebook Pages: The first thing you need to do is create a customised Facebook page where people can ‘Like’ your page. Whenever you post an update, your news will appear in their timelines. This new feature allows control over the content of business updates you want your fans to be able to view. You can gain visibility and boost your fan numbers by offering a special discount or deal linked to your business website. This ‘page’ is specifically useful for developing a brand and network within the Facebook community.
• Facebook Plugins for your website: these Facebook ‘plugins’ are social media marketing applications that let you see what your friends or fans have ‘liked’, commented on or shared from sites across the web. You can add these plugins to your business website, allowing people to ‘like’ an article or blog post on your website and share it with friends on Facebook. This is essential the new-age ‘word-of-mouse’ advertising. Some of the most popular Facebook plugins are the ‘Like’ Button, Live Stream, Facepile and the Activity Feed.
• Facebook Places: This is an add-on application for Facebook used on mobile devices. It allows Facebook users to ‘check in’ to specific places, notifying their friends where they are and what they are doing. Importantly this application also provides a plug for the business or location the Facebook user is checking into. Therefore when customers ‘check in’ to your business location, you are essentially getting advertising on your customers’ Facebook pages. A great social media marketing tool is to offer an incentive for your fans to ‘check in’ to your business location on Facebook Places.
• Facebook Analytics: the “Insights for Websites” tool makes it easy to see who likes the content you post, who is sharing the content and how many impressions you made during any specific week or month.

Taking advantage of all the great tools listed above can only boost and enhance your social media marketing strategies.

This post was written by Francois Muscat

Hello there, I started our business in 2004 and am enjoying every minute of it. I am a professional speaker (with the PSASA) and speak frequently  at Digital Marketing conferences all over the world. I am the current WSI training ambassador and last year I trained over 450 WSI Internet Marketing consultants world wide in digital marketing and social media.

Francois is the WSI area representative for Africa and is a member of the exclusive WSI President’s Circle, ICAC Council, operates a Regional Solutions Centre. Francois has won nine WSI awards including – Best Product Showcase, Excellence in Search Engine Optimization, Excellence in PPC, and two mentorship awards. Most recently he won the National Sales Award as Africa’s Franchisee of the Year at Stansted 2009. He enjoys mentoring over 12 WSI Internet Consultants internationally.

If you would like Francois Muscat to speak at your conference, seminar, workshop or provide in-house training to your team, contact him via the site or by phone at +27 11 468 3138.

WSI Internet Marketing will be exhibiting at IFE 2012, the biggest franchise expo in Africa. The International Franchise & Entrepreneurs Expo (IFE) 2012 will be held at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, Gauteng on 17-19 May. Now in its 20th year, the IFE expo is the official exhibition of the Franchise Association of Southern Africa (FASA).

Over the years the show has become renowned for showcasing quality franchising opportunities for entrepreneurial-minded individuals. Franchising is also known to have higher success rates for new business owners than independent businesses.

FASA has put forth some interesting facts on franchising:

• Franchising contributes 11.8% to South Africa’s GDP – more than many other sectors like agriculture and manufacturing?
• Franchising opportunities span 17 different business sectors, with over 500 franchised systems with a network of almost 30 000 franchisees.
• New business trends are the incubators of future big brands and franchising is the stone that causes the ripple effect of small business growth.

Interested in owning your own business?

WSI is looking to expand its growing franchise base across South Africa and to add to their existing franchises. If you are entrepreneurial and serious about business, then you cannot miss this opportunity to network with like-minded individuals who are self motivated and driven to succeed.

WSI Internet Marketing is for anyone interested in a white collar franchise with a global footprint. Pop in at our stand to learn about what we do and to find about the digital marketing solutions we offer. Chat to our consultants to hear their first hand experiences and find out if you would be a good fit for owning one of our franchises.

IFE 2012 is open from 10h00 to 18h00 daily with an entrance fee of R50 per person. You can find WSI at stand B10 or follow live blogging and tweets from the event. If you are visiting us do not forget to check in on Foursquare!

This post was written by Francois Muscat

Hello there, I started our business in 2004 and am enjoying every minute of it. I am a professional speaker (with the PSASA) and speak frequently  at Digital Marketing conferences all over the world. I am the current WSI training ambassador and last year I trained over 450 WSI Internet Marketing consultants world wide in digital marketing and social media.

Francois is the WSI area representative for Africa and is a member of the exclusive WSI President’s Circle, ICAC Council, operates a Regional Solutions Centre. Francois has won nine WSI awards including – Best Product Showcase, Excellence in Search Engine Optimization, Excellence in PPC, and two mentorship awards. Most recently he won the National Sales Award as Africa’s Franchisee of the Year at Stansted 2009. He enjoys mentoring over 12 WSI Internet Consultants internationally.

If you would like Francois Muscat to speak at your conference, seminar, workshop or provide in-house training to your team, contact him via the site or by phone at +27 11 468 3138.

Images speak louder than words and often illustrate the point far better than pages of copy.  But large files and incompatible formats can make for lengthy download times – something that frustrates people and could get them to leave your website.

Despite improvements in networks and internet connectivity, there are still some at the mercy of very slow connections (e.g. dial-up) and those accessing sites from mobile phones.

There are a few important guidelines to remember:

1. Be sure to choose the correct format

Experts agree that as a general rule of thumb, images that have solid/flat colours are best saved in PNG and GIF format – eg line drawings, graphs, bar charts and so on. For images with continuous colour – like photographs, detailed illustrations (such as art works), and so on, rather use JPG format.

2. Optimise your file size

There are several really good photographic packages available – either free ware or commercial – that are ideal for reducing the file size and quality without really affecting the overall appearance on the website. This is especially useful if you do not need to use really large, crystal-clear images as you would need to for a photographic site, for example.

Often by simply cropping an image, resizing it and reducing the quality and/or colour of the image, you can considerably reduce its file size.

3. Limit the number of images and photographs per page

Use images, illustrations and photographs cleverly and sparingly.  Often one clear image works better and can illustrate something more precisely than using several different images would.

Using these three simple principles to optimise the images and graphics on your site, you will significantly reduce the time each page takes to load, thereby improving how your webpages perform and keeping your visitors interested and on your site for longer.

Need help with your web design? Contact WSI OMS today!

This post was written by Marelise da Silva

Marelise has been with WSI since 2004 when Francois first opened his franchise. She fills a dynamic role in Francois team including Project Management, Web Administration and Client Services. Marelise is well versed in HTML, PHP and ASPX and she enjoys applying her skills to an ever changing industry.

Social media marketing can almost be found everywhere on the web can it can be a bit confusing for a small business owner to start using social media to increase their brand awareness. Most of the time people are only focusing on one or two social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook because they are the biggest. There are thousands of social media channels available that you can use and while you won’t be able to use them all effectively, which ones are you going to use?

Before you start interacting with your social media marketing campaign, it is important that you first identify where your potential customers are. Facebook and Twitter is not always the right choice for every business. The social media channels that you use will all depend on who you want to reach with your campaign.

Other social media channels

Never start your campaign by looking at only the big social media channels that you can use. Forums and blog are most likely the most underused channels that can be extremely powerful to connect with others. Do a bit of research and gain some insight what people are currently talking about regarding your business or services. This can help you generate content that you can share with your audience. Also, look at popular blogs in your market niche. This can also be a strategy to write guest posts to increase your exposure.

Other social media channels that you can also look at includes Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube for videos. Don’t focus on only one social media channel because you are then spreading yourself very thin on the social web. Get the balance right on who you want to target and you will find that your exposure to potential prospects will be positive, and the amount of targeted visitors to your website will increase.

This post was written by Francois Muscat

Hello there, I started our business in 2004 and am enjoying every minute of it. I am a professional speaker (with the PSASA) and speak frequently  at Digital Marketing conferences all over the world. I am the current WSI training ambassador and last year I trained over 450 WSI Internet Marketing consultants world wide in digital marketing and social media.

Francois is the WSI area representative for Africa and is a member of the exclusive WSI President’s Circle, ICAC Council, operates a Regional Solutions Centre. Francois has won nine WSI awards including – Best Product Showcase, Excellence in Search Engine Optimization, Excellence in PPC, and two mentorship awards. Most recently he won the National Sales Award as Africa’s Franchisee of the Year at Stansted 2009. He enjoys mentoring over 12 WSI Internet Consultants internationally.

If you would like Francois Muscat to speak at your conference, seminar, workshop or provide in-house training to your team, contact him via the site or by phone at +27 11 468 3138.

Blogging can be a very rewarding experience if you are writing about something you are passionate about. Successful blogs often acts as a source of income for their blog writers, and many people start or shape their careers around the blogs they have started. If you are interested in getting involved in the wonderful world of blogging, read these steps on how to blog successfully:

• Set up your blog: the first step to blogging is setting up an account with a blogging website such as Blogger, Live Journal or WordPress. If you have your own existing website, WordPress can slot right into in. WordPress is one of the most highly recommended blogging platforms and receives some of the best reviews.
• Focus your blog on some specifics: the best types of blogs have a specific focus and contain a few sub sections about a few select ideas or things. Choose something specific that you are passionate about and interested in – your experiences as a writer, the latest technological reviews, sports games that you have watched – whatever takes your fancy! It’s really helpful to choose no more than five key words which will define what kind of content will appear on your blog.
• Use tags: these keywords are also know as tags, and can be a very helpful blogging tool. Use the tags in your articles, about three per article should suffice. This will help your readers navigate your blogs. They also make it easier for internet search engines to pick up on your blog, and for people who may be interested in what you’re writing about to find you!
• Write often: Most internet search engines such as Google display the most current links first when they return search results, so it is important that you are constantly writing and updating your blog in order to ensure that your blog articles are high up on internet search results lists. Your readers will also appreciate a regularly updated blog as it shows you are keeping your blog up to date and that the content is fresh and interesting.
• Keep it fresh: It’s important to update your blog regularly, but it’s also important to keep your blog newsworthy. Ask thought leaders to contribute (via guest posts) and link to other relevant blog posts that your readers might find interesting.

Once your blog has been established and you’re writing articles, all that is left to do is self-promote! Add you blog URL (blog address) on every e-mail you send and every social networking post you create, ask your friends to repost your articles or their social networking accounts.

Need help with your blogging efforts? Contact WSI OMS today!

This post was written by Marianna Muscat

Marianna Muscat is talented in many different Internet Marketing Solutions. Not only is she able to sort most technical problems you put in front of her, she also has the rare ability to manage technical people and has won numerous ‘Man Manager” awards in her Corporate career. She is highly skilled in Google paid search, Search Engine Optimisation and project management. She has held Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer positions in a large South African bank for many years. She brings the skills on-board to take our WSI Franchise business to the next level.