How to Get Your Media, Guest Blog, and Any Other Request Ignored

I do my best not to feed into strict, concrete rules of engagement when it comes to advising you on certain things. I believe there are certain rules that should be followed in certain situations, but by no means do I advocate experts who have a "my way or the highway" style of leading and coaching.

Opened up my inbox today to find an email from an organization asking me to post one of their blogs here on my blog. This isn't the first time this particular individual has contacted me asking to have one of their posts featured. I did today what I've done in the past - read and delete.

Why? They completely went about it the wrong way.

Mistake #1: The subject line of the email was "The Unemployed Entrepreneur". Yep, that's me...now what?

Mistake #2: The email salutation read "Hi,". So I'm no longer The Unemployed Entrepreneur® or even Donna for that mattter. I've either been reduced to a single character or my new name is Comma and she decided to abbreviate it.

Mistake #3: The first sentence of the first and only paragraph started off with, "I'm a big fan of your blog and have enjoyed reading all the great content since I stumbled across it a while back."

Really? Stop pulling my leg!

Mistake #4: The entire email was full of formatting and punctuation errors. If this is what your email to me looks like, why should I take the time to even consider looking at the link to the post you sent? 

Mistake #5: Every time you've emailed me, you've sent the same crappy email...with the exception of changing the link to the post you think "my readers would get alot out of reading". You've just blown your third or fourth attempt at making a good first impression.

Deep down in my heart, I know you are far too intelligent for me to have to put together a list of things you should do to avoid making the same mistakes as the genius I'm referring to above. If you're ever in doubt, just do the opposite of what she did.

Photo credit: Bob.Fornal

PowerPoint for Presenters: A Post for The Work at Home Woman

Have you ever sat in on a presentation and became overwhelmed by the speaker's use (or misuse!) of PowerPoint? Take a look at the post below to avoid making the same mistakes:

5 Tips to Avoid PowerPoint Plague when Public Speaking

Increasing Blog Traffic with Speaking and Article Marketing

In June, I only wrote one post but managed to increase my blog subscription by 40% last month. Yeah, if I'd intended to do that it probably wouldn't have worked out that way.

While I can't give you a specific formula for how it happened, I can share with you something I did during the course of the month that probably contributed to the spike in growth:

Free Speech - I gave three free talks locally. Two of the speaking engagements were at women's chamber organizations. The audiences consisted of women entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, and other decision makers. One of the groups did an exceptional job of extracting information from my website and created a killer bio to market my presentation. They even went the extra mile and found comments from an online article I'd written (which weren't on my testimonials page) and included those as well. The other event afforded me the opportunity to serve as a moderator for a roundtable discussion. This allowed me to get up close and personal with my target audience. I was called to speak at this event because someone had cancelled and I didn't have time to create a customized handout. Instead, I gave each person at my table a copy of my personal branding article. The article byline included my blog url. At the end of the event, I had ladies who hadn't sat at my table coming up to me and asking for a copy of the article as well.

I've met people who simply refuse to speak for free. For me, it's a great way to get exposure, share my expertise, and expand my community. In this case, I thought outside of the box and gave more valuable content to my participants, and at the same time, was able to showcase my writing abilities and drive traffic here to my blog.

I've set a goal for the number of blog subsribers I'd like to have by the end of 2010. At this rate, I'm well on my way to achieving that goal.

Photo credit: kevinzhengli

The Relationship Factor: A Forbes Post

In a recent Forbes post, I gave three solid tips to maximize your networking efforts and follow up. Are you doing any of these already? Share your strategies for getting the most out of your personal connections.

3 Tips to Building Better Business Relationships