Two More ADR Online Marketing Tools

In Part 6 I’ll offer you the steps I recommend for creating any new web presence for yourself, whether it’s a site that offers writing, audio, video or a little bit of everything. I’ll walk you through the basic steps to start a blog, from soup to nuts.

In the meantime, here are a few features and strategies you can use on your site and elsewhere to create buzz and dialogue with your target market.

E-zines. E-zines are online newsletters, delivered to your mailing list by email. They’re much less expensive to produce and send than a print newsletter and they’re common now. With an e-zine service, some of which are free and most of which are reasonably priced, you can create your e-zine with relative ease (or use one you’ve paid someone to design for you), send it out on the date you specify with the ease of a button click, and ensure you’re staying in compliance with laws intended to reduce email spam.

Blog, e-zine or both? There are strong opinions all over the map on this one. Some say blogs are still too new for marketers to give up e-zines and newsletters. Others say that, since people can subscribe to blogs by email, there’s no particular need to produce a newsletter too—it’s a lot of writing to do when you’re also trying to run a business, and it could inundate your audience. Still others say that you can use blog posts for your newsletter or newsletter articles for your blog and so do both easily.

Forget what everybody else says. Do what makes sense for you and, as importantly, for your target market. Ask a few members of your target market and have them help you decide. And take your own time into account. As one mediator said to me, “I want to blog in order to build business. I don’t want blogging to become my business.”

Autoresponders. The print version of this book will include detailed information on autoresponders right in this very spot. Since, however, you’re reading this on a blogsite at the moment, I’m going to capitalize on links to material I’ve already written on this subject, and send you there instead of simply re-stating it here. Here’s a series of posts I wrote last winter and still relevant now:

1. Building Client Relationships with Autoresponders
2. How Autoresponders Work
3. Using Autoresponders to Market ADR Services
4. How to Choose an Autoresponder
5. Autoresponder Strategies for Building Client Relationships

What’s Next in Making Mediation Your Day Job?™

Part 6 of Making Mediation Your Day Job™ will walk you through the steps for creating an effective online presence using the kinds of technology discussed here in Part 5.

Part 7, the final section of the blook, will walk the reader through a short, focused and incredibly do-able, without the need to be a tech geek, marketing plan that capitalizes on what you already know how to do as a mediator and the thinking you’ve already done in earlier parts of this blook. You’ll be on your way!
Copyright 2006 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.