Getting the Attention You Need

Solopreneurs: What's the up-side of being laid off from someone else's company? How can you start up a business you're passionate about on a shoe-string budget? How can search engine optimization (SEO), dynamic content, blogging and social marketing help bring attention to your enterprise?

Current Status: After a relaxing 3-day weekend with decent weather, I'm feeling eager to delve into some projects. The holistic healing book is under way, with another interview scheduled for this afternoon.

How is the great recession affecting us? I just read a Ted Rubin Twitter pointing out that the great recession has put the consumer back in control. Entrepreneurs not only must have excellent products and services, but also must really pay more attention to their customers' needs, develop relationships and demonstrate their expertise.

How can I develop customer relationships and demonstrate my expertise? 

7 Ideas:

• By updating your key words, refreshing your content, making sure your content is optimized for search engines. 

• By blogging -- to provide both dynamic content and establish a more personal relationship with clients/customers. 

• And by making sure your Web site and blog present the most professional and inviting look and feel.

• Your Web pages must not only be easy to navigate, but also absolutely error free to reflect the highest quality of product or service. 

• Content must be organized both to draw eyeballs and pre-screen visitors. Once prospects reach your core presentation and call to action, they should be ready to make the conversion to customers.

• And, as you continue to provide knowledge and service through your blog and Web site, each customer will be encouraged to become a loyal, return patron. 

• Give your visitors something for free, such as information or advice in the form of a white paper, 10 Tips, or a How-To. These "knowledge gifts" -- written by a professional to be useful, to educate consumers and to intrigue prospects with your expertise -- can be valuable yet affordable marketing tools for your business. 
  

How do I accomplish all this? Do you need to hire a company to keep your site ranked high by the search engines? Can you purchase search-engine-optimized (SEO) content? Do you need a blog but don't have time to set one up and maintain it? Do you need to hire someone to copy edit your site/blog to clean up typos and grammatical mistakes? A few hours with an Internet marketing coach may be of tremendous value in finding the help you need and setting your business apart from your many competitors.

The Soap Box: It's a big job to wear all the hats in a small enterprise -- bigger than most of us -- so realize that high-quality marketing and presentation, no matter who provides it, can take you a long way toward bringing in the customers you want.

Why Blogs and Social Marketing for Business?

Solopreneurs: What's the up-side of being laid off from someone else's company? How can you start up a business you're passionate about on a shoe-string budget? How can search engine optimization (SEO), dynamic content, blogging and social marketing help bring customers to your new enterprise?

Current Status: I'm psyched about co-authoring a nonfic book with my favorite doctor. It will have case studies that demonstrate the mind-body connection, and how letting go of emotional burdens can free us not only of illness, but also release us to be more vital, happier people. It's still in the planning stages, but I look forward to getting into the writing very soon. 

What's interesting in Internet marketing: I focused my research on blogs and social marketing today. There is so much free information on the Internet that, if you take the time, you can learn a great deal without paying for anything. I'm basically an autodidact -- I teach myself, that's the way I'm most comfortable learning something new, so this is great for me. And I'll share. 

For example: Successful Internet marketing involves making connections and building community with your customers -- being generous, authentic, honest and transparent. Who'd a thunk? We boomers have always seen business as the Man, the master and the soul-sucking enemy that dictates how we live. The new ROI, as I read in a post today, is in avoiding the risk of ignoring the clients or customers we would most like to attract. 

And... All the social factors that isolate people, from overwork to single parenting, have begun to turn around due to the unlikely auspices of the personal computer. Now we find life partners, interest groups and even communities on FaceBook and and eHarmony, LinkedIn and Twitter. Small businesses cannot afford to overlook this trend.

Also... Businesses that insist on spending dollars on integrated advertising campaigns rather than hiring humans to blog and listen in on the Twitterverse will probably lose out, simply because marketing campaigns come to an end...while viral marketing expands unstoppably outward, in an explosion of information and brand loyalty. [I'll explain this further in future posts.]

Watching: Saw Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang --again-- last night. So entertaining. Stuart and I love movies with witty dialogue. And I have nothing but admiration for the acting talent of Robert Downey Jr.

Soap Box: Give it away, give it freely.They'll beat a path to your door once they know you are genuine. Except for the extreme risk-takers and gamblers and pie-in-the-sky optimists, most people know -- or suspect -- when they're being spammed or scammed. So give genuine service and quality around something you love to do...because it's right and because it works.

Back But Not Quite on Track

Current Status... I'm in recovery from the exhaustion of travel and family stress. Stuart and I both worked hard for two days after we got back from Oklahoma -- loan modifications/refis for him; copy writing, business writing, SEO web/blog content for me -- then had to take Friday off as we were both completely crisped. Deep sleep is good!

Now that I'm back, and sleeping without waking every couple of hours, I can eat more than two bites without getting heartburn. I stressed out like that for weeks before I left; now my body's finally catching up on rest and nutrition. Stuart, too. Life sometimes seems like a series of drownings and resuscitations. It's important to learn to jumpstart those turnarounds, short-circuit the stress.

Lately I'm thinking... It's time to be realistic about my new career. I hate estimating jobs, for example -- either for time or money. But to be working online, I have to do it. How to take the pain out? I'm open for suggestions (comment below).

To be a "remote" worker is to sell oneself 24/7. Sounds difficult. But the reason I'm into the new wave of Internet marketing is that it is more friendly, more generous and more genuine than older models. I can't sell anything I don't believe in and wouldn't recommend to a close family member. But I can sell excellence in online presentation.

Currently watching... The Rebus mysteries from PBS/BBC: great production values, great acting, thick Scottish bad guys with thick Scottish accents. Love it!

Reading... Jody Picoult's SECOND GLANCE (422 pp., paperback). Started it on the plane Tuesday night and couldn't put it down. Finished it Saturday afternoon. As far as the writing goes, it was romantic chick lit; but the subject matter (moral questions around genetic engineering) was serious, thought provoking and interestingly handled. So I guess that puts it on a continuum somewhere between chick lit and great literature. Of course, I'm a romantic and want the characters all paired up at the end, but this plot had to be pretty contrived to pull that off. My gold standard for novels is POSSESSION, by A.S. Byatt.

The Soapbox: It's a little hard to be up on the soapbox today -- I'm depending on a combination of sunshine and warmth to bring me to life soon, like shoots from a damp bulb pushing past a big, heavy dirt clod. One of these days, the conditions will be just right for me to "spring" into action! So, here goes:

The price of freedom is being out of work from time to time. I've been through it before. I'll find my new niche. My goal is to help everyone be free (a "solopreneur") who wants to be.

Weathering the Storm: Rain, Thunder & Economic

Current Status... Back from my trip to Tulsa/Claremore, OK -- for one sister's birthday, my niece's wedding, my Mom's 90th birthday and early Mom's day. It rained/was cloudy the whole time, just as it was back home in the Hudson Valley. In fact, flying in through Memphis, and back through Detroit, it seemed at least the Eastern half of the country was under a vast rain cloud. Which is true, isn't it? ... There was flooding in Oklahoma -- too much rain just runs off the red clay and settles in dips of the older roads, the low fields and intersections in the towns. It's amazing to see such a green Oklahoma. Much of the year, the grass is burned brown, and that's what I remember. This trip was like entering the land of Oz. I had a great time but came back exhausted.

Lately I'm thinking... I'm laying the ground work for my new blogging-for-business business, but there is so much to do, and I want to be at it already. We've run the bank account down but are not in debt yet. I'm still hoping Stuart will get a small business loan for his loan modification enterprise from the real estate law firm he's doing business with.

This is really interesting... Lots of businesses seemed to be drying up in Oklahoma, but no one was talking about the recession. They are stoic, friendly people who are good at cutting back and surviving. On the flip side, they're also good at forgetting about the homeless, the parolees, the addicts, the needy people of color.

Currently watching... The Benjamin Franklin mini-series. It's really interesting, but Stuart falls asleep before the end of every episode due to the lack in 18th-century bios of car chases and explosions.

The Soapbox: OK, it's a little scary to turn down the 40-hr./wk. proofing job, which would be pretty secure but boring and spirit-killing. And to tell friends not to bother recommending me for 9-5 jobs in the city. On the other hand, it's a necessity. I know what I can do, and it's pretty specific. I need to be writing and editing, as much as possible from my home office. That's it. As precarious as we are right now, that's it.