Free Content for Your Fact Sheets and Brochures

Fact sheets and brochures branded with your name can enhance your image as an expert. If the information is helpful, people will keep these items and pass them on to others.

You don’t need to write all the content yourself. Save time by using material that’s already out there. You can use documents produced by U.S. government agencies – such as NIMH – without getting in trouble for plagiarizing. Why? Anything produced by the U.S. government is in the public domain. It is not copyrighted. That means:

• You don’t need permission to use the content. 

• You don’t need to pay royalties.
• You are free to use the content in any way you like. You can modify it, adapt it, or use just parts of it.
• You are not obligated to cite the source. In fact you can put your own name on it.

Here are a few examples of publications from NIMH:

• Fact sheets on ADHD, PTSD, The teenage brain, Suicide warning signs

• Booklets (some have Spanish version) on Anxiety disorders, Autism spectrum disorder, Eating disorders, Men and depression

• Statistics on various mental conditions and disorders

• An image library with images (mostly of the brain) to enhance your brochures

All of the above publications from NIMH are in the public domain, absolutely free for your use. More resources on psychological topics are available at the websites of other government agencies. For example:

• Post-stroke rehabilitation fact sheet, from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
• Anger Management booklet from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
• Homework tips for Parents, from the Department of Education

How to find public domain content in government websites:

USA.gov is the main portal. From there you can search within specific agencies (e.g., NIH, NIMH, Department of Justice, etc.) or type your keywords into the search box to get results from more than one government agency.

Alternatively, you can search Google, adding the following to your keywords: site:gov (no spaces between the characters.) This tells Google to search only within government websites.

NOTE: Although all documents and images produced by the federal government are in the public domain, you may find some material on government websites that was produced by an outside contractor. Such material may be protected by copyright.

Therefore, when searching for public domain content, add the phrase  “public domain” (in quotes) to your search. A Google search for tips on anger management would look like this:
“anger management” tips “public domain” site:gov

With public domain content you can quickly churn out fact sheets and brochures on several topics. Just copy and paste. If you have more time, you can modify the content so that it better reflects you and your practice.

Where to Distribute Fact Sheets and Brochures:

• Give them to clients when appropriate.
• Drop them off (after getting permission) at the offices of other professionals (physicians, attorneys, etc.) as well as at hair salons, health clubs, schools and other places where your prospective clients hang out. 

• Post them for download on your website.

• Hand them out at your presentations.

Be sure to include your full contact information on every product. This not only makes it convenient for people to get in touch with you; it also helps to brand you as an expert on the topic.

** Please join my free, monthly conference calls focused on marketing. Sign up online at bit.ly/monthlycalls
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NAMS 5 Webinar Series, and more...

A couple of weeks ago I was part of a week-long NAMS 5 webinar series - 26 hours of presentations on the latest tools and techniques in online marketing and productivity. 

My presentation was titled: Beat Procrastination...For Real This Time. It generated a bit of Twitter buzz, since it's a problem we can all relate to.

By the end of the week I had tons of notes and links from the other expert presenters that I've already put to use.

After the webinar series was over, organizer David Perdew kept working. He gathered all the Powerpoint presentations and put them on a download site. Then he added:

• PDFs and Audios of the presentations
• Audio files from FOUR previous NAMS 3-day conferences (150 hours) 
• Software - Article Twister and Local Domain Hound

As if all that isn't enough, he's including the following, which are coming up:

• 18 hours of "deep dive" interviews over the next few months
• A free ticket to the NAMS 6 live conference in August.

How much is he asking for everything (and more) mentioned above?

UNTIL FEB 4 at 5 pm Eastern, you can get it all for $397.

I've never seen so much quality, expert content offered for this fee. I strongly recommend that you take a look a this before the Feb 4 deadline.

Here's my affiliate link to learn more and sign up. I'll be at NAMS 6 in August. If you're there, I'll treat to dinner on Friday night.

pw

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Get more mileage from your community presentations

One of the best ways to market your practice is to give presentations to local community groups. But for all the work you put into the preparation, wouldn’t it be nice to reach more than a few dozen people?

You can, if you take the content of your workshop and “repurpose” it into different formats for different audiences.

Let’s say you gave a presentation to a group of parents about communicating with their teens, and that you distributed a handout. You can repurpose the content of both your presentation and your handout:

• Take your handout and create a tips sheet for your clients. You may have to condense your ideas so that they fit on one page. If you have too much content for one page, create several tips sheets, each covering one sub-topic. 

• From the notes from your presentation, write an article – or a series of articles, depending on how much you covered in the presentation. Your articles should be no longer than 500 words. Post them online at your website or blog, or distribute them via email. You can also post them on article banks such as ezinearticles.com, where others can use your article in their own newsletters or blogs (with full credit to you.)

• Make video recordings of segments of your presentation and post them on youtube. They should be no longer than 3-5 minutes each.  If you covered 7 points in your presentation, make 7 individual videos.

• Make an audio recording of your presentation, using an inexpensive microphone connected to your computer. Using the free software, audacity, you can record, edit, and even add music to your recording. Post the mp3 file as a download on your website. Or put it on CD. For just $1 apiece at kunaki.com, you can create professional-looking CDs and jewel cases.

These are just a few ways to get more mileage from your presentations. Please share how you have repurposed (or intend to repurpose) your content. Post your comment below.

SEO - Boost your search engine rankings

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about how to get your website noticed by search engines - So that when people search the Web, your site has a better chance of appearing near the top.

The principle is simple. Most search engines pay attention to fresh content that doesn't look like spam.

They do this via a series of complex algorithms that rank websites on different dimensions. But each search engine does it differently. That's why, if you run the same search on Google and Yahoo, you won't get exactly the same results.

However, all search engines look for these factors:

• Content - Original content that is not repetitive. Google and other search engines don't rank spelling and grammar, but they do tend to dismiss websites that have very little content, or that have the same words repeated over and over throughout the website.
  
  
• Relevance: Think about keywords that people might search on in order to find your website. Use these keywords in the title and the body of your website, but don't over-use them - otherwise the search engine may assume that you are "stuffing" keywords just to artificially boost your ranking.
  
  
• Outgoing Links - Links should be related to the content. If they're not, the search engines will consider them random and spammy.
  
  
• Incoming Links - If a lot sites link to yours, search engines view your website as "popular" and give you higher ranking.
  
  
• Metatags - These are the words that define the title of your website and describe what your content is about. Metatags are like keywords, and should match the keywords that your potential audience would probably type into the search engine.
  
  For example, if your website is about overcoming shyness, your metatags might be: overcoming shyness, getting over shyness, social confidence, .... etc.
  
  You access your metatags on the actual files that are stored on your website's host. If you have a blog you can access the metatags from your blog's control panel or dashboard.
  

Each search engine gives different ranking to the above factors. Also, their algorithms change frequently. Thus, what was #1, 2 and 3 yesterday could be different today or tomorrow.

For more specifics on how to optimize your site for search engines, see their individual guidelines:
Google
Yahoo
Ask
Bing

More info is at SEOMoz.org.
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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.

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

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.

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4 ways to get people to open your emails

When emailing someone you don't know, it's quite likely that your message will end up being deleted without being read.

Here are 4 tips to increase the chances that your recipients will open your emails:

1. Use plain text, rather than HTML. Many email programs are set to assume that HTML messages from unknown sources are spam, and send them directly to the trash folder, so that your message doesn't even make it into the recipeient's inbox.
   
   
2. Make your subject line short, but intriguing. For example, which of the following would you open first:
   
   News article
   
   News about beating procrastination
   
   
3. Use your recipient's name in the subject line. When people see their own names, they pay attention. In either of the above examples, if you simply add the recipient's name, they will at least stop and notice. And if the subject line is interesting, they'll feel compelled to open the message.
   
   
4. Make the most of the "From" field in your message. Open the setup screen of your email account, where it asks you to type your name as you want it to appear in the "From" field of your recipients' inbox. Instead of just your name, try changing it (temporarily or permanently) to something like: Joe Blow, ADHD Expert. This gives your message an added layer of authority.