Holiday-themed articles: Re-use them every year

Every professional should have a file of holiday-themed articles. Whatever your field, write about something related to the Christmas season, New Year's, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, etc.

Once you write a holiday-themed article, you can use it every year, with minimal tweaking.

It's OK if you publish it over and over - because someone reading it this year might not have noticed it last year.

People pay attention to what pertains to their own lives at any given moment. Thus, your Valentine's Day themed article on how to stay emotionally connected when your spouse is overseas, will be noticed by women whose husbands are in Iraq. But it probably won't be of much interest next year when their husbands are back home.

OK, now that you have a set of articles, what can you do with them?

• Rotate them on your website or in your newsletter
• Submit them to article banks such as ezinearticles.com, so that others can find and publish your content in their own newsletters or websites.
• Upload them to social media sites such as scribd.com
  
• Post them on your social networking page, such as Facebook.com
• Create press releases out of them and send them to off-line media - newspapers, TV, radio. See my blog post on press releases.

Always be thinking a couple of holidays ahead, and plan your strategy on how to distribute your articles.

It's also OK to repurpose them in different formats. See my slideshow on 7 Ways to Repurpose Your Content - and let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

And be sure to include in every article that you write:

• Your full contact information - name, phone number, email
  
• A link to your website
• A specific offer or directive - e.g., Start building your expert status online today, with my step-by-step audio-narrated course, Market With Authority: Build Credibility and Name Recognition on the Web. ;-)

--Pauline

p.s. My friend Mark Hendricks is still going gangbusters with his 12-Days-of-Christmas Giveaway. Get dozens of marketing tools for free! See my last blog post below.

Special marketing tools giveawy

I don't usually promote specific marketing programs, but here's one you must not miss: Mark Hendricks's "12 Days of Christmas" program.

Every December since 2003, this Internet entrepreneur known for his integrity as well as his expertise, has coordinated a giant giveaway program, with Internet marketing products donated by dozens of the best marketers online. (I'm honored to have my product included.)

These products will be released a few at a time, every 2 days in December - which means you'll have access to dozens of high-quality products over the 12 release dates.

Here's how the program works:

1. Sign up here

2. That will put you on the list to get emailed notices when new products are posted.

3. Click the links in the emails to browse and to download whatever you want - all FREE!

What's the catch?

The donors are providing their products at no charge, in order to introduce themselves to you and to showcase what they can offer you.

For most of the products you will be asked for your name and email address, which will subscribe you to their individual mailing lists. 

There is no obligation, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

If you are new to marketing online, this is a great way to explore the possibilities.

Pauline

Get media attention with a press release

You don't have to be a corporation or a publicist to write a press release. Anyone can write one.

The main purpose of a press release is to make a newsworthy announcement about your business. Journalists are always looking for story ideas - and your press release may prompt them to contact you.

In order to get the attention of the media, your press release must answer the question: "Why should anyone care about this?"

Write a press release to announce things such as:

Your new book

An event that you're planning or sponsoring

A new service that you're offering

Expert training that you have completed

Write in an engaging manner, as if you were talking to a friend. The press release should fit on one page, and should have attention-grabbing headline.

In my Market With Authority Home Study Course, you'll hear a Chicago Publicist reveal how she worded a headline that generated calls from major media with minutes of posting a press release online.

Press releases follow a certain format. For guidelines and tips try one of these websites:
eHow: How to write a proper press release
wikiHow: How to write a press release
PRWeb: Press release tips and guidelines
Pressbox: Writing press releases for online use

Submit your press releases online. Here's a list of sources.

Scribd - the 'youtube' of article publishing

In my last blog post I described how to get more mileage out of your articles by submitting them to article banks.

Here's another idea: upload them to Scribd.com, which combines article hosting with social media.

That means people can comment on your articles and/or easily share them with others - thus the potential for your articles becoming viral.

Scribd uses technology called iPaper, which converts documents to Flash format. (Scroll down to see an example.) Flash is built into all Internet browsers. If you can view youtube videos, you will be able to read iPaper documents. iPaper uses less memory than Adobe Acrobat, and loads faster.

To use Scribd, sign up for a free account. Upload your article in .doc, .pdf or other supported file types. All formatting and images will be retained as you originally set them.

Next, choose a topic category for your article, and type in keywords that tell the search engines what your article is about.

You can decide whether to make your article public or private.

You can also decide whether to allow the article to be downloaded, and in what format (plain text, Word doc, pdf.) If you want your article to be read only online, and not downloaded, uncheck all the download options.

Assuming you make your article public, website owners can add it to their site by simply copying and pasting the 'embed' code - similar to how youtube videos are streamed through individual websites. Your article appears in its entirety, in its original format. You can use the embed code to show your articles at your own website, blog or Facebook page.

Here's an example of one of my articles that I uploaded to scribd.com. To enlarge the font, click the little down arrow to reveal a drop-down menu. Or to view in full-screen mode, click the icon at the top right corner of the document window.

Breaking Up is Hard To Do - Especially for Men

Get your own at Scribd or explore others: Health divorce breakup

Get more mileage out of your articles

One of the best ways to establish yourself as an expert online is to write articles.

You can post them on your website, of course. But to get greater distribution, you should submit them to article banks, such as ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com and others. Just search for "article bank" at your favorite search engine for thousands of other article banks.

Article banks are websites dedicated to collection and dissemination of articles written by experts who offer their work for free.

When you submit your articles to article banks, they may get picked up by publishers who are looking for fresh content for their ezines, newsletters and websites. Thus you have the potential of reaching audiences that you would otherwise not have access to.


Boost your chances of getting your article picked up by publishers:

• Publishers generally look for brief articles that offer tips, advice or insight - emphasis is on BRIEF. Keep your articles to 500-700 words.

• Keep your focus very narrow. Better to cover one or two points well than to try to pack in tons of information.

• Write on topics that appeal to large groups of people. But don't be so general that your article is watered down.

Include links back to your website.

In the body of your article, or at the end, be sure to include a link back to your website or blog. 2 reasons for this:

1. It will encourage readers of other people's ezines, newsletters and websites to visit your website. Those who click on your link are obviously curious about you or what you have to offer. Once they get to your website, they'll learn more about how you can help them.
   
   
2. It will boost your ranking in the search engines. When people click over to your website from somewhere else on the internet, that tells Google and other search engines that these other websites are "recommending" you - which raises your popularity value in search results.

Click to learn more about marketing yourself online to build a strong expert presence in this tough economy.

-- Pauline

Build a mailing list

If someone visits your website or blog, that shows they're curious about what you have to offer.  If they like what they see they might want to return.  But with so much distraction on the internet, they may never get back. 

Wouldn't you want to keep in touch with these visitors - perhaps send them a newsletter or occasional tips? 

Staying in touch keeps your name and your expertise in front of people who are interested in your services or products.   In order to do so you'll need their email addresses.

There are a few ways to get people's email addresses:

1. Post your email address and ask them to contact you.  

For example: If you'd like to be on my mailing list to receive tips every week, please send me an email: [your email address]  

This method is OK, but it has some drawbacks:

• It requires that people copy and paste your email address, go to their email programs and compose a message.  With this extra work involved, a lot of semi-interested people will not bother.
• When you post your email address on a web page, spammers can use robots to capture the address and send you junk mail.  To avoid this, replace the @ in your email address with the word AT. 

For example: john AT trainyourhamster.com  

This will not be a link, but most people will know what it means, and know that they should use the @ instead of AT

2. Use a web form on your website.  You can create a simple input form that does not even show your email address.  Web visitors can simply enter their name and email address into the form, and the information will be forwarded to your email box.  

If you don't know anything about html (and don't care to learn) ask your web designer to add a form.  

If you'd like to create one yourself, there are many free "form wizards" and tutorials.  Here are a few links to give you an idea of what's available:

JotForm

Web-Source

eHow

Formgenics

You can also use Dreamweaver and other web design tools.

3. What do you do with the list of email addresses? In order to keep in touch with the people who submit their email addresses to you, you'll need to use some form of bulk mailing.  After all, you don't want to be composing 30 or 300 separate email messages!  

If you don't have many names on your email list, you can use your regular email program. Simply create a group within that program, and send a single message to that list.

Be sure to check with your ISP about limits on the number of emails you send at once.  My ISP limits it to 10. You can send up to 100 messages per day via gmail (and can make them look as if they came from one of your other email accounts) but if you exceed the limit, Google may freeze your account, because they don't want people complaining about spam.

Another option is to use a web-based mailing list program. I use aweber.  It allows me to have unlimited email lists. I can send personalized emails, so that Mary will get a message starting with"Hi Mary" and Bill will get the same message, but starting with "Hi Bill." 

I can also automate thank-you and follow-up messages, so that if someone signs up for my mailing list, they'll immediately get an acknowledgment by email.  And  aweber also provides a form wizard to create and customize the form to place on my website, where visitors will input their information, and be automatically added to my aweber mailing list.

--Pauline

Better than advertising? And free!

Advertising can be very expensive. And in some cases it may not be as effective as other means of promotion.

When you advertise your own services and products, YOU are talking about YOU. Wouldn't the message carry more weight if SOMEONE ELSE talked about you?

Think about the last time you were looking to buy something that you didn't know much about - say a digital camera. All the ads for cameras claimed to be the best in some way. So how did you decide? You asked a knowledgeable friend, or read an expert's review.

In other words, what someone else said about the camera was more credible than what the manufacturer said.

So how do you get other people to talk about you?

1. Ask colleagues in non-competitive businesses to link to your website. If they add a sentence or two about you in the link, that's even better.
   
   
2. ASK for referrals. Don't be shy. Next time you chat with someone about what you do, state that you're accepting referrals.
   
   
3. Organizations are always looking for good speakers. Offer to speak at community events, at service club meetings, and at professional conferences. When these organizations promote their events, they will talk you up, because they want their members to attend.
   
   
4. If you have something noteworthy to say about current events or items in the news, call your local newspaper, or your local TV or radio news producer. If they decide to quote you or interview you, they will refer to you (and thus endorse you) as an expert.
   
   
5. If you have published a book or a paper, ask colleagues to write a review.
   
   
6. While certain professional ethical codes prohibit the use of client testimonials, there are circumstances in which testimonials are OK - for example, for your books or other products.
   
   I have received many positive testimonials from professionals who took my course, "Market With Authority: Build Credibility and Professional Name Recognition on the Web." Here's one of them:
   

   "Anyone who owns a business or who is interested in establishing themselves as an expert in their field needs the information in this course.
   Folks like me, who lack confidence in their technology skills, can really benefit from the careful way you teach with examples, tips and resources. "

   – Stephanie Pratola, Ph.D.,P.C.
   Licensed Clinical Psychologist
   

Learn more about the Home Study version of the course here. To get the DELUXE version of the course for half-price ($199) order from THIS PAGE ONLY.

Pauline

Picking a domain name? What to consider

Whether or not you already have a website, you should always buy a domain name that contains your own name. And you should get both .com and .net suffixes - e.g. FirstnameLastname.com, FirstnameLastname.net, FirstnameMiddle-initialLastname.com, etc.

That way no one else will be able to use it. You don't have to set up a website with your name in it, just own the domain names.

If you don't own those domains, other people could buy them. For example if there is someone else with your same first-and-last-name combination, they could grab the domain name and set up a porn site. Or, if you have enemies, they might buy your name as a domain and put up a parody site.

A popular source to check on domain name availability is godaddy.com.

What if your name is already taken? If your first and last name are common, e.g., John Johnson, you might find that someone else has grabbed the domain name. You can find out who owns the domain and offer to buy it from the person.

Or, use a variant:

• Try putting hyphens between your first and last name

• If you have a professional title like dr or doctor, or Ph.D., or MSW, or CPA, you can append those to the name and see if it's available that way.
  
  
• Or just add the word "the" to your name - e.g., thejanedoe.com

Other considerations when choosing a domain name:

1. Branding yourself: Have your name, company or specialty in your domain name. Your website is thus descriptive of who you are or what you do. If you wrote a book, it's a good idea to have a domain name containing part or all of the title.


2. Search-friendly: If you want your website to be easily found by search engines, use keywords in your domain name.

This is primarily for people who don't search for you by name, but who enter keywords for a specific service into search boxes.

For example, if you are a therapist in Detroit who works with families, you could get the domain: detroitfamilytherapist.com (which is still available as of this writing.)

Then, when someone searches for: family therapist detroit, your website will end up near the top of the search results.

To hyphenate? or not?

Some experts say that search engines can more easily "read" individual words in a string when they are separated by hyphens, so you might want to do this - e.g., detroit-family-therapist.com - especially if you have three or more words running together.

But then again, hyphens are often omitted by searchers.

In any case, it's a good idea to buy both the hyphenated and unhyphenated versions of your domain name. You can set the non-hyphenated name to be automatically redirected to the hyphenated version, which is your actual website. Thus, whether people type in detroitfamilytherapist.com or detroit-family-therapist.com, they'll end up at the same place, and you'll be more visible to the search engines.

When setting up a domain name containing keywords, consider what your intended audience might be searching for. There are synonyms and alternate forms for most keywords - so with a little creativity you'll probably find something that fits.

3. Easy: Your domain name should be easy to say, easy to spell, and easy to remember. And make sure that you don't inadvertently put together a combination of words that could be interpreted in more than one way- a popular example is therapist.com.

Keep in mind: Even though your domain name is important, it's not as critical as the CONTENT of your website. If you're using your website to market your practice, make sure you emphasize benefits for your audience. See my earlier blog post on this topic.

-- Pauline

Competition is GOOD for business!

Are you afraid of competition? Don’t be.

Competition is actually good for your business. When several people offer the same types of services, it implies that these services are popular and in demand.

People flock to what’s popular, because popularity is an endorsement – The herd mentality is: If others are using a service, it must be worthwhile.

It’s actually much harder to sell services that no one else is – especially if you’re in the mental health field, which still has some stigma in many communities.

No matter how much you say you can help people, they might be skeptical. After all, in most businesses, if there is something worth paying for, a lot of people would probably want it – and there would be enough demand for similar businesses to sprout up.

Therefore, instead of fearing competition, embrace it. Here are some tips:

• Promote what’s different about you. Figure out at least one way that you’re different from your competitors, and emphasize that in your marketing. But the difference must be of benefit to your audience. If you are fluent in Swahili, and no one in your community speaks Swahili, that’s not much of an edge over your competition. However, if you offer evening hours, or babysitting, or if you are a specialist in a sub-niche of your field, people will be drawn to you.
  

• Support your competition in a way that does not undermine your business: Refer people to your competition whom you would not work well with. If you come across an article that might be helpful to your competition, send it to them. When they have the opportunity to refer to you in the future, they will be more likely to do so.

• Network with your competition. Give them a chance to get to know you, like you and trust you. They may end up referring some of their family or close friends to you, which would be the ultimate endorsement of their respect for you.

Build Your Online Presence - Slideshow

A few weeks ago I gave a talk at the American Psychological Association Convention, on ways to build your online presence.

I condensed the content into an 8-minute slideshow with audio narration. Click the player button below to start.

If you'd like to learn step-by-step how to build your online presence, take a look at my Home Study Course.

Readers of this blog can get the Deluxe version for half price. I'm running an unadvertised special. Email me for details: drwallin@drwallin.com

Pack Your Articles with Statistics

When writing articles for the public, you can boost your authoritative credibility by citing statistics related to your topic.

A good place to start is LibrarySpot.com, which has links to statistics on dozens of sources, listed by government agency and by topic.

Speaking of government agencies, the U.S. Census Bureau has a great resource for journalists and other writers - Facts for Features and Special Editions. These are collections of statistics around specific topics. For example, the "Back to School" statistics list statistics on student enrollments, how much money is spent on back-to-school shopping, government spending, the earning power of eduction, and more.

Another source for statistics is the University of Michigan Library's Statistical Resources on the Web. There you'll find links to data on business, health, demographics, economics and more. If you don't find what you're looking for, you can request assistance from the librarian. (Priority is given to University of Michigan students, staff, faculty and alumni.)

A little rusty on how to interpret averages, sample size and margin of error? Here's a link to an article, Statistics Every Writer Should Know.

7 Ways to Repurpose Your Content

Have you noticed how the "big names" keep presenting the same message over and over again? You can pretty much predict what they're going to say. The content varies slightly, but the theme remains the same.

They are "repurposing" their content - sometimes you'll see it in print; sometimes you'll hear it in an interview; or you may get it online via the web or newsletter.

There are dozens of ways to repurpose content. Here's a slide show I recently posted online, which reviews 7 of them.

The more ways you can get your message out there, the more quickly you will be branded as an expert in your field.

| View

Do-it-yourself: Website or blog?

One of the most frequent questions I get is, "What's the quickest and least expensive way to set up my website?"

If you're going to do it yourself, the quickest way to get a web presence is to set up a blog at blogger.com. This blog that you're reading is hosted on blogger.com. It's free. You don't need any programming or web-designing skills. And you can update it very easily.

Blogger blogs are limited - you can't have different sections and pages,as you'd find on a traditional website.


Convenience of a blog, look and feel of a website

If you want the convenience of a blog (easy updating, interactivity, plug-in widgets, etc.) with the look and feel of a website, your solution is to use the free Wordpress blog software.

To do this you need a domain name and web host. If you don't have a domain name (e.g., yourwebsite.com) you can get one at Godaddy. Each name costs about $10/year.

Next, you need a place to host your website. There are hundreds of web hosts. You can use Godaddy for hosting, but I've heard great things about Hostgator. Fees start at $4.95/month.

Whatever hosting service you use, make sure they offer free installation of the Wordpress software. Wordpress will be a built-in option that you click to install from your website's control panel. Learn more at wordpress.org

Once you get your Wordpress blog installed, simply choose a template and start typing to add content. You can add extra functions and widgets as you go along.


Want to stick with a traditional website?

If you won't be doing much updating, or if your website is mainly a brochure for your business, then a traditional html-based website may be all you need.

Many web hosts have simple "site builders" (templates) to get you started. You can also use wysiwyg (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) html editors such as nvu or amaya. With these editors you don't need to use html - simply type in your content and the html code is automatically created.

However, it does help to know a little about html, in case your final result has weird lines or spaces. Here's a link to info and tutorials on html.

Whether you decide on a blog or a website, if you don't have any web presence, get started today. Don't wait till you have everything ready to load onto it. Just get started. Tweaking will be easier when you have it partially completed.

LEARN MORE


Learn more about the difference between a blog and a website, and how they are related to your marketing, in the 9-minute slideshow below. It's a sneak preview of my new home-study course. If you are ready to take a serious step toward marketing your practice or business, visit MarketWithAuthority.com for details.

The power of your voice

If you're a a therapist, coach or consultant, you probably communicate mainly through your voice. Your voice reveals so much about who you are. Recently I interviewed two broadcast specialists from Australia, who gave us lots of tips on how to make the most of our voice to connect with clients, and also to market ourselves.

The blogtalkradio recording is below. It's 60 minutes, but you can download it to your computer and either listen online or transfer it to your portable music player. To download the audio, click here and look for the blue Download tab just above the "Market with Authority" image.

Get the study guide here.

Use hot topics to frame your marketing message

The best marketing message is that which addresses people's concerns.

What are people talking about? What are they searching for online?

You can get answers to these questions from statistics provided by search engines, blogs and social bookmarking sites.

If there are a lot of searches or a lot of blogging on a given topic, that means it's hot. And if you're an expert on this topic (or something related to it) it's an ideal time to write about it or comment about it. This will help build your status as an authority.


HERE ARE SOME TOOLS:

Google Trends - See at a glance what the popular searches have been for the past 24 hours. Or search on a specific topic for trends in recent weeks, months or years. You can even compare search terms and get a breakdown of searches by country and region.

This graph shows the results of searches for 3 popular psychiatric diagnoses: ADHD, Autism, and Bipolar, for the last 12 months.

Overall, Autism (red line) has been the most popular search. However, if you look at the countries below the graph, you'll notice that this is the case mainly for English-speaking countries. in northern Europe the most popular search has been ADHD (blue line.)

Thus, depending on which population you're targeting, you'll frame your message accordingly.





Yahoo Buzz - Learn what's hot right now. A "Buzz score" is based on search term popularity, how many times a news story or other item is emailed from Yahoo Buzz, and the number of votes from Buzz visitors. You can search for buzz within a particular topic, and within a specific time frame, up to the past year. Here's a screenshot from what's hot in health news from the past 30 days:





Blogs and social bookmarking - People are not only searching online; they are also talking about what they've found. They're blogging, commenting, and sharing their bookmarks. You can see what's hot by visiting:
Technorati
BlogPulse
Del.icio.us
Furl

"Expensive" implies quality

Last week in the news there was an interesting study confirming what we already suspect: Expensive medicine is perceived as more effective.

People who were told that a pill cost $2.50 got more pain relief from a shock to their wrist, than did those who were told that the pill cost only 10 cents. In reality, both groups of subjects received the same pill, which contained no pain medicine at all. The pill was just a placebo (sugar pill.)

A few months ago another study showed that people sipping wine which they thought cost $45, reported that it tasted better than wine that they were told cost $5.

Moreover, brain imaging reflected more activity in the pleasure centers when the people drank the "expensive" wine - even though both products were identical!

These research results are not surprising. From haircuts, to cosmetics, to watches, to cars - in the mind of the consumer, higher price is associated with better quality. And expectation of quality affects one's experience of satisfaction.


What this means for your professional business:

Even in these tough economic times, if you are a professional, think twice before slashing your fees.

There is still a need for your services and products. And when money is tight, your potential clients and customers don't want to waste it. More important than ever is their confidence that what they are paying for is indeed going to help them.

Instead of lowering your prices, increase your perceived value. Here are some tips:

• Be extra responsive - e.g., return phone calls and emails within an hour.

• Offer extra convenience - e.g., toll-free phone number, baby-sitting services for your in-person clients, evening office hours, stamped self-adressed envelopes for return mail.

• Give something free, which is related to your paid service or product - e.g., book (yours or someone else's), CD, DVD, pedometer (eg., for clients you are coaching to improve their life style.) These items cost a few bucks, but can greatly enhance your perceived value.

What eye-tracking studies imply for your website

Where should you place your most important text on your web page? According to eye tracking studies by Jakob Neilsen, people's eyes scan web pages in an F-shaped pattern, as in the image below. The red areas indicate the longest gaze, blue the shortest, and grey no focus at all.



What does this mean for your website? If you look at the diagram, you can see that the top third of the page, with emphasis on the left side is the most looked at. That's where your most important information should go.

Further down the page use more headings. Since readers spend less time focusing as they scan down a web page, headlines will catch their attention and get them to stop momentarily.

Nielsen also recommends AGAINST using a lot of bright graphics and fancy formatting. He found in his research that anything resembling a banner ad tends to get ignored.

Research for writing articles

Do you write articles for the public? Where do you research your topic?

Journal articles may not your best source. They are geared toward professional audiences, who have different questions from the general public.

Here are some alternative sources:

• Findarticles.com is a good blend of popular and academic articles. Most of them have passed through professional editors and fact-checkers. Many articles are free, but there are also some available for a fee.
  
  
• MagPortal is another source, not quite as comprehensive, but all articles are free.
  
  
• Search recent news at Google News or Yahoo News. Many news stories quote authorities on the topic. If you want to know more, you can usually find the quoted sources or people via a simple Google search.

Pauline
p.s. Still time to sign up for my distance-learning course

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