Pat Iyer’s Guest Post: Why use social media for marketing a legal nurse consulting practice?
A guest blog from guru Pat Iyer.
Four Things to Change About Your Website in 2012.
4 Key Things You Can Do To Help Your Website in 2012.
Iannarino’s Keep, Start, Stop Method
How to start the New Year off right! use the KEEP, STOP, START Method
7 Unwritten Rules of Using Social Media In Your LNC Practice
Are you breaking the rules when marketing your LNC Practice?
Feb 12
1
Pat Iyer’s Guest Post: Why use social media for marketing a legal nurse consulting practice?
All month long we are devoted to finding the best in the business to blog and share their insights regarding Legal Nurse Consulting Marketing. Today’s Post is from Pat Iyer, a guru in the industry certainly a delight to read.
Why use social media for marketing a legal nurse consulting practice?
Stripped apart, the term “social media” has two different pieces you’ll need to understand: the social aspect, and the media aspect. Most people know that the term social refers to interaction with others, including developing relationships and cultivating new connections. The term media, in this instance, refers to the way social information is exchanged.
There are quite literally hundreds of social media networks out there. You could spend a lifetime developing profiles and engaging with connections both old and new on these networks. You need social media in order to present yourself in a certain way to legal professionals, as well as to help you make connections that allow you to succeed in your industry.
Who Can Use Social Media?
Whether or not you’re currently using social media in a personal capacity, or you are trying to make a legal nurse consulting business profile, there’s no better time than the present to jump on the social media bandwagon. You can rest assured that your competitors have already considered the importance of social media and networking, and may have already created profiles on various social media networks.
The longer you wait to create profiles and begin to develop business connections, the more “behind the times” you’ll find yourself. It’s important to utilize social media because it’s 100% free, far-reaching and effective in developing a stronger client base. You’ll see the value of social media once you learn to effectively brand yourself professionally.
How Can Social Media Benefit Your Business?
Other forms of digital or print marketing may cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars to execute, while pretty much 100% of the basic functions of any social media network come at no cost. Social media can serve as incredibly effective, cheap marketing for your legal nurse consulting business.
Social media also allows you to reach a new audience like never before. While your ambitions may not include interacting with professionals in other countries, social media gives you the ability to do so if you desire. Using this type of marketing, you’re able to reach out to folks who would’ve been impossible to connect with 20 years ago. Plus, you have the capacity to vastly increase your social network within your own country, or even local area. Just a few hours a day using social media tools will result in connections you never thought possible. Regardless of whether or not those connections are down the street or across the globe, you never know who you’re going to meet, or what effect your new connections will have on your legal professional networking.
Direct Marketing
What about the things social media can’t do? Many people using social media make the mistake of expecting direct marketing relationships or sales to result. Direct marketing is a way to reach customers that will result directly in a sale. Many people expect that they’re going to go out, create social media profiles, and begin selling their products or services immediately online.
Unfortunately, social media marketing isn’t a direct sales marketing technique. If you’re becoming involved in social media, patience should be your first virtue. Social media marketing is all about establishing relationships and developing connections with potential clients. For you, this means social media networking is going to serve as a way for people seeking your services to find out more about you, learn about the services you offer and what your business is like, and even see testimonials or interactions with previous legal professionals who have been happy with your services. You’re not necessarily looking for a lawyer to view your social media profiles or Facebook business page, and get so excited about what you do that he or she contacts you and immediately engages you in business. In an ideal world, this would be the result – but unfortunately, social media doesn’t work that way.
What you are looking for is efficient and low-cost branding that will make you look like you know what you’re doing. If a social media profile seems too simplistic a method of displaying that information, you’re not really thinking about social media the right way. There are particular methods in which you can make social media profiles extremely effective advertisements for your business, and we’re going to teach you those methods in this book. It’s important to learn how to develop that sort of on-point advertising for yourself without expecting a direct sale.
Patricia Iyer MSN RN LNCC is president of Patiyer.com and has been tweeting, blogging, using Facebook, connecting on LinkedIn and posting Youtube videos for over 2 years. Learn how you can benefit from using social media in your business by checking out Social Media for Legal Professionals, available at www.patiyer.com.
Special thanks to Pat for taking a few minutes to be our guest blogger this week. For more information on building a remarkable Legal Nurse Consulting or Life Care Planning practice, subscribe to the RSS Feed for the Blog and our Email Newsletter follow us on Twitter, join our LNC/LCP Group on LinkedIn, or friend us on Facebook. We also offer one on one practice coaching as well as amazing LNC/LCP marketing materials, website design and social media page designs. Email us or call (317) 426-1170
Posted in Blogging Guide to Social Media Marketing for LNCs Mobile Marketing Writing by .
Jan 12
29
Six Common Talking Mistakes
As much as we are taught to network in the business world, I find that people often make crucial errors when learning how to “work a room.”
Here are six of the most common ones:
1. Blabbermouthing. Talking too much. Going on and on without giving another person a turn. If you’re the one who hogs the talking platform you will soon frustrate others and they tune out the blabbermouth. If you are a blabbermouth who is wringing out the patience of other’s you will be labeled as such. Don’t be fooled. Just because your job requires you to speak for a living that everyone wants to hear your opinion on every subject. Professors, clergy, professional speakers who are all paid for a living pay special attention.
2. Grab the talking stick and go. A talker begins a topic and the listener grabs it away and opens a me-centered monologue. You say, “I saw a great movie last weekend . . .” and the listener-soon-to-be talker says, “Oh? I saw one, too . . .” and begins to describe their experience. The person who brought up the topic is unable to complete their thought because it’s been high-jacked. This is a very childlike and frustrating behavior, and eventually drives people away.
3. Unsolicited advice. You know ‘em. We all have them in our lives. Some people are quick to give advice as soon as the other person mentions a problem. “Have you thought of . . .? “Why don’t you . . .?” erupt quickly from their overflowing volcanoes of counsel. Men seem especially prone to this tendency, although women are not immune from it.
4. Interrupting. Butting in before your partner has completed the thought. Usually this is done because the interrupters are impatient and are afraid of not getting their thoughts expressed. Many of these interruptions occur when Legal Nurse Consultants are trying to meet all the people in the room and kind of talk and dash. The guests butt in, over-talk, and then walk away after leaving you with their “very important thoughts.”
5. The Word BUT. One of the ultimate conversation-blockers. Simply said, in conversation means I don’t believe anything you said before the word but. It sounds like a simple concept, yet you would be surprised at the number of times clients will say, “Yes, but….” There are alternative ways that you can disagree with a point in the conversation, yet still remain professional.
6. Stingy and gruff. Listens, receives, and takes, but doesn’t give. This type of conversationalist is difficult to deal with because it often leads to mistrust of the stingy person. If you are the only one giving information, eventually you stop giving it.
Conversation is skill that is learned, much like learning to draw blood. You may have to practice a while on each other, but eventually a rolling vein ain’t no big thing! For more help building a remarkable Legal Nurse Consulting practice or Life Care Planning practice, subscribe to the RSS Feed for the Blog and our Email Newsletter. Follow us on Twitter, join our LNC/LCP Group on LinkedIn, or friend us on Facebook. We also offer one on one practice coaching as well as amazing LNC/LCP marketing materials, website design and social media page designs. Email us or call (317) 426-1170.
We’ve all been there. You’ve gone to a site that you’re sure has the information you need and when you click on it all you see is…craziness! Blue background with yellow font, type crooked and out of line with other copy, photos that don’t make any sense, and recently, I went to one Legal Nurse Consulting website that also sold decorative soaps. As your small practice’s “webmaster”, if you’re are going to do it yourself then you will need to not only have potential clients flock to your site, but you also need to keep them there so they will hang around and look. Yet I continually run across poorly designed sites where I see the same mistakes repeated over and over again.
What follow are four common ways written by Tim Eyre, the Marketing Manager at Extra Space Storage, which show how small business websites in particular can lose visitors within minutes, if not seconds. I have added to his concepts for use within the LNC arena but they are almost universal.
1. Aggravate eyestrain
Nothing is more unappealing than a website with a cluttered look. Nobody wants to see a page filled to capacity with boring text; even worse is a page that is hard to read:
- Although it might sound colorful, blue text on a purple background is a nightmare to the human eye. So is a gaudy font that is as illegible as it is fancy.
- Long paragraphs present a daunting challenge to many readers.
- And why would you even consider burdening your viewers with tiny text?
So often I find Legal Nurse Consultant sites that are built on “do-it-yourself” software that aren’t actually finished, still have placeholders floating about or are simply overcrowded with information. If you only decide to pay for one area of marketing help…this would be the one. An attractive site is VITAL to any LNC practice success.
2. Make content hard to find
Site visitors typically have a good idea of what they are looking for. It’s your job to make it easy for them to find it!
All too often I see pages designed with the expectation that the viewer will read the entire page to learn what to do next. Most people don’t want to do that; they’d much rather skim the page to find a link that takes them where they want to go.
A link that reads “click here” doesn’t tell your viewer very much at all. Instead, you should clearly describe the destination within the text of your link. For example, a link that reads “Learn more about (name of service)” works much better.
You would think that this one would be self-explanatory but it is not. So often I see sites that don’t even tell a visitor what to do or worse yet are filled with so much information not related to the services that the potential client just goes to the next name on the list.
If your website isn’t crystal clear on every page, then it’s time for a change!
3. Don’t provide alternatives to audio or video content
Nothing slows down site performance more than large video or audio files. Without question, audiovisual content has value—if you use it the right way.
Include a brief description of each video clip you post on your site so you save viewers the frustration of loading and watching content that turns out to be irrelevant to them.
While as a professional marketer and web designer all of the flash and glitz of multi-media tools is wonderful, it can be very aggravating to clients. Flash on an intro page has gone by the wayside in many industries; as well as large photographs or videos. Remember, a good many clients may be checking out your site on their mobile phones or tablets which may not be compatible with Flash. If you have no other alternatives, those clients won’t stay and probably won’t remember to check it out on their laptop later.
4. Take away control
Visitors who feel they are in charge are likely to stick around and become interested in what you are offering. Don’t turn their site exploration into a navigational nightmare. When they make a mistake, don’t transport them back to the homepage or never-never land. Instead, tell them what they did wrong via an error message so that they can correct it.
This is a big one for me. So often when LNCs are doing their own websites, I find that they don’t properly know how to do a 303 or 403 error page and instead it takes the client into an endless loop of errors or they have to log out and go back to the homepage again. Make sure that if you do choose to do your own website that you understand the way that different browsers handle different error pages; especially when dealing with hose potential clients that may be browsing from their smartphones.
Websites are a huge part of marketing to the attorney clients population out there. That being said, there are a few things that you can do to make yours more streamlined, effective and more easily navigated by the very people you want to stay around a while and check your out.
For more on building a remarkable Legal Nurse Consulting or Life Care Planning practice, subscribe to the RSS Feed for the Blog and my Email Newsletter. Follow us on Twitter, join our LNC/LCP Group on LinkedIn, or friend us on Facebook. We also offer one on one practice coaching as well as amazing LNC/LCP marketing materials, website design and social media page designs. Email us or call (317) 426-1170.
Take five minutes and learn a new way to make your practice remarkable!