Waiting for Inspiration

I often lecture my clients when they do not update their blogs. "Write about whatever," I tell them. "This is meant to be fun, not a burden." For the first time in a long time, I feel sympathy for them. I was committed to updating the Account Management blog today. I logged into my account and just stared at the screen.

Uhhhhhh...

That feeling of just writing inane dribble for inane dribbles sake is overwhelming. I mustn't write crap! That would just be pointless.

There are all these cheesy lists of ways to get over writers block on the internet, and being the sucker I am, I checked them out.

1. Let it sit for a day or two- then come back to it at a later time. (Well- that isn't going to happen.)

2. Get a friend to help you. (I really don't think any of my three friends would be interested, so scratch that one.)

3. Admit you have writers block. Admitting you have a problem is the first step towards recovery. (This sounds vaguely familiar...)

4. Writer's block is created from a sense of fear that your writing will be viewed as poor, therefore, you do not even try. Put that fear aside and write your feelings. (I feel like I am in therapy.)

5. Relax your mind. (Do what?)

Needless to say, I did not find anything specific that inspired me to write a cunningly clever blog entry. What worked for me, was I put on some music I enjoyed. However, what works for me may not work for others.

The first step, in my mind, is to figure out what is inspiring. Sometimes you just have to wait for inspiration. Other times, you must force it out, just like you would the last dab of toothpaste from the already over-squeezed, marred shell of what was once your creative reservoir.

Now thats a blog post! Take that Mr. Lack of Motivation!

Account Management Poems

The account management team met recently with Colleen Stanley of Sales Leadership Inc., to do ongoing training and to learn how to better serve our clients.

The training was extremely helpful and not only gave us additional tools, but helped to foster poetic prose of perseverance and positivity.

Here is a sampling of the poems we came up with at the end of our meeting:

Roses are Red,
Violets are Blue,
Being Proactive
is the thing to do.

Roses are Red,
Violets are Blue,
Set clear expectations
and be proactive too!

Roses are Red,
Violets are Blue,
The relationship with your
clients is all up to you!

While poets we are not, we are passionate about our jobs, our clients and providing the best service in our industry. As we strive to create an even stronger team and better relationships with our clients, our poetry may not improve, but our service certainly will.

Content and Links

If you haven't figured it out yet, the key to organic success on the web is consistently adding real, meaningful relevant content to your website combined with consistently building links back to your website from other websites and blogs.

Whether you are a cosmetic dentist, a cosmetic surgeon, a LASIK surgeon or an attorney, you should have as your goal to develop your website into the ultimate authority on your specialty. If you make a commitment to do this, we at Page 1 Solutions, can help you make it happen. Our writers can help you develop the content - for you to edit of course - to place on your website on a consistent schedule throughout the year. Add a blog to your site and you can regularly make updates as well. Within a year, your site will move to the top of the charts in terms of credibility as compared with the vast majority of your competitors.

The second step in the process is link building. We have several ways to accomplish this:

• directories (free and paid) - our program registers you on 15 or more directories every month for years. We work with hundreds of directories and are constantly adding more to the list so that your directory listings are always growing.
• article syndication - just like the content you write for your website, we encourage you to write content for publication on other websites with links back to you. In fact, we write all this for you - and you can edit it. We have documented the effectiveness of this strategy.
• links from directories that we own and from blogs that we control - as part of our program we will automatically add you to these directories and when we write blog postings, we link back to one or two of our clients so they benefit from these links.
• links from other clients' websites - we have a cross-linking program that helps you get links from many of our other clients - always from clients in non-competing markets
• links from other blogs and websites - we have developed an arsenal of blogs and websites that will add links to our clients for a fee. We do not do this on a grand scale and only with credible websites, but it can be the strategy that puts you over the top.

The bottom line to all this is that an effective website marketing strategy requires a huge amount of effort (and a lot of knowledge). We put in the effort for each and every client and we have the knowledge and ability to adapt to keep getting excellent results for each client.