It’s Sunday, Give Self Promotion a break!
It’s Sunday
Screw Opportunities
Screw Promotion
Whatever you do TODAY, whether it’s shutting the computer off and walking away completely or catching up on your favorite blogs and tweeting with your favs or liking your facebook friends, do it – for fun.
We all blog for a reason, many of us do so to accomplish some sort of income.
We all use some form of social media, not only to connect with like-minded people but also to promote ourselves.
We comment, but not only because we like the blogger or the article, because it’s a form of exposure aka self promotion.
Today, let’s give it a break.
If you’re going to be online at all, do it cause it’s fun.
Before we thought about traffic and seo and brands and affiliate links, we blogged and commented because connecting is fun.
Tomorrow, we can get back to business. Today, if you’re blogging, commenting, tweeting or anything else along those lines, let it be for fun.
Blogging’s Not All About The Money
WAHM Tip: Promoting Your Business With Class
Promote Your Services For FREE
You did notice the FREE in that heading, right?
With all the about.me promotions going around, there’s no doubt that you’ve heard about it.
But, are you using it to promote your blog or your business?
When I cracked open my box of business cards, I realized, shit, I added the about.me link but there’s nothing about me on that page. LOL
So I jam packed that sucker. Any way and every way there is to self promote with class – take it!
There are so many free tools out there to promote yourself and your blog or business. Utilize them! Twylah, Linkedin and about.me are 3 of my favorites at the moment.
Promoting via Social Media
Social Media, is of course, a great way to self promote. If you do it with class. If you can provide people with something they can find value in – a resource, a how to, a review – something you intimately know that others can benefit from, they’ll share that with their social media buddies. That’s promoting yourself through word of mouth. Not only is it classy, it’s the best kind of promotion you can get.
Another way to self promote via social media is to actually fill out your profiles. For instance, Linkedin now offers a section to list your skills. These “skills” are searchable keywords. Members can plug in a keyword in the search field and you can be on that list. That keyword may be a service you offer.
If you type WordPress Design into the search box and choose the Greater New York Area, I’m first on the list.
WAHM Tip: Return business from the client who boots you
Gracefully Gaining Return Business
The back story
So I got a call on Tuesday from some guy named Fred Something. Fred was directed by my client to call me since I handle the marketing and website management. Fred wanted to offer his services of being a social media manager. I politely explained to Fred that it’s not in the budget to hire someone extra to handle social media and when he went into his spiel about the benefits of social media, i explained to him that the social media aspect was also being handled by me. Now between you and I, I haven’t handled much of it lately. Why? Because as a courtesy, since my client is short staffed and short on funds, I’ve been handling HR, customer service and interior decorating. I also recently redesigned the website and I’m in the process of building the online store. So my plate has been full.
Now, back to Fred. Fred decided to stab me in the back, a fellow small business owner, and pitch to my client anyway. All my client saw was the smaller weekly bill. My client doesn’t get that what Fred is offering is only 1/16 of what I do for them online. So today, the day we were suppose to renew our contract for another 3 months, I was instead told that unless I was willing to cut my prices in half, they would be going with a more affordable vendor. Named Fred. or something like that.
WAHM Tip: Pro Contact Page
Professional Contact Page For WAHMs
If you don’t have a contact page up, get your arse in gear! I screwed up recently with my new business site. I was so busy designing, I didn’t add a contact page. You can read about my screw up at my small business blog. In this post I’m sharing a great contact page option that I’ve used for clients AND an alternative to having crazies calling your home.
A Contact Page That Works For You
Your contact page is NOT just a place to add your email address. It should also be a place to collect info.
What Every WAHM should have on her contact page.
- email address or message box
- social media options
- a phone number
- a mandatory field for the user’s name and email address
- an optional field for that user’s URL
- a mandatory area listing specific reasons why you’re being contacted (check out my small business marketing contact me page for an example)
ContactMe
contactme.com/features
ContactMe is a contact management system. They offer a free plan that comes with a contact form that you can embed on your site and on your facebook fanpage and a ContactMe button you can embed on all your blog pages for easy access to the form.
The contact form allows you to share your contact info and allows users to send you a message along with their contact info. It also allows you to collect info from the user. (See the “I’d like to learn more about” section in the screenshot) The form can be created with or without a map. Very customizable. When someone hits submit, you receive an email of their entire message. No need to head back to the ContactMe website unless you plan to use their organization and task management features.
When Your Family Comes 2nd
The WAHM Rant
I keep saying this mantra:
“I’m doing this for the kids”
or
“I’m doing this so I can spend more time with the kids”
or
“I’m doing this so I won’t miss any of my kids’ special moments”
or
“There are bills to be paid. Hubby can’t work 24/7″
or
“I’m too smart to be sitting in front of the boob-tube eating oreos”
and also, in moments of frustration:
“I am really sucking at working from home”
and
“Where is that time I promised the kids?”
I hear being a WAHM is awesome. I’ve learned that to get to that awesomeness, there’s a sucky path of disappointments and long hours of work. Not very different from when I had an 8 to 6, put still sucky.
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