A consultant can handle their “Keep In Touch” Marketing (where you keep in touch with past clients, interested prospects and people who have requested that you email them) in a few different ways. These solutions include:

• An e-zine (email newsletter)
• Having people subscribe to get emails from your blog through a solution like Feedburner
• RSS streams

Should you have an ezine list or have people subscribe to your blog?

The answer to this depends on the amount of work you want to do in your marketing.

Newsletter

A traditional newsletter mailing list is more work – you have to write the newsletters and send them out. You can customize this option more – from look and feel, to the frequency that the newsletters are sent out with, to other offers or promotions that you send out with your information. But, this also means that you have to do the work of sending out an email newsletter:

• signing up for a newsletter service

• setting the account up

• designing your email newsletter template

• setting up your newsletter each time it has to go out

• testing and sending it

And, that is the process you have to go through each time the newsletter has to go out (and I’m not even talking about putting together your articles and offers for the newsletter).

Blog Subscription

If you just have people subscribe to your blog (through a service such as Feedblitz, which integrates easily with Typepad or Wordpress), then the work of sending out the newsletter is done for you. Your blog posts, if you have made any, get emailed to people who sign up once a day. You don’t have to do anything extra. If you don’t write a blog post, nothing gets sent out. And, if you want to communicate with your list, you just post on the blog – and take care of 2 marketing tasks at once, because your blog is refreshed and your customers have been updated.

Feedblitz also allows you to log in to your account on their site and view a list of your subscribers – to see exactly who’s subscribed. There are other features on their site that allow you to email your subscribers separately from your blog – for example, if you want to make a special discount offer to subscribers only.

RSS Feeds

The other option is to have people read your blog through RSS Streams, or RSS assistance programs like Feedburner. These are neat and easy for the client to do – they just grab your RSS address from your blog and then paste it into their email program or RSS aggregator. And, they increase the likelihood that people will keep up with your blog – instead of leaving it to them to remember to pull up your blog site every few days. But, the major disadvantage to you here is that they don’t have to give you their details in exchange. That means that you can only communicate with these contacts through the blog – which is better than nothing, but not ideal.

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Nice short article by Digital Inspiration on a new Bit.ly feature: uploading files and sharing them through email, Twitter, and other social networks. The post explains how to do it and lists the advantages of using it vs. uploading files directly to yfrog. 

 Read “Now Upload Files Through Bit.ly” or try it for yourself.

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In this age of internet (in)security, it is now more than ever crucial to establish a system of password creation that is both safe and easy to remember. Following is one method that should help prevent you from falling into common mistakes when creating passwords, such as writing them down in order to remember them, or using easily recognizable words or word combinations.

Start with a favorite song lyric. For this example, we’ll use a line from the Beatles’ tune, ‘Blackbird’:

“Take these broken wings and learn to fly”

Now, take the first letter from each word of the lyric. In this case it will be:

TTBWALTF

Next, choose a random set of characters and/or numbers. For our example, we’ll use:

& 5 +

Insert the random characters/numbers into your letter set above, in any order or position. For our example, we’ll choose beginning, middle and end, to make it easy to remember where they go:

&TTBW5ALTF+

To make it a bit trickier, make a few of the letters lower case. You will now have a password that is difficult to crack or decipher.

&TTbW5aLTf+

Note: using upper and lower case can make it a bit harder to remember, but will increase your password security level.

Just a few options to song lyrics are:

• Affirmative phrases /mantras
• Names of favorite sports teams or players
• Birthday months of relatives
• Favorite flowers

The possibilities are endless, as long as you use the first letters only from each word. You could also try using the last letter only, although this might be a little harder to remember. Be sure to use a subject that is familiar to you and easy to remember. I like song titles and lyrics because it’s easy to Google them should you ever forget.

Once you’ve created your passwords, be sure to do the following:

1/ Never share them.
2/ Never write them down.
3/ Change them frequently, at least once a year.

Identity theft and internet security are world-wide, growing issues. Databases are hacked and personal information is stolen on a regular basis these days. And what you read about on the news is only a fraction of the actual amount; a lot more theft occurs than what is publicly reported. Keep yourself and your privacy out of the wrong hands!

How about you? Do you have any great password protection tips to share?

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This bit of prose has crossed my email many times, and I’ve shared it with my friends and family in the past. This time, I thought I’d share it with my WIC friends. I know some of our members, affiliates, and readers are men, but I think you’ll see the value in the message and share it with your wives, daughters, mothers, sisters, and other significant females in your life.

While technically it isn’t about woman in business, it’s message it’s good to remember:  “Women have vital things to say and everything to give. However, if there’s one flaw in women, it’s that they forget their worth.”

To all the wonderful women of WIC, have a wonderful day and don’t forget your worth!

Women have strengths that amaze men.
They bear hardships and they carry burdens, but they hold happiness, love and joy.
They smile when they want to scream.
They sing when they want to cry.
They cry when they are happy and laugh when they are nervous.
They fight for what they believe in.
They stand up to injustice.
They don’t take “no” for an answer when they believe there is a better solution.
They go without so their family can have.
They go to the doctor with a frightened friend.
They love unconditionally.
They cry when their children excel and cheer when their friends get awards.
They are happy when they hear about a birth or a wedding.
Their hearts break when a friend dies.
They grieve at the loss of a family member, yet they are strong when they think there is no strength left.
They know that a hug and a kiss can heal a broken heart.

Women come in all shapes, sizes and colors.
They’ll drive, fly, walk, run or e-mail you to show how much they care about you.
The heart of a woman is what makes the world keep turning.
They bring joy, hope and love.
They have compassion and ideas.
They give moral support to their family and friends.

Women have vital things to say and everything to give.

HOWEVER, IF THERE’S ONE FLAW IN WOMEN, IT’S THAT THEY FORGET THEIR WORTH.

Please pass this along to all your women friends and relatives to remind them just how amazing they are.

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