Be Brave Not Safe

In the last few posts on Launching a Consulting Business we’ve discussed the general area of Marketing (preparing to make some noise) to attract others to you / your business.

At this point you should have:

• A comprehensive LinkedIn Profile
• A website
• Content which you have begun placing into the tool you have selected to manage your e-Newsletter and/or Blog

If you don’t have ALL of the above stop here and come back when you are ready 🙂

If you do have ALL of the above you are ready to begin the never-ending process of shamelessly promoting your business.

To start, you NEVER know where consulting engagements will come from. They could originate from anywhere: a neighbor, someone at church, the parent of one of the players on the same team as your child, colleagues you worked with and/or for at prior companies, your Board of Advisors, etc. And, because these are the people you will see most frequently and/or are part of your “inner-circle” you’ll want to start here.

To do so you will want to let them know what you are up to. You can do so as follows:

• In conversation – remember your elevator speech?
• Send them an (individual) email message summarizing what you are up to (your elevator speech and value proposition) encouraging them to visit your website to learn more.
• Invite them to subscribe to your e-Newsletter and/or Blog
• Encourage them to forward your e-Newsletter and/or Blog to others who may benefit

And, because they are in your inner-circle, you should ALWAYS ask them for their honest opinion and feedback, offering to help them if there is any way that you can (related to their own personal or professional endeavors).

In addition, be sure to update your email signature (that you use outside the company that you may still be employed at) to share your:

• Name
• Company Name and it’s tagline
• Website
• Phone number

By doing so, EVERY email that you send whether it is personal (to friends, relatives, neighbors, etc.) or professional (for your business) you are sharing your e-business card reminding people what you are up to and providing an easy way for them to “check you out.”

Finally, in a prior post I mentioned that I place marketing collateral on a USB memory stick which I hand out as business cards. In addition to this, I’ve had a bunch of (very nice) hooded sweatshirts made up with my company logo, that I wear and give out as gifts. For example, a few years ago we hosted a neighborhood Christmas party which included a Yankee Swap. Guess what my gift was: A Customer Centricity sweatshirt. Everyone got a kick out of it and (if it hasn’t worn out yet) there is someone else in this world promoting my business…

In closing, get creative – make it yours!

In a future post I’ll share marketing strategies that didn’t work (for me) and how I FINALLY landed my first consulting engagement (cha-ching!)

Click here to review the next article in the series.

In the prior 2 posts on the topic of Launching a Consulting Business we’ve covered establishing a:

• Comprehensive LinkedIn Profile
• Website

The 3rd element of your online presence is the icing on the cake: An e-Newsletter and/or Blog.

That is, your e-Newsletter and/or Blog becomes the “active” part of your online presence drawing people to you/your website. To support this, you’ll want to publish / post on a recurring basis to remain top-of-mind, reminding people you are “out here.”

In this post we will cover the following areas:

1. The content
2. Creating leverage
3. The tool(s)

The content

Your e-Newsletter and/or Blog can include:

• Your own material – If you’ve been “keeping up” you have content ready to “get started.” That is, in a prior post you were encouraged to “begin” generating content around your 3-5 areas of expertise (i.e., “The 10 easy steps to [insert your value proposition here]” or “How to [insert your value proposition here]”).
• Recommended readings – In order to remain at the top of your game it is important to read relevant books, articles published by others and/or visiting applicable websites that share information and approaches useful to you / your field. When you come across something especially insightful you can write an article encouraging others to check out the material (book, article, website, etc.).
• Upcoming events – Building on the above, you are also encouraged to attend relevant events related to your industry and/or profession. And, working with industry / professional association leaders to promote their events is an important step in getting invited to speak at such events to further generate business (the topic of a future post).

Keep in mind that the attention span of “most of us” is fairly limited. As such, you’ll want to ensure that each article/post is “bite-sized.” Something that can be consumed in just a few minutes. Otherwise, you may lose your audience. While they may receive the “reminder” (notification) that you’ve again published, they may not take the time to review the content and benefit accordingly. An approach for doing so I’ve found effective is:

• Initially publishing an introductory article / post on the topic, including the punch-list of items to be covered
• Following up (every few days, weekly or every other week) with articles / posts covering individual items on the punch-list

Once you have completed the series (i.e., “The 10 easy steps to [insert your value proposition here]) you are now ready to leverage this content…

Creating leverage

By preparing individual articles (based on your own content) you can further leverage this content to:

• Generate whitepapers – These are valuable marketing tools you can publish in print and/or pdf form and provide to your prospects and customers. And, make available on your website for download.
• Publish in trade rags – One of the newsletter series we published (resulting in a whitepaper) ended up as a cover story on an industry trade rag. And, we received an industry award for doing so. All great “noise” for the business.
• Prepare a presentation that you can deliver to an audience which may benefit from your expertise.

The tools

As you might imagine, there are numerous (online) tools available for managing an e-Newsletter and/or Blog.

We’ve used Campaigner for my business e-Newsletter for a number of years. One of the best things about this tool (and most others like it) is that it allows individuals to manage their own subscription (to subscribe or unsubscribe). For example, we provide an option on our website to allow visitors to subscribe to our newsletter making it “hands free” for us.

For this blog (and it’s website) I’m using WordPress which is very easy to use and cost-effective. In fact, at some point I may convert my business website (and e-Newsletter) to this tool. One of the best things about this tool is that it allows you to easily “push” your posts / articles into LinkedIn and other social media tools further generating visibility for you / your business.

In closing…Once you have done all of the above (and what we have outlined in prior posts on the topic of “Launching a Consulting Business”) you are ready to begin making some noise, which will be covered in the next post on this topic.

To prepare for this next step, you are encouraged to begin placing your content (i.e., “The 10 easy steps to…) into one of the tools in preparation for posting / publishing.

Click here to review the next article in the series.