Identify Components of a Typical Contract Essay

Identify Components of a Typical Contract - Essay Example Parties must meet the legal capacity to enter into valid contracts (Miller & Jentz, 2012). This implies that parties must be of age, to understand stipulations of a contract and be of sound mind. It must be noted that minors of age below eighteen years cannot enter into a contract. Another requirement to be met by parties entering into contracts is that concerned parties must ensure that the contract is free from any form of future misunderstandings and has no loopholes. An offer must be made, and consideration be made for exchange. The purpose for which any contract is made must be for legal objectives. Lastly, parties meeting all the legal requirements seal the contract (Meiners, Ringleb & Edwards, 2012). The law also stipulates measures to be taken should any of the parties fail to honor terms of the agreement or perform breach of contract. The injured party could rescind the contract or set free the breaching party off any responsibilities coming because of the contract implement ation? The other option available is for the parties to reach an agreement on notation (Walston-Dunham, 2012). The injured side has a right to ask for compensation from the defaulter for damages or loss incurred. The injured party can file for a court order restraining the other party from undertaking any transaction direct related to the agreement. All rules relating to how contracts are formed and how every party is supposed to behave are contained in the law of contract (Walston-Dunham, 2012). Case 1 The two parties here are on contract, to sell ten acres of land. The seller, Krauses in the first instance offered a price less than the actual market value and a contract was formed both parties. The contract is legally binding in all terms and both parties are required to observe stated term. Krauses cannot make changes on the contract despite realizing the quoted price is much lower than the market price (Walston-Dunham, 2012). Changes can be implemented to the terms of the contra ct on exceptional cases such as when the contract ends (Meiners, Ringleb & Edwards, 2012). The contract could also be terminated if both parties reach a mutual agreement to end the contract and in other cases when both parties have fulfilled their obligation to each other leaving no other reason for the parties to carry out the contract (Walston-Dunham, 2012). If another situation arose and Krauses breaches the contract terms by indicating a price higher than agreed in writing, Jud is not liable to adhering to the stipulated terms as Krauses has performed breach of contract by false writing for his personal reasons (Miller & Jentz, 2012). As a result, Jud has right to terminate the contract as it does not act as per the laid down agreement (Walston-Dunham, 2012). Case 2 The second case implies a contract whereby there are two parties Gerald and a centre looking into the needs of disadvantaged children. The initial agreement was that Gerald who is an event organizer stages a concert to raise funds for the kids centre. However, Gerald thereafter decides not to hand over the concert earnings to the charity home as per the agreement. Both parties were well aware of the stipulations of the agreement and had the intention to abide by them (Meiners, Ringleb & Edwards, 2012). As earlier stated, for a contract to be valid it must fulfill all terms laid down by law. One of the stipulati

Fitzgerald and Gatsby Essay Example for Free

Fitzgerald and Gatsby Essay Francis Scott key Fitzgerald was a popular american storyteller. Born September 24th, 1896 and died in December 21st, 1940, Fitzgerald lived the prime of his life in the Roaring-Twenties. The values and morals were declining in favor of materialistic and careless attitudes following the world war. Social prestige no longer came to how hardworking and knowledgeable you were but how much property and goods you had. People began to think that instead of earning a place in society you could purchase it. This corrupted the characters in the novel The Great Gatsby and twisted the American dream. In the novel by Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby he connects many of the characters to real people that he has delt with in his life. Fitzgerald’s character Gatsby is a mirror of himself. In many ways Fitzgerald betters himself through Gatsby and his characteristics but still follows a close backbone to Fitzgerald himself and events in his life. James Gats was born into a poor, disadvantaged farm family and came from nothing. Fitzgerald was born into a deprived family and had to create himself on his own. Neither came from old money or was born into the elite class but rather had to work for all of their money. Fitzgerald loved to party and drink but with that came many things he did wrong when he was drunk. Gatsby threw many parties but never drank so he wouldnt miss a beat. It says how Gatsby learned from Dan Cody, that when he was drunk women took advantage of him and he made ignorant mistakes. Fitzgerald was taken advantage by his wife and spent money very foolishly when he was drunk. Gatsby was created without Fitzgeralds alcoholism. Fitzgerald was also enrolled in the army and became a military officer but never went to war. Gatsby returned home as a war hero with medals of honor. Gatsby never had money problems it seemed as he never really worked but the money just kept coming in. Fitzgerald was always fighting to keep making money and worked for hours on end to make ends meet so he could support his lavish, careless, and drunken lifestyle. Fitzgerald was a major party addict. He loved the fast life. He was an excessive partier but his home life suffered and was extremely unhappy. Gatsby Through many big parties almost every weekend but he was lacking the only thing money couldnt buy him, love. Both Fitzgerald and Gatsby fell in ove at a young age with a woman out of their league. Fitzgerald with Ginevra and Gatsby with Daisy. Both Daisy and Ginevra came from a background of old money. They lived luxurious lifestyles. These women were beautiful,rich and characterized everything these men believed were perfect. They were blinded by materialistic things rather than inner beauty. At the time these men were still unsuccessful and couldnt support these high maintenance women. Their love lives are very similar. Both Daisy and Ginevra did love them but could not marry them because â€Å"Rich girls do not marry poor boys†. The women moved on but the men still loved them and were even more determined to become successful and win their lovers back. In the end both men were successful and earned a lot of money to move into the elite class. They so called conquered the American Dream But they were still unhappy. They didnt have the loving family unit or white picket fence house instead they had excessive amours of money, designer clothing, expensive cars, big unfriendly mansions and a cold separated family. But both Daisy and Ginevra got married already to rich men who could support their lifestyles. They were both unhappy with their marriage. Fitzgerald meets up with Ginevra again and has a second and last chance to impress her and win over her love now that he was successful. They meet at a bar and he drinks and is out of control. He is rude and is not the way Ginevra remember the Fitzgerald she fell in love with and loses his chance. Gatsby gets a second chance with Daisy too. When he firsts meets her she seems different to him, Older and less bubbly but he still loves her. But he goes out to lunch with her and her husband and takes things too far trying to win her back and loses his final chance. Through time things have changed about each character but in their minds they were static. They were both imagining different visuals and personalities from their youths. Everyone in life gets older and matures. It did not work out in the end for both men. The American dream was twisted and all of the riches they earned were wasted because money cannot buy true love. It just was not ment to be. Even though money is up there with oxygen it isnt everything. These men where searching for love and happiness and money was not going to buy it. The novel parallels to Fitzgeralds life immensely. Its captures and llustrates many of the issues Fitzgerald suffered. He had constant implications with women in his life therefore he portrays them as shallow, ignorant, and disloyal in the novel. Fitzgerald used many of his emotions to influence his novel and that is why it mirrors his life so closely, as well as many of the other pieces of writing he has created. He is a gifted writer and lived a rollacoster lifestyle up until he died of a heart attack. If only he realized sooner how to prioritize his life he could lived much happier. It is unfortunate what he had to go through. But there is no reward for living life as a drunken partier.

Job Discrimination Essay -- Discrimination is Wrong

In some way or another we have all experienced discrimination not only through race but also sex, a disability, religion and so on. How can we determine if discrimination is right in areas other than race? If we define discrimination from the Webster’s dictionary it can be the treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person belongs. In my opinion I would simply say that â€Å"you can’t judge a book by its cover† and that is what we tend to do when we face discrimination. The Federal Equal Opportunity Laws are the enforcers of such discriminations people face on a daily job. Whenever employees encounter a problem with discrimination the EEO laws are their as protection for their rights in the workplace.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Laws are like the book of psalms in your bible, daily laws to live by. Under the title VII, the ADA, and the ADEA, it is illegal to participate in any discrimination when dealing with employment. For instance, hiring and firing, recruitment, testing and transfer, promotion, lay off, or recall. Which employers are responsible for making employees aware of the rights under the EEOC? Under the title VII it explains that it is not only intentional discrimination, but also discrimination against color, sex, religion, race, and national origin. When describing National Origin Discrimination it is discriminating against people because of their ancestry, birthplace and culture. National origin an employer has the right to request proper form of Identification or something that let’s them know that they are legal citizens; and this is supported by the IRCA. Dealing with Religious Accommodation discrimination that the employer has the right to ask his boss for permission to accommodate his religious belief. For instance, if the employee is practicing the Muslim religion, and he is required to pray in certain areas at certain times, he needs to make sure that when he practices his daily religious belief that it does not affect other employees. Sex discrimination would fall under title VII, which can range from sexual harassment can stem from sexual favors from the same or opposite sex. For pregnant women they should be treated the same way any ill person would be treated. Next, Age Discriminati... ...specific agent the â€Å"Fair Employment Practices Agencies (FEPAs) they make sure that the party that is being charged is under both federal and state law. Once the charge has been filed they contact the employer and there are several ways they can go about the incident. For instance, interviews, review documents, and maybe visit the incident where it happened. In these cases mentioned above when discrimination is present these are things that may occur: back pay, hiring, promotion, reinstatement, front pay and reasonable accommodation; it may also include attorneys’ fees, and court costs. As I researched this topic, I read a passage in the book Sex Discrimination in the legal Profession, that women in the early 1980’s and 1990’s who were lawyers were getting paid less than a man in the same profession; yes female lawyers are among the most highly educated women on earth now is that equal. Well I think by now we should know whether this topic is a federal or state law? Yes it is a federal law. In order for job discrimination to decrease we must learn how to treat people equal regardless of the color of their skin or their race, or any other discrimination we face in day-to-day life.

The Uncertainty of Happiness in Anton Chekhovs About Love Essay

In Anton Chekov's "About Love" Alekhin also known as Pavel Konstantinovich shares a story within a story about his one true love Anna Alekeevna with Burkin, the high school teacher and Ivan Inanovich, the veterinary surgeon. The story shares how he and Anna grew to share an unconditional love for each other. The two sacrificed their love for each other for the happiness of others since Anna was already married and had two children. Later on in his life, Alekhin realizes that he had missed his one chance of true love, when he had the chance they should have sacrificed everything and attempted to live a happy life together. Although Alehin's tone while telling his story seems to doubt the possibility of true happiness, it is not until after he is finished that he seems to understand that by not sacrificing and taking chances in life, you hinder your chance of ever-attaining true contentment. Living in his own form of futliarnost, Alekhin enforces the idea that ones own happiness is set upon the ideal they have envisioned for themselves. I an educated man with a knowledge of languages, should, instead of devoting myself to science or literary work, live in the country, rush around like a squirrel in a cage, work hard with never a penny to show for it (198). The term "futliarnost" is used to explain one who encasts himself physically, psychologically or morally in order to reduce the contact between oneself and the rest of the world. Alekhin's state of affairs with Anna comes in the form of a rejection of love, forcing him to keep busy with daily routines to keep his mind from pondering upon hi... ...hat he had the chance to be in love was a taste of happiness. One must take chances and make sacrifices in order to obtain such a passionate emotion; if that person refuses to change their ways they may be pushing away a chance of happiness that may only come once. It is not until Alekhin is finished telling his story that he comes to realize many things about the situation and himself. Others may look upon happiness as a state of mind you create for yourself, a state of contentment. Alekhin was able to reach this state by occupying himself and achieving good in his life. One can look upon this story as one of irreverence or a lesson in life. Happiness is relative; a person can create happiness or unhappiness depending on how they choose to act upon chances life and loved ones present to them.

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove Chapter 22~23

Twenty-two Theo The walls of Molly's trailer were plastered with movie posters. He stood in the middle of the living room among the scattered videotapes, magazines, and junk mail and slowly turned. It was her, Molly. She hadn't been lying all this time. Most of the posters were in foreign languages, but every one featured a younger Molly in various states of undress, holding weapons or fighting off bad guys, her hair flying in the wind, a nuked-out city or a desert littered with human skulls and burned-out cars in the background. The adolescent male part of Theo, the part that every man tries to bury but carries to his grave, reared up. She was a movie star. A hot movie star! And he knew her, had in fact put handcuffs on her. If there was only a locker room, a street corner, or a second-period study hall where he could brag about it to his friends. But he didn't really have any friends, except for Gabe maybe, and Gabe was a grown-up. The prurient moment passed and Theo felt guilty about the way he had treated Molly: patronizing her and condescending to her; the way many people treated him when he tried to be something besides a pothead and puppet. He kneeled down to a bookshelf filled with videotapes, found one labeled KENDRA: WARRIOR BABE OF THE OUT LAND (ENGLISH), and slipped it into the VCR and turned on the television. Then he turned off the lights, laid his guns on the coffee table, and lay down on Molly's couch to wait. He watched as the Crazy Lady of Pine Cove battled mutants and Sand Pirates for half an hour before he drifted off to sleep. His mind needed a deeper escape from his problems than the movie could provide. â€Å"Hi, Theo.† He came awake startled. The movie was still casting a flickering light over the room, so he couldn't have been sleeping that long. She stood in the doorway, half in shadow, looking very much like the woman on the television screen. She held an assault rifle at her side. â€Å"Molly, I've been waiting for you.† â€Å"How'd you like it?† She nodded toward the television. â€Å"Loved it. I never realized. I was just so tired†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Molly nodded. â€Å"I won't be long, I just came to get some clean clothes. You're welcome to stay here.† Theo didn't know what to do. It didn't seem like the time to grab one of the pistols off the table. He felt more embarrassed than threatened. â€Å"Thanks,† he said. â€Å"He's the last one, Theo. After him there aren't any more of his kind. His time has passed. I think that's what we have in common. You don't know what it is to be a has-been, do you?† â€Å"I think I'm what they call a never-was.† â€Å"That's easier. At least you're always looking up the ladder, not down. Coming down is scarier.† â€Å"How? Why? What is he?† â€Å"I'm not sure, a dragon maybe. Who knows?† She leaned back against the doorway and sighed. â€Å"But I can kinda tell what he's thinking. I guess it's because I'm nuts. Who would have thought that would come in handy, huh?† â€Å"Don't say that about yourself. You're saner than I am.† Molly laughed, and Theo could see her movie-star teeth shine in the light of the television. â€Å"You're a neurotic, Theo. A neurotic is someone who thinks something is wrong with him, but everyone else thinks he is normal; a psychotic thinks something's wrong with her. Take a poll of the locals, I think I'd come out in the latter category, don't you?† â€Å"Molly, this is really dangerous stuff you're messing with.† â€Å"He won't hurt me.† â€Å"It's not just that. You could go to jail just for having that machine gun, Molly. People are getting killed, aren't they?† â€Å"In a manner of speaking.† â€Å"That's what happened to Joseph Leander, and the guys working the drug lab, right? Your pal ate them?† â€Å"They were going to hurt you, and Steve was hungry. Seemed like great timing to me.† â€Å"Molly, that's murder!† â€Å"Theo! I'm nuts. What are they going to do to me?† Theo shrugged his shoulders and sat back on the couch. â€Å"I don't know what to do.† â€Å"You're not in a position to do anything right now. Get some rest.† Theo cradled his head in his hands. His cell phone, still in the pocket of his flannel shirt, began ringing. â€Å"I could sure use a hit right now.† â€Å"There's some Smurfs of Sanity in the cupboard over the sink – neuroleptics Dr. Val gave me, antipsychotics – they've done wonders for me.† â€Å"Obviously.† â€Å"Your phone is ringing.† Theo pulled out the phone, flipped it open, hit the answer button and watched as the incoming number ap peared on the display. It was Sheriff Burton's cell phone number. Theo hit disconnect. â€Å"I'm fucked,† Theo said. Molly picked up Theo's .357 Magnum from the table, held it on Theo, then picked up Joseph Leander's automatic. â€Å"I'll give these back before I go. I'm going to get some clean clothes and some girlie things out of my bedroom. You be okay here?† â€Å"Yeah, sure.† His head was still hung. He spoke into his lap. â€Å"You're bumming me out, Theo.† â€Å"Sorry.† Molly was gone from the room for only five minutes, in which time Theo tried to get a handle on what had happened. Molly returned with a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She was wearing the Kendra costume, com-plete with thigh-high boots. Even in the dim light from the television, Theo could see a ragged scar over her breast. She caught him looking. â€Å"Ended my career,† she said. â€Å"I suppose now they could fix it, but it's a little late.† â€Å"I'm sorry,† Theo said. â€Å"I think you look beautiful.† She smiled and shifted both of the pistols to one hand. She'd left the assault rifle by the door and Theo hadn't even noticed. â€Å"You ever feel special, Theo?† â€Å"Special?† â€Å"Not like you're better than everyone else, just that you're different in a good way, like it makes a difference that you're on the planet? You ever feel that way?† â€Å"I don't know. No, not really.† â€Å"I had that for a while. Even though they were cheesy B movies and even though I had to do some humiliating things to get into them, I felt special, Theo. Then it went away. Well, now I feel that way again. That's why.† â€Å"Why what?† â€Å"You asked me why before. That's why I'm going back to Steve.† â€Å"Steve? You call him Steve?† â€Å"He looked like a Steve,† Molly said. â€Å"I have to go. I'll leave your guns in the bed of that red truck you stole. Don't try to follow, okay?† Theo nodded. â€Å"Molly, don't let it kill anybody else. Promise me that.† â€Å"Promise to leave us alone?† â€Å"I can't do that.† â€Å"Okay. Take care of yourself.† She grabbed the assault rifle, kicked open the door, and stepped out. Theo heard her go down the steps, pause, then come back up. She popped her head in the door. â€Å"I'm sorry you never felt special, Theo,† she said. Theo forced a smile. â€Å"Thanks, Molly.† Gabe Gabe stood in the foyer of Valerie Riordan's home, looking at his hiking boots, then the white carpet, then his boots again. Val had gone into the kitchen to get some wine. Skinner was wandering around outside. Gabe sat down on the marble floor, unlaced his boots, then slipped them off. He'd once been into a level-nine clean room at a biotech facility in San Jose, a place where the air was scrubbed and filtered down to the micron and you had to wear a plastic bunny suit with its own air umbilical to avoid contaminating the specimens. Strangely, he'd had a similar feeling to the one he was feeling now, which was: I am the harbinger of filth. Thank God Theo had made him shower and change before his date. Val came into the sunken living room carrying a tray with a bottle of wine and two glasses. She looked up at Gabe, who was standing at the edge of the stairs as if ready to wade into molten lava. â€Å"Well, come on in and have a seat,† Val said. Gabe took a tentative step. â€Å"Nice place,† he said. â€Å"Thanks, I still have a lot to do on it. I suppose I should just hire a decorator and have done with it, but I like finding pieces myself.† â€Å"Right,† Gabe said, taking another step. You could play handball in this room if you didn't mind destroying a lot of antiques. â€Å"It's a cabernet from Wild Horse Vineyard over the hill. I hope you like it.† Val poured the wine into stemmed bubble glasses. She took hers and sat down on the velvet couch, then raised her eyebrows as if to say, â€Å"Well?† Gabe joined her at the other end of the couch, then took a tentative sip of the wine. â€Å"It's nice.† â€Å"For a local cheapie,† Val said. An awkward silence passed between them. Val made a show of tasting the wine again, then said, â€Å"You don't really believe this stuff about a sea monster, do you, Gabe?† Gabe was relieved. She wanted to talk about work. He'd been afraid that she would want to talk about something else – anything else – and he didn't really know how. â€Å"Well, there are the tracks, which look very authentic, so if they are fake, whoever did them studied fossil tracks and replicated them perfectly. Then there's the timing of the rat migration, plus Theo and your patient. Estelle, was it?† Val set down her wine. â€Å"Gabe, I know you're a scientist, and a discovery like this could make you rich and famous, but I just don't believe there's a dinosaur in town.† â€Å"Rich and famous? I hadn't thought about it. I guess there would be some recognition, wouldn't there?† â€Å"Look, Gabe, you deal in hard facts, but every day I deal with the delusions and constructions of people's minds. They are just tracks on the ground, probably like that Bigfoot hoax in Washington a few years ago. Theo is a chronic drug user, and Estelle and her boyfriend Catfish are artist types. They all have overactive imaginations.† Gabe was put off by her judgment of Theo and the others. He thought for a second, then said, â€Å"As a biologist, I have a theory about imagination. I think it's pretty obvious that fear – fear of loud noises, fear of heights, the capacity to learn fear – is something that we've adapted over the years as a survival mechanism, and so is imagination. Everyone thinks that it was the big strong caveman who got the girl, and for the most part, that may have been true, but physical strength doesn't explain how our species cre-ated civilization. I think there was always some scrawny dreamer sitting at the edge of the firelight, who had the ability to imagine dangers, to look into the future in his imagination and see possibilities, and therefore sur-vived to pass his genes on to the next generation. When the big ape men ended up running off the cliff or getting killed while trying to beat a mas-todon into submission with a stick, the dreamer was standing back thinking, †˜Hey, that might work, but you need to run the mastodon off the cliff.' And, then he'd mate with the women left over after the go-getters got killed.† â€Å"So nerds rule,† Val said with a smile. â€Å"But if fear and imagination make you more highly evolved, then someone with paranoid delusions would be ruling the world.† Val was getting into the theory of it now. How strange to talk to a man who talked about ideas, not property and personal agendas. Val liked it. A lot. Gabe said, â€Å"Well, we didn't miss that by far with Hitler, did we? Evolution takes some missteps sometimes. Big teeth worked pretty well for a while, then they got too big. Mastodons' tusks got so large they would snap the animal's neck. And you've probably noticed that there are no saber-toothed cats around anymore.† â€Å"Okay, I'll buy that imagination is an evolutionary leap. But what about depression?† Talking about mental conditions, she couldn't help thinking about what she'd done to her patients. Her crimes circled in her mind, trying to get out. â€Å"Psychiatry is looking more and more at mental conditions from a physical point of view, so that fits. That's why we're treating depres-sion with drugs like Prozac. But what evolutionary purpose is there for depression?† â€Å"I've been thinking about that since you mentioned it at dinner,† Gabe said. He drained his wineglass and moved closer to her on the couch, as if by being closer, she would share in his excitement. He was in his element now. â€Å"A lot of animals besides humans get depressed. Higher mammals like dolphins and whales can die from it, but even rats seem to get the Blues. I can't figure out what purpose it serves. But in humans it might be like nearsightedness: civilization has protected a biological weakness that would have been weeded out by natural dangers or predators.† â€Å"Predators? How?† â€Å"I don't know. Depression might slow the prey down, make it react less quickly to danger. Who knows?† â€Å"So a predator might actually evolve that preyed on depressed animals?† Right and it's me, Val thought. If I haven't been preying on depressed people, what have I been doing? She suddenly felt ashamed of her home, of the pure materialism of it. Here was an incredibly bright man who was concerned with the pure pursuit of knowledge, and she had sold her integrity for some antiques and a Mercedes. Gabe poured himself another glass of wine and sat back now, thinking as he spoke. â€Å"Interesting idea. I suppose there could be some sort of chemical or behavioral stimulus that would trigger preying on the depressed. Low serotonin levels tend to raise libido, right? At least temporarily?† â€Å"Yes,† Val said. That's why the entire town has turned into horndogs, she thought. â€Å"Therefore,† Gabe continued, â€Å"you'd have more animals mating and passing on the depression gene. Nature tends to evolve mechanisms to remain in balance. A predator or a disease would naturally evolve to keep the depressed population down. Interesting, I've been feeling especially horny lately, I wonder if I'm depressed.† Gabe's eyes snapped open wide and he looked at Val with the full-blown terror of what he had just said. He gulped his wine, then said, â€Å"I'm sorry, I†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Val couldn't stand it anymore. Gabe's faux pas opened the gate, and she stepped through it. â€Å"Gabe, we have to talk.† â€Å"I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to†¦Ã¢â‚¬  She grabbed his arm to stop him. â€Å"No, I have to tell you something.† Gabe braced himself for the worst. He'd fallen out of the lofty world of theory into the awkward, gritty world of first dates, and she was going to drop the â€Å"Don't get the wrong idea† bomb on him. She gripped his arm and her nails dug into his bicep hard enough to make him wince. She said, â€Å"A little over a month ago, I took almost a third of the people in Pine Cove off antidepressants.† â€Å"Huh?† That wasn't at all what he'd expected. â€Å"My God, why?† â€Å"Because of Bess Leander's suicide. Or what I thought was her suicide. I was just going through the motions in my practice. Writing prescriptions and collecting fees.† She explained about her arrangement with Winston Krauss and how the pharmacist had refused to put everyone back on the drugs. When she finished, to wait for his judgment, there were tears welling up in her eyes. He put his arms around her tentatively, hoping it was the right thing to do. â€Å"Why tell me this?† She melted against his chest. â€Å"Because I trust you and because I have to tell someone and because I need to figure out what to do. I don't want to go to jail, Gabe. Maybe all my patients didn't need to be on antidepressants, but a lot of them did.† She sobbed on his shoulder and he began to stroke her hair, then pushed up her chin and kissed her tears. â€Å"It'll be okay. It will.† She looked up into his eyes, as if looking for a hint of disdain, then not finding it, she kissed him hard and pulled him on top of her on the couch. A Higher Power And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? – Revelation 13:4 Twenty-three Steve What horrors can a dragon dream? A creature who has, in his own way, ruled the planet for millions of years, a creature for whom the mingy man mammals have built temples, a creature who has known no predator but time – what could he possibly dream that would frighten him? Call it the knowing? Under a stand of oak trees, sexually satisfied and with a bellyful of drug dealers, the dragon dreamed a vision of time past. The eternal now that he had always known suddenly had history. In the dream he saw himself as a larva, tucked into the protective pouch under his mother's tongue until it was safe to venture out under her watchful eye. He saw the hunting and the mating, the forms he had learned to mimic as his mercurial DNA evolved not through generations, but through regeneration of cells. He saw the mates he had eaten, the three young he had borne as a female, the last killed by a warmblood who sang the Blues. He remembered the chan-ging, not so long ago, from female to male, and he remembered all of it in pictures, not in mere instinctual patterns and conditioned responses. He saw these pictures in the dream, brought on by the strange mating with the warmblood, and he wondered why. For the first time in his five thousand years, he asked, Why? And the dream answered with a picture of all the oceans and swamps, the rivers and bogs and trenches and mountains beneath the sea, and they were all empty of his kind. As sure as if he were floating through the cold black at the end of the universe, where light gives up hope and time chases its tail until it dies from exhaustion, he was alone. Sex does that to some guys. Val â€Å"Oh my God, the rat brains!† Gabe shouted. It was a different response to lovemaking. Val wasn't sure that she might not be hurt, feeling vulnerable as she was, with her knees in the vicinity of her ears, a biologist on top of her, and her panty hose waving off one foot like a tattered battle flag. Gabe collapsed into her arms and she looked over his shoulder to the coffee table to check that they hadn't kicked the wineglasses off onto the carpet. â€Å"Are you okay?† she asked, a little breathless. â€Å"I'm sorry, but I just realized what's going on with this creature.† â€Å"That's what you were thinking about?† Yes, her feelings were definitely hurt. â€Å"No, not during. It came to me in a flash right after. Somehow the creature can attract mammals with lower than normal serotonin levels. And you've got, what, a third of the population running around in antidepressant withdrawal?† She was pissed now, not hurt. She dumped him off her onto the floor, stood up, pulled her skirt down, and stepped away. He scrambled into his pants and looked around for his shirt, which lay in shreds behind the couch. He had a tan that ended at the neckline and just below the shoulders; the rest of him was milk white. He looked up at her from the gap between the couch and the coffee table with a pleading in his eyes, as if he were looking up from a coffin in which he was about to be buried alive. â€Å"Sorry,† he said. He wasn't looking her in the eye, and Val suddenly realized that he was talking to her exposed breasts. She pulled her blouse closed, and a battery of insults rose in her mind, ready to be fired, but all of them were mean-spirited and would serve to do nothing but make them both feel ashamed. He was who he was, and he was honest and real, and she knew that he hadn't meant to hurt her. So she cried. Thinking, Great, crying is what got me into this in the first place. She plopped down on the couch with her face in her hands. Gabe moved to her side and put his arm around her. â€Å"I'm really sorry. I'm not very good at this sort of thing.† â€Å"You're fine. It's just too much.† â€Å"I should go.† He started to stand. She caught his arm in a death grip. â€Å"You go and I'll hunt you down and kill you like a rabid dog.† â€Å"I'll stay.† â€Å"No go,† she said. â€Å"I understand.† â€Å"Okay, I'll go.† â€Å"Don't you dare.† She threw her arms around him and kissed him hard, pulling him back down onto the couch, and within seconds they were all over each other again. That's it, she thought, no more crying. It's the crying that does it. This guy is aroused by my pain. But soon they lay in a panting sweaty pile on the floor and the idea of crying was light-years away. And this time Gabe said, â€Å"That was wonderful.† Val noticed a wineglass overturned by her head, a cabernet stain bleeding over the carpet. â€Å"Is it salt or club soda?† Gabe pulled away far enough to look into her eyes and saw that she was looking at the stained carpet. â€Å"Salt and cold water, I think. Or is that blood?† A drop of sweat dripped off his forehead onto her lips. She looked at him. â€Å"You weren't thinking about that creature that doesn't exist, were you?† â€Å"Just you.† She smiled. â€Å"Really?† â€Å"And a weed-whacker, for some reason.† â€Å"You're kidding.† â€Å"Uh, yes, I'm kidding. I was only thinking of you.† â€Å"So you don't think I'm a horrible person for what I've done?† â€Å"You were trying to do what you thought was right. How could that be horrible?† â€Å"I feel horrible.† â€Å"It's been a long time. I'm out of practice.† â€Å"No, not about this. About my patients. You really think something could be preying on them?† â€Å"It's just a theory. There may not even be a creature.† â€Å"But what if there is? Shouldn't we call the National Guard or something?† â€Å"I was thinking of calling Theo.† â€Å"Theo isn't even a real cop.† â€Å"He deserves to know.† They lay there in silence for a few minutes, staring at the spreading stain on the carpet, feeling the sweat run down their ribs, and listening to the beat of each other's hearts. â€Å"Gabe?† Val whispered. â€Å"Yes.† â€Å"Maybe we should go to couples' counseling.† â€Å"Should we get dressed first?† â€Å"You were serious about the weed-whacker, weren't you?† â€Å"I don't know where that image came from.† â€Å"There's supposed to be a good couples' guy in San Junipero, unless you'd rather go to a woman counselor.† â€Å"I thought we were going to call the National Guard.† â€Å"Only if it comes to that,† Val said. Thinking, When we tell the shrink about this, I'm leaving out the part about the wine spilling. Theo Is there anything more irritating than people who have just been laid? Especially when you have not. Not for a long time. Oh, it was obvious as soon as they came through Molly's front door, waking Theo for the second time that night: Gabe's grin looking like the oversized grill on an old Chrysler, Val Riordan wearing jeans and almost no makeup; the both of them giddy and giggling and blushing like children. Theo wanted to puke. He was happy for them, but he wanted to puke. â€Å"What?† Theo said. Gabe was obviously amped and trying not to show it. He put his hands in his pockets to keep from waving them around. â€Å"I† – he looked at Val and smiled – â€Å"we think that this creature, if it exists, may be attracted to prey with low serum serotonin levels.† Gabe bounced on the balls of his feet as he waited for his statement to sink in. Theo sat there, staring at him, with no discernible change in expres-sion from the weariness he'd worn since they came through the door. He guessed that he was supposed to say something now. â€Å"Molly was here,† Theo said. â€Å"The creature exists. It ate Mikey Plotznik, and Joseph Leander, and who knows who else? She said it's a dragon.† Gabe's grin dropped. â€Å"That's great. I mean, that's horrible, but it's great from a scientific point of view. I have another theory about this species. I think it has some specialized mechanism to affect its prey. Have you been horny lately?† â€Å"There's no need to be arrogant, Gabe. I'm glad you two had a good time, but there's no need to rub it in.† â€Å"No no, you don't get it.† Gabe went on to explain about Val Riordan's decision to take her patients off antidepressants and how the lowering of serotonin levels could lead to increased libido. â€Å"So Pine Cove has been full of horny people.† â€Å"Right,† Theo said. â€Å"And I still can't get a date.† Val Riordan laughed and Theo glared at her. Gabe said, â€Å"The rats I found alive near this trailer, where we think the creature might have been, were mating when I found them. There are some species of carnivorous plants that give off a sex pheromone that attracts their prey. In some species, the behavior of the male – a display, a dance, a scent – will stimulate the ovaries in the female of the species without any physical contact. I think that's what's happened to us.† â€Å"Our ovaries are being stimulated?† Theo rubbed sleep from his eyes. â€Å"I gotta be honest with you, Gabe. I'm not feeling it.† Val turned to Gabe. â€Å"That's not very romantic.† â€Å"It's incredibly exciting. This may be the most elegant predator that the world has ever seen.† Theo shook his head. â€Å"I have no home, no job, no car, there's probably a warrant out for my arrest, and you want me to be excited over the fact that we have a monster in town that makes you horny so he can eat you? Sorry, Gabe, I'm missing the positive side of this.† Val chimed in, â€Å"It may be the reason that you've been able to quit smoking pot so easily.† â€Å"Pardon me? Easily?† Theo wanted to jump off the couch and bitch-slap them both. â€Å"Were you ever able to go this long before?† â€Å"She could be right, Theo,† Gabe said. â€Å"If this thing affects serotonin, it could affect other neurotransmitters.† â€Å"Oh good,† Theo said. â€Å"Let's open a detox clinic. We'll feed half of the patients to the monster and the other half will recover. I can't wait.† â€Å"There's no need to be sarcastic,† Gabe said. â€Å"We're just trying to help.† â€Å"Help? Help with what? Bar fight? I can handle it. Skateboard theft? I'm on it. But my law enforcement experience hasn't prepared me for dealing with this.† â€Å"That's true, Gabe,† Val said. â€Å"Theo's little more than a rent-a-cop. Maybe we should call the sheriff or the FBI or the National Guard.† â€Å"And tell them what?† Theo asked. Rent-a-cop? I'm not even that now, he thought. â€Å"He has a point.† Gabe said. â€Å"We haven't seen anything.† â€Å"That old Blues singer has,† Val said. Theo nodded. â€Å"We need to find him. Maybe he'll†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"He's living with Estelle Boyet,† Val said. â€Å"I have her address in my office.†

User Persona Spark Yours to Life With These 9 Tools - CoSchedule Blog

User Persona Spark Yours to Life With These 9 Tools Blog Ah, the user persona. Every marketing expert will tell you that you need one as the foundation for your content marketing strategy. But so many people just slap together some vague demographic data, give it a cute, alliterated name like â€Å"Busy Betsy† or â€Å"Hipster Henry† and call it a persona. Then they wonder why they arent seeing user engagement with their content. If you want to create meaningful content that wins fans and conversions, your user persona needs to be more than a collection of data points. To make your user persona come to life, you need to create a fully fleshed-out character with dreams, fears, challenges, and desires. You need a complex, uniquely human hero for the story youre telling with your brand. But it can’t just be a pure flight of fantasy. Each characteristic and inner motivation of your user persona should have data or real-life examples to back it up. Sound like a tall order? Worry not: this post will give you the online resources you need to make a hyper-specific user persona. I’ll show you how to use persona-building tools so you can create deeply engaging content that will draw in your target audience and make them stick with you. But first   Spark Your User Persona To Life With These 9 Important ToolsWhy Do We Need User Personas? Writing generic content to a general audience just doesn’t cut it anymore. Gone are the days of keyword stuffed, SEO-focused content, clickbait social media posts, and salesy email blasts. The average internet user can see right through these flimsy marketing ploys. If you want to stand out on search engine results, on social media and in your email marketing, you need to have robust, human-centered content that hits people right in the feels. And a User Persona helps you define just who that human is and what kind of content appeals to their needs. But maybe I should back up a few steps. Let’s take a quick look at what a User Persona is. Describing a User (or Buyer or Customer or Reader) Persona can take up an entire blog post unto itself. Thankfully, Sam Kusinitz  of HubSpot has distilled things down into less than 100 words for us: A buyer persona  is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. The more detailed you are, the better. So basically, a User Persona is a made-up customer who represents the very real customers you want to appeal to. A User Persona is a made-up customer who represents the very real customers you want to appeal toIn case you’re feeling a bit skeptical about the impact of a fictional character upon your bottom line, here are a few stats  from Cintell's 2016 Benchmark Study to help fire up your faith in the Power of the Persona: 71%  of companies who exceed revenue and lead goals have documented Personas 65%  of companies who exceed lead and revenue goals have updated their Personas within the last 6 months. Persona based content increased customer engagement almost six-fold  when targeting cold leads (10% versus 58%). Using Personas increases email open rate 2-5 times. It is more effective to target cold leads with Persona based content than targeting warm leads without using Persona based content (58% versus 45%) Pretty impressive, right? So just what is it about User Personas that make such a huge difference in customer engagement and conversion rates? It comes down to a potent mixture of storytelling, psychology, and sociology. Recommended Reading: How to Write Like a Journalist to Be a Better Marketing Storyteller Why Do User Personas Work? As marketers, we’ve long known that the fastest route to inspiring empathy and emotional connections in audiences is to tell a story. But recent neurological studies  have confirmed that if you really want to hook someone, tell them a story about a protagonist with a relatable goal and describe their struggle to reach that goal. So here’s what you want your User Persona to be: An individual with internal and external features similar to your audience, A person whose goals mirror your audience A character who has everyday struggles that your audience can immediately relate to. The more specific you are about what makes your User Persona an individual, the deeper an emotional connection your audience will have with your brand. And the easier it will be to convince them to take action. The more specific your personas are, the deeper emotional connection your audience will have with...Be Fearless In Your User Persona Back in 1978, two hippy guys decided to sell ice cream out of an abandoned Vermont gas station. Within five years, their chunky, flavorful ice cream packaged in colorful pint-sized containers caught the attention of grocery stores. The ice cream sold so fast from freezer sections they could barely keep it in stock. Ben Jerry’s was a tremendous hit. How did they become such a big success where other homemade ice cream shops have failed? Because Ben Jerry weren’t afraid to get specific about their user persona. And their user persona wasn’t what people had come to expect from a homemade ice cream brand. Here’s how your typical, old-school marketing team would probably have done it: using traditional market-focused research, they would have focused on the â€Å"homespun Vermont† aspect of Ben Jerry’s and featured a hand-operated ice cream maker in their logo. Instead of focusing on the buyer, they would have extolled the quality of the ingredients and the deliciousness of the flavors. Their flavors would have had Vermont-inspired names like â€Å"Backwoods Berry Blend† or â€Å"Maple Syrup Swirl.† Freelance designer Lyn Severance knew their brand had to reflect the groovy spirit of the hippy era and the fun-loving personalities of Ben Jerry and their friends. But Ben Jerry knew who their customers were, and they weren’t the rustic, antique-loving Vermonters of popular imagination. Note that their original container illustration featured a hand-cranked ice cream maker- but there’s a person  with a distinct personality doing the work: a stout, bearded dude who bears a striking resemblance to The Original Chubby Hubby himself, co-founder Ben Cohen. Also, the style of the illustration brings to mind the underground comics and concert posters of the 1960’s and 1970’s, not the vintage etchings of the 1900’s. There’s something mischievous, verging on subversive about Ben Jerry’s branding. But fun/peace-loving  subversive.  Yellow Submarine  subversive. The folks who flocked to Ben Jerry’s were real people who loved pop culture, leaned to the left politically, had an irreverent sense of humor, and got the munchies when they partook in their recreational mood-altering substance of choice. In other words, Ben Jerry’s target user was,well, Ben Jerry. So Ben Jerry created a product that spoke to THAT Persona. Even at the risk of alienating the people who don’t fit that description. Ben Jerry aren’t afraid to court controversy and voice their stances on political and social issues. A recent blog post prominently features the â€Å"Black Lives Matter† sign in their signature hand-lettered calligraphy. No doubt this wins them even more brand loyalty from their socially-conscious target buyers. (Source) In fact, not being afraid to take a stand is an essential quality of Ben Jerry’s User Persona. The ice cream brand has used content to inspire their audience to help them face down Pillsbury-owned rival Hagen Daas in the form of boycotts and protests. 'We believed that Pillsbury’s actions were illegal,' says Ben, 'but we knew that in a strictly legal fight we’d run out of time and money long before Pillsbury would. Our only option was to rely on our customers and the media to pressure Pillsbury into backing off. So we started printing the slogan â€Å"What’s the Doughboy Afraid Of?† on our pint containers, along with an 800 number for the Doughboy Hotline. Everyone who called got a Doughboy Kit, with protest letters addressed to the Federal Trade Commission and the chairman of the Pillsbury board, and a bumper sticker.' By publishing their Doughboy Hotline, they collected the names and addresses of their highly engaged (target) customers- customers who they could send additional marketing content like coupons or recipe booklets to. Ben Jerry created a targeted lead magnet before people were even using the world wide web. And their User Persona doesn’t only impact their marketing strategy- every aspect of Ben Jerry’s from product to operations was created with their user in mind. Because their target buyer (and their executive team) is socially conscious, Ben Jerry’s was one of the first companies to adopt an executive salary cap (although they dropped it when they hired a new CEO in 1994). The secret to Ben Jerry’s success is not in their admittedly delicious ice cream, but in their ability to understand what their target buyer ultimately wants from the world. Recommended Reading: How to Find Your Target Audience and Create the Best Content That Connects The Keys to a Great User Persona So how can you make your target buyer feel like you really, truly â€Å"get† what they’re about? By asking the right questions about who they are and finding real-word answers. Some of those questions are about demographics, like: Age Gender Income Occupation Education level Geography Marital Status Those are external factors about the circumstances of your target user’s life. Things that, unless they make a major life change, they have little control over. When you dig a little deeper, you start getting into psychographic information, like: Lifestyle Hobbies Career goals Political affiliations Religious values Priorities in life Aesthetic taste Obstacles Fears Assumptions As you discover more about your target buyer, you’ll unlock the hidden desires, fears, and challenges your target user faces so your content can help them navigate along their journey toward their biggest goals in life. And the more you help your target user, the more they will trust you, and the more they will want to do business with you. The more you help your target user, the more they will trust and do business with you. After you’ve developed your user persona, here’s what you can expect: You’ll gain a clearer picture into the external and internal life of your target user You’ll have more relevant content ideas You’ll write content faster You’ll know where to find your target user You’ll know which people/publications your user sees as influencers You’ll know where to promote your content so your target reader will find it You’ll dramatically increase your conversion rates So without further ado, here are some resources you can add to your persona-building toolkit today. Here are the resources you need to start building user #personas1. Target Audience Kit has created a handy downloadable package  that includes a worksheet on how to conduct audience surveys and a quick-and-easy template for a user persona. Print them out and use them as guidelines as you hunt down demographic and psychographic information. 2. Startup Target Customer Profile Worksheet What if you don’t know who your target customer is because you’re just starting out? I’ve created an in-depth worksheet for startup founders to help you ask the right questions in your search for the perfect customer. It covers not only their demographics and psychographics, but also their digital tribes, influencers, popular hashtagsbasically all the information you need to reach your target user when they’re actively looking for stuff that relates to your service. You can download it here. 3. Xtensio User Persona Creator This intuitive web-based template by â€Å"lean design agency† Xtensio helps you create a beautifully designed persona to share with your clients or team members as you create your content marketing strategy. When you sign up for a free account, you’ll also have access to templates for pitch decks, business plans, content strategies, and press releases, among other tools. If you’re a startup founder, this could be a true life (and time) saver. Alright, you now have three blank slates for creating your user persona. But how do you find the data to fill in the blanks? Below you’ll find some essential resources to help you discover information about your target customers based on real-world data. Recommended Reading: This is How to Use Data to Fuel Your Content Marketing Strategy 4. Google Analytics First of all, are the right visitors finding you? What are the interests of the people visiting your site, and what kind of content are they engaging the most with? Is there anything you need to change about the way visitors discover your content? A peek at your Google Analytics will give you these insights and more. One Way Use Google Analytics (of Many): If you don’t have Google Analytics set up on your website, take a few minutes to get your tracking code and install Analytics to your website. Once you’ve created your Analytics account and installed your tracking code to your site, wait about a week for Google to collect data about your visitors. Then log into your account and browse around. You can see your average visitor’s demographics, what content they’re spending the most time looking at, even their interests based on their typical search behavior. Google Analytics helps you see whether or not the users that are coming to you are the users you actually want. For example, I noticed when I went into my Users Interests In-market Segments that the top four interests of visitors to my site were: Employment Travel/Hotel Accommodations Employment/Career Counseling Services Dating Services My site is for Copywriting and Content Strategy Services. So somewhere there’s a disconnect between the content of my site and the people who are finding it. Now the challenge is to figure out why people are coming to me looking for jobs, accommodations, or love. So I take a look at my Landing Page analytics to see which page is attracting the most traffic, and lo and behold, other than my home page, the top two pages are two blog articles: one about the TED Talk formula for sales pitches, and one about finding your target customer. The â€Å"target customer† post starts with a story about my experiences with online dating and how they parallel with a startup founder’s search for the perfect customer. Later in the post, I give an example of a travel bag company that used â€Å"Alternatives to AirBnB† as a way to capture their target leads. So, that explains why people interested in Dating Services and Travel stumble upon my site! It also tells me that I need to build up the content on my site for my target customer so more startup founders and less lonely hearts and wayward travelers find their way to my blog. Even more reason to really hone in on my User Persona and their needs There are a myriad of ways Google Analytics can give you insights about who is coming to your site and what changes you need to make so your content is getting in front of the right people. Do yourself a BIG favor and take some time to evaluate the quality of the traffic you’re already getting so you can determine what you need to tweak to improve it.   has created a quick guide to how to use Google Analytics to understand your audience. Recommended Reading: 5 Big Questions About Your Site That Google Analytics Can Answer 5. Alexa Let’s say that you haven’t launched your site yet  or you’re getting ready to do a major overhaul of your website. You may be feeling a bit in the dark as far as who your ideal customer actually is. The good news is you have plenty to learn about your target audience by getting a glimpse at who’s going to the competition. Alexa provides detailed demographic reports  on visitors to any website, as well as the most popular keywords people use to find them. Here’s the quick-and-dirty way to get the goods on who is looking for your products or services. Google your core offer and see who your top competitors are in the paid and organic results. For example, let’s say you’re a virtual assistant for small business owners. The top paid result is for TasksEveryday.com. Go to Alexa.com and type in the URL and when you scroll down you’ll see related sites (ie other competitors in your niche): And their audience demographics: By using the new Audience Overlap Tool, you can get a big-picture demographic view of who is using virtual assistant services similar to your top competitor: Just click â€Å"Audience Overlap Tool† on the main overview page: Select the competitors you wish to compare: Scroll down to Demographics and take a look at what these sites have in common and what makes them notably different. For example, I noticed that getfriday.com visitors have a much younger average age (18-24) than taskseveryday.com (35-44). When I investigated, I clicked on â€Å"getfriday.com† to open a site overview in Alexa and discovered one of the main sites that led visitors to GetFriday was YouTube: So I clicked the link and discovered that the videos that lead to getfriday.com are all about outsourcing Virtual Assistants from the Phillipines. Is that giving me a clearer picture of who is going to my competitors and why? Well, if I do a little more digging into the demographic information on Alexa, I can discover that the average income of the GetFriday user trends lower than the average income of the TasksEveryday user. So now I have a decision to make: do I want to target my Virtual Assistant service to a budget-strapped startup founder looking to outsource on the cheap or a well-to-do CEO of a small company willing to invest in a top-notch professional? Once I make that decision, I can start deep-diving into the world of my target user to fill in the gaps of their larger story. Recommended Reading: 14 Time-Tested Tactics to Get Tons of Traffic from Social Media 6. BuzzSumo You now know the â€Å"who’s† about your target customers using Google Analytics Alexa. Now it’s time to discover the â€Å"what’s† and the â€Å"why’s.† What are your customer’s goals and Why do your target customers need your help accomplishing their goals? BuzzSumo is hands-down the most popular audience discovery tool for content marketers.  After an initial free trial, you have to pay for it, but if you’re trying to build an audience and relationships with influencers, it’s well worth the $99 a month. Why? Because with one keyword search, not only will you find the most popular articles about a topic in terms of shares and clicks, but also who the most influential people are within a niche AND who their followers are. So to continue with our fictional Virtual Assistant service, let’s say we want to cater to startup founders. So I type â€Å"startups and virtual assistants† into the BuzzSumo search box and see which articles have had the most engagement over the past year: Then I click on â€Å"View Sharers† to see who has been engaging with the post. I see that Stephen Bronner, news director for Entrepreneur has been sharing the article, which tells me he thinks his followers would find value in it. So now I can take a look at his followers. After scrolling through their bios, I spot an ideal candidate for Virtual Assistant services: a PR coach for entrepreneurs and startup founders: Now I can take a look at her Twitter profiles to get insights on her life and the lives of her  followers people who are starting their own companies and need help. Like this follower, who describes herself as a serial entrepreneur: BOOM. Target achieved. This person’s Twitter account is a window into her life. She tweets about where she likes to go to eat, the big projects she’s working on, her hobbies, the religious holidays she celebrates, the brands she likes. You can fill out an entire User Persona template with this information alone! Recommended Reading: This is the Marketing Research Process That Will Take Your Content to the Next Level 7. Customer Surveys Let’s say that you’re an established company looking to shift to a customer-centered content marketing strategy. Your current customers are an invaluable resource for insights. Just ask them about their lives. Pioneering content strategist Colleen Jones  says customer surveys are a great way not only to determine user behavior (what they do), but also the emotions and motivations leading to their decisions (what they’re feeling): â€Å"If you want to assess your success at producing effective content marketing, you need useful, actionable feedback about it. That means you need to know what people think about your content. Surveys are an invaluable way to find out.† Here are some customer survey tools you can try out for free: Survey Monkey- The most popular contender, Survey Monkey has a great reputation for being easy to use and having a step-by-step tutorial to walk you through the survey-building process. However, to export the survey data you collect, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid version. Typeform- Typeform’s survey templates are slick and beautifully designed, which means your participants are less likely to abandon ship mid-survey out of boredom. Google Forms- Simple, straightforward, free, and easy to access via your Google Drive account. Need help coming up with some good questions? Michael Patterson, CEO of marketing research software Hotjar has come up with a great list of customer survey questions  that get into the minds (and hearts) of your customers. Recommended Reading: How to Use Social Media Listening to Create Better Content for Your Audience 8. Quora If you lack a customer base or even a list to send audience surveys out to, Quora can be an invaluable tool to grab information about your target customer’s needs  Ã¢â‚¬Å"in their own words.† Don’t just look at the most-upvoted answers: sometimes the replies to expert answers can provide you with deeper insights into your target user’s world than the more polished expert responses. Quora can be an invaluable tool to grab information about your target customer’s needs9. Twenty20 Confession time: I’ve spent more time than I should looking through Twenty20’s gorgeous curated stock photo collections, in search of The Face of the User Persona for my clients. Why Twenty20 as opposed to the kajillions of other stock photography sites out there? Because Twenty20 sources and curates photography that looks like real people’s lives instead of glossy studio sessions. Here’s what you should look for in a great User Persona profile pic: A headshot of one person- Your user persona represents an individual, not a group. Personality-  Unless you’re creating content for a modeling agency, your user persona is probably not a fashion model. Look for pictures of everyday folks. Match the data demographics-  If your research suggests that the majority of users in your niche are 50-something white-collar professional women, don’t use a headshot of a 20-something tattoo artist. In their natural environment- Try to find a picture that shows your User Persona where she’d be using your product or service. Above all, User Personas should represent and look like the real people you're creating content for. Here are some other examples of great User Personas to help give you a kickstart in creating your own. (Source: Xtensio) Recommended Reading: How to Make the Best Social Media Images the Easy Way (+84 Free Images) Note how in-depth the above persona is in terms of Alyssa’s desire to balance her creativity with her business sense.   This is a great starting point for giving a â€Å"voice† to a brand’s content: that of a passionate artist who wants to be a success without being a â€Å"sell-out.† So based on the information I gathered using the tools above for my fictional Virtual Assistant service, here’s the User Persona I created using the Xtensio template tool: On the other end of the persona spectrum, we have MailChimp’s multiple User Personas. (Source: MailChimp) These visually appealing Personas aren't as specific in their narratives as Xtensio’s, but they still offer psychographic data for inspiring content. Even though these Personas lack a written story, the specificity of the look, dress, and descriptive text communicate volumes about each individual. To achieve this Portrait style persona, all you need is: A graphic design tool like Canva  or Photoshop, A great stock photo, A list of personality traits and motivators. Here’s what I made in Canva using the same Virtual Assistant target user: How to Create Your Own Persona in Canva Here’s a quick example showing how you can create one that is similar: After opening Canva, select â€Å"Create a Design† Select the â€Å"Blog Graphic† template from the Blogging eBooks section Upload your stock photo (or you can choose from Canva’s collection of stock photography and pay a $1 to download it) Drag and drop the stock photo as the background to the layout Free stock photo from Pexels.com Select the Heading text tool and start typing the personality trait keywords.  Choose various fonts, sizes or colors as needed. You can change the angle of the text by selecting the text box, clicking on the Rotate tool (the circular arrow at the bottom of the text box), and rotating the text box around. It's Time to Start Creating Better User Personas Alright: you've now assembled a well-stocked persona toolkit.   It's time to get to work! Have fun creating your User Persona- and if you've made one you're particularly proud of, feel free to share it with us! User Persona Spark Yours to Life With These 9 Tools Blog Ah, the user persona. Every marketing expert will tell you that you need one as the foundation for your content marketing strategy. But so many people just slap together some vague demographic data, give it a cute, alliterated name like â€Å"Busy Betsy† or â€Å"Hipster Henry† and call it a persona. Then they wonder why they arent seeing user engagement with their content. If you want to create meaningful content that wins fans and conversions, your user persona needs to be more than a collection of data points. To make your user persona come to life, you need to create a fully fleshed-out character with dreams, fears, challenges, and desires. You need a complex, uniquely human hero for the story youre telling with your brand. But it can’t just be a pure flight of fantasy. Each characteristic and inner motivation of your user persona should have data or real-life examples to back it up. Sound like a tall order? Worry not: this post will give you the online resources you need to make a hyper-specific user persona. I’ll show you how to use persona-building tools so you can create deeply engaging content that will draw in your target audience and make them stick with you. But first   Spark Your User Persona To Life With These 9 Important ToolsWhy Do We Need User Personas? Writing generic content to a general audience just doesn’t cut it anymore. Gone are the days of keyword stuffed, SEO-focused content, clickbait social media posts, and salesy email blasts. The average internet user can see right through these flimsy marketing ploys. If you want to stand out on search engine results, on social media and in your email marketing, you need to have robust, human-centered content that hits people right in the feels. And a User Persona helps you define just who that human is and what kind of content appeals to their needs. But maybe I should back up a few steps. Let’s take a quick look at what a User Persona is. Describing a User (or Buyer or Customer or Reader) Persona can take up an entire blog post unto itself. Thankfully, Sam Kusinitz  of HubSpot has distilled things down into less than 100 words for us: A buyer persona  is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. The more detailed you are, the better. So basically, a User Persona is a made-up customer who represents the very real customers you want to appeal to. A User Persona is a made-up customer who represents the very real customers you want to appeal toIn case you’re feeling a bit skeptical about the impact of a fictional character upon your bottom line, here are a few stats  from Cintell's 2016 Benchmark Study to help fire up your faith in the Power of the Persona: 71%  of companies who exceed revenue and lead goals have documented Personas 65%  of companies who exceed lead and revenue goals have updated their Personas within the last 6 months. Persona based content increased customer engagement almost six-fold  when targeting cold leads (10% versus 58%). Using Personas increases email open rate 2-5 times. It is more effective to target cold leads with Persona based content than targeting warm leads without using Persona based content (58% versus 45%) Pretty impressive, right? So just what is it about User Personas that make such a huge difference in customer engagement and conversion rates? It comes down to a potent mixture of storytelling, psychology, and sociology. Recommended Reading: How to Write Like a Journalist to Be a Better Marketing Storyteller Why Do User Personas Work? As marketers, we’ve long known that the fastest route to inspiring empathy and emotional connections in audiences is to tell a story. But recent neurological studies  have confirmed that if you really want to hook someone, tell them a story about a protagonist with a relatable goal and describe their struggle to reach that goal. So here’s what you want your User Persona to be: An individual with internal and external features similar to your audience, A person whose goals mirror your audience A character who has everyday struggles that your audience can immediately relate to. The more specific you are about what makes your User Persona an individual, the deeper an emotional connection your audience will have with your brand. And the easier it will be to convince them to take action. The more specific your personas are, the deeper emotional connection your audience will have with...Be Fearless In Your User Persona Back in 1978, two hippy guys decided to sell ice cream out of an abandoned Vermont gas station. Within five years, their chunky, flavorful ice cream packaged in colorful pint-sized containers caught the attention of grocery stores. The ice cream sold so fast from freezer sections they could barely keep it in stock. Ben Jerry’s was a tremendous hit. How did they become such a big success where other homemade ice cream shops have failed? Because Ben Jerry weren’t afraid to get specific about their user persona. And their user persona wasn’t what people had come to expect from a homemade ice cream brand. Here’s how your typical, old-school marketing team would probably have done it: using traditional market-focused research, they would have focused on the â€Å"homespun Vermont† aspect of Ben Jerry’s and featured a hand-operated ice cream maker in their logo. Instead of focusing on the buyer, they would have extolled the quality of the ingredients and the deliciousness of the flavors. Their flavors would have had Vermont-inspired names like â€Å"Backwoods Berry Blend† or â€Å"Maple Syrup Swirl.† Freelance designer Lyn Severance knew their brand had to reflect the groovy spirit of the hippy era and the fun-loving personalities of Ben Jerry and their friends. But Ben Jerry knew who their customers were, and they weren’t the rustic, antique-loving Vermonters of popular imagination. Note that their original container illustration featured a hand-cranked ice cream maker- but there’s a person  with a distinct personality doing the work: a stout, bearded dude who bears a striking resemblance to The Original Chubby Hubby himself, co-founder Ben Cohen. Also, the style of the illustration brings to mind the underground comics and concert posters of the 1960’s and 1970’s, not the vintage etchings of the 1900’s. There’s something mischievous, verging on subversive about Ben Jerry’s branding. But fun/peace-loving  subversive.  Yellow Submarine  subversive. The folks who flocked to Ben Jerry’s were real people who loved pop culture, leaned to the left politically, had an irreverent sense of humor, and got the munchies when they partook in their recreational mood-altering substance of choice. In other words, Ben Jerry’s target user was,well, Ben Jerry. So Ben Jerry created a product that spoke to THAT Persona. Even at the risk of alienating the people who don’t fit that description. Ben Jerry aren’t afraid to court controversy and voice their stances on political and social issues. A recent blog post prominently features the â€Å"Black Lives Matter† sign in their signature hand-lettered calligraphy. No doubt this wins them even more brand loyalty from their socially-conscious target buyers. (Source) In fact, not being afraid to take a stand is an essential quality of Ben Jerry’s User Persona. The ice cream brand has used content to inspire their audience to help them face down Pillsbury-owned rival Hagen Daas in the form of boycotts and protests. 'We believed that Pillsbury’s actions were illegal,' says Ben, 'but we knew that in a strictly legal fight we’d run out of time and money long before Pillsbury would. Our only option was to rely on our customers and the media to pressure Pillsbury into backing off. So we started printing the slogan â€Å"What’s the Doughboy Afraid Of?† on our pint containers, along with an 800 number for the Doughboy Hotline. Everyone who called got a Doughboy Kit, with protest letters addressed to the Federal Trade Commission and the chairman of the Pillsbury board, and a bumper sticker.' By publishing their Doughboy Hotline, they collected the names and addresses of their highly engaged (target) customers- customers who they could send additional marketing content like coupons or recipe booklets to. Ben Jerry created a targeted lead magnet before people were even using the world wide web. And their User Persona doesn’t only impact their marketing strategy- every aspect of Ben Jerry’s from product to operations was created with their user in mind. Because their target buyer (and their executive team) is socially conscious, Ben Jerry’s was one of the first companies to adopt an executive salary cap (although they dropped it when they hired a new CEO in 1994). The secret to Ben Jerry’s success is not in their admittedly delicious ice cream, but in their ability to understand what their target buyer ultimately wants from the world. Recommended Reading: How to Find Your Target Audience and Create the Best Content That Connects The Keys to a Great User Persona So how can you make your target buyer feel like you really, truly â€Å"get† what they’re about? By asking the right questions about who they are and finding real-word answers. Some of those questions are about demographics, like: Age Gender Income Occupation Education level Geography Marital Status Those are external factors about the circumstances of your target user’s life. Things that, unless they make a major life change, they have little control over. When you dig a little deeper, you start getting into psychographic information, like: Lifestyle Hobbies Career goals Political affiliations Religious values Priorities in life Aesthetic taste Obstacles Fears Assumptions As you discover more about your target buyer, you’ll unlock the hidden desires, fears, and challenges your target user faces so your content can help them navigate along their journey toward their biggest goals in life. And the more you help your target user, the more they will trust you, and the more they will want to do business with you. The more you help your target user, the more they will trust and do business with you. After you’ve developed your user persona, here’s what you can expect: You’ll gain a clearer picture into the external and internal life of your target user You’ll have more relevant content ideas You’ll write content faster You’ll know where to find your target user You’ll know which people/publications your user sees as influencers You’ll know where to promote your content so your target reader will find it You’ll dramatically increase your conversion rates So without further ado, here are some resources you can add to your persona-building toolkit today. Here are the resources you need to start building user #personas1. Target Audience Kit has created a handy downloadable package  that includes a worksheet on how to conduct audience surveys and a quick-and-easy template for a user persona. Print them out and use them as guidelines as you hunt down demographic and psychographic information. 2. Startup Target Customer Profile Worksheet What if you don’t know who your target customer is because you’re just starting out? I’ve created an in-depth worksheet for startup founders to help you ask the right questions in your search for the perfect customer. It covers not only their demographics and psychographics, but also their digital tribes, influencers, popular hashtagsbasically all the information you need to reach your target user when they’re actively looking for stuff that relates to your service. You can download it here. 3. Xtensio User Persona Creator This intuitive web-based template by â€Å"lean design agency† Xtensio helps you create a beautifully designed persona to share with your clients or team members as you create your content marketing strategy. When you sign up for a free account, you’ll also have access to templates for pitch decks, business plans, content strategies, and press releases, among other tools. If you’re a startup founder, this could be a true life (and time) saver. Alright, you now have three blank slates for creating your user persona. But how do you find the data to fill in the blanks? Below you’ll find some essential resources to help you discover information about your target customers based on real-world data. Recommended Reading: This is How to Use Data to Fuel Your Content Marketing Strategy 4. Google Analytics First of all, are the right visitors finding you? What are the interests of the people visiting your site, and what kind of content are they engaging the most with? Is there anything you need to change about the way visitors discover your content? A peek at your Google Analytics will give you these insights and more. One Way Use Google Analytics (of Many): If you don’t have Google Analytics set up on your website, take a few minutes to get your tracking code and install Analytics to your website. Once you’ve created your Analytics account and installed your tracking code to your site, wait about a week for Google to collect data about your visitors. Then log into your account and browse around. You can see your average visitor’s demographics, what content they’re spending the most time looking at, even their interests based on their typical search behavior. Google Analytics helps you see whether or not the users that are coming to you are the users you actually want. For example, I noticed when I went into my Users Interests In-market Segments that the top four interests of visitors to my site were: Employment Travel/Hotel Accommodations Employment/Career Counseling Services Dating Services My site is for Copywriting and Content Strategy Services. So somewhere there’s a disconnect between the content of my site and the people who are finding it. Now the challenge is to figure out why people are coming to me looking for jobs, accommodations, or love. So I take a look at my Landing Page analytics to see which page is attracting the most traffic, and lo and behold, other than my home page, the top two pages are two blog articles: one about the TED Talk formula for sales pitches, and one about finding your target customer. The â€Å"target customer† post starts with a story about my experiences with online dating and how they parallel with a startup founder’s search for the perfect customer. Later in the post, I give an example of a travel bag company that used â€Å"Alternatives to AirBnB† as a way to capture their target leads. So, that explains why people interested in Dating Services and Travel stumble upon my site! It also tells me that I need to build up the content on my site for my target customer so more startup founders and less lonely hearts and wayward travelers find their way to my blog. Even more reason to really hone in on my User Persona and their needs There are a myriad of ways Google Analytics can give you insights about who is coming to your site and what changes you need to make so your content is getting in front of the right people. Do yourself a BIG favor and take some time to evaluate the quality of the traffic you’re already getting so you can determine what you need to tweak to improve it.   has created a quick guide to how to use Google Analytics to understand your audience. Recommended Reading: 5 Big Questions About Your Site That Google Analytics Can Answer 5. Alexa Let’s say that you haven’t launched your site yet  or you’re getting ready to do a major overhaul of your website. You may be feeling a bit in the dark as far as who your ideal customer actually is. The good news is you have plenty to learn about your target audience by getting a glimpse at who’s going to the competition. Alexa provides detailed demographic reports  on visitors to any website, as well as the most popular keywords people use to find them. Here’s the quick-and-dirty way to get the goods on who is looking for your products or services. Google your core offer and see who your top competitors are in the paid and organic results. For example, let’s say you’re a virtual assistant for small business owners. The top paid result is for TasksEveryday.com. Go to Alexa.com and type in the URL and when you scroll down you’ll see related sites (ie other competitors in your niche): And their audience demographics: By using the new Audience Overlap Tool, you can get a big-picture demographic view of who is using virtual assistant services similar to your top competitor: Just click â€Å"Audience Overlap Tool† on the main overview page: Select the competitors you wish to compare: Scroll down to Demographics and take a look at what these sites have in common and what makes them notably different. For example, I noticed that getfriday.com visitors have a much younger average age (18-24) than taskseveryday.com (35-44). When I investigated, I clicked on â€Å"getfriday.com† to open a site overview in Alexa and discovered one of the main sites that led visitors to GetFriday was YouTube: So I clicked the link and discovered that the videos that lead to getfriday.com are all about outsourcing Virtual Assistants from the Phillipines. Is that giving me a clearer picture of who is going to my competitors and why? Well, if I do a little more digging into the demographic information on Alexa, I can discover that the average income of the GetFriday user trends lower than the average income of the TasksEveryday user. So now I have a decision to make: do I want to target my Virtual Assistant service to a budget-strapped startup founder looking to outsource on the cheap or a well-to-do CEO of a small company willing to invest in a top-notch professional? Once I make that decision, I can start deep-diving into the world of my target user to fill in the gaps of their larger story. Recommended Reading: 14 Time-Tested Tactics to Get Tons of Traffic from Social Media 6. BuzzSumo You now know the â€Å"who’s† about your target customers using Google Analytics Alexa. Now it’s time to discover the â€Å"what’s† and the â€Å"why’s.† What are your customer’s goals and Why do your target customers need your help accomplishing their goals? BuzzSumo is hands-down the most popular audience discovery tool for content marketers.  After an initial free trial, you have to pay for it, but if you’re trying to build an audience and relationships with influencers, it’s well worth the $99 a month. Why? Because with one keyword search, not only will you find the most popular articles about a topic in terms of shares and clicks, but also who the most influential people are within a niche AND who their followers are. So to continue with our fictional Virtual Assistant service, let’s say we want to cater to startup founders. So I type â€Å"startups and virtual assistants† into the BuzzSumo search box and see which articles have had the most engagement over the past year: Then I click on â€Å"View Sharers† to see who has been engaging with the post. I see that Stephen Bronner, news director for Entrepreneur has been sharing the article, which tells me he thinks his followers would find value in it. So now I can take a look at his followers. After scrolling through their bios, I spot an ideal candidate for Virtual Assistant services: a PR coach for entrepreneurs and startup founders: Now I can take a look at her Twitter profiles to get insights on her life and the lives of her  followers people who are starting their own companies and need help. Like this follower, who describes herself as a serial entrepreneur: BOOM. Target achieved. This person’s Twitter account is a window into her life. She tweets about where she likes to go to eat, the big projects she’s working on, her hobbies, the religious holidays she celebrates, the brands she likes. You can fill out an entire User Persona template with this information alone! Recommended Reading: This is the Marketing Research Process That Will Take Your Content to the Next Level 7. Customer Surveys Let’s say that you’re an established company looking to shift to a customer-centered content marketing strategy. Your current customers are an invaluable resource for insights. Just ask them about their lives. Pioneering content strategist Colleen Jones  says customer surveys are a great way not only to determine user behavior (what they do), but also the emotions and motivations leading to their decisions (what they’re feeling): â€Å"If you want to assess your success at producing effective content marketing, you need useful, actionable feedback about it. That means you need to know what people think about your content. Surveys are an invaluable way to find out.† Here are some customer survey tools you can try out for free: Survey Monkey- The most popular contender, Survey Monkey has a great reputation for being easy to use and having a step-by-step tutorial to walk you through the survey-building process. However, to export the survey data you collect, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid version. Typeform- Typeform’s survey templates are slick and beautifully designed, which means your participants are less likely to abandon ship mid-survey out of boredom. Google Forms- Simple, straightforward, free, and easy to access via your Google Drive account. Need help coming up with some good questions? Michael Patterson, CEO of marketing research software Hotjar has come up with a great list of customer survey questions  that get into the minds (and hearts) of your customers. Recommended Reading: How to Use Social Media Listening to Create Better Content for Your Audience 8. Quora If you lack a customer base or even a list to send audience surveys out to, Quora can be an invaluable tool to grab information about your target customer’s needs  Ã¢â‚¬Å"in their own words.† Don’t just look at the most-upvoted answers: sometimes the replies to expert answers can provide you with deeper insights into your target user’s world than the more polished expert responses. Quora can be an invaluable tool to grab information about your target customer’s needs9. Twenty20 Confession time: I’ve spent more time than I should looking through Twenty20’s gorgeous curated stock photo collections, in search of The Face of the User Persona for my clients. Why Twenty20 as opposed to the kajillions of other stock photography sites out there? Because Twenty20 sources and curates photography that looks like real people’s lives instead of glossy studio sessions. Here’s what you should look for in a great User Persona profile pic: A headshot of one person- Your user persona represents an individual, not a group. Personality-  Unless you’re creating content for a modeling agency, your user persona is probably not a fashion model. Look for pictures of everyday folks. Match the data demographics-  If your research suggests that the majority of users in your niche are 50-something white-collar professional women, don’t use a headshot of a 20-something tattoo artist. In their natural environment- Try to find a picture that shows your User Persona where she’d be using your product or service. Above all, User Personas should represent and look like the real people you're creating content for. Here are some other examples of great User Personas to help give you a kickstart in creating your own. (Source: Xtensio) Recommended Reading: How to Make the Best Social Media Images the Easy Way (+84 Free Images) Note how in-depth the above persona is in terms of Alyssa’s desire to balance her creativity with her business sense.   This is a great starting point for giving a â€Å"voice† to a brand’s content: that of a passionate artist who wants to be a success without being a â€Å"sell-out.† So based on the information I gathered using the tools above for my fictional Virtual Assistant service, here’s the User Persona I created using the Xtensio template tool: On the other end of the persona spectrum, we have MailChimp’s multiple User Personas. (Source: MailChimp) These visually appealing Personas aren't as specific in their narratives as Xtensio’s, but they still offer psychographic data for inspiring content. Even though these Personas lack a written story, the specificity of the look, dress, and descriptive text communicate volumes about each individual. To achieve this Portrait style persona, all you need is: A graphic design tool like Canva  or Photoshop, A great stock photo, A list of personality traits and motivators. Here’s what I made in Canva using the same Virtual Assistant target user: How to Create Your Own Persona in Canva Here’s a quick example showing how you can create one that is similar: After opening Canva, select â€Å"Create a Design† Select the â€Å"Blog Graphic† template from the Blogging eBooks section Upload your stock photo (or you can choose from Canva’s collection of stock photography and pay a $1 to download it) Drag and drop the stock photo as the background to the layout Free stock photo from Pexels.com Select the Heading text tool and start typing the personality trait keywords.  Choose various fonts, sizes or colors as needed. You can change the angle of the text by selecting the text box, clicking on the Rotate tool (the circular arrow at the bottom of the text box), and rotating the text box around. It's Time to Start Creating Better User Personas Alright: you've now assembled a well-stocked persona toolkit.   It's time to get to work! Have fun creating your User Persona- and if you've made one you're particularly proud of, feel free to share it with us!

Free Essays on Alcohol And The Effects On The Body

Consuming alcohol has both a negative and a positive effect on the body. Most people when they think of drinking alcohol, only think of the bad things it does to one's body. But alcohol isn't always bad for a person. It does have some positive effects. The Old and the New Testament mention the benefits of drinking 191 times. At the turn of the century, there was evidence that moderate intake of alcohol was associated with the decrease of heart disease. It has been proven from 1900-1986 that moderate drinking showed a reduction in cardiovascular disease and coronary artery disease. This is very important because heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States. Heart disease kills about one million Americans each and every year. This came from the Nutrition Committee of the American Heart Association. Alcoholism is a chronic disease, progressive and often fatal; it is a primary disorder and not a symptom of other diseases or emotional problems. The chemistry of alcohol allows it to affect nearly every type of cell in the body, including those in the central nervous system. In the brain, alcohol interacts with centers responsible for pleasure and other desirable sensations. After prolonged exposure to alcohol, the brain adapts to the changes alcohol makes and becomes dependent on it. For people with alcoholism, drinking becomes the primary medium through which they can deal with people, work, and life. Alcohol dominates their thinking, emotions, and actions. The severity of this disease is influenced by factors such as genetics, psychology, culture, and response to physical pain. Moderate drinkers live longer than those you totally abstain from drinking and those who drink heavily. A Harvard study found the risk of death from all causes to 21-28% lower among men who drank alcohol in moderation as compared to those who did not drink any alcohol. Moderation would be described as one to thre... Free Essays on Alcohol And The Effects On The Body Free Essays on Alcohol And The Effects On The Body Consuming alcohol has both a negative and a positive effect on the body. Most people when they think of drinking alcohol, only think of the bad things it does to one's body. But alcohol isn't always bad for a person. It does have some positive effects. The Old and the New Testament mention the benefits of drinking 191 times. At the turn of the century, there was evidence that moderate intake of alcohol was associated with the decrease of heart disease. It has been proven from 1900-1986 that moderate drinking showed a reduction in cardiovascular disease and coronary artery disease. This is very important because heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States. Heart disease kills about one million Americans each and every year. This came from the Nutrition Committee of the American Heart Association. Alcoholism is a chronic disease, progressive and often fatal; it is a primary disorder and not a symptom of other diseases or emotional problems. The chemistry of alcohol allows it to affect nearly every type of cell in the body, including those in the central nervous system. In the brain, alcohol interacts with centers responsible for pleasure and other desirable sensations. After prolonged exposure to alcohol, the brain adapts to the changes alcohol makes and becomes dependent on it. For people with alcoholism, drinking becomes the primary medium through which they can deal with people, work, and life. Alcohol dominates their thinking, emotions, and actions. The severity of this disease is influenced by factors such as genetics, psychology, culture, and response to physical pain. Moderate drinkers live longer than those you totally abstain from drinking and those who drink heavily. A Harvard study found the risk of death from all causes to 21-28% lower among men who drank alcohol in moderation as compared to those who did not drink any alcohol. Moderation would be described as one to thre...