One of the 30 Day Blog Challenge members suggested that we might post something about how we can help people, so that they will know who to refer if the opportunity arises. That’s a great idea! All too often, we simply take for granted that others will know how to refer to us, and I’m, here to tell you from experience that it isn’t so!
If you want people to refer others to you, they need to know:
- what you do (I did that in one of my recent posts)
- who you help
- how you help them (what the person gets, when they work with you)
Not so difficult, right? Well. . . for a business like mine, it IS difficult! But I’ll give it a shot, because it’s worth the practice — and because readers who know me from one area of my business might not have a clue that I do other things too 🙂 It’s all about connecting — how and why we do that, and why someone might want to.
How we connect, photo by enot-poloskun
These days a lot of connections happen over the internet. But even with social media and web sites and blogs, people still need a reason — to visit, read, connect, hire and/or buy. Why not make it easy for them to do that?
I still see people “hiding” behind their brochure-style websites, with no way to interact with them. If they have a blog, they make it hard or impossible to post comments or questions. They bury their contact info so no one can find it. Hey, that’s no way to build relationships! Put your best face forward — but don’t make it a passive experience for your visitors.
Give them multiple ways to interact with you, hopefully ones that allow them to get to know you better, like you, and trust your services and products. That assumes you have something valuable to offer — and that you WANT people to hire you or buy from you 🙂 Doesn’t hurt a bit if you also make that process fun and different, too, so that you stand out from all the other 89 bazillion other web sites. blogs, Facebook pages, twitter icons, and so on.
Tomorrow, it will be my turn. I’ll take a shot at doing what I just recommended that YOU do 🙂 If nothing else, it will probably give you some ideas about how to do this for your own business.