23Jan

Your Internet Presence

FILED IN Marketing Comments Off

I realize that at this moment in time (having ignored my website for the better part of four years of nursing and midwifery school), I am not in any position to be a model of good internet marketing.  However, I do see a lot of birth professional websites due to the work of the Natural Childbirth Directory. I see a lot of what not to do, but I didn’t realize how confusing it could be to potential clients until my daughter started doing the directory updates for me.

You see, she had questions.  The exact questions I know readers have as they check out the websites.  The exact questions that have moved me to have such strict guidelines for putting a website into the directory.  The exact questions that many birth professionals don’t understand because they don’t see their website or their business as a potential client does.

I decided to spend a few days helping you see how an outsider views your business based on your internet presence, and hopefully help you fix any gaps that may exist.   So today we will begin with the first and most important concept:

If it is not listed as a service on your website, I cannot hire you to perform that service. 

Even birth professionals understand this about other industries, using websites to determine if a store caries a particular brand, dates for specific movies or what classes are available at a local school.  But when it comes to their own website many birth professionals forget to list everything they do.

As an example, consider Jane.  Jane is a doula who does private childbirth education for couples. On her website she lists her doula work, being sure to highlight that she does belly casting.  When she submits to the directory she indicates she does doula work and childbirth education. When I check the listing, all I see listed is her doula work (with childbirth education listed as part of the doula service package).  Nowhere does she list that I can hire her for private childbirth education without hiring her as a doula.  As a potential client, I assume she doesn’t offer this service and I search elsewhere for a childbirth education class.

I’ve heard many reasons why professionals choose not to list a service they are willing to provide.

“I don’t want too much business, I mostly get doula work from my childbirth classes.” 

“It’s just a side job for me, I don’t advertise myself as a childbirth educator.”

If either of these are true, you shouldn’t be listing yourself in the undesired role on web directories. Usually, the birth professional simply did not realize they had not listed all their services on the website – perhaps because in their mind they are so linked.  They think, “I’m a childbirth educator, of course I would do doula work for my students.”  The problem is outsiders (potential clients) don’t think that way.

The trick is to have someone else look at your website and have them tell you everything they can hire you to do.  Make sure that list accurately reflects all the things you are willing to be hired for, and then ONLY advertise yourself in those roles on internet directories.

 

21Jan

After Graduation

FILED IN Jennifer's Training Comments Off

I’ve been ignoring you…sort of.  I had to get through my final exams and the the last week of school.  Then I was visiting family out of state which, despite my best intentions on every trip, is NOT a place for me to accomplish any work.  Admittedly, I have been home and without classes for two weeks. But something unexpected happened to me…I had to transition to non-student life.

It wasn’t unexpected that I would need to transition, besides, I’ve done this a few times before.  The joke at our house is that I keep graduating because I’m good at it. What was unexpected, at least to me, was how I would balance all the things I had planned to do with all the things I had been putting off while in school.  What was unexpected was that the rhythm of life as a student, and the organizational tools I used as a student, would no longer be effective for me.

For example, each semester I made a list of all the assignments and projects for each class.  I then put them in order by due date because this was when they had to be completed.  But now, I don’t have ANY due dates except the ones I put on myself. These seem somewhat fluid to me, not because they are but because I haven’t put any dates on the calendar.  So for two weeks I tried to work on things without having my normal prioritization scheme – and really only made progress on one project (which actually had an outside deadline, go figure).

Another example, during the semester I have classes at scheduled times of the day.  This gave me natural built-in work times with “breaks” that I had to take.  But now I have lost the outside imposed stop times, and the urgency of getting my work done before class begins is gone.  This has made it very easy to slack off, and over the past two weeks I’ve noticed I waste more time than I actually work.

Added to all these structural changes is the uncertainty of my next step.  We haven’t decided yet if we will stay in Atlanta or if we will move.  We don’t know yet what type of “job” I will look for.  This has made it hard to want to prioritize the certification exams – a step which is priority number one for most graduating midwives. I need to decide which to take first, nurse practitioner or midwife.  And I need to balance this part of my work with updating the website — a task that has been on hold for four years!  And this needs to be balanced with publishing the results of my thesis — a task that is time sensitive due to the nature of research.

You see, I didn’t really plan well for my exit from graduate school. I couldn’t really give advice on how to do this better, some of it may just be the initial “shock” that all students experience during the move from student to worker. But I wanted to be honest about how much more complex this piece of the educational journey is, especially since I had not anticipated graduation would be difficult.

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