Confidence + Goodwill = Success

Asking current clients for referrals can be difficult, but for moving forward it is an absolute necessity. What holds you back from asking? Your confidence: that's what! So how do you move through this confidence challenge? By looking back and identifying which of your clients had the greatest success. These individuals will be (and will continue to be) walking testimonials and advertisements for you and your business. Here are three tips to improve your business confidence and savvy while increasing your client base!

Take Stock & Boost Confidence
Your first priority is to gather all the positive feedback, comments and notes from current and previous clients you can find. Next, make a list and read through it a few times. Reading over your list of positive feedback will allow you to establish a mental and emotional connection based on positive thoughts and experiences. This allows you to reach out to each of these individuals more confidently. Asking for help is never easy, but when we make a positive emotional connection with those to whom we are reaching out, we can design a new thought pattern. With a new pattern in place, you create new beliefs—and your new beliefs increase your confidence level!

Using the positive comments from your clients in your communication, remind your clients of how much they appreciated what you have done for them. Then ask them for referrals to associates, family and friends who could use your services.

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Downside of Social Media?

A tool is as good as its user; that rule applies to social media as well. Though social media is a wonderful and relatively cost-effective marketing tool, it does have a few downsides. Through my experience I have come to realize there are always two sides to every thing, every experience and every exchange. Social media is definitely not an exception to the rule, and the following ideas are just a few alternative perspectives that have come to mind while I have been exploring the wide world of social media.

Time is Money, Honey
Building your social networking pages and writing articles and blogs takes a lot of time and effort. Your business’s brand value depends largely on the kind of content you create. False information, tall and baseless claims, or overtly promotional language can backfire on your business. Therefore, you must use social media with great care. When creating your content, remember it may be the first impression for some and for another confirmation of your brand and message. If you cut corners on the creation process of your message, it may cost you more than just the time it took to create it.

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Free Publicity and Your Business

There is no better publicity than free positive publicity! Having your business’s name mentioned in articles, TV stories and blogs can help you build your brand value and credibility. However, to get free publicity you need to understand how the media works so you can use it to plug stories favorable to your business.

The media, whether print or electronic, needs stories that will sell; i.e., stories in which their readers/viewers would be interested. So in order to get free publicity for your business, you need to figure out how can you contribute to or create stories in which the media would be interested. This may sound complicated, but if you embrace some of the basic public/media relations principles listed below, you’ll find it easier to attract media coverage.

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