Marketing Yourself and Your Business Online and Off

• Author: Victoria Pynchon/Joe Kraynak (With)
• Profession: Mediator, author, speaker, negotiation trainer, consultant, and attorney with 25 years of experience in commercial litigation practice/Professional writer who has contributed to numerous For Dummies books
• Pages: 273-288

Chapter 16

Marketing Yourself and Your

Business Online and Off

In This Chapter

▶ Getting to know your market

▶ Using websites, blogs, and social media to promote yourself

▶ Marketing yourself in other ways

U

nless you go the mediation panel route, one of the roles you play as

a mediator is a marketing specialist. Your goal is to promote your

brand — You, Inc. — online and off, via a website, a blog, social media

(Facebook, Twitter, and so on), press releases, business cards, public speak-

ing, and press-the-flesh networking. This chapter shows you how to market

like a pro.

Tuning In to Your Market

When you choose a niche, as I explain in Chapter 2, you choose a market, and

that market becomes the community in which you practice. Your market/

community may be special education, healthcare, human resources, assisted

living, community mediation, or something else entirely. Your market also

extends to your personal and professional contacts, especially attorneys who

may secure your services and community organizations where you live and

do business.

Whatever your market is, you must become involved in it as an active

member of the community. The following sections explain where and how to

get started. (For more about getting involved in your market, see Chapter 17.)

274 Part IV: Launching Your Own Mediation Practice

Immersing yourself in your market

To know where to invest your promotional efforts, make a list of all the orga-

nizations and groups of people you can think of that comprise your market.

Start with the following:

✓ Attorneys

✓ Bar associations

✓ Colleagues

✓ Community and religious organizations

✓ Corporate counsel

✓ Educational networks, especially those related to mediation

✓ Friends and family members

✓ Law firms

✓ Trade organizations related to your area of expertise

Assuming that you focus on a specific niche market or industry, immerse

yourself in that market by reading what your market reads and going where

your market goes. In other words, read trade publications and attend rel-

evant trade shows, conferences, and events. Immersing yourself in your

market

✓ Sensitizes you to common concerns and areas of dispute.

✓ Brings you up to speed on essential terminology and concepts so that

you can talk the talk.

✓ Gives you an inside perspective on how people in the community think,

what they feel, and how they interact with one another.

✓ Provides valuable networking opportunities to connect with the movers

and shakers in your market.

Tune in to the way community members talk, act, and dress, and do your best

to fit in. Eventually, you want to stand out from the crowd, but do so by being

better, not by breaking with tradition. Respect your market and its ways.

Building your marketing database

All the people you meet are potential clients, so keep track of them. Ask for

business cards, and when you get back to your office, transfer the informa-

tion on the cards to your database — typically a contact-management pro-

gram such as Microsoft Outlook. But don’t stop there. Keep detailed notes

about each contact, including the following: