The New Business of Online Marketing

Put your website to work.

Your website and how you work it can help you reach out to prospective customers economically. Be prepared to state what your business does, what services you provide and what products you have for sale. Specifically show how your current customers use your products and services. Explain why people need your products and services. Now show how your products and services differ from the competition. In marketing lingo, this is your value proposition.

Your website must attract potential customers, keep them interested in your products and services, and make it easy for customers to use and share with others. Does your web page have something for the visitor to read or download for free? Does your web page have a form customers can fill out to get more information? Put up all the social web icons so your customers can share your site with others. Submit your website to the search engines using Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the varied techniques and practices used to get more traffic from search engines

When you put a word or a phrase into search engine, the search engine goes out looking for those words in the description of websites. Put "underwater basket weaving" into a search engine and look at the full first page of the results. If you sell supplies for underwater basket weavers, you want to be in this first page results. If you have written a book, give tours, sell t-shirts or teach underwater basket weaving, you want to have your website come up in this first page of results.

Get busy with article marketing.

You know a lot about 1957 Chevies or parachutes or grooming poodles. Write about what you know. Open up your word processor and just type down anything and everything you know on your subject until you get to 600 words. Now go back and make the spelling, grammar and punctuation corrections. Open up your favorite search engine and type in "article marketing" and make a list of five directories. Open up an account on each one and submit your article. Keep track of how long it takes each one to approve your article. Once it is approved, write another. In fact, write up 5 more and submit as many of them as you can.

Ramp up your e-mail marketing.

Sending out an email to prospective customers is maybe the easiest and one of the best ways to grow your business. Just learn the right way to do it. That customer form on your website is where you get the email addresses. Make your subject line attention getting with "FREE" or "REVEALED" or "SECRET" along with 4 more words. The message inside tells the customer 3 reasons why they should get your products or services. Those articles from the marketing steps above turn into a free eBook once you have 45 pages of reading material.

Social Media Marketing

Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit and the list goes on. You need to get an account set up on each social media site and put the linking icon on each page of your website. When someone reads something interesting on your website make it easy for them to share it with others. You want to have the communication device that others seek. If you have a 3 minute video of upholstering a footstool, put it up on your website with all the social media links. If you have a 6,000 word eBook on nuclear plant effluence effects on migrating salmon, put it up on your website with all the social media links. Do you have still shots of how to install a zip line in a rain forest? Put up a slide presentation on your website with all the social media links.

How Can Trance Beats Help To Shape Music?

Even in the most solo of efforts, music is always a collaborative effort. The musician takes his personal collective influences and transforms these into sound, or music. Trance music, specifically was introduced as a genre of music in Frankfurt, Germany in 1993 and is primarily computer generated, although it is often manipulated by human beings. Trance is very popular in the "club scene" because much of the trance beats are designed to be very upbeat and motivating. When played in clubs, the preference is often to play the music on vinyl which gives the DJ the opportunity to manipulate the songs through bending and scratching the record and offering variance to the sound.

The "instrument" used in trance is the computer, which gives the music a very modern feel. Vocals may or may not be present, but when they are, it's usually a female voice with an operatic or ethereal quality that simply vocalizes rather than sings. However, ironically, it shares a lot in common with classical music, particularly the characteristic of repeating variations of short musical phrases throughout a piece. Most trance music, however, is much faster than typical classical music keeping a beat near 150 beats per minute. Many listeners are both captivated and uplifted by trance music.

While many people love trance music and love it on its own, it's not something everyone likes to listen to by itself. However, there are elements of trance beats that occur often within other kinds of music. One only has to listen to a few minutes of trance music to recognize that very similar beats have become the backdrop to many different pop and dance tracks as well as on film scores and music for television shows. Musicians and producers know the positive energy trance music brings to many people, and how it gives them an opportunity to feel and experience the music. Many musicians really embrace incorporating elements of trance sounds into their own.

Human beings have always had a fascination with music and their own ability to play and participate in music. Today, most of the music we listen to is played from digital files, and as a treat we may go to a club, a concert, or try playing an instrument ourselves. But of course, not everyone is musically gifted. With trance music, or other genres of music that features a trance beat there is an emphasis on making the listener a participant in the music, even if they have little talent.

Music and instruments are made from whatever we have available around us, and the things that are important to our lives. Our ears pique when we hear a cello in a rock band, or an electric guitar appearing in an orchestra. We crave "one-off" sounds that let us know music is still marching forward. With technology being such a driving force today, there is little doubt that elements of trance music will continue to infuse music of all genres for years to come.

The Other Sistine Chapel Frescoes

Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling frescoes are among the most famous paintings in the world.  However the entire Sistine Chapel is covered in fresco paintings, the walls were painted nearly thirty years earlier by some of the most famous artists of the late 15th century.  

Pope Sixtus IV commissioned the frescoes for the walls in 1481 and asked that the Chapel be completed within a year (named the "Sistine" Chapel in his honor).  He chose to hire several successful fresco painters from Tuscany and Umbria.  The Florentines included: Domenico Ghirlandaio, Sandro Botticelli and Cosimo Rosselli (assisted by Piero di Cosimo).  From Perugia came Pietro Perugino (who was assisted by Pinturicchio) and Luca Signorelli who worked in both regions.

 The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Matthew, Domenico Ghirlandaio,

Sistine Chapel, 1481-82

The Calling of the Apostles moves away from the stylization of his Last Supper and towards the later style he would become known for.  Look at the two halves of the painting, the figures on the right side are painted in a rather stylized way, mostly in profile while the figures in the center and on the left side are more naturalistic.  This fresco is filled with details and uses atmospheric perspective so that the objects in the background are painted in blues and grays.  The painting is also rich in color, no expense was spared in the use of pigments.

Christ Handing the Keys to St. Peter, Pietro Perugino (with Pinturicchio)
Sistine Chapel, 1481-82

Pietro Perugino was a key figure in the Italian Renaissance and a painter who emphasized beauty and harmony in his work.  Pinturicchio was his student and his assistant and worked closely with him.  The style of Pinturicchio (and also of the early Raphael) was very similar to their master Perugino who brought a new sense of gracefulness to the High Renaissance.  Here he shows Christ handing the keys of the church to St. Peter, which was an appropriate theme for the chapel attached to St. Peter's Basilica.

This is both a very famous work of art and also was a very influential work of art for later painters.  Unlike some other paintings and frescoes done at this time which were in private villas or small chapels, St. Peter's and the Sistine Chapel received thousands of visitors from all over Europe and beyond.  Perugino's graceful handling of human figures, use of one-point perspective and inclusion of harmonious 15th century Italianate architecture within a Biblical story would influence a wide variety of future artists.

Temptation of Christ, Sandro Botticelli
Sistine Chapel, 1481-82 

The Pope requested ten frescoes from the Old Testament (painted on the south wall) and New Testament (painted on the north wall) as well as many papal portraits near the clerestory windows.  Botticelli painted three of the large frescoes and around seven portraits.  Some of the frescoes on the altar wall were removed in the early 1530's to make way for Michelangelo's famous Last Judgement fresco which now covers the entire wall.

 

The Testament and Death of Moses, Luca Signorelli
Sistine Chapel, 1481-82

Luca Signorelli is perhaps most famous for his fresco of the Antichrist in the Cathedral of Orvieto, but that wasn't painted until 1499.  This is a much earlier work from this artist who was active in Tuscany, Umbria and Rome.  This fresco uses continuous narrative to show several scenes from the life of Moses including: Moses teaching the law to the Israelites, being shown the Promised Land from Mount Nebo and the descent of Moses from the mountain.

This was not the first time that several of these painters had met each other, both Ghirlandaio and Perugino were students in the workshop of Florentine Andrea Verrocchio along with Leonardo da Vinci.  Ghirlandaio as mentioned earlier would go on to train Michelangelo and Perugio would become the teacher of Raphael.  Botticelli may also have studied with Verrocchio (both painters studied under Fra Fillipo Lippi).  These artists would collaborate with one another in the future as well: Perugino, Ghirlandaio and Botticelli all worked on another fresco cycle together in a villa of Lorenzo di Medici in the mid-1480's.

The Italian "High Renaissance" is often said to have lasted from 1480-1520 and certainly these frescoes were painted in a style that had an enormous influence.  I have often thought that this interesting fresco cycle truly marked the start of the Italian High Renaissance.