The Fish on Your Dish May Not Be the Salmon You Sought

Salmon is salmon, right? Well, yes, in a manner of speaking, but there are also several different varieties of America’s most popular fish dish.

And if you don’t know your Chinook from your Chilean or your Alaskan from your Atlantic, you could be on the receiving end of a salmon fraud that has nutrition and fishery experts increasingly worried.

A while back in  Seafood Fraud: What’s Really On Your Dish? we wrote about how environmental research group Oceana discovered that many types of seafood were mislabeled, intentionally otherwise, and that as many as 87% of some fish types were wrongly described in grocery stores and restaurants.

Click here to read the full article. 



©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

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Seven Ways to Get Clients to See You as an Expert

As a self-employed professional, the view that prospective clients hold of you is crucial. What you want is for clients to see you as an expert. How clients perceive your level of expertise will influence not only whether or not they hire you, but also how much they’re willing to pay, how easy it is for you to close the sale, and whether clients award you big projects or small ones.

It may feel like you, the person to be hired, don’t have much power over clients’ perceptions. You may believe that clients will make their own decisions about how — or whether — to work with you, regardless of what you do. But that’s not true. There is much you can do to influence how potential clients view you before you ever have your first conversation with them. Here are seven ways you can influence clients to perceive you as an expert.

1. Speak — Public speaking for groups of potential clients or referral sources is a powerful way to demonstrate your expertise, while simultaneously making a personal connection. Whether you speak at conferences, professional meetings, webinars, or teleclasses, audience members will automatically value your expertise more highly because it’s coming from the podium.
2. Teach — If you enjoy speaking in public, consider finding an opportunity to do so on the faculty of a university, training school, or resource center where potential clients or referral sources attend classes. In addition to the usual benefits of public speaking, you’ll gain instant credibility as a faculty member of a recognized institution.
3. Write — Writing articles, blog posts, white papers, case studies, or ebooks can allow you to reach a wider audience than speaking or teaching. Plus, writing has the significant benefit of permitting you to capture your expertise once, then share it over and over. Once clients view you as the “author of” one or more publications, they’ll begin to think of you as a trustworthy advisor.
4. Publish — Writing for your own blog or newsletter is an easy way to get started as a writer. But you’ll become more credible once you publish outside your own website or mailing list. Consider writing guest posts for other blogs your audience reads, or articles for industry newsletters, trade journals, or local publications.
5. Join — Clients will often survey your affiliations to judge how “professional” you are. Even when a client knows nothing about your field, they’re likely to consider you more of an expert when you belong to one or more professional associations related to what you do.
6. Serve — Volunteering on a committee or serving as an officer for an industry association or local community group provides multiple benefits. You’ll make new connections with potential clients and referral sources, gain recognition from colleagues or neighbors, and be seen by others as someone who’s at the center of things.
7. Position and Promote — All of the above activities will produce better results when you make sure prospective clients are aware of them. Your professional bio should include where you speak or teach, where you publish, and what organizations you belong to or volunteer for. When you get booked to speak, begin teaching a new class, publish an article or other writing, or take on a new role with an organization, let your mailing list and social media connections know.

Don’t spend all your marketing time and money just on being more visible to prospective clients. Visibility marketing like running ads, email blasts, direct mail, and promotion-only social media may get your clients’ attention, but you want more than that; you want their trust. Make sure to include some of the trust-building approaches above in your marketing mix.

Then clients won’t just see you, they’ll see you as the expert you truly are.


 Copyright © 2015, C.J. Hayden

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Seniors Snared in Multiple Impostor Scams

Older seniors are the most widely targeted victims of scams, often because they’re too trusting and sometimes because they can be more easily confused or forgetful.

These ingredients come together in a new trick that relies on victims thinking they’ve failed to recognize someone they should know, but don’t like to admit it.

It may play out at a stop light, where the scammer hangs out until he or she spots an older driver, preferably significantly older.

Click here to read the full article. 



©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

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Scammers Cash-in on Fears of Law Enforcement

While we mostly think of the law enforcement as being a group of people who are there to protect us and ensure justice, scammers are also finding ways to twist that understanding so it earns them some money.

For example, scammers have, for years, posed as police officers and court officials threatening victims with arrest and jail for bogus charges like failing to turn up for jury duty.

In the latest variation in this type of crime, crooks have discovered there are ill-gotten gains to be picked up by scouring public notices about bankruptcy.

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©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

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Introducing the Adkreator Tour

Yes, Writing Blog Posts and Articles CAN Bring You Clients

“I’d like to attract clients by writing articles or a blog, but I’m not sure what to write about.”
“I tried blogging for a while, but it didn’t bring me any business.”
“When I write, people seem to like it, but I have only a handful of readers.”

These are some of the comments I hear from self-employed professionals who think that writing about their area of expertise might be a path to attracting clients… but feel like they don’t have a map. I understand their frustration. It’s easy to make crucial mistakes when using writing as a marketing strategy. But you CAN do this successfully. Here are six guidelines to make writing pay off.

1. Consistency is key. For writing to succeed as a marketing approach, you need to write regularly. Whether you are posting to your own blog, publishing in your ezine, or writing articles or guest posts published elsewhere, you must write frequently. I recommend writing at least weekly if you have your own blog, and twice a month at minimum if you’re publishing elsewhere.

2. Write content, not copy. Articles and blog posts aren’t the place for marketing copy. Write to educate, entertain, or evoke emotion in your readers. That’s what will keep them coming back for more of your material. Write about the same topics you discuss with your clients every day; share that same expertise with your readers. See #6 below for where your marketing copy belongs.

3. Showcase your work. Go beyond just providing information to your readers. Give them a glimpse of how you work. Include phrases like:

• One of my clients had this problem, and here’s what I helped him do
• A student in one of my classes asked about this and here’s how I answered
• I’ve developed the following solution for the clients I work with
• Here’s what I’ve learned in helping my clients with this issue

4. Once you’ve written, promote. Don’t rely on readers finding their own way to your blog posts or articles. Get your writing in front of potential readers in as many different ways as possible. Send your articles or posts via email, mention them on social media, link to them on your website, pass out copies at speaking engagements, and announce them to your professional groups.

5. Position yourself as an expert. Include with your writing – wherever it is published – an author bio that tells people exactly what you do. Be sure to add to it some credibility-boosters like your years of experience, degrees or certifications, where you’ve taught or spoken, or roles in any professional groups. Having a credible bio will give your words more weight.

6. Build a path to sales. Wherever your pieces appear, be sure that a way to contact you and a call to action are visible on the same page. This could be in your author bio, as a P.S. to the piece, or in a sidebar, footer, or floatbox on the page. Invite readers to join your mailing list, download a bonus, follow you on social media, sign up for your program, or call you about working together.

When you follow the guidelines above, writing quality, content-rich blog posts and articles can become a powerful marketing approach for you. You’ll often find that people who’ve been reading your material for a while will be pre-sold before they contact you, and ready to hire you on the spot. Isn’t that the kind of result we’d like to see from all our marketing?

Copyright © 2015, C.J. Hayden

Read more free articles by C.J. Hayden or subscribe to the GET CLIENTS NOW! E-Letter.  

QuickBooks Scam Emails by the Dozen!

In the course of just two weeks during February, software company Intuit reported the circulation of a dozen fake emails attempting to steal confidential information from users of its QuickBooks accounting program and tax preparation software, TurboTax.

It turns out that this is not unusual. It just happened to be a random sampling we took. A similar level of scam emails seems to be circulating at any one time.

It’s easy to see why: Both QuickBooks and TurboTax handle masses of confidential information – both financial and personal that could be extremely dangerous in the hands of a crook.

Click here to read the full article.


 

©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

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