Making yourself matter means that you affect the lives of others in a positive way. Whether it be with a product, service or cause, what you do has impact. You know that I think intention is important, but Pablo Picasso says, "What one does is what counts and not what one had the intention of doing." I think he's right. Action has to follow intention, otherwise good wishes are just vaporous pleasant thoughts. Here are actions that you can take right now to make your PR count for something.



1. Set up your systems.

Your systems and shopping cart must work flawlessly. I have several clients who want to sell products in huge quantities, but their websites don't support their desires. One couldn't figure out why her customers halted the buying process in the final step. I advised her to go through that process herself step by step to see what happened. She thought she knew--but a message popped up right on the final buy page telling those potential customers that they could contract a virus if they continued. Yikes. You need a reliable shopping cart that has autoresponders so you can follow up with satisfied buyers, safeguards in the merchant account/credit card processing department given all the Internet fraud, and an automated affiliate program to make it easy for others to sell your products.

2. Set up autoresponders.

Autoresponders make your connection to customers consistent. Consistency breeds trust. I find that many people write to me personally after receiving messages that I've delivered via autoresponder. I get a sense of what potential customers are thinking, if they find the information valuable (they do) and why they aren't buying (lack of finances). If you want to see how autoresponders work sign up for the Get a 6 Figure Book advance free teleclass download and you'll get tips and promos in your email box. Go ahead and use that format for your own autoresponders if you like.

3. Distribute your articles regularly.

Regularly is the key word here. PR is an ongoing and cumulative process. The 2 best systems we've found that we use are iSnare and ArticleMarketer. We're testing them both right now to find out which one works best for us. While it's incredibly time consuming even to use these systems, having your articles posted on dozens of sites gives you a real advantage when it comes to the search engines. One of the top ways they rank site value is by the number of linkbacks you have to your site. Article placement gives you that.

4. Send out press releases.

Your press releases should fall into two categories. Key word rich ones and ones that are truly designed to get media attention. The key word rich ones are for the search engines to pick up the information to give you a high ranking, so while the press release must make sense, it contains the terms that you've found people search on most for what you're promoting. I've been fooling around with this and will keep you posted on what I learn.

5. Put video on your site.

Video gives your website visitors a chance to meet you quickly. It's the next best thing to meeting you face to face. Internet whiz Mike Koenigs found out that in combination with a "Squeeze page" one that has only an offer for a special report and nothing else, combined with video, produced a 37% conversion rate--unheard of results. He's now unbundled his infomercial toolkit so you can get just this feature and have it up in an hour. If your conversion rate isn't what you'd hoped for try this.

These are some shortcuts so you can spend your time where it really matters. With people. Doing what you love. Streamlining your processes, ones that are repetitious or can be automated, frees you up to focus on the truly important stuff.

Copyright (c) 2006 by Susan Harrow. All rights reserved.