Blogging has taken the Internet by storm - it seems that everyone is doing it, from your neighbor down the street to famous celebrities and musicians. Blogging is a term that comes from “web logging” and was shortened to blogging; and thusly a weblog quickly became shortened to blog.

Perhaps you want to break into the world of blogging on your own but are feeling a little overwhelmed by the whole concept of starting your own blog. You can start your own blog in a matter of 10 minutes by following these simple steps. However, we are assuming that you have a basic idea of what you want to blog about. If not, that should probably be your first step.

A Place To Call Home
Start by finding a spot to blog. You can use a free blogging place, such as blogger.com, xanga.com or others. You can find the one that you like the best by doing a quick internet search for “free blogs”. There are many out there that use a variety of interfaces.

When you find the one that you choose to use, in this instance, we’re going to use blogger.com, all you have to do is click on the “sign up” button. Once you’ve signed up with your witty name (which is what your blog will be called) you’re almost ready to rock and roll and begin blogging.

Adding Your Own Touches
You can customize the way your blog will look by going to the options portion of your account. It’s not recommended to mess with any of the HTML tags unless you know how to. However, blogger.com allows you to customize your blog with just a few clicks of your mouse. You can choose from themes, color choices and much more.

Begin Blogging
Once you’ve done any of the tweaking to your account for the way it looks when it is published, you are ready to blog. All you have to do is click on “write page” or “write post” and start writing. When you hit submit and publish, the blog you wrote is live. It’s really that simple and takes no more than 10 minutes.

Now that you have an established blog, you can write about whatever you want. Perhaps your blog is just for personal friends and family to read about you and your life. So, your “my blog” is about you and your life. Perhaps you want to update everyone on a new job or promotion, or show off pictures of your kids doing something cute. All of these are easy to do - just point and click to add pictures, video, highlight text, bold, italics, change the font and color - all with just a click of your mouse.

If you are looking to blog about something in particular, for example gardening, ensure you’ve chosen a relevant blog name. George’s Green Thumb Gardening is a good example of a blog name for gardening, but not for writing. Having a relevant blog name will help bring other people to your blog to read. The most important thing to try and do in any niche like gardening is to establish yourself as an expert in the field, so be sure that you’re writing about something you know and that the information you’re putting on your blog is true. Establishing yourself as an expert will bring more people to your blog to read it regularly and soon enough, you’ll have a “fan base” of people waiting to read whatever else you have to say.

Click on one of these links to check out sample legal documents drafted by Amlaw 200 Law Firms for Fortune 500 Companies.

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The following blog post addresses some of the provisions most commonly found in Internet Advertising Agreements.

Definitions: The first paragraph of an Internet advertising agreement should set forth the definitions of the key terms that the agreement will refer to frequently.

Term: The agreement should recite how long the agreement is for.

Positioning: This paragraph should clarify how the advertising banners will be positioned on the advertiser’s website, and may refer to a schedule attached as an Exhibit.

Click-throughs: A “click-through” means that a user has clicked on the banner or the link to the purchaser’s website. If the agreement is for a certain amount of click-throughs per month, this provision of the agreement must clearly describe the commitments promised by the advertiser.

Exclusivity: If the deal points include an exclusivity provision, the agreement must reflect this intention. The agreement should be drafted to recite something to the effect of “no competitor of purchaser shall be permitted to place or purchase from advertiser, banner or promotional advertising as defined in Exhibit B, and advertiser agrees to use reasonable efforts to prevent third parties that are entitled to place ads on advertiser’s site from placing any banner or promotional ads of purchaser’s competitors.”

These are the most key provisions of an Internet Advertising Agreement. Once you and your advertising partner have reached an agreement, it is wise to consult an experienced transactional attorney to draft the agreement for you.

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Ah, those magic words - “Attract Clients”. Virtually every professional I know loves the idea of attracting clients, and would be even happier if there was a “magic formula” for accomplishing it. Well, actually there is a formula that works like magic for attracting clients to you. And I’m going to reveal it - right here, right now. (OK, to be more specific, it’ll be at the end of the article. But no cheating! You need to read through the article for the formula to make sense.)First of all, this isn’t about simply “getting” clients. It’s about attracting them to you. It is the concept of building a business without chasing prospects, dogging down purchased leads, or operating a “quote mill” - turning out quote after quote hoping to have the lowest price. Unfortunately, many professionals are either trained or take it upon themselves to uncover prospects “at arm’s length”. It seems that either intentionally or inadvertently, companies often train their team to build their business by pursuing prospects. Although many companies and managers praise the benefits of “attracting” clients, when it comes time to meet production quotas, all the methods which “pursue” clients are the ones encouraged. By the time “meeting production quotas” become an issue, drastic measures are called for.

The solution, of course, is to avoid being in that place of “catch-up” to begin with. By learning how to attract clients and by applying those methods consistently, you side-step the need to pursue clients altogether. Virtually every professional who has a sizable, growing business - characterized by high retention and a steady flow of client referrals - does it by attracting clients rather than pursuing them.

There are two key components to successfully attracting clients.

The first key is to understand that people will be attracted to you by WHO YOU ARE, rather than by WHAT YOU DO. While there will be a small group of people who will do business with you strictly based on your depth of knowledge, most people - in fact, the majority of people - will do business with you because of who you are. Having good knowledge of your products, services, and industry is important. And having strong technical skills is useful and important as well. It’s just that being knowledgeable and skillful isn’t sufficient.

The second key component in attracting clients is actually getting out, so that people get a chance to see you, know you, and be attracted to you! The reality is that when you are in your office behind your desk, prospects never get to experience you and those people skills you possess. The result? If you try to get clients from behind your desk, you end up having to pursue them. On the other hand, when you get out and allow people to interact with you, you end up attracting them.

OK, so here’s the “magic formula” I promised. The way to successfully attract clients is to improve your people skills, and get out and meet people. I know it’s a pretty simple formula, but … it works like magic.

Written by Michael Beck, “Head Zookeeper” at http://www.ClientMonkey.com , a marketing strategies website dedicated to getting more clients, making more money, and having more fun! Receive a FREE program on recruiting & prospecting success at: http://www.PowerRecruitingandProspecting.com

Click on one of these links to check out sample legal documents drafted by Amlaw 200 Law Firms for Fortune 500 Companies.

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Ever heard of the term “The One Man Band”? Well, I don’t know who this “man” is, but I can tell you that he will set you up for failure. If you look at most of the books out there on running a small business, or becoming an independent sales consultant, they’re trying to make you a master of everything. And, I think that is ridiculous. Because, if you are doing both money generating, and non-money generating business tasks, you will find that you are not mastering anything. You’re not an American Idol star, you’re really a One Man Band, a mediocre generalist, who is probably over worked. And the only beat you hear, is your head beating against the wall wondering why you can’t attract enough clients. Why do that?

I’m also seeing a major trend picking up speed in my client’s lives. Regardless of whether or not they’re doing well financially, more and more tension is popping up between their professional and personal lives. They are spending more precious business time handling non-money generating details and activities. Adults are moving from one personal crisis to the next. And, when I ask them, “So what did you do this week to build your business”, all I hear is a deep, “Sigh….”.

For a lot of self-employed professionals, things are getting a lot complicated. Longer sales cycles, clients in different time zones, global competition, never ending technological changes and vanishing trade barriers have created a new business model - the globally integrated business. The new global business model didn’t exist 20 years ago. Twenty years ago, work was a place you went to and it was defined by time lines. We knew our competitors well; frankly, we had dinner with our competitors and their kids played sports together. If they weren’t across town, they weren’t far and we could study them, speak their language and understand their moves.

And, this new way of doing business leads to frustration because on one end of the spectrum you have self-employed professionals that are loosing business to overseas competition and they are panicking; trying to save their sinking ship without a plan. On the other side of the spectrum you have businesses who are growing too fast. In either case, there is no time to plan or reflect because basically things are out of control.

So, from my experience, one of the number one reasons for businesses failing during this time in history, is because the business owners are spending time in their business, instead of working on their business. And, not knowing the distinction here, is costing you clients. Let me put it this way: spending your business hours on something that you can have done for you, for $30 - $40 per hour, just doesn’t make sense.

Look at these two activities and tell me which one makes you more money: You could be spending time building a high-trust relationship with a client and closing a sale, or waiting on hold to figure out when a late shipment will arrive. Here is another example: You could be talking to a prospect to understand their immediate needs, or you could be opening up the mail and reading it. John Dudek says it better, “Take the stuff you do great and that have the greatest impact, and do only those activities. Don’t do anything else.” Well said John.

When you finish reading this article, I need for you to make a list of the organizational tasks that you can pay someone else to do for you. Consider hiring a virtual assistant or high school student to help you recapture those non-money making hours to be strategic, speak with new clients, close more sales, make more money ‘ or whatever you’re really good at. Those hours are precious and irreplaceable. If your time is worth $80 or $8,000 an hour, it’s just plain silly to spend several hours a day doing something that you can delegate, or outsource for the equivalent of $15, $20 or $40 an hour.

My final thought to leave you with is this: every time I outsourced an activity, my income grew exponentially. I’m not just talking about an incremental increase in revenue, but a catapult to a higher profit margin. If you feel like you are becoming a human ‘doer’ instead of a human ‘being’, then you need support from a team that you can outsource work to.

About the Author

Kim Schott, your Global Client Communication Expert, is the author of the Keys to Client Communication Systemâ„¢, the step-by-step, paint by numbers client communication program to attract more clients in less time. To receive your weekly how-to articles on consistantly attracting more local and global clients in less time, visit http://www.SchottCulturalConsulting.com

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