People are searching for you on Google (and the other search engines). Using SEO good practices will help them find you. Clawing Your Way to the Top of the Heap Every second there are more than 40,000 Google inquiries. That adds up to more than 3.5 billion per day. Most of them aren't your people. They're looking for something else. Or maybe they want your hard work for free, or they're someplace you don't serve, or they don't speak your language, or they're just jerks. Let's leave them out … [Read more...] about SEO Good Practices: Pleasing the Google Gods
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How to Plan Your Content Strategy for the Web
Creating your content strategy for the web is the key to making the most of content marketing without getting overwhelmed, losing focus, and giving up. Last week I explained why it's worth the trouble to create a content plan for your website. Today I'm going to explain the basics of getting the content strategy for your website up and running. 1. Where Do You Want to Go? Your business is taking you on a journey. Where it's going is mostly up to you. What's the kind of life you … [Read more...] about How to Plan Your Content Strategy for the Web
10 Content Planning Tips to Keep Your Audience Engaged
My theme for May, as I get this blog up and running, is content planning. Planning makes everything easier, from writing a book to running a marathon to taking a vacation. Your content plan is not a rigid box that locks you in. Instead it gives structure and direction, so that you know where you're going and how you intend to get there. Changes happen, and that's good. But a plan will help you avoid costly and futile "random acts of marketing" (not my original phrase, but I love it). 10 … [Read more...] about 10 Content Planning Tips to Keep Your Audience Engaged
Why Bother to Develop a Content Plan for Your Website?
We're all busy. There's work and marketing and networking and work and more work. There's certainly not time to create a content plan for your website. Content marketing is a powerful way to -- Attract new clients Engage the right ones Persuade them that you are the one to help them. Justin McGill, writing at Hubspot, says, "Content marketing helps businesses prepare and plan for reliable and cost-effective sources of website traffic and new leads." The problem is that … [Read more...] about Why Bother to Develop a Content Plan for Your Website?
Planning Social Media Content: 6 Questions for Your Foundation
In planning social media content, you build on the same solid foundation as in every other kind of communication: Who are you talking to? What is your message? What is your goal? It doesn’t matter whether you're planning web content, social media outreach, a book, or a conversation. Disha Kathuria, writing about planning social media posts at YourStory.com, takes these three questions and divides them in some useful ways, to make your a social media plan a good fit for … [Read more...] about Planning Social Media Content: 6 Questions for Your Foundation
7 Secrets to Writing Website Copy that Sells
Your website is a valuable plot of digital real estate. It is the hub of your marketing efforts -- both online and offline. With effective writing, the website copy on your site will attract new clients and help you nurture the ones you have. Many coaches and other professionals depend on face-to-face meetings. Those personal connections are very good, but your high-quality web writing can supplement your in-person meetings: Reaching out beyond your local community Giving people a … [Read more...] about 7 Secrets to Writing Website Copy that Sells
Your Professional Website: A 24/7 Networking Assistant
Your professional website can help your networking around the clock, year-round. Clients come and go. They finish their cases and move on. Sometimes they even die. And there you are with a hole in your schedule and the same recurring bills. It takes a constant stream of new clients to replace the old ones and to build your practice for the future. Face-to-face networking is great. Whether you do volunteer work or participate in networking events, the contacts you make and the referrals … [Read more...] about Your Professional Website: A 24/7 Networking Assistant
3 Ways Your Professional Website Displays Your Competence
All day, every day, your professional website speaks for you. It talks to people who hear about you from satisfied clients, who find you through a search, and who click a link from some other site. When they arrive, they have already begun to evaluate you — not just your web skills, but your work ethic, your people skills, and how good you are at your job. It doesn’t matter that you just got your website set up in your spare time because you’re too busy doing great work for real clients. Web … [Read more...] about 3 Ways Your Professional Website Displays Your Competence
5 Reasons You Don’t Need a Professional Website
A friend of mine in the legal services field told me that she didn’t think she needed a website. She was too busy to do it herself, and she didn’t know where to go to get it done for her, other than those spammers who call or email with big promises and no accountability. Even though I could have created an effective website for her, I thought she might be right that she didn’t need one. She had a few decades under her belt in her field and had more work than she could keep up with. Although … [Read more...] about 5 Reasons You Don’t Need a Professional Website
How’s Your Whuffie? Social Marketing for Attorneys
You have an advantage as a solo or small-firm attorney — not only because you get to set your own agenda for your practice, but also because you have agility that big law firms don’t have. Tara Hunt, author of the 2009 social marketing book The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business, said in an interview with Rosemary O’Neill at Successful Blog: Individuals understand how to build Whuffie [social capital] because every relationship is important to them – … [Read more...] about How’s Your Whuffie? Social Marketing for Attorneys