More Than Words

Social Media Law

Alicia — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:27:35 +0000

I went to Social Media Club’s event this week and heard Chris Gatewood (lawyer of intellectual property, media/entertainment, and employment law, with the firm of Hirschler Fleischer) speak about “Social Media Law”. He did a great job and even shared the slides from his social media law presentation online. There’s great info here for any person or business that engages in social media.

Share and Enjoy!

Networking to Grow Your Small Business

Alicia — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 19:30:11 +0000

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned as a small business owner is that businesses grow like flowers, not like weeds. They need caretakers who follow the basic instructions and are dedicated to nurturing them.

Instead of water and sunlight, I like to give my business a good dose of networking each week. I joined a local BNI chapter a couple of months ago, and it’s going pretty well. I’m getting to know some great business owners, expanding my referral network and getting new clients. Any one who does business in Richmond knows that it’s a small town, and business is often earned by “who you know” instead of “what you know”.

Last year my BNI chapter passed over $350,000 worth of business between about 15-17 members, and this year we are hoping to increase that to at least $500,000. We also want to grow the size of our group – the more the merrier kind of thing.

While anyone is welcome to visit, we have created a list of professions that would easily fit into our group right now and quickly start receiving referrals.

Attorney: Divorce, Trust & Estates, General
P&C Insurance
Recruiter/Headhunter
Business Banker
Credit Card Processing
Payroll Processing
Business Banker
Event Planner
Title Company
Chamber Staff
Interior Designer
Business Coach
Commercial Realtor
Plumber, Electrician & HVAC
Car Dealer
Property Manager
Wedding Coordinator
Collections Specialist
Commercial Moving Company
Hairdresser/Spa Owner

If you are in one of these professions and looking for a great way to grow your business this year, come visit our group to see if it could be a good fit for you.

Curious about who is already in our group? Here’s a list of professions already represented in Capital Excel BNI:

Residential Real Estate
Graphic Design & Printing
Financial Advisor & Life Insurance
Promotional Items
Commercial Insurance
General Contractor
Custom Closets & Storage (The Closet Factory)
Home Mortgages
Accounting
Web development, Hosting, IT
Health & Medical Insurance
Copywriting & Social Media (That’s me!)

If adding someone from any of these professions to your network would be beneficial to your business, then you should check us out.

We meet Thursday mornings from 8-9:30. Let me know if you’re interested in checking us out and I’ll give you directions to where we meet.

Bill Bevins recently interviewed Central VA BNI’s CEO about the importance of networking. They cover the basics of what BNI is and these 3 tips for networking:

1. Network before you need work.

2. Be prepared when you go to networking events.

3. Make sure you follow up.

Share and Enjoy!

TwitterFountain

Alicia — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:52:12 +0000

Today I discovered TwitterFountain. It’s a very cool app for gathering tweets and flickr images. All you have to do is go to their site, plug in your info and copy the code.

Here is a fountain I created gathering tweets about “writing” and Flickr images of “journals”:

Share and Enjoy!

Creating an Editorial Calendar for a Blog

Alicia — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:41:13 +0000

Anyone who knows me, knows that I have recently developed a new love. A love that will never end, and that I cherish every day.

This romance is with my day planner. I take it every where I go, and it is always within an arm’s reach – even while I’m sleeping.

I know you are thinking, “Wow! Alicia is so busy and cool! She must have a gazillon fun things going on if she needs her day planner that much!”

Well, that’s simply not true. The real reason I keep my day planner by my side is that I have a few sections in the back that are used for jotting down all my brilliant ideas. Some of these ideas are for my clients, but some are for blog posts. I have pages and pages of wonderful blog posts ideas, yet they rarely make it here….to my blog.

To change that in 2010, I’m going to create an Editorial Calendar for my blog. I have already established the purpose and goal for my blog, but need a map to help guide the way. An editorial calendar is the perfect fit because it will keep me focused, motivated and on topic.

Let’s go through some easy steps on setting up an editorial calendar.

How often do you want to post? Or, better, how often do you have time to post?

The first place to start is by deciding how frequently you can/want to post. Be realistic. We all wish we could post daily. I’ve made that commitment to myself several times, but it doesn’t happen. So, to save me some guilt, I’m going to aim for posting three times a week for this first quarter of 2010.

Identify types of blog posts and possibly weekly themes.

Once you think about it, there are a lot of possibilities for types of blog posts.

Instructional/How-to
Q&A
Product or Book Review
Podcast
Video
Photo
Opinion
Guest Blogger

Plus, the sky is the limit for the types of themes you can create, like Favorite Fast Food Friday, where each Friday you write about your favorite fast food meal of the week. One of my themes is called “Interesting Tidbits” and is inspired by all the wonderful articles/posts I read from Twitter.

Identifying types and themes can transform a long, random list of blog post ideas into something that kinda makes sense.

Pull out the glue and crayons! We’re gonna make a calendar!

Or, you can use Word or Excel to create a document for tracking your posts. I easily created an editorial calendar template in Google Documents to show the information I track on my editorial calendar.

After filling in most of the information, I will start to schedule time in my beloved day planner for time to write the posts and do additional research, if necessary.

Let the brilliant blog ideas flow.

Now that you have an editorial calendar for your blog, whenever you get a brilliant idea for a post you can simply fit it into the schedule. This also works well for any holidays or special events or milestones you will want to blog about. For example, I know that I have a special offer that expires at the end of March, so I will be sure to mention it a few times leading up to the expiration date.

If you are using a chart like the one I created, you can also take a few notes about the post so you won’t forget, classify what type of post it will be and note if you need to dig up additional resources or schedule time for creating/editing a video, etc.

Share and Enjoy!

New Webcopy for Two Va Beach Businesses

Alicia — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:02:15 +0000

Recently I had the opportunity to work with Costa Designs out of Virginia Beach on two web projects. Both projects were for locally-owned, successful small businesses in the VA Beach area. I started both projects with keyword discovery because improving search engine rankings was a goal for both companies.

I reviewed the current content on Teklogic’s site, before drafting copy for some new pages they wanted to add. The new content was about their services and industries.

Teklogic, a leading IT firm in VA Beach

And the second project was for Dominion Printers. My main focus was developing the content for their services.

Dominion Printers of VA Beach

Share and Enjoy!

Affordable Newsletter Writing for Small Businesses and Nonprofits

Alicia — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 18:04:31 +0000

It’s time to kick start 2010 with a killer communication strategy. One that increases awareness, visibility and interactions with your target audience – all without breaking the bank. I have a few newsletter packages, some are even marked down for the first quarter of this year.

These packages are ideal for nonprofits communication to donors or volunteers; associations communicating to members; or, small businesses communicating to consumers. If you do email marketing I can assist with list management and distribution, if you prefer to mail your letters I can assist printing and distribution.

Visit my website to see my normal rates, and the specials I’m running for the first quarter of 2010.

Share and Enjoy!

Launch of New Site for Your Linen Service

Alicia — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:23:23 +0000

I had the opportunity to write the copy for the newly-launched site for Your Linen Service, a great, family owned company based in Petersburg, VA. This project involved:

Reviewing the entire product catalog and writing a description for each product and service provided

Editing the 75 years of history the company has been in operation
Writing about their various efforts to be green
Assisting the company president with his letter
And, assisting the Marketing Director with the information architecture

Share and Enjoy!

Networking, Networking, Networking

Alicia — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:59:07 +0000

Thus far in my business, most of my work has come from referrals and meeting people. As I look at 2010 and wanting to grow my business, I’ve decided to go on a networking overload for the first quarter of the year.

To help me do this in an effective manner, I’ve created a Google Calendar with all the upcoming networking events I (more than likely) will attend. If you are also interested in building more connections in the next few months to help grow your business, check out my calendar and let me know if there are any events you want to attend with me.

Share and Enjoy!

New for Me, My Own Newsletter – Sign up!

Alicia — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:52:57 +0000

photo credit: MacJewell

I offer newsletter writing services, and each month write a few for my clients on various topics. This month I’m going to start compiling my own monthly newsletters with tips and tidbits on communication, marketing, writing, social media and anything else I find interesting. My goal is that the newsletters will be a good source of information and a little fun to read, as well.

I promise that I will never share your contact info with anyone else, and I also promise that it will be very easy to unsubscribe if you find my newsletters to be useless or boring.

So, sign up, read it and tell everyone you love about it.

Share and Enjoy!

New Business Cards

Alicia — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 04:43:05 +0000

I love this time of year as a business owner. I recently picked up my planner for 2010. I’m setting goals and writing my business plan for next year.

And today I got to tackle another task that I think is fun – I ordered new business cards! They should be ready for pick-up on Friday, just in time to go in my holiday/end-of-year cards.

Many thanks to the lovely and talented Bridget Marshall for working her magic on these cards.

Share and Enjoy!