Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

Creating Trust in Client Relationships

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trustPeople do business with those they trust. That trust can be developed in many ways. If they can visit your place of business, see you face to face, get comfortable with you, and know they can come to you if they have a problem, they will be more likely to trust you and to buy from you.

But what if you do business with people over the web, or by phone or mail? How can you build trust?

Of course, it is important to provide excellent products and services. Whenever customers decide to do business with you, they will know their trust was well-placed.

Here are some ways you can encourage them to make that first purchase:
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How Much Is Your Reputation Worth?

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for_the_money.jpgAre you ever tempted to do something “just for the money”? At some time in our lives, most of us do things that we would not do if we didn’t need the money. It might be staying in a job we do not particularly enjoy, or accepting a client with whom we would prefer not to work. However, there are things you should not do if you value your reputation.

There are people who will sell anything, and will say anything to sell something to you.  Although you may encounter them anywhere, the Internet seems to be a breeding ground for those who continually hype the latest and greatest way to separate you from your money. [Read more…]

Building Your Expert Platform

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crowd.jpgIf you want to market yourself as an expert–author, coach, consultant or information product producer–you need a platform. “Platform” is simply the current buzzword for being visible and having an audience.

In fact, most major publishers will not consider a book from an author who does not have an established platform. Even if you do not plan to seek a traditional publishing contract, however, having a platform will make it easier to profit from the content you create.

So how can you create a platform for yourself? [Read more…]

Do You Own Your Name?

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com.jpgI got a political brochure in the mail today, and it was a nasty piece of work. Perhaps the worst part is that the URL for their attack web site is the candidate’s name, as in “JohnSmith.com.”

Many times, people looking for information will simply enter the name of a person or company followed by “.com.” Voters wanting to learn about the candidate may enter his name and end up on a site set up by his political enemies. People who do not read the attack brochure carefully may even think that the “JohnSmith.com”  site is the candidate’s official site.

Fortunately for this politician, when you do a Google search on his name, his real campaign site comes up first and the attack site was not in the top results. However,  you can not be certain that this will happen if you are ever the victim of this kind of identity theft.

You may think that you do not need to own <yourname>.com. You do business under a company name, and you do not ever plan to run for office, so why do you need to register your name as a domain name? [Read more…]

Online Reputation Management

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You do a search for your name (or the name or your company or product) and one of the top results is a blog post attacking you. Or maybe there is something that you wrote, but it does not reflect what you believe today. Or there are those embarrassing vacation photos your friend posted to flickr.

Is there anything you can do to get this negative publicity off the Internet, or at least keep customers (and your mother) from seeing it? Although you may not be able to get all of it completely off the Internet, there are several things you can do to make it less visible. Let’s take a look at what your plan should be. [Read more…]