Using Mobile Games To Promote Your Online Business

Creating mobile games and apps to promote your online business is now easier than in the past and well worth the effort for many online business owners. The use of mobile apps has been shown to cut costs, increase productivity, and give your business a stronger hold on the market. Yet it’s a good idea not only to think about integrating mobile apps with your business, but also to think about what kind of apps will be most effective.

Recent surveys assessing the public’s use of mobile apps have overwhelmingly showed that the most popular apps are mobile games. According to a survey conducted by BusinessDegree.net, 64% of smartphone users play games, with the average iPhone user averaging 14.7 hours per month. As a result, online business owners might want to determine how to best integrate mobile games as a promotional tool.

The Benefits Of Using Mobile Games
There are many uses of mobile apps for business owners, including new payment models that allow users to swipe their phone rather than carry credit cards. Yet gaming unlocks the door to unique promotional possibilities. By using mobile games to promote your business, you can reach a wide audience and create a buzz around your brand. Businesses can tie promotional offers as rewards for beating levels of the game, for example, or use customer purchases to unlock a new level of the game.

People love a challenge, and using mobile games as a promotional tool allows you to tap into that aspect of human nature. With more and more of the public conducting business and making purchases on the go, another benefit is that business owners can reach their target audience no matter where they might be.

Three Steps For Integrating Mobile Gaming
Laying the groundwork for this type of promotion simply involves optimizing your web design using ecommerce web hosting tools. You can then get creative with promotional possibilities.

1. Get your Website in Order
You don’t want your new customers to be underwhelmed by your actual business after playing with a fun and catchy mobile game. Preventing this means creating an ecommerce site that’s easy to navigate, visually appealing, and secure. A common mistake that overeager entrepreneurs make is to launch a huge marketing push before their website is ready. It’s easy to give your website a makeover with templates and content management systems provided by today’s services such as the Shopify ecommerce platform. Once this is squared away, you can progress on to the next level of promotions.

2. Optimize your Website for Mobile Visitors

When someone accesses your website from a tablet or smartphone, they will have a more user-friendly experience if the site has been optimized for this use. This is simply a matter of taking your already existing website, and presenting it for smaller screens. The navigation tools may need to be tweaked a bit so that they can be accessed with a touchpad rather than a mouse. You can then link your optimized mobile website to the game.

3. Create Mobile Game Apps for Your Business

The best games are usually those with relatively simple designs. It’s helpful to think about how mobile games typically work. Players usually are trying to beat their own score, or play to unlock new levels of content. To tie this in with your business, you could reward players with coupons, sales, free shipping, or other rewards when they beat a level.

Another use of mobile games could be to spark the initial introduction to your brand, by asking them to register their personal details in exchange for gaining access to the game. Purchases can be connected to the mobile app, so whenever a customer buys something, they will get a password that gives them an edge in the game or unlocks a new level of content.  The possibilities are endless with this type of promotional opportunity, helping engage your existing customers and gain new ones at the same time.

How To Increase The Reach Of Your Facebook Page Updates

Thousands of Facebook page fans and only a handful of likes, shares and comments – sound familiar? After all that time you’ve spent reading about the greatest Facebook marketing tricks and ways to get your fans to engage with you, and you’re doing everything right – you just can’t seem to get more people to click “Like”, and shares and comment seem more and more like mission impossible. It can’t be that they don’t like what you’re putting out – it’s all positive and engaging, not offensive, by all standards the content you’re publishing is shareable.

And well, you’re probably right. Even if you’re doing it all by the book in terms of selecting the content, finding the voice that your audience loves and choosing the right time of the day, you’re probably not taking one thing into consideration:

How many people actually see your Facebook Page updates?

Officially according to Facebook, Facebook page updates reach about 16% of fans on average. In reality, most Facebook page updates fall into the average of 7% daily!  That means that only 7 out of 100 fans will see whatever you post on your Wall, status updates, images, videos, links, etc.

Don’t you just hate when you realize that your efforts are, for the biggest part, in vain? 93 out of 100 people won’t see that carefully crafted status update nor that link that you are trying to get them to click on. Or 930 out of 1000. And so on – no matter how many fans your page has, the percentage of those who statistically won’t see it is huge.
Luckily, you can do something about it.

First tip: Do you know how well you’re doing now?

Statistical data is one thing, but your actual numbers can be well below or beyond that 7% mark. This is pretty easy to find out – unless you’re using Sponsored Stories, but that’s another scenario. Just go to your Insights and check the numbers of your reach. To be more accurate, take the numbers from the last 30 days and take the average; then divide the number you got by the number of your fans – and there you go, something to start from.

The simplest way to increase engagement! (and pretty effective too)

Images! Facebook users love images, and Facebook loves what their users love. Facebook EdgeRank (what determines whether your content will reach a greater number of people) prefers visual to textual content. So yes, funny and meaningful status updates are all fine, but you can accompany them with an image for better visibility, or write them across the image (all it takes is two minutes of your time and basic Photoshop skills, or even simple Paint).

Status updates, quotes, practically anything you can publish as text – you can publish as an image as well. They’re more likely to be seen and read than the plain text updates (although you don’t want to forget about those either), and they don’t take time to be seen as the video content does.

Second tip: Stimulate the engagement, it’s not as difficult as you may think.
Increased interaction also influences your EdgeRank, and it’s up to you to create it – your Facebook page fans won’t get activated by themselves. This doesn’t require you to be online all the time, nor to spend large amounts of money on sweepstakes and contest prizes; it doesn’t even require that you be insanely creative – you can look around, see what others are doing, modify their idea to suit your audience, and you’re all set.

Some of the most engaging activities on Facebook include:

    Asking a personal question that the fans should answer to by filling in the blank (it has to be personal, because your fans will be delighted to share something about themselves)
    Multiple choice Q&A – even one letter comment (y or n) counts as a comment, don’t forget that!
    Sharing inspirational quotes (people easily relate to them and want to show them to their friends)

In one month, do the above calculation again and see how well you did – for the boost in morale; then just continue with the tips we shared, and add some more – and you’ll do just fine.

10 Twitter Tips To Drive Traffic To Your Site

A large percentage of my website traffic comes from Twitter. I know that many of you enjoyed the tips that I shared in my FREE 7 Day eCourse about making money from blogging and making your own website, so today I wanted to look more in detail at how Twitter can help your business.

I am a big fan of Twitter marketing! It is such a great tool that you can use to find targeted traffic for your website, whilst allowing you to network with people from all over the world.

Most people that use Twitter tend to tweet meaningless nonsense, such as what they ate for lunch! That is great for people that use it purely for social reasons, however if you are planning to use Twitter to help you market your business, then you need to be using it in a more productive way.

The best thing about Twitter is that the people using it are so diverse! It doesn’t matter what your business is about, you will be able to find people almost instantly who are interested in your niche. This allows you to quickly find people who are part of your targeted audience.

The following are some tips that you can use to improve your Twitter account and increase traffic to your website.

Driving Traffic From Twitter To Your Blog

Lets get to the point! You want to use Twitter to drive traffic to your blog/website. Twitter is one of the best social media tools for driving traffic to your blog. I use it to update all of my followers about what’s new on my websites and what I’m doing (@matt_oit). It is such an amazing feeling when you tweet about a new post on your site and people start to re-tweet it, spreading the word.

Using Twitter and Blogging Together

To get the most out of Twitter, you need to promote Twitter on your website and there are a few ways to do this. The most obvious way to do this is to display a Twitter button on your homepage, or better yet within your sidebar so that it displays on all of your website pages. This button links directly to your Twitter account, allowing people to sign-up and follow you.
Another great way to promote Twitter on your site is to display sharing links on your posts. As you can see, at the top of all of my blog posts I display ‘AddThis‘ share buttons. This allows anyone to share my posts on any of the social media sites online, including Twitter. Counters can help show how popular your posts are to new visitors.
Also, consider placing a ‘Recent Tweets’ box on your site. This will display your newest tweets that your visitors may be interested in. Ultimately, this is just another way to encourage people to ‘follow‘ you.

Promote Yourself

You need to make sure that you promote yourself and your blog on Twitter. If you can do this well, then you will be able to build a strong brand identity that will be beneficial in the long run.
One of the key parts of your Twitter profile is your bio. Write a bio that clearly states what your blog is about and add a link to your site. This sounds really easy, but take some time to think about this. You only have a limited amount of characters, so make them count. If after reading your bio, people don’t get what you are about, they won’t stick around.
The best way to promote your site is to tweet about it! Tweet about all of your new posts a couple of times a day and keep everyone up to date about everything that is happening with your site. Surprisingly, a lot of people think that if they promote themselves on Twitter, then that makes them a spammer. That is just not true! It is fine to promote yourself, as long as you do it the right way. Tweeting every 5 minutes about your new post or an affiliate link would be classed as spam. Mix it up a bit and you will be fine. Tweet about your new post, but then tweet about other things that might be related.
If you can get the right balance and learn to promote your site in the best way, then you will begin to see results.

Make Friends

Twitter is a social site, so be social! There is a whole community related to your niche out there, so get involved. Chat to people, make friends, share ideas, ask question, re-tweet, etc.
I am always amazed when I get followed by someone that doesn’t tweet. When I check their profile, they are following x thousand people, but have never tweeted a single thing. You can’t expect to make friends and build your brand without tweeting.
Blogging is a community, so find similar people that blog within your field and interact with them. The more blogging friends that you can connect with, the better your blog will be as you will be able to share ideas with each other.

Listen To Your Twitter Followers

One of the best things about Twitter is that you can get almost instant reaction to your tweets from your followers. It is important that you listen to your followers as they can tell you what is working and what isn’t. A particular post that you tweet may be particularly popular, so you might want to do a follow up post on the same subject. Similarly, if you don’t get much reaction from one of your tweets, it may be because there isn’t much interest for it.
You can just ask your followers what they like and what they don’t and why. This way you are almost treating Twitter as a tool for market research that can help you with your business.
Have Conversations
Twitter is full of people having great conversations with one another. The best ones are full of useful information that can be very helpful to you. Don’t be shy, jump into conversations, ask questions and contribute to the discussion, or better yet start your own. People are very helpful when you are nice to them, you can learn a lot from many different people and build a useful network of people.

Honesty Is The Best Policy

I think that this is important for every aspect of your business and life in general. It is very easy to tell when someone is clearly talking a load of rubbish about something. Doing that only results in loosing business. Just be honest about who you are and what you are talking about. Trust is such an important part in any relationship, whether that be a romantic relationship or simply a business relationship. People are much more likely to listen to you and do business with you if they trust you.
Be honest on Twitter. If you come across something that you really like, or that you think your followers will like, then tell them about it. If you find something that you don’t like, then also tell them about it and why you don’t like it. You may find that not all of your followers agree with everything that you say, but ultimately they will value your honest opinion, which is far more important!

Straight To The Point

I am a big fan of writing informative posts that people can read. On Twitter, this is not possible because you have a limited 140 characters to use. This means that you need to get to the point with your Tweets!
This can be a bit of an art form, but the more you Tweet, the better you will get at doing it. You need to provide maximum information with minimum characters. Keep your titles, questions, comments, etc. short and concise, whilst still being easy to read.
Any links that you want to include should be shortened. This is easy to achieve with the many online URL shortener websites that are available online. I myself use bitly.com to shorten all of my links. This is such a great tool that dramatically reduces the amount of space that your links take up in your tweets.

Twitter Backgrounds

Twitter allows you to customise your Twitter account, so you can change all of the colours and you can upload your own background image. Why is this important? Well, by customising your own account, you make yourself stand out from the rest of the crowd. You can make all of your account colours match your website colours. Check out our Twitter account to see how we did this to match our website.
The background image is the most important part of this process. You can include a lot of important information on your background image that your followers might find useful. The most obvious would be to display your website address, but you could also show social network addresses, any products that you are promoting, company logo, etc.

5 Ways To Do Social Media Marketing The Right Way

Unlike what is generally perceived by people, marketing is not limited to just sales and promotions. Marketing is a holistic process that starts long before a business opportunity, when a market or a product is identified or created. One of the mediums used for marketing is social media. Social media marketing encompasses almost all areas that traditional marketing includes, such as customer research, promotion, sales, and customer feedback. It is also possible for businesses to execute their marketing activities strictly through social media. Social media includes social networking sites, cell phones and any other medium that people use to interact with each other.

Social Media Marketing Tools

We have heard quite a lot about the different social networking sites used by businesses to carry out their social media marketing techniques. However, not enough light has been shed upon the various tools used to maximize the benefit derived out of social media. Social media tools are used by experts to analyse holistic trends, related to different issues being talked about on social networking sites. They also include practices that boost the effectiveness of the social media features. Some of them include:

1. Social Media Measurement

Just the way businesses carry out surveys to find the extent to which customers are aware about their brands, social media measurement tools quantify the presence of certain marketing content on social media such as social networking sites, micro-blogs, news sites, blogs, and other forums. An area that compliments social media measurement is social media monitoring. A collection of professionals, that includes sales teams, social engagement staff, marketing teams and PR staff, is used to gain insights into not only the presence of a certain brand, but other areas as well such as:

    User interaction involving the discussion of the brand in question
    Users expressing an increase in desirability of the brand
    Impact of social media marketing on online sales
    Change in competitors’ social media marketing strategy as a response to the brand’s strategy
    Target market’s consumer behaviour in general and their inclination towards other issues, products, and brands

Since the area of social media measurement and monitoring has recently emerged, tools related to it are still developing. The ones that are present already are quite large in number and wide in variety. Some of them are entry level that can be used for free, while others are very powerful and are used by large organizations only. It must be noted that social media measurement tools have one of the two areas as their focus:

    Data Centeredness – These tools focus on collecting and analyzing data extensively to reveal trends. Such analysis helps companies identify areas that require change.
    Solution Centeredness – These tools track the presence of brands on the Internet and propose solutions to increase brand visibility and user engagement.
A lot of tools are a homogeneous combination of the two foci.

2. Social Network Aggregation

Given the huge number of social networking sites that have emerged over time, users often create accounts and use them on more than one platform. Since their accounts on different platforms contain exclusive sets of information, maintaining them all becomes quite cumbersome at times. This is where social network aggregation comes in. It is a process that lets users collect their profiles and information from different social networking sites on a single platform.

Social network aggregators come in the form of different tools and widgets that allow users to carry out tasks across different networks at the same time, such as accessing profiles, reading RSS feeds, searching for information, combining bookmarks, tracking friends, and consolidating messages.

3. Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is yet another emerging field that has seen significant growth over the last two years. With the growing quantity of user related information present on the Internet, – a lot of which is generated by other users – the need to compile it all at the same place was realized. This compilation would make it easier and take less time for users to search for certain information. Different titles have been given to the concept of social bookmarking such as ‘tagging’. Facebook users are able to tag their friends in photos, statuses, notes, and comments. People may tag themselves in photos also. This way, with a single click, a user can have a look at all the pictures others have uploaded of him/her.

4. Social Analytics

Social analytics is a field of online marketing that allows companies to collect and analyze data of consumers who use social media. There are numerous companies that render services related to social analytics such as Telligent Systems, Expert System, Attensity, and General Sentiment. These companies’ job is to collect information related to different market segments. Once they do so, they are approached by clients. These clients are not necessarily businesses that sell products and services. They may also be businesses (such as advertising agencies) that cater to other businesses.

It must be noted that not all companies have to avail the services of different social analytics companies. They may also carry out analyses themselves by using platforms such as Klout, Swaylo, PeerIndex, and Empire Avenue. These tools help them find out their brands’ presence in social media. They also present solutions that companies must follow to engage people from the target market and increase their brand awareness among them. A number of companies such as JetBlue, Royal Bank of Canada, and Whirlpool have used these tools to accomplish their goals.

5. Automation
Purists almost consider automation a sin. However, others realize that given the ever increasing number of platforms used by businesses for social media marketing, automation is a tool that simply makes their efforts easier and faster. A certain level of responsibility must be exercised when applying automation because its overuse can lead to spamming that can annoy consumers and lead to the decline of brands’ desirability. When used wisely, automation can be not only good, but great. It picks up areas that are left untouched.

For example, TwitterFeed is a great way of connecting your blog to people on different social networking sites. Once you are done with writing a blog post, instead of posting links to your profiles on different sites, you can simply relax. You can do so by automating the process of sharing information on Twitter by using TwitterFeed. As soon as you publish a blog post, a message is automatically sent to all the members even if you are not signed into your Twitter account. Similarly, NetworkedBlogs is another tool that automatically informs your friends on Facebook about blog posts you publish.

The reason why social media marketing tools have emerged is because of the effectiveness of social media marketing itself. Today, the world revolves around information. Consumers make decisions based on the information they get about brands, and businesses make decisions based on information they get about consumers. Information minimizes the risk factor these parties are exposed to. Social media marketing has become so popular over the years because of three chief reasons.

Rapid Action

There is hardly any other medium that spreads information faster than social media. The structure social media is built on and the way its users behave on it make it a platform that spreads information like wild fire. For this reason, businesses find marketing their brands on social networking sites, micro blogs, cell phones, and other social media tools to their advantage.

Highly Experiential

Another benefit that businesses enjoy using social media marketing is the extent to which they can engage their audience. Earlier, Orkut, Facebook, Blogger, and other services allowed users to share information of limited formats. After much development, they let information of virtually any type to be created and shared online. Whether it be social networking sites or blogs, textual, pictorial, and visual content can be easily uploaded. Some platforms are limited to certain types of information. For example, Twitter users share texts, YouTube focuses on videos and Pinterest supports pictures only. Hence, their users attach links to external online locations that can be visited for further experience.

Cost Effective

Cost effectiveness is another reason for social media marketing’s boom. Unlike traditional media such as TVCs, billboards, newspaper ads, etc. social media platforms charge a lot less. This is because of the relatively lower business costs they themselves incur. Also, certain practices such as PPV (pay per view) and PPC (pay per click), make payment options not only low, but also efficient because clients pay for only what they have benefited from.

All in all, social media marketing is a field that highly depends on consumer behaviours. Its success depends on what consumers like and don’t like. Meanwhile, business collect, analyze, and use information related to social media to make decisions related to promotion, engage target audience, increase product/service sales, and receive customer feedback. With time, social media marketing practices are bound to evolve because of the changes in technology, politics, economy, consumer behaviour, and other factors.

3 Profitable Niche Blog Topics – Select A Blog Topic That Makes Money?

You may just be getting starting within the world of blogging, or perhaps you have blogged before, but if you are considering starting a blog to earn money, then you are making a very wise decision!

Blogs have become a very lucrative piece of web property online because they have the highest return on your investment. This is because they require almost no investment to set one up, but can result in high profits.

Now, this all sounds great, but to ensure your success as a blogger, you have to make sure that you are getting into the right niche to begin with!

There are an infinite amount of niche topics that you could build a site around, but many of them won’t make you any money because they are too specific. For example, a site that focuses on glow in the dark shoes, won’t (I’d imagine?) get much traffic, therefore limiting its income potential. In contrast, a site that concentrates on women’s shoes, will be much more popular.

One of the most important things to remember when picking a niche, is that you must be interested in the subject. You could pick a great niche topic, with huge potential, but if you are not that interested in it, then you won’t put the work in that is needed.

Currently, there are three huge profitable niche topics online. These are; ‘Health & Fitness‘, ‘Relationships‘ and ‘Money & Finance‘.

Health & Fitness
This blog niche seems to be profitable no matter what time of year it is, the economic situation of the country, or how society and culture changes!

The health and fitness market is awash with narrow and targeted niches that you can focus on. Think about all of the different fields that fall under this category; diet, weight loss, exercise equipment, nutrition, etc.

Setting up a blog focused to answering some of the burning questions and needs people have with regards to their health and fitness level, would be very popular. After all, people will always be willing to pay in order to look and feel better. So a blog within this market is guaranteed to earn you money

Relationships
Another niche that has always been highly profitable is within the market of relationship advice. This is a huge market that has many targeted niches within it that you could build a site around. This can include; romantic relationship advice, dating sites, parenting advice, professional working relationships, social media, etc.

Our lives and our happiness is so dependent on the relationships that we have with one another, there will always be money in helping people to connect with others and lead a more fulfilling live.

Money & Finance
The third and arguably most profitable blog niche is money and finances! Everyone is always looking to improve their finances, make more money, set up a business, debt advice, getting a job, etc.

This is the niche that this site is built around, because I enjoy helping people learn how they can set up their own site and make money from it, which provides me with a nice income for myself. You yourself are reading this very article, so I must be doing something right!

I hope this post has given you some ideas to create your own website.  If you have any questions or just want to share your opinions, then please leave a comment below.

Making the Most of Your Business Assets

Running a business is one of the toughest challenges you can professionally face. Every business owner deals with a constant flow of hurdles, but there are easy ways to overcome them. It just takes the right knowledge to successfully compete in the business world and overcome its daily challenges. There are a few tricks to every trade and there are several solutions that successful businesses share.

Business Assets
At the core of every business is a numbers game. It is all part of the challenge of operating a successful business. The numbers associated with profit and cost are at a constant battle. In order for profit to prevail, a company will have to take advantage of its business assets. Every business has assets; some business owners don’t even realize that they may have some very powerful business assets. These assets could be used to help a business turn a profit. Assets can be physical items like: office furniture, computers, machinery, or a finished product and its components.
Not every business sells a product, but rather a service. These businesses may not have physical assets that they can take advantage of, but they still have very powerful assets in the form of open invoices.
Any business can leverage the power of these assets in order to help make a profit. At the end of the day however, there is a wide range of expenses that must be paid. A business that is not making a profit will not be able to handle these expenses and thus, stay alive.
Is a Loan the Right Solution?

Are Payday Loans Going Out Of Fashion Making the Most of Your Business Assets
Loans can be a great way for any business to get ahead, but getting approved for a business loan is often a difficult task. Banks will require every business to meet a specific set of requirements. If these requirements are not met, then the bank will deny the loan. The few businesses that are lucky enough to meet the strict requirements of a bank funded business loan will be facing higher interest rates, and most banks don’t fund 100% of the original loan amount.

Asset Based Lending May Be the Better Choice
This is a unique form of lending that allows you to benefit from your business assets. These assets could be inventory or open invoices. In order for any business to take full advantage of this unique type of lending, they will need to find a company that specializes in this type of lending. This type of company is called a factoring company.
A growing business will face its own unique set of challenges. There are businesses all over the world that grow faster than their cash flow intake. That is where asset based lending comes in.

How Does It Work?This type of lending allows a business to take advantage of its inventory or accounts receivables by using them as collateral. Accounts receivable financing allows a business to collect the funds from open invoices before they are due. It is not uncommon for a business to give its customers 60 or 90-day terms. This is great for the average customer, but for a business, it can be difficult to continue steady growth without access to the funds that are tied up in the invoices. This type of financing allows businesses to retrieve profits with open invoices.
Purchase order financing is another excellent option. This form of financing allows a business to finance the purchase of items that have already been sold to a credit-worthy customer. 1st Commercial Credit PO Financing is another solution for businesses that are growing faster than their cash flow.

What Are the Benefits?
This financing technique does not come with all of the same hassles that a traditional bank loan does. The interest rates or fees may be a bit higher than a traditional bank, but there are not as many pre-requisites. There are no audits, no financials, no minimums, no upfront fees and no hidden fees. Setting everything up can take as little as 3-5 days. Once everything is set up, the funds can be available in as little as 24 hours.

Best Ways to Decorate Home

Whether redecorating or starting from the scratch, home decor is all about transforming an ordinary house into your dream home. The nuisance is in finding the right furniture as well as the decorations to make it profoundly beautiful which captivates the onlookers. Well, this can be a tricky part as there are abundant decorating ideas and objects to give just the right touch. However, that many options often leave you confused. 

Once donning the kids` rooms with Disney movie characters and comic book leads, themed decorations have now taken over the grownup space. Not exactly comics or cartoons, but something abstract which enables women to decorate their homes in various themes and see their fantasies sail. A theme decoration lays out a dream, tells a story and most importantly defines the homeowner, reflecting their beliefs, ideas and personal interests. Hence, you must be very careful while choosing a theme and planning the layout.

Winter Theme
Winter theme is usually appropriate for colder climates, but if you can keep the temperature of your home cool at all times, you can give it a try. The must have item for winter themed decoration is a fireplace – you don`t have to light a fire, but it must be there with some ottomans, a small table and a rug placed by it to create an authentic winter look. Winter is all about being cozy and snugly – keep that in mind. Placing cushions on the sofa with a soft unfolded blanket will create a warm ambiance perfect for winters.

Don`t be too flashy with decorations – use pastel colors to bring out the beauty of natural elements which add serenity to the home. Wood and stone are perfect for winters – so invest in decorating pieces made of these two. Better yet, you should place some dried flowers on a vase with dried leaves around it and on the table as if it had just fallen. Buy low watt light bulbs and increase the romantic vibes in the air.

Tropical Theme
Also known as the Hawaiian Theme, this theme is based on the vibrant tropical lifestyle. If you are high-spirited, you should bring home the turquoise water, exotic beaches, intensely hued corals, splendid flowers, green palms, clear blue sky and a never-say-die spirit of tropical areas and uplift your mood. Choose read and yellow for the draperies, furniture upholstery, bed covers bath towels, etc... And add seashells to the curtains. Cane and bamboo furniture is befitting for this theme.

Bring your home alive with zestful and peppy decorations on the walls. You can even have the walls painted with blue ocean waves. If you have a backyard, install a hammock and if not, try the cloth hammock (throw in some pillows as well) in the living room or even balcony. Buy indoor palm trees and adorn your living room with them – they are easy to grow and care for. You can also use coconut shell replicas as ashtray, soup bowls and even pen stands.

Asian Theme
Embroidered curtains, beaded upholstery, Dragon phoenix lying on coffee table tops, Feng Shui chimes and crystals hanging over the doors and more items can give your home a unique Asian look. For lighting, you can blend the amazing Chinese lamps and the magnificent traditional Indian chandeliers to create a magical look. Traditional utensils in the kitchen and dining room make the place awe-inspiring.

Use furniture made of bamboo adorn with the upholstery graced by Jaipuri patchwork or embroidery. Artwork of Asia should be placed on various tables and hung on the walls. Pottery figurines, Lord Buddha idols, paintings depicting Asian cultures and other things look just stunning. You can even get a bookshelf designed as a ying-yang symbol and brighten up the room. While decorating, you have to keep in  mind that the Asian theme is soothing and relaxing, so try not to overdo it.

Traditional or Antique Theme
One of the most common themes, Antique theme accentuates the look of every room. You can choose to transform your living room into something that screams sixteenth century exploration with framed historic travel maps on the walls, contemporary furniture, a file cabinet with travel books, a small telescope on the side table, an antique table with a globe and a traditional lamp on top of it. These will add a distinct appeal to the living room.

The best thing about Antique theme is that you can depict a different era in each and every room. While the living room is all about exploration, your bedroom can be a reflection of the Victorian Age. Throw in the vintage bed with curtains, a chest, an ottoman and the crucial item – the carved-wood room separator. Instead of buying a dressing table, you should hang an old mirror over the wooden chest and place two antique lamps, each on one side to pull them together.  

Likewise, you can go for a rock n` roll theme with retro record player or a radio set, posters of Rolling Stones, Dire Straits, Led Zapplin and other musicians of the age. Whatever theme you like, just choose items that tell stories and blend well to present a sense of unity as well as lend an exquisite appeal to the room.

Tips to Look Good this Festive Season

It’s the busiest quarter of the year, with weddings, festivals and parties in a row, women are all set to deck up and step out in all their finery.  Well, transforming into a diva is no rocket science , however it takes attention, intuition and creativity to brighten ones  glamour qoutient.

These days women are trying to steer clear of stale looks rather trend is to look unusual by moving from basic sarees  or dripping diamonds. However,  one shouldn’t go over-board with designer duds. The trick is to look elegant, stylish and different.

Attractive Attires
Women must steer clear of figure hugging clothes and wear things that flatter their body types. One should choose garments which depict feminity and chicness.  Women should learn to experiment with their silhouettes,  hemlines with elegant drapes and flowy fabrics.

Now a days, women are also experimenting tremendously with their silhouettes, which could range from panelled suits , mermaid lehengas, saree-cum-lehenga, corsets, pre-stitched or kalidar saris, ghararas- shararas, floor length anarkalis with lungis or skirts, fitted blouses with back broaches or chunky latkans. Women are also throwing in an indo-western appeal, with the usual kurta-churidars giving way to structured kurtas paired with cigarette, dhoti, palazzo pants. The materials that women can opt for range from raw silks, nets, velvets, georgettes, chiffons, courdroy, cotton, to chanderis.  Most of these plain materials can be beautifully accentuated with beads, zari or banarasi borders, swarovski crystals, diamonte stones,coloured pearls, crochet laces. The festive season hues range from  burgundy, green, blue, violet and coral. Women can chalk out a look in their mind or take inspiration from the internet or magazines, scout out for materials and get them stitched at the trusted tailor.

Old is Gold
Girls are blessed in more ways than one. For one, they can transform their mom’s closet and mix and match it for creating a brand new look. So raiding your mom’s wardrobe, jewellery box is fairly a good idea. Pick out your mom’s old sarees, lehengas, stoles besides you can also dig out the jhumkis, chokers, mangtikkas and anklets because they are back with a bang. Make sure to pick your look and then mix with the antique patchwork or jewellery to create a new you. Do not mix your glittering dress with too much accessories, focus on statement worthy jewellery or let the dress do the talking.

Show Shoes
No girl’s closet is complete without a couple of fancy pair of Punjabi jootis, stilletos, wedge heels or peep-toe shoes in flats or kitten heels to go with traditional wear. Make sure you have your basic colour tones in place- nude, black, white, silver and gold.

Skin-tillating
The effect of a skin scream, facial or hair therapy shows only after the second day. So make sure you complete your hair spa sessions, glow peels, body polish, manicure, pedicure, nail spa-nail art, foot spas at the nearest salon way before the occasion to get glowing from head to toe in time.  Don’t forget grandma’s tips for a natural healthy you which includes raiding the kitchen for the home rituals with haldi, besan, milk , rose petals, fruits juices, almonds, saffron and multani mitti rituals to get the porcelain look. With plenty of visitors home and having to visit people and the endless eating, its best to keep your health regimes in place. Indulge in exercise, walk, run or jog for 30 minutes to keep yourself in shape. Make sure you drink litres of warm water, orange juice and coconut water to keep the hydration levels intact.

Let the heads turn your way all through the season.