Inviting Your Questions: Ask Tammy

What do you want to know about leveraging technology, online and off, to market and manage your ADR practice? Do you have a question you’d like to ask or a suggestion for a topic you’d like me to write more about?

I’d like to know. Learning the questions on your mind or the subjects you’d like to see helps me focus on topics most relevant to you.

So I’ve created a new, easy, one-box form for you to ask your questions, anonymously if you wish. You can find it anytime by visiting Ask Tammy or by clicking the Ask Tammy link on Mediator Tech’s top navigation bar.

Why don’t you try it out right now?

Don’t Update that Website Yet…

Are you thinking about updating, upgrading, or redesigning your website? Or wondering if starting a blog is right for you?

Well, hold off on that final decision! Before you put in a lot of your time or pay your tech gal a handsome fee to do it all for you, you’ll benefit from some good counsel coming soon.

I’m about to announce a collaboration with one of my favorite ADR colleagues and I can’t wait to tell you about it. We’ve put together a little something to help you make important decisions about your website, your ADR marketing strategy, and next steps. We’re putting the finishing touches on the announcement, so watch for more information!

Copyright © 2006 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

The Mediation vBlog Project: History in the Making

Fellow mediator and blogger Geoff Sharp has just announced a cool new collaborative project that will benefit all of us: Mediation vBlog Project. Be sure to hop on over, watch Diane Levin’s introduction and read all about the grand and good plans.

This is way cool,

Copyright © 2006 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

Using Public Wi-Fi Hotspots: How to Surf Safely with JiWire

Do you ever use public wi-fi hotspots, those free or for-fee wireless connections at cafes, hotels, airports, and even entire downtown areas now?

I sure do. For my decade in private practice, I’ve been a bit of a road warrior. Some of my clients take me far afield and there are stretches of planes, trains and hotel rooms. Some of my clients are close to home and I pop into a Panera or Starbucks (because they have wi-fi) if I arrive early for a mediation. Or, if I want to get out of my office to stretch my brain, I may visit my local cafe to sip tea while thinking and planning. [Read more]

Online Marketing Tools Are Like Augers: Don’t Let Them Become the Tools from Hell

I could have begun the book with this chapter. It was tempting to do so, because so many mediators tell me that online tools are your weak spot and that you want to fill that gap in your marketing strategy.

I didn’t, of course, begin the book with this chapter. And at the risk of over-stating the obvious, I want to be sure you understand why. I do this in case, while the book is in blog form, you’re just joining me now. I do this in case, once the book is in print form, you skip the earlier chapters because this one’s got the content you’re most curious about.

If you begin the book here and have not done the kind of foundational work through which I guided you in earlier chapters, then what follows in this chapter and the next will probably not help you much. Here’s why, via a story.

[Read more]

Online Marketing Tools Are for Learning, Not Selling

In Part 1, I made the bold statement that the developmental crisis the field faces comes, in no insignificant part, from generally poor marketing by mediators.

I said, “Marketing today is about being in conversation with your public, really engaging them, and not selling and telling…It’s about listening. It’s about a desire to understand what they really want. It’s about staying true to your purpose without being overly committed to the one way you’ve chosen to act on that purpose (offering mediation only, for instance).”

Bernie Mayer, whom I also referenced in Part 1, has suggested [Read more]

Montastic Tells You Before Your Clients Do

I built my first website back around 1994, when I was a college dean, websites were still something of a rarity outside of academe, and one had to learn coding to make words bold or italic. My first ADR business website was born in 1997 and as with anything that evolves, there have been good moments and bad.

In that decade plus, my website has occasionally disappeared temporarily, most often from an outage at my webhost or other event I can’t control. I used to learn about such moments from a phone message or email like this: [Read more]

Making Mediation Your Day Job, Part 5: Creating Dialogue Online

Blogs. Vlogs. Podcasts. RSS. And don’t forget wikis. To the uninitiated, these terms seem more likely to be spoken by a Star Wars character than a mediator. To the wise marketer, they’re terms that signal the future. And the future is now.

Collectively, this new generation of web-based tools is part of “Web 2.0,” a dynamic version of the Internet that’s palpably different than the “old” web. Static websites, which are essentially in-depth online brochures, are becoming less and less relevant. Web 2.0 is all about social media, those tools designed to help people collaborate, share information and engage in dynamic, ongoing conversation.

Web 2.0 is so much more in line with the way mediators [Read more]

Keystone Mediators Statement: How to Sign On

My friend and colleague Susanne Terry was recently part of the Senior Mediators Conference in Keystone, Colorado. One outcome of that esteemed gathering was the Mediators’ Statement:

Given that the world is confronted with real and perceived threats from several international arenas we, the undersigned, urge that citizens of our nations insist their elected and appointed government officials immediately engage in honest, direct and unconditional negotiations with all authorities and powers who can resolve these pending crises in ways that are equitable and practical for all concerned without sacrifice to national sovereignty or security. As citizens of the world and as professional negotiators and mediators we urge that proven conflict resolution processes be employed now.

If you’d like to become a signatory to the statement, you can read more about it and sign on via the Senior Mediators Release Statement Urging Effective Negotiation Approaches press release page. And it’s not just for mediators…urge your family and friends to become public signatories.

Marketing Is About Your Customer, Not About Your Services

There’s a terrific new post by Georgia Patrick over at the Duct Tape Marketing blog.

The experience she describes sounds pretty familiar.

It shouldn’t be familiar. It should be banished. And she’ll tell you how.

Can We Talk About Customers?

With ACR and other regional ADR conferences coming up, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to practice,

Copyright © 2006 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

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