We hear it over and over again, and see expanding proof of its truth: times are tough, and it looks like they will be for a while. A few months ago, I was pooh-pooing this fact (and for a while we got reports that "everything's getting better right now!"), but the evidence is striking closer and closer to home, most recently in the form of massive layoffs in my home town (it was a few months ago, the effects are dramatic now in the form of house foreclosures, empty storefronts, and so on). What do you do when you're trying to stay afloat? How do you market your business and stand apart from your competition, who might be doing what you do, but at a discount?

In an increasingly competitive marketplace, how do you market your business and its products and services so that people come to you instead of the other guy? And what if it's a decision between your light bill and your marketing budget (it comes to that entirely too often these days!)?

Our services are, I'll admit it, not cheap. And not every business can afford what we do. What we do is save you the time it takes learning how to do it yourself, and then doing it. But you can do it yourself, if you are willing to learn and spend the time on your own marketing efforts.

There's so much action in social media these days (Twitter, Facebook, mySpace, LinkedIn and other social media platforms), and many businesses are using them to great effect. I'm going to share some of what we do so that you can start doing it yourself. Face it, I'd rather you stay in business than put yourself out of business hiring us!

So here's what you do:

Step 1: Get going on a web site. We offer a do-it-yourself option if you have the time and patience to do it this way--and truly, the options there permit you to buy your own domain name, get a web hosting account and set up a nice looking template-based web site on your own. You can actually do pretty well this way! Ready?

Go here: http://www.shetechhosting.com.

Step 2: Set up an account on Facebook if you don't already have one. Then set up a company page. Here's how ours look, so you can see what the end result can be:

SheTech's personal Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/shetech
SheTech and Company's company page on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Maryville-TN/SheTech-and-Company/12336687279

Step 3: sign up for Twitter (which I think you've also done). Here's what our account looks like:

http://www.twitter.com/shetech

Step 4: any other social media accounts (LinkedIn--especially for businesses!--Flickr, mySpace, etc)

Step 5: sign up for Ping (http://www.ping.fm) and connect all your accounts in there.

What that will do is permit you to update and connect all of your profiles, so that you can publish a single update and deploy it to all of your social media at once. You can also add a Facebook application which updates your profile with any blog updates you make to your web site. They all tie together, and that helps with exposure.

What good do all these connections make?

Well, once you have connected them all, you can start expanding your network by inviting friends and colleagues to join you, "friend" you, or whatever the term is on that particular platform.

Then you start sending updates about what you're doing!

A word of caution, though: it's not cool these days to put out a hard-sell pitch. Here are some effective way to market your wares:

• Ask about pain points: Ask questions, such as "Do you always up with a sore neck/back? Come see us! We have ..." (etc.)


• Get excited about an offering: This one can be tricky. It's not as easy as just saying "We're really excited about thus-and-such!"--but if you say something like, "We just got this really cool widget, and we like it so much we're playing with it in the store! Come play with us!" Get it? It's a matter of engaging your readers. I'd certainly want to come play with some widget if it sounded interesting enough, wouldn't you?


• Make it relevant and timely: One of the smartest network marketers I know sells Mary Kay Cosmetics (you can find her at http://www.marykay.com/kmcgee2/), and one of the reasons she's so smart about marketing her products is that she makes her offerings relevant, like reminding customers about July 4th weekend, and don't forget your sunscreen!

There's so much more, but I don't want to give away all the tricks! This will get you started. If you have questions, you know where to find me!

We'll all get through this together.

Cheers,
Rebekkah
http://www.shetech.com

Because business has slowed down a bit, I thought I would try something new: a Facebook ad. In minutes, I had already hit my clickthrough limit, but none of those clicks resulted in sales (at least not so far).

It's interesting, being my own guinea pig. As I test methods on my own site, I can share what I've learned with my clients. "If at first you don't succeed..." is a phrase by which all marketing lives, I think, but these days it's important to have fewer failures. We want to spend client marketing dollars as efficiently as possible.

Part of the problem is that everyone is so VERY cost-conscious these days that they're looking for free solutions for everything, including marketing. There's lots of free stuff out there, but it takes knowledge and experience -- not to mention a great deal of time -- to really make it work for you.

I'd love to hear from readers about their experiences testing their own methods on themselves.

Save a friend's life: http://ping.fm/ax2EO

Yesterday was a significant day for me in in interesting way: I took part in a webinar for LEAPS.TV (http://leaps.tv) around the topic of domestic violence 911 call handling. We had a panel of experts from local E911, two different police forces and Haven House, a local domestic violence shelter and advocacy service.

This webinar was wildly successful from the standpoint of attendance alone, and certainly from the information being exchanged between panel members and the audience.

Being the moderator, I had my hands full juggling technical issues (inevitable in a program as complex as this one was), fielding questions and keeping the conversation fluid. Much more than this, the topic is of great personal interest to me, and it was extremely important to me that the information itself be passed around and shared so that every participant benefited, and came away with new ideas.

It worked.

The response so far has been tremendous; so much so that we're already planning follow-up sessions.

Domestic violence is an epidemic. Over half of the calls that come into an E911 service have to do with domestic violence, and thousands upon thousands of cases occur each year. It represents among the riskiest calls a responding officer can take (remember what happened in Pittsburgh), and getting the right information, at the right time, to the right people, can literally be a matter of life and death.

In the course of working with Haven House and the members of the LEAPS.TV panel, I have learned a great deal and shared a great deal.

I firmly believe everyone--everyone--should participate in community action of some kind. My cause need not be your cause, nor yours be mine. But service to our neighbors is a giant part of how this country came to be built. Reach out. Help. Be part of your community.

Prime numbers quite suddenly fascinate me.

I have known what prime numbers are for years, of course, but it wasn't until recently that I discovered that I have a "feel" for them. For example, I knew that 2003 was a prime without testing it. And then I looked for a list of small primes, and there it was. Today I have begun participating in a distributed computing project which hunts for the next Marsenne prime, which is of the form "2 raised to the P power, minus 1", where "P" is a prime. Fascinating stuff! But I couldn't possibly tell you why it fascinates me so.

This trip to see my mother has been a pivotal one. While all of my trips here have been significant in one way or another, this one somehow seems the most complete. We have started and continued the routine of getting up Really Bloody Early to walk for three miles in the morning; during the day, I have been able to continue working, which helps a lot -- my brain needs exercise, too! I have gone sailing, and this time was plopped at the helm, which made the experience something far beyond previous sailing trips. When the boat heels over and puts a rail in the water, it is an experience that cannot be forgotten.

Some really great family issues are being worked out, and have taken on a fresh new turn (differing from "being stuck" in one place for at least the last ten years), and that could only have happened when Mom and I spend long days together; we somehow work things out as a team really well when we can sit and work things through.

And speaking of teamwork (and I think this excites me the most), she and I are beginning to collaborate on a new course for singers that utilizes both our areas of expertise, and I think this will be some groundbreaking territory. More to come as we develop the course. Since I am going back to not one but two teaching jobs, in a couple of area community music schools, we should be able to try the curriculum out on my students once we have the course developed.

When I heard Mom telling a friend of hers that we were collaborating on this project, my heart swelled. It somehow seemed more real to hear her say it, and less of a half-drunk fantasy. And besides, we already have the first two sessions of the course outlined!

And on top of everything else, I'll be going home with a new set of teeth, so to speak, which has already added a great boost to my flagging self-esteem.

So it has been a good trip.

It has been a long time since I made a contribution to my journal! I'm sitting on the front stoop of a friend of my mother's, borrowing their wireless high speed connection so that I can continue to work while hanging out in North Carolina, waiting for my teeth to be done. I've been telling people that I'm saving myself $3000 by having bought a $300 train ticket. How, you ask? Because in Connecticut/New York, having crowns done would have cost $1000 or more per tooth, whereas in North Carolina they're costing a little more than half that. Definitely worth the trip, and a nice excuse for an extended visit with Mom.

In the meantime, I'm continuing to work on a contract, designing graphics and eventually redesigning a client's web site (Yay!). Once this one is done, there will no doubt be more to come.

Perhaps enough to finance my music career?

It has been an interesting struggle: this summer's workshop was amazing in so many ways: I learned so much, both musically and professionally, and I'm SO ready to take the next steps -- if I could only get out of my own bleedin' way!

Whatever one might think of the circumstances of one's life, there is always something for which one can be thankful.

After just having spent the last who-knows-how-many-hours updating and deploying my resume, I may be entirely burned out to do this subject justice, but it has to do with the convergence of my jobless state, my lack of money to pay for voice lessons, my continuing interest in seminary, and a general confusion about the whole business.

I am sure that there is a way to reconcile all the different interests that I have wandering around out there, but so far I'm stumped as to how -- be a technical project manager for an opera company that specializes in theology??

I'll write some more about this when I'm lucid.