Why your website needs a good 404 page

You’ve seen them. Those white, mostly blank web pages that say, in large bold lettering, Not Found.

They’re 404 error pages, the pages visitors to your website land on if the URL they tried no longer exists. People can end up on 404 pages when you move a page, rename it, delete it, the link they clicked had a typo or other error, and when they mis-type the URL.

Why you should care

You should care about this because 404 error pages are an opportunity. [Read more]

How and why to comment on blogs

I’m always grateful when a reader contacts me with their thoughts and ideas in response to one of my posts here at Mediator Tech. Not only does it help me get a sense of how well my content is meeting your needs, but it also gives me the interaction with fellow ADR folks that’s a good chunk of the fun of blogging.

Thank you to each and every one of you who has ever contacted me with a comment.

I’ve come to understand lately that some of you are emailing me to comment because you’re not aware that there’s a comment box on the article’s web page (if you get the article by email or RSS feed, you don’t see the comment box) or are uncomfortable leaving a public comment. So I’m writing this post to encourage you to comment on blogs and to offer up some tips if you’re new to it.

Why comment on a blog post?

[Read more]

How to make ADR marketing part of your routine

A teleseminar participant recently asked me for advice about making time to do the marketing necessary to build a truly healthy mediation practice. I’m already working full-time as an attorney, she said, and have a family. Exactly when would I market my mediation services…midnight?

Making Mediation Your Day Job offers an entire chapter on the topic, of course, and I’ve also written about it here in articles like Do You Let the Urgent Get in the Way of the Important? and How Much Time Should You Spend on Marketing?

Chris Brown of Branding & Marketing blog [Read more]

In mediation marketing, the little touches count

Every Friday I write thank you cards to clients I served that week. They’re hand written and I choose the card from a stockpile I keep in my office, something for every client personality. It takes me 15-20 minutes do write each week’s cards and I know they matter because clients have commented.

Sometimes, I’ll include an article from my files if I have one that’s relevant post-mediation or consult. And, of course, I include my business card…three of them. One for the client to keep, two for [Read more]

Keeping Your ADR Website Fresh: How Much Time to Invest

How much time should you spend to keep your website’s content fresh?

That’s the good question from one participant in my workshop with Diane Levin at New England ACR’s annual conference a few weeks ago. Diane and I offered up our opinions then, and I’ve continued to ponder the question in order to answer it more thoroughly here.

How can you decide the “right” amount of time to invest in keeping your site attractive to search engines by creating fresh content? I’ve whittled the deciding factors down to these four: [Read more]

Jott Yourself a Message on the Run

Do you have some of your best ideas when you’re away from your computer, perhaps when you’re out for your daily jog or running errands and your brain’s been freed to wander creatively? Wouldn’t it be nice to have an easy way to capture those ideas and reminders without carrying pen and paper along?

The creators of Jott thought so. They started with the premise that for many, the cell phone was the item most often available in such moments, and they built a free service around it.

Jott allows you to record a brief message via cell phone, then transcribes and emails the message to you in text form within a few minutes. You can also listen to your original audio of the message, and you can Jott messages that go out to others. In fact, you can import your address book to make that easier. The voice transcription isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty darn good.

At first, I didn’t get Jott. Why should I use Jott to record a note to myself, when my cell phone has a built-in voice recorder? And if I’m running late unexpectedly, why wouldn’t I just call a point person to let them know? [Read more]

The Secret of Successful Business Card Exchanges

Conventional “guerilla marketing” wisdom holds that you should print on both sides of your business card to maximize your use of the white space available. I’ll go out on a limb and suggest the guerrillas should rethink this idea.

A few weeks ago, while I waited in the lobby of a secure building where I’d be meeting the point person for a workshop I was teaching there, a nice gentleman stopped to offer help. He noticed I’d been sitting there for a while (it was too early for the lobby security desk to be open) and offered to help locate my contact wherever she was in the secure portion of the building. When he learned I was there to teach a workshop for a conflict resolution association, he told me he’d been thinking about a conflict management workshop for his own department. We exchanged business cards and agreed to have a conversation about it. Wow, I always love a little serendipity in my day!

But I didn’t just hand him my card and take his in return. I took a moment for one more key action first. [Read more]

Article Clipping for Clients: Another Note to Geoff Sharp

Dear Geoff,

This is my promised second letter in response to your kind invitation. Bet you didn’t expect your simple question to lead to so much typeface! I’ll just blame it on being a wee bit revved by the cold medicine…

In my first note to you, I closed with saying there was one really good idea suggested by the direct mail piece you supplied in your post, specifically the second one, a copy of which I’ve shamelessly placed here. What I love is the idea it’s based on: Article clipping for prospective and past clients.

This is something I do regularly and which other successful professionals also regularly include in their efforts to be of service to their clients. It’s simple and quick and one of those “value added” ideas I like so much. I’m betting I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, Geoff, but some of my readers may be new to marketing and so I appreciate you bearing with me. The process generally goes like this: [Read more]

How to Write an ADR Press Release for an Online World

They’ve been called press releases because they used to be written only for the press. But the times, they are a changin’. Today’s press releases are more accurately called news releases, because you want to write them for the press and for the public.

This may mean changing your approach to writing and distributing news releases as part of your regular marketing activities. Here are a few resources that give you the skinny on today’s news releases and how to do them right: [Read more]

Getting Things Done with Remember the Milk

If you’ve been looking for a flexible, computer-based way to manage your to-do lists, then you’ll want to take a look at Remember the Milk, a wonderful, free task manager that’s been getting plenty of positive buzz. I’ve been using it for about 6 months and consider it a central part of my ADR practice management setup. And while you can use Remember the Milk as a stand-alone, when paired with the Google services I’ve been discusssing, you’ve got a super project management system.

Remember the Milk makes creating, editing and managing to-do lists a cinch. Even—dare I utter the words—fun! Though by no means an exhaustive list of all the things Remember the Milk can do, these are some of my favorite features: [Read more]

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