Presence? Yes. Fancy? Not necessarily. 

There are probably folks flourishing in a niche using solely word of mouth but they are rare. What’s more, word of mouth is spreading increasingly online these days, so even if you’re not intentionally making an online presence, you have one. 

You need to manage it. You have two choices. 

A site of your own. Simple or fancy, traditional or blog, whatever fits you. Why matters is that you engage your clients and attend to the details with excellence. 

Leverage existing sites. Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, Twitter, etc. These are valuable tools but relying solely on them is a bit risky: 

1. They’re not under your control so you’re at their mercy if there are problems or changes.
2. They’ll fluctuate in popularity. What’s hot will cool. (Geocities? MySpace?) You need to pay attention to what’s coming next or get left behind.

A client’s awareness of and interaction with you will continue to evolve. The key is to know where they are and be there. Your name and number on your car is not enough any more.
 
What do you think? Do you know of a success story that uses no online promotion?

Good: Dutch Hollow Tulips has a basic site which features content from their Facebook page where customers are raving about their tulips.

Poor: Who is TelePacific? Why do I need you? Why would I ever call you? And you have too many figures in your number. It's not clever, it bugs me.

It comes down to this: it’s not really about Twitter. It’s about managing the public face of your business. It just so happens that currently, Twitter is a really good way to do that. There are all kinds of other social media tools to help as well, but those are topics for future conversations.

People are tired of dealing with bureaucracies and mindless policies. They want to do business with people who care about their issues. They want to interact. They are real people who want to talk to real people.

In 2009 as I considered freelancing, this concept was really important to me. I am a real person with faults and strengths. I have expertise I can offer you. I intended to use this space, and some of my time on Twitter, to share things I learned about how to communicate better.

But somewhere I got lost in the fear that it had to be perfect. I forgot the conversation and the process. I let doubt crowd out the chance to grow and improve. Twitter became almost completely fluff (except for the valuable relationships I’ve made) and this space lay dormant.

Last week I read this on Michael Hyatt’s interview with Seth Godin:

Our job is to connect to people, to interact with them in a way that leaves them better than we found them, more able to get where they’d like to go.

This is what I want to do. Leave you better than I found you. Help you get closer to where you’d like to go.

So I’m not going to worry that this space isn’t completed yet. That my portfolio isn’t posted yet. That I don’t have all the bells and whistles done. That’s the process. Maybe down the road you’ll help me with some of that. But first let me ask you:

How can I help you?

I understand prudence and safety. I do.

But I can’t recommend policies that groom a force of worker bees who only know how to say, “It’s not my job.”

What kind of employees are you developing?

While advising you today to ignore sunk costs, he uses an example of something dear to my heart: spelling errors! Specifically, stationary vs. stationery.

Today’s tip:
if you mean the paper that you write notes on, it’s stationery. Remember the E. Paper is for letters. Stationery has an E. 

Stationary means standing still.

If the shop owner had remembered this, he could’ve avoided being called out for his failing grade in spelling. But then Seth wouldn’t have such a good example of the need to pay attention to the details, now would he?

The other day, though, I witnessed a brief exchange that fit perfectly what I’m doing here.

@limesoothsayer asked for an easy way to remember when to use “affect” and when to use “effect.”

@redrabbit replied “I will affect something and it will have an effect.”

Perfect!

Affect is a verb. Verb=Action. Remember the A. If something is doing something, it’s a verb. It’s action. It’s affecting something, or something is being affected.

Effect is a noun. I don’t have any nifty word games for this one. Sorry. Just remember the A. If it doesn’t apply, then use effect.

(Now, not to confuse you, but there is one way to use “affect” as a noun, but it’s used so rarely that, if you’re planning on using it that way, you already know which one to use.)

Received this ad in the mail today, on the same page as this one.

When you say “I should have …” out loud,

it comes out “I should’ve …”

and it sounds like “I should of …” 

But please, PLEASE, don’t put it in print!

This also applies to would have and could have and might have. Just don’t do it!

I received this in the mail today. This ad was on the same page.

In her honor, I’ve joined a team for Relay for Life to help fight against this terrible disease.

We could use your help in a few ways:

1. We’re having a yard sale on May 2 to raise money towards our booth at the relay. If you have items to donate to the sale, we can pick them up. You can also shop at the sale. I’ll post the address here.
2. Come to the relay May 30-31 and support Team Hope and the others
3. Donate in advance to our team. Every little bit helps!

And, well, I made a handy-dandy button from PayPal to make it really super easy to donate, but WordPress won’t let me paste it here. So here’s the plain link:   Donate to Relay for Life

Thank you very much.

Two: This is a number. No mystery here, but if you can’t remember this on your own, I think there’s a book or two about that.

To:  It’s your basic connecting word. Of these three, it’s the most common in everyday speech. “I’m going to go to the store.”

Too: This can mean also, or in addition to. “I want to go, too.” Or it can mean extreme or very. “It’s too small.” There are a few other ways to use it, but they’re related in concept to the second definition. Think of it this way: it’s the one with the additional ‘o’ in it. Use it when you mean in addition to or very.

Here’s more info, if you want it.

So there you have it. Spelling and vocab in one shot, and no pop quiz.

These will be basic issues that, left uncorrected in your writing or advertising, will make you look less than competent. No one wants that, do they?

I’ll include some mnemonics here and there, but sometimes those work best if you come up with your own.

So there was your first vocab lesson, and no pop quiz! Sprinkle words like mnemonic around (correctly) and you’ll look really smart.