Natalie Morris Morris MC

If you are like me you have a pile of business cards from people you have met at networking events. If you are also like me you have followed up with most of those people at least once. However, the real question is how can you follow up with them on a regular basis without being a pest? The trick is providing them with information they will find helpful.

There are a few options for staying in front of your client or more importantly potential clients:

• Send each contact a personal e-mail relating to their business. Pretty unlikely if you meet more than a few people a month. However a short generic e-mail to a select group might be a good option.
• Send a monthly newsletter.
  • The benefits; there are a quite a few inexpensive applications out there that make managing a newsletter fairly easy.
  • The draw back; most people find that newsletters require a substantial amount of time to create something worth reading, which is key.
  • Another drawback is unless you have added someone to your newsletter they won't get your newsletter.
• Another option is to use your blog as your connection.
  • One benefit is most blogs offer an easy to set up RSS feed so that people are able to control their incoming feeds.
  • You can send a link to your blog in a short sweet e-mail to specific clients. "Hi Sally, I thought you might be interested in this article I wrote, New Years Resolutions or should they be Revolutions?"
  • You can link to your Blog from your website so that anyone who comes to your website can read it. 

It is  important to keep in front of your clients, and your potential clients. People who don't need your services now my need them in 6 months so it's important to keep in touch. When you are reading an article that you find interesting think to yourself is this something my contacts would be interested in? Even if it doesn't relate directly to your services offering quality information will establish you as a resource, someone to think about.

Natalie Morris
www.morrismc.com

A good portion of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is back-end. Which means the back-end HTML code is modified, XML and HTML site maps are created, and other tools are put into effect to help the search engines determine what your site is about. But this Blog isn't all what SEO can do for you but what you can do for SEO.

One way that Search Engines determine if your site is going to be ranked more highly than your competitors is to see if others feel your site is worth linking to. Ideally you would have all your vendors, customers, friends and family link from their site to yours, although as we all know this is not at all practical. This is where Blogs and Forums come in handy. Not only can they help you establish your expertise in the "Internet Community" but if used correctly it can also help you promote your website.

Here's an example of adding links to your blog; our company Morris MC offers web development, marketing materials, and content writing.  These links point to my site and tell the search engines that my site is related to my blog, and that I feel Morris MC is a good resource for visitors to my blog. Search Engines use incoming links - links that point to your site - to help gauge how relevant your site is to particular keywords. In this case, my site and then more specifically the pages the keywords link to, are relate to this blog.  

The same can be said for Forums, however you need to be careful not to use forums as marketing venues. Your best bet when using a forum is to use your URL in your signature line - if allowed - or to create pages on your website that are informational resources that you can point forum visitors to. As an example I may find a forum where someone asks what they need to know when writing content for their website. Instead of typing a bunch of information on the forum I could create a link to my Helpfull Information About Content Development page, not only will this help the people visiting the forum, but it links to your site with relevant key words. When writing for a forum, you want to be seen as an expert, and actually help visitors, instead of try to sell your services. The more of an "expert" you become, the more beneficial the forums will become. If someone is looking for a particular service, product, or solution to a problem they are going to be more likely to go to the expert, than the pushy sales person.

Another great way to get your links out into that Wide World Web is by using LinkedIn. Similar to forums and blogs you can add your links to your profile, discussions, etc. 

This is a great, effective, and relatively simple way for you to help increase your search engine rankings. So go get blogging!

 Natalie Morris
www.morrismc.com

I had a great phone conference call with my business coach (http://coachjoelle.com/) on Monday and we discussed New Years Revolutions. Her main point was that to get a resolution to stick, you really need to change it into a revolution.

Resolution: the act of analyzing a complex notion into simpler ones

Revolution: a drastic and far-reaching change in ways of thinking and behaving

A resolution is really just determining what the problem is and what the solution or goal is, a revolution is actually changing the way you think and behave to accomplish that goal. No wonder new years resolutions are always broken, you need to implement a revolution to be able to achieve the solution.

So this year I am focusing on my revolutions not my resolutions.

Another interesting concept I learned from our call was that we live in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) world. This is actually a term developed for computer applications, more or less for computers it says this application lets you easily create your end product without needing to understand the underlying language.

However what Joelle meant was that the way you see the world directly impacts the way the world unfolds for you. If you see your life as miserable with no meaning, then more than likely that's what your life will be. However if you see your life as exciting and fulfilling then that is the way your life will be. However the hard part is getting over the reality that "my life IS" some particular way and just thinking it isn't won't change anything. Which is true, however if you think you are a certain way, then you will act that way, and in return you life will be that way. So in essence you aren't saying my life is exciting (when it's not) you are saying I am exciting - which will lead to you choosing exciting things.

Having started working for myself again, I have found that I am falling back into my old ways (all work and no play makes Natalie a dull girl) however after the call I remembered that I was an exciting active person who loved to be outside and meet new people!! I just sort of forgot that… So I called Alpine Valley Ski Resort - if you not from NE ohio, its really just a bump with a few chair lifts - I know the ski school director, from my previous life as an exciting person, and now I am scheduled to talk to him this Thursday about instructing one or two days a week!! Yeah! I am fun! And all it took was changing the way I thought about myself.

Go ahead you can do it too!!

Natalie Morris
www.morrismc.com