Do We Really Need to Tweet?

Everybody's Tweeting, it seems. Where once you were left in the dust if you didn't have a website, or a blog, now the craze is to Tweet.

Incessantly. Mindlessly. Time-consumingly.

I might be clinically anti-social, but I don't get the appeal of reading what you had for breakfast, where you walked the dog, or how much you adore /hate American Idol. Nor has it -- yet -- occurred that I've made real friends (call me old fashioned, but if I've never heard of you, you can't possibly be a friend).

Can engaging in social media really build your counseling or naturopathic practice? Should Twitter, et. al., be a central part of your marketing strategy?

They -- you know, those people who know everything -- say that engaging in the social media frenzy is absolutely necessary to having a successful business. Could that be true?

So far as I can tell, no counselor I know of, and no ND I'm in touch with, is filling their practice with clients gained from spending hours -- much less offering one tweet a day or week -- on Twitter. Or Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, or any social media site. I think this is because there is an essential ingredient missing in the instantaneous global broadcasting of one's daily trivia, personal inspirations, private wins, idiosyncratic gripes, and self-serving promotions.

The missing ingredient is actual relevant value to the recipient of others' streams of consciousness.

What Twitter especially can do for us, is be a traffic cop in helping send more readers to our newest blog post, or to a fresh offer on our websites, or to info about an upcoming event that helps shed light on or solve the problem that our ideal clients have.

Note that the strategic effort goes into the problem solving blog, website, or creation of an event.

Okay, now that I've thrown out my 2 cents, it's time to Tweet that this post exists.

Business Housekeeping Countdown

Got some extra time on your calendar in the second half of this month due to holiday slow down? Great!

This is the perfect time for a little business housekeeping. You know, taking care of all those little things you haven't made time for because you've been too busy marketing your practice and serving your clients, like:

• updating your website, making sure all your links and buttons work
• formalizing new service packages and policies
  
• cancelling online accounts that aren't producing
• cleaning out your data base of prospects who never buy, attend or hire
• deleting all those guru ezines you've intended to read and never have

I don't know about you, but that could keep me busy for 2-3 weeks.

Not much fun, though. So, what about balancing the housekeeping with some other business development tasks that you may not have taken time for either, such as:

• creating a vision board for achievements you want to accomplish within 5 years
• hosting a spontaneous, informal celebration lunch with colleagues to toast the 2009 successes
• shopping for a new item that contributes to business efficiency or reach
  
• seeking out a group to join in January that will be part business learning, part social, part accountability keeping
  
• finding teleclasses to take to improve marketing skills

While it's tempting to blow off work entirely over the holiday slow down, a little housekeeping and a little forward thinking can be better for giving your practice an energized start for the New Year.

So what will you tackle today, next week, and before Dec 31?

4 More Tip Sheets from The No Hype Mentor

Lots of my clients start out as do-it-yourselfers, but quickly get overwhelmed with how much there is to learn about having an effective web-presence.

To help get to the gold fast, I've developed a number of quick guides and tip sheets. I have four more for you today.

Suggestions for 1st 5 Web Pages
Clear, quick advice on what content your first website needs to have to attract more clients to your practice.

17 Sticky Ideas
Especially for coaches, counselors and naturopathic doctors, these suggestions will help make your website more client attracting, and help to increase conversion rates from visitors to people calling for appointments.

Niche Viability Checklist
Sometimes you have a great idea for a very narrow or specialized niche that you know needs your help. This checklist will help you determine if enough of these folks will want your services in great enough numbers for you to make a living.

Crafting Your Ideal Client Niche
Those of you who are generalist in recovery may like some help in figuring out exactly who your ideal client is. Helps develop the demographic and psychographic details that you need for an effective marketing message.

Request any or all of these 4 No Hype Mentor Tip Sheets ~~ Note: Submitting this form will not trigger an instant download. I'll be sending you the materials you request personally. Sorry for the wait if your daytime is my sleep time.

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7 Things to Think About When Creating Your Website or Hiring a Designer

Websites and blogs both need to be designed. Fortunately, many template-based, free or low cost, easy do-it-yourself (DIY) platforms exist for tech-less solopreneurs to accomplish this relatively quickly.

To work as the effective center of your web-presence, your website and/or blog needs to be created with multiple functions in mind. The old idea of a website simply being an online brochure is no longer a smart approach for attracting clients.

At minimum, this is what all solopreneurs in the healing arts need:

• a visually attractive and attracting design
• conversion elements such as data base builder contact management and autoresponder widets
  
• good search engine optimization (SEO)
• compelling copywriting
• purposeful strategic marketing
  

Those who are a little more technologically able or fascinated, may also want to include the following (and some DIY web and blog builder programs offer the ability to include these fairly easily):

• appropriate community-building components such as a forum and rss feeds
  
• social media integration

Not all private practitioners will need the more gee-whiz capabilities, particularly if your business relies strictly on in-person clients, and you aren't even trying to reach millions of consumers to become an internationally recognized expert or product seller.

Most web designers can provide pretty pages with smooth navigation and install conversion elements. Many can ensure or advise on SEO. Some will know how to best incorporate community building and social media components.

Few are really skilled in helping you write compelling content. Almost none will know how to develop good client attracting marketing for the private practice professions that have more conservative ethics than the majority of internet businesses.

If you don't yet have a website or blog for your business, or if you know you need to update and upgrade, ask yourself:

• what do I want my website or blog to do?
  
• what do my ideal clients need from my website or blog?
• what's the easiest, cheapest, best way to provide that?
• how much can I create and control myself?
• what will I need a designer's or tech-savvy person to help me with?

Ezine, Blog, or Social Media? Wrong Question

For non-writers, all this talk of having a website, then doing an ezine, and writing a blog, and sending bursts of info out on social media can feel overwhelming and confusing.

Anyone out there feeling that? Yep, thought so.

The question is not which one should you do, but why and when will you want to do one or more of these forms of writing.

From my perspective as a web-presence marketing mentor-coach, I always say that a website is your home-base. It anchors all the rest of your marketing. This is the most important more or less permanent piece of writing you'll have to do.

The purpose of your website is to tell your potential clients what they are waiting to hear in order for them to know you are the right provider for them.

Blogs seem to work better these days than ezines for getting people interested in you and your services, and getting a little taste of what it would be like to work with you. So when you are starting out and needing to generate enough clients to fill your practice, a blog is a good addition to a website.

Ezines seem to work best to keep in touch with current and former clients, generating repeat business, providing targeted help on topics your clients have expressed an interest in, and reminding people you haven't seen for a while that you are still in business. This is a different purpose than a blog, so the writing should be different as well.

Social media work best to spark interest in something specific in the moment. They can be good for sending the curious and the prospective client to your blog or website for more extensive information, or to make an appointment. But for solopreneurs in the healing arts, they don't really directly generate a lot of new clients.

So, website, ezine, blog, and social media -- which will you work on today?

7 Ideas for When You Don't Have Time to Market

When you think you don't have time to market, that's a problem. Your practice may have enough clients right now, but do you have all the things in place that you need to ensure that there are always people coming into the pipeline to replace those who "graduate" from your services?

Ideally, to get a private practice in the healing arts off the ground successfully, conventional wisdom says you'll need to be engaged in marketing tasks 4 hours a day 6 days a week for 6 months to a year.

I can hear a lot of you groaning about spending that much time.

About half of my business coaching clients aren't new at their work, just changing status from agency or clinic or corporate employment to private practice. Some are moving away from taking insurance to being completely cash-based. Your practices have been successful for a while, and you don't want to feel and act like a beginner, putting that much time in.

Okay, here's what I'd recommend when you're in transition or have very limited time. Missed and cancelled appointments are perfect times for accomplishing any of these marketing upkeep tasks.

What you'll need: a laptop and internet access in your office.
What to do: pick just one of the tasks below to fill your available time.
Assumes: you already have a website, are on some locator directories, maybe do some blogging.

1. Review and refresh your website. Make sure has strong, emotionally compelling messages on the home page. Ensure that the target niches are current. Check all the links to make sure they still work and eliminate the ones that send people off your site. Time expense: 2 hours to half a day now, and once every year).

2. Add visitor capture widgets -- some way and reason for people to provide you their email address in exchange for something they can implement immediately, like a tip sheet or a quiz. Time expense: 30 minutes or less, once.

3. Add articles you've already written. Recycle old blog posts, ezine topics, publication articles you've submitted to update references, statistics, etc. Time expense: 30 minutes or less for adding to website, 2-3 hours or less for revising each article, one per week or month.

4. Review and refresh all locator directory profiles. Make sure they are consistent with your refreshed website, and are speaking to your current target niche market. Time expense: 1 hour or less per profile, once a week until done.

5. If all updating is complete, brainstorm a list of questions your clients ask you. If you have a blog already established, and if you can post in draft mode (unpublished), start a new blog draft with each question. This forms a ready prompt for later. Time expense: 30 minutes - 1 hour.

6. Pick one blog draft prompt question, and off the top of your head start writing a conversational answer. Voila, you have a blog post. Edit for spelling and grammar, and publish. Time expense: 20-40 minutes.

7. After publishing new blog post, go to your Twitter account and Tweet it, thus driving traffic to your blog. Time expense: assuming you already have your professional Twitter account established, 5 minutes or less.