Be Brave Not Safe

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.

In the prior post on the topic of Launching a Consulting Business we began discussing your online presence, which has (at least) 3 major components:

1. Comprehensive LinkedIn Profile (previously covered)
2. Website
3. Blog and/or e-Newsletter

We will now cover the 2nd topic (Website).

Let’s face it…When we are looking for products and/or services (personally and/or professionally), where is the first place we’ll go to perform research? The web! And, that is exactly where people will be looking for your services. As such, to be “officially” in business you MUST have a website.

To be clear, the most difficult part of this step is NOT the website itself — that is simple. The hard part is the generation and organization of the content that you wish to present. As such, if you’ve completed the prior steps covered on this topic (of Launching a Consulting Business) then you should be in very good shape to take this step (of standing up a website).

First and foremost, it must present a professional look and feel. And, even though you may be a “one-person shop” (at least in the beginning?) there is absolutely NO NEED to give that impression on your website.

There are a couple of approaches to consider as you prepare to setup your website (and finalize your marketing content):

1. Get help!
   • Regarding your marketing content – Prior to placing your marketing content on your website (or on any other marketing collateral) you are going to want a second set of eyes to review / edit your content. This may be hired help or someone in your inner circle — someone who can help make you “look good.” To reinforce, the “technical” part of setting up a website (which we’ll talk about next) is VERY different than properly preparing and organizing your marketing content — for your intended audience.
   • Regarding your website – If you’ve never built or maintained a website, there are plenty of professionals who can help you. The fees will range from very expensive (agencies that will charge thousands upon thousands) to cheap (and, you will likely get what you pay for). A recommendation I can make in this regard would be my son, Ian. Click here to visit his website. If you end up contacting him, tell him I sent you :-). Alternatively, you may have someone in your inner circle (on your Board of Advisors?) with the appropriate experience who would be willing to help get you started.
2. Do-It-Yourself – If you have previously built or maintained a website then you are obviously capable of doing so again. I’ll even go so far as to say that with today’s tools if you are highly proficient with MS Word you can stand up a (simple / starter) website within just a few short hours (and do so – FOR FREE). The tool I’d recommend for this is WordPress (which is what I use for this blog).

Once you have finalized your marketing content and determined the approach to setting up your website it is now time to “frame-up” your site. There are many approaches / styles for doing so. And, you may already have an idea with regards to how you’d like things to look (and work) based on sites you’ve visited. That said, effective websites (especially for a consulting business) typically have the following elements (sections and/or pages):

• The home page – Should INSTANTLY provide the visitor some sense of what you do.
• Services Overview – A more detailed overview of what you do, the results you help companies achieve and your approach to doing so.
• An “About Us” section – This is where you’d share your bio (and that of any other members of your team). In addition, within this section of my business website I provide a link to my LinkedIn profile so people can dig deeper to learn more about me, if they so desire.
• Customer References and/or Testimonials – We’ll talk later about how to get these during the early stage after launching your business. As such, this section may need to initially be “on hold.”
• Resources – This page would contain any reference materials (recommended readings, upcoming events, etc.) that your audience might find useful in their quest to solve problems in your general area of expertise. This may be content you’ve generated and/or other useful resources available online (i.e., relevant professional associations / organizations, etc.).
• Contact Us – This is where you’ll offer a phone number and email address to reach you. A couple of notes on this:
  • You do NOT (necessarily) need to get a separate phone number for your business. For example, the main number to reach me is my cell (whether for personal or professional reasons). And, this is the number offered on my business website. That said, you’ll just want a professional sounding greeting for when people reach your voice-mail.
  • You might consider setting up a generic email address for your business (although not absolutely required) such as: info@[insert your business domain here].

In closing, the above is meant to provide a high-level framework for how you might structure content on your website. That said, “make it your own” based on your style, approach and the intended audience you hope to reach. And, once you’ve setup the above you’ll again want to have people within your inner circle (including Board of Advisors) review your site and provide feedback so that you can make any adjustments prior to the “official” launch.

In the next post we’ll discuss the 3rd topic related to your online presence (Blog and/or e-Newsletter).

Click here to review the next article in the series.

In prior posts we’ve discussed the creation of marketing content in preparation for making some noise, to attract others to you / your services. Now that you’ve drafted this content it is time to finalize and begin making it available.

As you may know, or have guessed, the #1 marketing channel is the Internet! And, with relatively little effort you / your business can be marketed — to the entire planet!

While there are numerous “offline” marketing activities we’ll talk about later you MUST first have an effective online presence for others to find and/or check you out. This online presence includes (but is not necessarily limited to) a:

• Comprehensive LinkedIn Profile
• Website
• Blog and/or e-Newsletter

Let’s address the first item above. The other 2 will be covered in future posts…One step at a time everyone 🙂

LinkedIn Profile

In a prior post we discussed the creation of your bio and the fact that it (the bio) is NOT a detailed resume. That said, LinkedIn IS the place to share details of your background (very much like a resume) including your most recent endeavor (your business and the services you offer). You can use the bio as the opening section of your LinkedIn profile. From there, you’ll want to list every (applicable):

• “Professional” position you’ve held (i.e., you’ll note that my profile doesn’t include my high school / college years of bagging groceries and mixing cement 🙂 ).
• Education / degrees and training / certifications

And, instead of my going into further detail on how to setup a LinkedIn profile I’ll simply encourage you to “follow their prompts.” That is, LinkedIn has an EXCELLENT wizard that walks you through the steps necessary to prepare a comprehensive profile and make effective use of the tool for networking purposes.

If you’d like to view an example (my LinkedIn profile) click here.

Once you have your profile setup (or have enhanced your previously existing profile) in preparation for your business launch (that’s right, you have NOT YET launched your business) it will be important for you to have a second set of eyes review it and provide feedback. This would include people in your inner circle, including your Board of Advisors.

I would not suggest Facebook as a tool for marketing a consulting business. This is assuming (as mentioned in the introductory post on this topic) your business is targeting other businesses. While I am certainly NOT an expert in online marketing, I would suggest that Facebook is more of a B2C (business-to-consumer) than a B2B (business-to-business) marketing tool. However, feel free to prove me wrong (later). First, get started with the “professional” networking tool (LinkedIn)…

In future posts we’ll cover other topics related to your online presence. Hope you are keeping up 🙂

Click here to review the next article in the series.